This precedent was followed in the erection of a similar company of starch-makers, and in a great variety of other grants, which may be found in Rymer's _Foedera_, and in the proceedings of the long parliament; till monopolies, in transgression or evasion of the late statute, became as common as they had been under James or Elizabeth. The king, by a proclamation at York in 1639, beginning to feel the necessity of diminishing the public odium, revoked all those grants.[20] He annulled at the same time a number of commissions that had been issued in order to obtain money by compounding with offenders against penal statutes. The catalogue of these, as well as of the monopolies, is very curious. The former were, in truth, rather vexatious than illegal, and sustained by precedents in what were called the golden ages of Elizabeth and James, though at all times the source of great and just discontent. The name of Noy has acquired an unhappy celebrity by a far more famous invention, which promised to realise the most sanguine hopes that could have been formed of carrying on the government for an indefinite length of time without the assistance of parliament. Shaking off the dust of ages from parchments in the Tower, this man of venal diligence and prostituted learning discovered that the sea-ports and even maritime counties had in early times been sometimes called upon to furnish ships for the public service; nay, there were instances of a similar demand upon some inland places. Noy himself died almost immediately afterwards. Notwithstanding his apostasy from the public cause, it is just to remark that we have no right to impute to him the more extensive and more unprecedented scheme of ship-money as a general tax, which was afterwards carried into execution. But it sprang by natural consequence from the former measure, according to the invariable course of encroachment, which those who have once bent the laws to their will ever continue to pursue. The first writ issued from the council in October 1634. It was directed to the magistrates of London and other sea-port towns. Reciting the depredations lately committed by pirates, and slightly adverting to the dangers imminent in a season of general war on the continent, it enjoins them to provide a certain number of ships of war of a prescribed tonnage and equipage; empowering them also to assess all the inhabitants for a contribution towards this armament according to their substance. The citizens of London humbly remonstrated that they conceived themselves exempt, by sundry charters and acts of parliament, from bearing such a charge. But the council peremptorily compelled their submission; and the murmurs of inferior towns were still more easily suppressed. This is said to have cost the city of London £35,000.[21]