was forbidden to interfere with them. The farmers behaved after their kind. Poor men were often charged twice over, but the establishment expenses were nevertheless badly paid. In the summer of 1676 nine months' arrears, amounting to 139,000_l._, were due to the army alone, and an unpaid army, Essex truly said, was like tinder. He could not rest well until he saw these poor creatures righted. He believed that if the Lords Justices had had 10,000_l._ they might have nipped the rebellion of 1641 in the bud, but the Exchequer was empty and they had no credit. He himself was in much the same position, and there were small mutinies at Drogheda and Kinsale. Everything connected with the army was out of order. There were scarcely 300 barrels of good powder in the country, nor 500 good muskets. 'There is not one company in the whole army completely armed, their muskets being many of them out of order and of different bores and the pikes half of them broken, all guns and fieldpieces in the several garrisons generally unmounted.' Ranelagh was himself made Vice-Treasurer in June 1674, so that there was no supervision whatever.[112] [Sidenote: Essex, Ranelagh, and Ormonde.] Though deprived of effective control Essex tried to keep the farmers in order, but they appointed numerous private collectors, and it was almost impossible to say who had a right to demand money. Moreover, the King and the Lord Treasurer did what they could to thwart him, and a letter signed by the one and countersigned by the other blamed him obliquely for 'encroaching on the office of our said Vice-Treasurer.' Many allowances were made for Ranelagh and much extra time was given him, but he could not be brought to account. The real reason of the extraordinary favour he enjoyed at Court doubtless was that he gave Charles ready money behind the Lord Lieutenant's back, and if it be true that one of his daughters became the King's mistress, as Henry Sidney reports, that might be an additional argument. Both Cleveland and Portsmouth made money out of Ireland. The King cared more about putting cash into his Privy Purse than about the public service. His state policy was influenced by this, as Louis XIV. well knew, and smaller people could play the same game. In March 1677, Ranelagh at last handed in an account up to the end of 1675, but declared that it was not final and that the items were liable to reconsideration. As it was confessedly imperfect, Essex refused to pass it. In the meantime, Ranelagh had fallen foul of Ormonde, attributing his own troubles to the mismanagement of Irish finance in the ten years preceding 1671, during the greater part of which the Duke was Lord Lieutenant. Ormonde had not much difficulty in defending himself, and retorted by showing how oppressive had been the system of collection under Ranelagh. The inferior tax-gatherers did not hesitate to remedy their own deficiencies by squeezing those whom they thought unable to defend themselves.