In Queen Elizabeth’s time, it is true, one or two little impositions crept in, the general prosperity of her reign overshadowing small errors and innovations. One of these was upon currants, by occasion of the merchants’ complaints that the Venetians had laid a charge upon the English cloth, that so we might be even with them, and force them the sooner to take it off. But this being demanded by King James, was denied by one Bates, a merchant, and upon a suit in the exchequer, was adjudged for the King. Now the manner of that judgment was thus: There were then but three judges in that court, all differing from one another in the grounds of their sentences. The first was of opinion, the King might impose upon such commodities as were foreign and superfluous, as currants were, but not upon such as were native and to be transported, or necessary, and to be imported for the use of the kingdom. The second judge was of opinion, he might impose upon all foreign merchandise, whether superfluous or no, but not upon native. The third, that for as much as the King had the custody of the ports, and the guard of the seas, and that he might open and shut up the ports as he pleased, he had a prerogative to impose upon all merchandise, both exported and imported. Yet this single, distracted, and divided judgment, is the foundation of all the impositions now in practice; for, after this, King James laid new charges upon all commodities outward and inward, not limited to a certain time and occasion, but reserved to himself, his heirs and successors, forever,—the first impositions in fee-simple that were ever heard of in this kingdom. This judgment, and the right of imposing thereupon assumed, was questioned in septimo and duodecimo[18] of that king, and was the cause of the breach of both those parliaments. In 18 and 21 Jacobi, indeed, it was not agitated by this House, but only that they might preserve the favor of the king, for the despatch of some other great businesses, upon which they were more especially attentive.[19] But in the first of his present Majesty, it necessarily came to be remembered, upon the proposition on the King’s part, for renewing the bill of tonnage and poundage; yet so moderate was that Parliament, that they thought rather to confirm the impositions already set by a law to be made, than to abolish them by a judgment in Parliament; but that and divers ensuing parliaments have been unhappily broken, before that endeavor could be accomplished: only at the last meeting a remonstrance was made concerning the liberty of the subject in this point; and it hath always been expressed to be the meaning of the House, and so it was (as he said) his own meaning in the proposition now made, to settle and restore the right according to law, and not to diminish the king’s profit, but to establish it by a free grant in Parliament.