gave the prince great "comfort," or re-assurance. So he made ready his ordnance, and discharged the great guns amongst the rebels, with mighty shot of arrows: by which means, and because the French king and queen, who were in the city, also held against the rebels, the burgesses were in a short time constrained to submit to the mercy of the duke of Exeter.[16] At p. 69 occurs a curious chapter in the praise of agriculture, or "labourage of the londe" as it is there termed, illustrated by a description of the gardens and herbers of king Cyrus. But the most important portion of the whole work, in an historical point of view, is the chapter commencing at p. 71, intended to inforce the wisdom and necessity of making just pay to soldiers, for eschewing of great inconveniences that may otherwise insue. It is here admitted that in this respect there had been more neglect in the English possessions in France than was elsewhere known[17]: {xiii} that in consequence the people had suffered great oppression from the soldiers taking their vitail without payment, and that such abuses had continued unchecked for ten or twelve years previously to the country being lost. Our author advises that the chieftains and captains should be duly paid their wages, either monthly, as had been usual during the time of the regent Bedford, or quarterly, and that without any reward of courtesy, bribe, defalcation, or abridgment, or any undue assignation; and that such payments be made content without delay, or long and great pursuit. It appears from the writer's statements, that the royal officers, deputies, and commissioners had not only been guilty of the practices thus denounced, but that those officers themselves had been needlessly numerous, living as they did upon bribery and extortion, and neglecting the exercise of arms necessary for the defence and protection of the territory. Oftentimes they had wasted of the subjects'[18] livelode more than was necessary, and oftentimes had suffered them to be menaced and beaten, and mischieved their beasts with their weapons, so that they were nigh out of their wits for sorrow, and thus enforced "for duresse" to forsake the title and laws of their English sovereign. Moreover, they had been so often grievously surcharged with paying of tasques, tails (or tolls), subsidies, and impositions, besides their rents paid either to the crown or their landlords, and many of them dwelling upon the marches having also patised (or compounded?) to the adverse party in order to dwell in rest, that these innumerable charges and divers torments had effected their uttermost undoing. The author cannot quit these reflections without this passionate appeal to the Almighty: "Oh God! which art most mercifulle and highest juge, soverein and just, how maist thou long suffre this (misery) regnyng without the stroke of vengeaunce and ponisshement commyng upon the depryvyng or yelding up of that Dukedom?"