The hoard amassed by Henry, and "most of it under his own key and keeping, in secret places at Richmond," is said to have amounted to near 1,800,000 l., which, according to our former conjectures, would be equivalent to about 16,000,000 l.; an amount of specie so immense as to warrant a suspicion of exaggeration, in an age when there was no control from public documents on a matter of which the writers of history were ignorant. Our doubts of the amount amassed by Henry are considerably warranted by the computation of Sir W. Petty, who, a century and a half later, calculated the whole specie of England at only 6,000,000 l.--This hoard, whatever may have been its precise extent, was too great to be formed by frugality, even under the penurious and niggardly Henry. A system of extortion was employed, which "the people, into whom there is infused for the preservation of monarchies a natural desire to discharge their princes, though it be with the unjust charge of their counsellors, did impute unto Cardinal Morton and Sir Reginald Bray, who, as it after appeared, as counsellors of ancient authority with him, did so second his humours as nevertheless they did temper them. Whereas Empson and Dudley, that followed, being persons that had no reputation with him, otherwise than by the servile following of his bent, did not give way only as the first did, but shaped his way to those extremities for which himself was touched with remorse at his death."[4] The means of exaction chiefly consisted in the fines incurred by slumbering laws, in commuting for money other penalties which fell on unknown offenders, and in the sale of pardons and amnesties. Every revolt was a fruitful source of profit. When the great confiscations had ceased, much remained to be gleaned by true or false imputations of participation in treason. To be a dweller in a disaffected district, was, for the purposes of the king's treasure, to be a rebel. No man could be sure that he had not incurred mulcts, or other grievous penalties, by some of those numerous laws which had so fallen into disuse by their frivolous and vexatious nature as to strike before they warned. It was often more prudent to compound by money, even in false accusations, than to brave the rapacity and resentment of the king and his tools. Of his chief instruments, "Dudley was a man of good family, eloquent, and one that could put hateful business into good language; Empson, the son of a sieve-maker, of Towcester, triumphed in his deeds, putting off all other respects. They were privy counsellors and lawyers, who turned law and justice into wormwood and rapine."[5] They threw into prison every man whom they could indict, and confined him, without any intention to prosecute, till he ransomed himself. They prosecuted the mayors and other magistrates of the city of London, for pretended or trivial neglects of duty, long after the time of the alleged offences; subservient judges imposed