may appear strange, not inferior to, if they did not exceed, in number
and consequence, those of our present establishment. At one time the
great seal was sold for three thousand marks. The office of sheriff was
then very lucrative: this charge was almost always sold. Sometimes a
county paid a sum to the king, that he might appoint a sheriff whom they
liked; sometimes they paid as largely to prevent him from appointing a
person disagreeable to them; and thus the king had often from the same
office a double profit in refusing one candidate and approving the
other. If some offices were advantageous, others were burdensome; and
the king had the right, or was at least in the unquestioned practice, of
forcing his subjects to accept these employments, or to pay for there
immunity; by which means he could either punish his enemies or augment
his wealth, as his avarice or his resentments prevailed.

The greatest part of the cities and trading towns were under his
particular jurisdiction, and indeed in a state not far removed from
slavery. On these he laid a sort of imposition, at such a time and in
such a proportion as he thought fit. This was called a _tallage_. If the
towns did not forthwith pay the sum at which they were rated, it was not
unusual, for their punishment, to double the exaction, and to proceed in
levying it by nearly the same methods and in the same manner now used to
raise a contribution in an enemy's country.

But the Jews were a fund almost inexhaustible. They were slaves to the
king in the strictest sense; insomuch that, besides the various tallages
and fines extorted from them, none succeeded to the inheritance of his
father without the king's license and an heavy composition. He sometimes
even made over a wealthy Jew as a provision to some of his favorites for
life. They were almost the only persons who exercised usury, and thus
drew to themselves the odium and wealth of the whole kingdom; but they