After this the House of Commons fell to discussing religion, and made the sad discovery that differences of opinion still existed.  In these circumstances they decided to refer the matter to their pious king, and to such divines as he might choose.  They then voted large sums of money for the royal establishment, and, it being the very end of August, adjourned till the 6th of November.  As for making constitutional terms with the king, they never attempted it, though Sir Matthew Hale is credited with an attempt to induce them to do so.  Any proposals of the kind must have failed.  The people were in no mood for making constitutions.

Having met again on the 6th of November, Marvell, in a letter to the Mayor and Aldermen of Hull, dated the 27th of the month, reports that “the House fell upon the making out of the King’s revenue to L1,200,000 a year.”  “The Customs are estimated toward L500,000 per annum in the revenue.  His lands and fee farms L250,000.  The Excise of Beer and Ale L300,000, the rest arise out of the Post Office, Wine Licenses, Stannaries Court, Probate of Wills, Post-fines, Forests, and other rights of the Crown.  The excise of Foreign Commodities is to be continued apart until satisfaction of public debts and engagements secured upon the excise.”

This settlement of revenue marks “the beginning of a time.”  Cromwell, as Cowley puts it in his Discourse, by far the ablest indictment of Oliver ever penned, “took armes against two hundred thousand pounds a year, and raised them himself to above two millions.”  It is true.  Cromwell spent the money honestly and efficiently, and chiefly on a navy that enabled him to wrest the command of the sea from the Dutch, to secure the carrying trade, and to challenge the world for supremacy in the Indies, both East and West.  In doing this, he had the instinct of the whole nation behind him.  But it was expensive.

Had Charles been the most honest and thrifty of men, instead of one of the most dishonest and extravagant, he must have found his financial position a very difficult one.  He was poorer than Cromwell.  The feudal taxation had fallen into desuetude.  To revive wardships, etc., was impossible, to recover arrears hopeless.  There was nothing for it but scientific taxation.  One of his first Acts contains a schedule of taxed articles extending over fifteen double-columned pages of a quarto volume.  To raise this revenue was difficult—­in fact impossible, and the amount actually obtained was always far below the estimates.

Marvell’s letter concludes thus:—­

   “To-morrow is the Bill for enacting his Majesty’s declaration in
   religious matters and to have its first reading.  It is said that on
   Sunday next Doctor Reynolds shall be created Bishop of Norwich.”

The rumour about Reynolds’s bishopric proved to be true.  The new bishop was a very “moderate” Anglican indeed, and his appointment was meant as a sop to the Presbyterians.  Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy refused similar preferment.