Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/113

1551.] or a homily, was a task for which he had no disposition. He was 'a man not learned,' he replied; and they had divines for such purposes. 'The matter of the currency, in his simple opinion, was so apparent, it needed not to be consulted upon; as a proof of which he stated that to keep the army from starving, he had been driven, as the council at home had been driven, to purveying. 'We have forced the people for the time,' he said, 'to take seven shillings for that measure of corn which they sell for a mark, and twelve shillings for the beef which they sell for fifty-three shillings and four-pence. These things cannot be borne without grudge, neither is it possible it should continue.'

In obedience to his orders, however, the deputy invited representatives of the industrious classes in Ireland to Dublin, to discuss the first principles of commercial economy.

'I sent,' he reported after the meeting, 'for inhabitants of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Drogheda, to know the causes of the dearth of corn and cattle, and how the same might be remedied. I declared unto them how the merchants were content to sell iron, salt, coal, and other necessaries, if they might buy wine and corn as they were wont to do. And thereof grew a confusion in argument, that when the merchant should need for his house not past two or three bushels of corn, he could not upon so small an exchange live; and likewise the farmer that should have need of salts, shoes, cloth,