SELLING THE JEWELS.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1781, 5 November 1879, Page 3

SELLING THE JEWELS.

I " Alt Jiitf Year Round.' ] Tiie Plautagencti? were very rough and ready financiers. Richard I. took it into his head to try conclusions with Saladin, he raised the needful by turning the crown manors and the fortretjsj of Roxburg and Berwick into hard cash, selling offices of trust to the best bidders, and did not hesitate to avow that he would dispose of London itself if a purchaser were forthcoming. Strangely enough, Coeir de Lion never seemß to hare thought of doing 1 the name by his crown jewels. Henry 111. was the first English monarch who had recourse to that undignified expedient. The idea, indeed, did not originate with him; for it is recorded that when some person or persons unknown suegested the replenishment of the royal coffers by selliDg the crown plate and jewellery, the King hinted a doubt as to the likelihood of finding purchasers, and being assured that the citizens of London would gladly accommodate him, Henry exclaimed, "On my word, if the treasury of Augustus were brought to sale, the citizißß are able tobe the purchasers. Theso clowns, who assume to themselves the name of Baronp, abound in everything, while we are reduced | to necessities!" Notwithstanding his indignatioD, Henry, like other men in his predicament, was willing enough to deal with the full-pursed ones he abused, and so, in 1248, he sold the citiarens of London all tho plate and jewellery he had not already mortgaged to the merchants of France. ' The ralief afforded was, however,, only a temporally one, for seven years later we find him demanding 8000 marks of the Jews, and answering their remonstrance against the exaction by pleading that he was a beggar, spoiled and stripped of all his revenues, without a farthing wherewith to keep himself, and therefore must have m*!>ney from any hand and by any means