ARTHUR INGRAM to the LORD CAREY (CAREW).

Excuse my not coming into Ireland as I promised. The business requiring my presence there was only the customs. I have understood by letters from my kinsman, Robert Cogan, that all the ports of that kingdom (excepting only Dublin, Waterford, Drogheda and Galway), do willingly agree to pay the King the subsidy of 12d. in the pound. It will remain as a thing of special importance for raising the King's revenue and setting a final conclusion of that business, that the like sum be levied by way of impost upon all the goods and merchandises of the freemen of the said four ports, to the end that the trade and commerce of all the ports of that kingdom may be equally balanced one with another, and the freemen of the ports who have conformed themselves be preserved from ruin, which they will suffer if those ports be permitted to pass their merchandises free, for thereby the whole trade of the realm will be drawn to those free ports, and the King receive a great loss.

The merchants of England albeit they pay subsidy due by the law, yet they also pay the King by the name of impost 12d. in the pound beside, upon almost all sorts of merchandise, inwards and upwards, having only repay upon shipping foreign merchandises outwards, as much as was paid for the impost of the same inwards. By these means it will be apparent that the freemen of those ports of Dublin, and the rest, shipping foreign merchandises from England and receiving there the repayment of impost being free in their own port, do not yield or bring any benefit at all to the King, but a loss by their traffic, in that the King payeth to them in England such moneys as shall be brought into his coffers, if the merchandise had not been transported from thence.

London the 13th Sept. 1611. Signed. Addressed.

Endorsed in L. Carew's handwriting: Received the 3rd of October, 1611.