He had cast out with the Hamilton gentry, and, having broken the head of a dragoon in the change-house of Lesmahagow, had his little estate mulcted in fines.

Shall I, an innocent proprietor, be mulcted of my right by thy fraud and covin?

"While he whom learning, habits, all prevent, Is largely mulct for each impediment.

The Star-Chamber itself served the king as, in a less degree, it served Sir Giles Mompesson, and others of the same stamp, as a means of increasing his revenue; half the fines mulcted from those who incurred its censure or its punishments being awarded to the crown.

The objection to the tithe system was founded rather on the way in which it worked, operating, as Lord John Russell described it, as "a discouragement to industry; a penalty on agricultural skill; a heavy mulct on those who expended the most capital and displayed the greatest skill in the cultivation of the land."

What had been done had doubtless been done in ignorance, and could be made good by a mulct to the episcopal treasury.