was uncertain, being levied by aſſeſſments new made at every freſh grant of the commons, a commiſſion for which is preſerved by Matthew Paris[1]: but it was at length reduced to a certainty in the eighth year of Edward III, when, by virtueof the king's commiſſion, new taxations were made of every townſhip, borough, and city in the kingdom, and recorded in the exchequer; which rate was, at the time, the fifteenth part of the value of every townſhip, the whole amounting to about 29000𝑙. and therefore it ſtill kept up the name of a fifteenth, when, by the alteration of the value of money and the encreaſe of perſonal property, things came to be in a very different ſituation. So that when, of later years, the commons granted the king a fifteenth, every pariſh in England immediately knew their proportion of it; that is, the ſame identical ſum that was aſſeſſed by the ſame aid in the eighth of Edward III; and then raiſed it by a rate among themſelves, and returned it into the royal exchequer.
The other antient levies were in the nature of a modern land tax: for we may trace up the original of that charge as high as to the introduction of our military tenures[2]; when every tenant of a knight's fee was bound, if called upon, to attend the king in his army far forty days in every year. But this perſonal attendance growing troubleſome in many reſpects, the tenants found, means of compounding for it, by firſt ſending others in their ſtead, and in proceſs of time by making a pecuniary ſatisfaction to the crown in lieu of it. This pecuniary ſatisfaction at laſt came to be levied by aſſeſſments, at ſo much for every knight's fee, under the name of ſcutages; which appear to have been levied for the firſt time in the fifth year of Henry the ſecond, on account of his expedition to Toulouſe, and were then (I apprehend) mere arbitrary compoſitions, as the king and the ſubject could agree. But this precedent being afterwards abuſed into a means of oppreſſion, (by levying ſcutages on the landholders by the royal authority only, whenever our kings went to war, in or-
