Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/187

FINANCE 177 session of the Long Parliament. Here, again, it is probable that the clergy had, at some period which cannot be now defined, attempted to protect themselves against the heavy demands of the king by putting their grants under the sanction of the popular chamber. The direct taxes of the Plantagenet and Tudor times were percentages on the annual value of lands and tenements, property taxes strictly so called on personal estate, and percentages on ecclesiastical revenues. The first two were granted by the secular, the last by the clerical parliament. Very early in the history of English finance, the district from which the tax was raised was assessed, and the assess ment was made a permanent valuation. It seems that this was even done with the tax on personalty. The town, for instance, from which the tax was collected was set down at a fixed sum, and the sum thus fixed was raised rateaUy by the local authorities. Hence in the time of James I. the subsidies and fifteenths, as the direct taxes on real and personal property were called, produced less than they did mora than three centuries before, though the money of the Stuart sovereign contained only one third of the specie which was coined in pieces bearing the same name in the 13th century, and prices had risen owing to the increasing cheapness with which silver was obtained. It is likely that the motive for maintaining the same assessment was that parliament might exactly understand the amount of the burden, and the extent of the aid given to the king. The taxing rolls in which the amounts levied are set down exist by thousands in the national archives, and might be made the material for illustrating the social condition and opulence of mediaeval England. Similarly the value of benefices was assessed and remained constant, the tax levied being a percentage on the nominal value as entered on the books of the pope or the king. The tax levied on the clergy was always a higher per centage than that imposed on the laity. It was reasonably argued that a tax on tithes was a lighter burden than a tax on products or annual value, since the tithe-owner had contributed neither in labour nor capital to his share in the produce. Hence Edward I. demanded, in 129G, an enormous percentage a third on the revenues of the clergy. The clergy had procured a bull from Boniface VIII., under which they were forbidden to pay taxes to lay persons. That this bull was obtained at their solicita tion seems manifest, since the crown was in want of money for carrying on war with Philip the Fair, with whom the pope was at constant feud, and against whom he would be likely to support any enemy. The attitude which Edward instantly assumed towards the clergy, the success which attended his policy, and the serious diminution in their privileges and prestige which followed from the expedient so unluckily adopted, are matters of familiar history. From the time of Edward there are only faint and occasional signs of that clerical independence which had exhibited such vigour in earlier times. During the 15th century the clergy had ceased to be a separate power in the state, though they exercised a great conservative influence in the obscure politics of the Lancastrian and Yorkist period. Sometimes the king received taxes in kind, especially in wool, the principal export of English produce. It appears that sheep-feeding was almost confined to England, pro bably because the peace was better kept in England than elsewhere, and destitution was nearly unknown. Hence it was possible to put a heavy export duty on the produce, or, what was the same in effect, to sell it at a much higher price than it was purchased at, by assuming a temporary monopoly of the article. Such an expedient was adopted by Edward I. in 1297, and several times over by Edward III. The importance of English wool to the Flemish manufactures was so great, and the trade was so easily manipulated by the English Government, that, from the time of Edward I. till that of Henry VII., i.e., during two centuries, the political sympathies of the Flemish were easily secured on the side of England through the agency of commercial intercourse. When Margaret of Burgundy gave a refuge to the Yorkist exiles, and sent forth pretenders to disturb the throne of Henry Tudor, the negotiation of a commercial treaty with Flanders, the Intercursus Magnus, formed an effectual bar to her intrigues. The direct taxes of the period before us were doled out sparingly and grudgingly. Sometimes, as in the minority of llichard II., they were appropriated, to use a modern phrase, by the hands of a body of commissioners appointed for the purpose. On the occasion referred to, Sir Richard Whittington was one of the persons selected to see that the moneys granted were duly applied to the war with France. It may also be stated that munitions for the defence of Cherbourg, saltpetre and sulphur, were sold to the Govern ment of this time by Sir William Walworth, well known in history as the slayer of Wat Tyler, the leader of the Kentish insurgents in the peasants war. It is almost superfluous to say, that supply was granted on the condition that the grievances were redressed. In the early part of the 15th century, when it was seen that the officials of the court evaded the redress of that which the Commons prayed for and paid for, the practice became general of drawing up petitions in the form of bills, and thus of making the redress of grievances the basis of a legislative act. It is a common-place with historians to assert that the right of the crown to purveyance, i.e., to provisions and labour, purchased at market rates, or distrained for royal works, was a serious grievance in the Middle Ages. There is no evidence that it was so. The present writer has read many thousands of mediaeval accounts, and has rarely found that the forced purchases of the crown were treated as a wrong. Sometimes a great courtier, such as was the younger Despencer in the reign of Edward II., usurped a right which belonged to the crown, and injured the proprietor. But, as a rule, the crown paid its way honestly during the Plantagenet period. It was especially in the reign of the first two Stuarts that the grievance of purveyance was felt. But the discontent was due to the fact that the crown had determined on paying for supplies at the old rates of value which prevailed before the currency was changed and prices had risen. Such a system put on the county, through the justices at quarter sessions, the cost of the difference between nominal and market rates; and the crown, when the supplies were not forthcoming from the county, purchased on its own account, and forced the county to pay extravagant, perhaps factitious, prices for that which it had failed to purvey. An additional cause of discontent was found in the fact that, though purveyance was claimable only while the king was in the district, the Stuart kings demanded the contribution when the court was in London, or at any rate at some distance from the locality which was charged, and often overcharged for default. In the 14th century a practice of making voluntary gifts to the crown began. Stories are told of Pole and Whittington having made presents or loans to the king, and of the latter having cancelled the king s debts at a banquet which he gave to hia sovereign. In the 15th century the voluntary gifts of rich men were modified into a system of begging, under the name of a benevolence. It is probable that the extreme poverty of the crown during the latter years of Henry VI. s reign, and the growth of partisan spirit among the nobles and gentry of this time, may have led to the practice becoming common. At any rate the custom became general during the twenty-five years of IX. 23