gradually by taxes upon the lands of the tenants in chivalry; the hidage or carucage upon the lands of the freeholders.1 The tax last named, when applied to the towns, bore the name of talliage. On great occasions, under the general name of auxilium, both taxes were sometimes raised at once; but as a general rule a year in which a scutage was imposed upon the military tenants was not marked by hidage, carucage, or talliage upon the freeholders. The process must next be drawn out through which the two superseded historically distinct land-taxes just described were gradually upon superseded by a novel system of taxation based exclusively personal property; upon personal property, — a new and tempting source of reve fifteenths and tenths; nue which the growth of national prosperity consequent upon Henry II.'s policy of order and reform rapidly brought into existence. The new method of taxation begins with the imposition by Henry in 1188 of the famous Saladin tithe of a tenth of rent and movables on all except crusaders.2 The system thus based upon the grant of fractional parts of movables, which varied in the earlier grants from a fortieth 3 to a fourth, continued in use about a century and a half, during which time the ancient land-tax on the hide, whether known as hidage, carucage, or talliage, and the new feudal tax on the knight's fee known as scutage, and all other forms of direct taxation, were gradually superseded by it. In 1224 carucage, the name under which the ancient land-tax appeared in the reign of Richard I., was granted for the last time; 5 in the records of fines imposed for a failure to serve in the war against the Scots in 1322 are found the last vestiges of scutage; while after the memorable events of 1332 talliage became obsolete. In applying the new system to the taxation of movables, it finally became the custom to grant a fifteenth from the counties outside demesne, and a tenth from cities, towns, and demesne. Such was the form of the grant made in 1332, whose rigid enforcement gave rise to such complaints that in the grant of another fifteenth and tenth in the next year power was given to the commissioners to treat with all bound to pay the tax, composi and to settle upon a sum to be paid as a composition for the fifteenth and tenth, the tax payers in each township being required to assess and collect the amount agreed upon from the various contributors.1 After this memorable composition of memorable 1334 a fifteenth and a tenth became a mere fiscal expression tion of for the sum then agreed upon, which amounted to between 1334; £38,000 and £39,000. In that way, when a fifteenth and tenth was granted every county knew the amount to be raised for the fifteenth, and every city and borough the amount to be raised for the tenth. When less than the whole sum was required, half a fifteenth and tenth was granted; and when a greater sum was required, it was granted under the name of two fifteenths and tenths, or as the case might be. The new system as adjusted upon the basis of 1334 for a long time held its own against all attempts to supersede it by fresh devices.3 A new departure was attempted when in 1377 the first poll unsuccessful attempt tax was levied, which was succeeded by another in a graduated to levy poll form in 1379, and by still another in 1380, the famous tax taxes; whose enforcement culminated in the Peasant revolt of the following year. So unsatisfactory did these expedients prove in practice that there was an immediate return to the old form of a fifteenth and tenth, which was continued down to the accession of the house of Tudor and long after that event. So fixed did the idea become that taxes should be imposed in a stated sum, divisible among the various districts upon the basis of the composition of 1334, that the tax-payers came to regard it almost as a constitutional right to contribute in that manner. The exclusive right of parliament to authorize the imposition right of taxof the direct taxes whose histories have now been briefly sum- sent to taxmarized was the final product of the idea that the tax-payer had the right to be consulted in some form before he was taxed. That idea was rapidly gaining ground at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the period during which was completely established throughout Europe the arrangement generally known as the estate system, which consisted of the payer to as ation ; tion with assemblies; gotiations taxation; division of a nation into the three classes or orders generally its connec- known as clergy, baronage, and commons.1 The outcome of the growth that system was that type of a national assembly in which each of national class or order appeared in person, or by representatives authorized to speak for those by whom they were sent. Not until late in the reign of Edward I. (1295) was such a central or national assembly finally built up in England with power to separate ne- represent every class of tax-payers.2 During the two centuries. with each which intervene between the completion of the Conquest and estate as to that great event, the crown, in the absence of any better means, was compelled to negotiate separately with each of the three estates for its special contribution. The idea that the taxpayer had the right to be consulted before he was taxed reached no doubt its lowest point during the Norman reigns, from whose dim fiscal annals it is hard to determine whether taxes were imposed by mere edict of the sovereign, or with tax-payer's the counsel and consent of the great feudal council composed right dimly of the lay and spiritual baronage. The theory that the nation recognized during was in some form consulted, even during the Norman period, is strengthened by two records which belong to the reign of Henry I. in the one, the king describes "the aid which my barons gave me;" in the other, the charter ordering the restoration of the local courts, he speaks of summoning the county courts whenever his royal necessities should require it. From these documents two important conclusions may be drawn first, that whatever consultation took place with the baronage as to taxation occurred in the great council; second, that whatever consultation took place with the rest of the nation as incorporated in shires and towns took place in the county courts. The first serious dispute as to taxation which arose between the crown and the baronage grew out of the frequent demands which the former made upon the latter for the payment of scutage, after that moneyed compensation in lieu of military service was established by Henry II. at the rate of two marks on the knight's fee. During the reigns of Richard I. and John the demands for scutages became more and more frequent until, in the reign of the latter, they became almost Norman period; conflict with the baronage results in 1 As to the rise of the three estates, see vol. i. pp. 337-357. 2 Ibid., pp. 466-469. annual, and some of them at the increased rate of two and a half marks.1 Under the pressure of such demands it was that the baronage in their great struggle with John in 1215 exacted from him articles 12 and 14 of the Great Charter, which pro- articles 12 and 14 of vided that no scutage or aid, except the three regular feudal the Great aids, should be imposed but by the common counsel of the Charter, and finally nation, and that such common counsel could only be taken in in a national council duly summoned under writs regularly issued.2 The fact that these vital clauses were invariably omitted from all subsequent issues of the Great Charter tends to show that the declaration of the baronage was premature, -that for such an absolute assertion of the right of self-taxation the tax-payers themselves were hardly prepared. Not until eighty years after the issuance of the Great Charter did the nation finally win, through the Confirmatio Cartarum, a the Confirmatio permanent constitutional guarantee that taxes should never be Cartarum; imposed by the unaided force of the royal authority.3 gotiations and commons; The grants made by the lay and spiritual baronage in the separate negreat council were absolutely binding only on themselves. with clergy Before contributions could be drawn from the inferior clergy, separate negotiations had first to be conducted with the archdeacons of each diocese representing the spiritual estate; and in like manner with the representatives of the commons in the county courts. The agents intrusted by the Conqueror with the collection of the taxes due from the local communities to the crown were the sheriffs, who twice in each year accounted to the Exchequer for the several kinds of revenue due from their respective shires. But as local disputes continually arose fiscal visits out of that method of collection, it became necessary to send from the of justices detachments of officers from the Exchequer to settle its busi- Exchequer; ness in each shire. As early as the reign of Henry I. such officers were frequently sent through the country to assess the revenue, and in the reign of Henry II. this custom was enforced with systematic regularity.5 These exchequer officers, while dealing with the shire communities, sat in the county courts, and there debated "with the landowners the number of hides for which they owe Danegeld, or the number 8 Ibid., pp. 418-423. 4 Ibid., p. 483. 5 Ibid., pp. 316–319. 1 As to the pressure of taxation under Richard and John, see vol. i. pp. 358363, 374. Ibid., p. 387. representation in the shire courts; national fiscal expe dient; of knights' fees from which aids and reliefs are due; they likewise assess the towns, which are now becoming important contributors to the revenue." 1 The county courts which thus met the itinerant justices from the Exchequer were not only popular but representative assemblies, county parliaments in which the reeve and four men appeared as representatives from every township, and twelve burghers as representatives election and from each borough in the shire.2 Into both the fiscal and judicial work of the shire election and representation entered as familiar principles, and both were constantly applied to the work of assessing and collecting the revenue. There can be representa- no doubt that representatives were first summoned from the tion in the shires to the great council as a mere matter of fiscal expecouncil a diency. Instead of sending officers of the Exchequer down into the shires to there negotiate separately as to the amount each would give, it was found more convenient for each shire court to send representatives to the national council, armed with power to express its corporate assent to whatever tax the general voice might there impose. The transition was an easy and natural one. When John in 1213 summoned for the first time "the four discreet men" from each county to appear in the great council, he simply applied to national purposes a system of representation that had existed from the earliest times. "The four men and the reeve had from time immemorial represented the township in the shire-moot; now the four men and the sheriff represent the shire-moot in the national council."4 The same general causes which brought about the appearance in parliament of the elected knights also presented. brought about, at a somewhat later day, the appearance of the elected representatives from the borough communities. To Earl Simon's famous parliament of 1265 were summoned liament of not only the two discreet knights from the shires, but also, for 1265; the first time in English history, two representatives from Edward I.'s the cities and towns. Not, however, until the meeting of the liament of model parliament of Edward I. in 1295 were the representatives from the boroughs recognized as an integral part of first the shires; then the towns re Earl Simon's par model par 1295; 1 Select Charters, p. 18. "The earlier method by which the king treated with the several local communities through his officers or through their own magistrates had been generally adopted until the reign of John."Ibid., p. 460. 2 Vol. i. p. 320. 4 Select Charters, p. 287. |