The remainder of the reign of Henry II, aside from the fact that it witnessed the temporary passing of the Danegeld,[45] derives its chief importance by reason of the extension of taxation to cover personal property. By the Assize of Arms in 1181, “every free layman who had in chattels or in revenue to the value of sixteen marks” was to “have a coat of mail and a helmet and a shield and a lance;” and “every free layman who had in chattels or revenue ten marks should have a hauberk and a head-piece of iron and a lance.”[46] Here was a step toward laying movables and personal property open to taxation. Seven years later, when Saladin had cut his way into Jerusalem, personal property was forced to contribute toward the Crusade. The Saladin Tithe, 1188 This tax, the so-called “Saladin tithe,” was laid at the Council of Geddington on the 11th February, 1188. Present at it were archbishops and bishops and the greater and lesser barons,[47] but it is not stated whether or not they gave a formal consent to the levy. “This year,” so goes the Ordinance, “each one shall give in alms a tenth part of his revenues and movables, except the arms and horses and clothing of the knights; likewise excepting the horses and books and clothing and vestments and articles required in divine service of whatever sort of the clerks, and the precious stones both of clerks and laymen.” This is the earliest recorded instance of a general tax upon movables. For the assessment and collection of the Saladin tithe, Henry adopted a scheme favorite with him, which had been utilized in England for national purposes at least since the time of the Domesday Survey.Assessment by Juries of Inquest It was ordained that the assessment be done by juries of inquest; thus the taxpayers themselves were instruments in the determination of how much each should pay, even though the determination of how much the gross payment should be was as yet far beyond their power.
Henry II closed his reign in 1189. His taxation[48] had never been exceptionally heavy, though it had been the occasion for protest and had served as the pretext in 1174 for a little warring with his barons. In the matter of royal authority over taxation, the power of the king to levy taxes was not much diminished. The instances of opposition that have been cited do not prove much more than that now and then complaining voices were raised in the Great Council; nowhere is it shown that the objections had more than passing value, much less that they were conclusive.
The year after the laying of the Saladin tithe, Henry died. Of his four sons, two were dead and two had taken up arms against him. His first son, who he had hoped would succeed him as Henry III, was dead, and so too was Geoffrey, the father of the luckless Arthur; Richard, his second son, was for the moment the ally of Philip of France; and John, whom the king had loved above the others, now as afterward seeking his own advantage, had recently taken his place amongst the rebellious barons who had made common cause with the king of France. This blow, coming on top of his unfavorable peace with Philip, struck the old king to the heart, and cleared the throne for Richard.
Richard I, 1189-1199
Richard was not, in the fullest sense of the word, an English king. His heart was on the Continent; England he regarded as a treasure-house, and he left the administration of it to his justiciars. Along with the exaction of feudal incidents and other and more special forms of taxation, Richard worked the machinery of the laws to its maximum capacity for what money it would bring him. He sold bishoprics and ministries, and released malefactors from prison for a consideration; sometimes, as in the case of Ranulf Glanville, his father’s treasurer, he threw men into prison on shadowy charges and forced them to buy their release. But all was under the guise of legality; Richard, unlike John, and much like Henry VIII, knew how to gain his end and yet adhere to the letter of the law.
Richard’s ransom
On his way back from the Crusade near the close of the year 1192, Richard fell into the hands of his enemy, Leopold, Duke of Austria. Leopold turned him over to his feudal superior, the Emperor Henry VI, and he held Richard for a ransom of £100,000. The levy of the king’s ransom was one of the three regular feudal aids[49] for which the subjects were responsible. The magnitude of Richard’s ransom, however, brings it out of strictly feudal history into the domain of taxation. In the letter which Richard wrote from his German prison to his mother, the Queen Eleanor, and to his justiciars, he said, “For becoming reasons it is that we are prolonging our stay with the Emperor, until his business and our own shall be brought to an end, and until we shall have paid him seventy thousand marks of silver.” The amount of the ransom was subsequently raised to one hundred thousand marks, with an additional fifty thousand exacted as the price of not assisting the Emperor in his war to regain Apulia. Thus England became liable for the payment of a sum aggregating £100,000.
It involves heavy and novel taxation