With these examples of parliamentary taxation before him, Henry turned away to fields at once more profitable and less dangerous, at least in their immediate consequences.
He turned to the old expedient of the benevolence, despite the statute of Richard III prohibiting its imposition. The methods used in laying a benevolence are illustrated in the famous account by Lord Francis Bacon of the dilemma devised by Bishop Morton, Henry’s Chancellor, “to raise up the benevolence to a higher rate; and some called it his fork and some his crotch.Morton’s crotch For he had couched an article in the instructions to the commissioners who were to levy the benevolence, that if they met with any that were sparing, they should tell them that they must needs have, because they laid up; and if they were spenders, they must needs have, because it was seen in their port and manner of living; so neither kind came amiss.”[270] Parliament, subservient to the king, actually registered for the moment its approval of the practice of levying benevolences, when in 1492 it passed the “Shoring or Under-propping Act” making debts still owing on gifts promised to the king legally collectable.
The benevolence was not the only means by which the ingenious monarch increased his income. Like Edward IV, he revived obsolete statutes and rigorously exacted fines in consequence of every infraction of them; but worse than that was his perversion of every function of the courts of law into a means of extortion. His odious instruments in that work were Richard Empson and Edmund Dudly who later were made to suffer for the evil practices of the father in the reign of the son. Beside these forms of imposition, the king pushed to the extreme the exaction of feudal dues accruing to the crown.
Henry VIII’s early taxation
Henry VIII succeeded to the crown in 1509. With his hand always on the pulse of the nation, he knew when he could carry his designs into execution and when he must wait for a fever to subside. His attitude toward taxation was not characterized by the same uniform regard for constitutional formalities that distinguished his other acts, nor was Parliament on the other hand quite as subservient to his will as in matters farther from their purses. His first Parliament showed its trust in him by granting tunnage and poundage for life, but with the distinct provision that it be not taken into precedent. Beside this, the Parliaments of 1513 and 1514 made generous grants of a poll-tax, of a fifteenth and tenth and of two subsidies of six pence in the pound.[271] Despite the magnitude of the grant, no opposition seems to have been provoked, an unfailing sign of increasing wealth.
Cardinal Wolsey’s breach of privilege, 1523
At the Parliament of 1523, the first since 1515, Cardinal Wolsey committed a distinct breach of Parliamentary privilege. Under Henry IV it had been admitted by the king that both houses of Parliament were to commune apart, and that the king should have no knowledge of the progress of a grant until the two houses be of one accord.[272] Wolsey, as representative of the royal power, reversed the usual process. Going into the House of Commons with all his following, “with his maces, his pillars, his pole-axes, his cross, his hatte, and the great seale too,”—in the words of the speaker, Sir Thomas More,—he asked for no less than £800,000 and required that it be paid in four years; he suggested that it “be raised out of the fifth part of every man’s goods and lands.”
To the demand of the cardinal the commons maintained perfect silence. The speaker “with many probable arguments endeavoured to shew the cardinal that his manner of coming thither was neither expedient nor agreeable to the ancient liberties of that House.”[273] Wolsey thereupon departed in a rage. The next day the matter was argued by the commons and the contention was made that “though some men were well-monied, yet in general it was known that the fifth of men’s goods was not in plate or money, but in stock and cattle. And that to pay away all their coin would alter the whole frame and intercourse of things.”[274] For fifteen days the commons debated the question and at the end of that time granted to the king a graduated property tax, much smaller in amount and covering four years in the payment. Wolsey’s displeasure was very great and he made a second journey to the commons in the hope that he might induce them to be more generous. He told them that he “desired to reason with those who opposed his demands.” He was answered that “it was the order of that House to hear, and not to reason but amongst themselves.”[275] Thus rebuffed, the cardinal went away.
Henry’s commissions and benevolences
Henry did without Parliament for the next seven years, but he was not deprived thereby of money with which to carry on the business of government. In 1526, commissions were issued for the collection of a sixth from the goods of the laity and a fourth from the clergy.[276] The people immediately evinced their knowledge of the law and complained that the proceedings were illegal; the clergy led the movement asserting that “the King could take no man’s goods without the authority of Parliament.”[277] The people began to murmur and insurrection seemed imminent. “If men should geue their goodes by a Commission,” they said, “then wer it worse than the taxes of Fraunce, and so England should be bond and not free.”[278] In Suffolk rebellion actually broke out; in London and in Kent the people were in a ferment. Henry, being what he was and knowing the nature of his subjects, eased the tension by shoving the responsibility of the measure on to the shoulders of Wolsey,[279] and declared that he would receive no money save as an “amiable graunte,” which was collected in 1528, and was nothing more agreeable than a benevolence. To this the citizens of London raised objection on the ground of the statute of Richard III. The judges thereupon handed down an opinion that that statute, being the work of an usurper, was void. Thus did the courts evince their subservience to the crown, and showed themselves as open to royal influence as the tribunals of the Stuarts a hundred years later.[280] So in theory Henry’s attempt at arbitrary taxation was frustrated; in practice, however, the imposition, though its burden was transferred from the turbulent lower classes to the more amenable people of substance, merely underwent a change of name. The exaction was unparliamentary whether it was levied as a king’s tax or under the thin guise of a benevolence.