Forced loans, 1522 and 1544
But Henry had other strings to his bow, and of these the forced loan was one which served him well. In 1522 commissioners were appointed throughout the kingdom to ascertain the value of every man’s possessions and to require a certain part for the king, on the understanding that they be repaid out of the grants from the next Parliament. The promise of repayment was under the king’s privy seal.[281] In 1544, forced loans were again exacted, this time from all persons rated at £50 and more per annum. Parliament, subservient to the king, far from protesting because of these arbitrary demands upon the pockets of the people, in two instances released the king from liability to payment. In 1529, Parliament “for themselves and all the whole body of the realm which they represent, freely, liberally, and absolutely, give and grant unto the King’s highness ... all and every sum and sums of money which to them and every of them, is, ought, or might be due by reason of any money ... advanced or paid by way of trust or loan.”[282] This caused much murmuring, but, as Hall’s Chronicle rightly puts it, “Ther was no remedy.” In 1544 a similar act of a servile Parliament not only gives the king the funds borrowed under the forced loan of 1542, but commands the refunding of sums already paid by him to his creditors in discharge of debts so incurred.[283]
Profits of the English Reformation
The Reformation in England redounded to the financial benefit of the Crown. In 1532 the clergy were relieved by act of Parliament from the payment of annates or first fruits, the sums which the ordaining authorities exacted from those accorded any preferment in the church, and which amounted sometimes to as much as a year’s income from the benefice. The exactions were denounced as having risen by “an uncharitable custom, grounded upon no just or good title,” and through them “great and inestimable sums of money have been daily conveyed out of this realm, to the impoverishment of the same, and to the advantage of the court of Rome.”[284] The same Parliament, meeting for its fifth session on the 15th January, 1533-4, reënacted the statute without the contingencies which had conditioned the other.[285] Closely following came a statute that deprived the Pope of his petty exactions which for generations he had drawn from the English Church. Thus were discontinued peter-pence, procurations, fruits, fees for dispensations, licenses, faculties and grants.[286] The sixth session of this Parliament, meeting at the end of the year 1534, turned the procedure into comedy by attaching to “the King’s imperial crown forever” the first-fruits and tenths of the annual income of all ecclesiastical benefices, the very payments which it had declared to be in conformity with an “uncharitable custom.”[287]
Parliament the confirming authority in clerical grants
Furthermore, at the session of 1533-4, Parliament had laid very definite restrictions upon the clergy in the matter of regular taxation.[288] Since the early part of the fourteenth century, indeed, almost since the beginning of Parliament itself, the lesser clergy had attended the sessions with great irregularity, and had voted their taxes for the most part in provincial assemblies. Now, however, came the general prohibition that the clergy should not enact or execute ordinances binding upon themselves without the king’s license and without his approval when once they were made. Included within the meaning of this prohibition was the granting of taxes. From thenceforward until the time of Charles II, when, without any special enactment but by simple process of evolution, the clergy began to be taxed in the same manner and according to the same rate as the laity, clerical grants were submitted to Parliament for confirmation.
Henry VIII died in 1547. Notwithstanding the heavy taxation, parliamentary and unparliamentary, which had been exacted during his reign, he remained popular with the great majority of his subjects to his death. His many vices were counterbalanced by his successful wars, the heavy taxation by the growing trade of England, and his semi-independence of Parliament by most efficient administration.
Elizabeth’s accession, 1558
After the lapse of eleven years, which in so far as they concern the evolution of the taxing power of Parliament, composed in effect an interregnum, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne of England. Elizabeth’s government was a despotism and was illegal; but it was so by sufferance, not because the nation was ignorant of its true character or because the people were unable to control it. When in later years the attempt was made to create a despotism against the voice of the people, the result was a Cromwell and his Charles I. Queen Elizabeth was loved by her subjects and they put their trust in her. The sympathy existing between queen and people could not be illustrated better than by the following anecdote, which suggests that under her rule benevolences were really made with the good will of the givers.
The queen, being at Coventry, is presented by the mayor with a purse heavily filled with gold.