Nevertheless, notwithstanding the absolutist character of the king, William retained the theory and for the most part the form of the Saxon Witan. Never, however, did the Norman assemblies exercise independent legislative or executive functions.[15] The holding of land,His National Council as a prerequisite to membership in the National Council, was under William an uncertain factor; the membership continued to include, generally speaking, the same officers, ecclesiastics, and nobles as composed the Witenagemot. The powers of this assembly were probably not great; at any rate, the magnates of the period considered attendance not as a right or a privilege or even as an advantage, but merely as a necessary duty toward the royal person. The king consulted the magnates on almost every piece of legislation, and stated in the subsequent promulgation of the laws that he had obtained their advice. But in the case of a strong king, such as was the Conqueror, the consultation must have been scarcely more than a statement of the royal will and a formal acquiescence. The holding of these assemblies took place at the crowning days of the king, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, generally in London, Winchester, and Gloucester.
Its part in taxation
In the matter of taxation, it is probable as in the case of other legislation that the Conqueror advised with his Council, though the evidence pointing toward such a conclusion is entirely of a later date. But in so far as practical advantage to the payers of the taxes was concerned, the power might quite as well have lain solely in the hands of the king; if indeed the Conqueror did secure the assent of the Council, it was no more than an instance of his policy of adhering to the forms of law while making the practices under it serve his own purposes. The reimposition in 1084 of the Danegeld which William revived as an occasional instead of a regular tax, is not stated by the chronicler as receiving assent from the Council; the king is said to have “received six shillings from every hide.”[16] Roger of Wendover’s Chronicle of the same year brands this exaction as an “extortion,”[17] by which we are scarcely to understand a tax granted in any modern sense by the chief legislative body of the kingdom.Instance of the Danegeld, 1084 The Saxon Chronicler speaking of the same imposition says, “The king caused a great and heavy tax to be raised throughout England, even seventy-two pence on every hide of land.”[18] The amount of such an impost, if drawn from two-thirds of the hidage of the kingdom, would be a sum approximating £20,000.[19] It is unlikely that an exaction of so great magnitude could have been levied without the assent of the Council if the Conqueror was under any obligation to obtain their consent or even their advice; and it is still more unlikely that four chroniclers of the events of that year should have let pass unnoted a vote of assent if it had been passed by the National Council. We are therefore to conclude that either the Conqueror levied the tax without consulting his Council at all, or that he did consult them, and that their assent was of so formal and valueless a nature as not to deserve notice in the records of the year.[20]
Domesday Survey, 1086
The year 1086 witnessed the Domesday Survey. By it William obtained a detailed register of the land and its capacity for taxation. To the administrative side of taxation the Survey is of supreme importance, since the valuation of land thus arrived at was never entirely superseded as a definite and fair basis for the laying of taxes; to the actual granting of the tax, however, its importance is of much less degree. In such light the interest centers chiefly on the fact that representatives were elected from every hundred upon whose sworn depositions the information that William wanted was obtained.
William Rufus, 1087-1100
The unlucky thirteen years of the reign of William Rufus, who succeeded to the throne upon the death of the Conqueror in 1087, are almost negligible in considering the progress toward parliamentary taxation. William Rufus, or more particularly his brilliant and perverted justiciar, Ranulf Flambard, determined upon the profitable program of getting together as much money as possible by whatever means seemed most convenient. In the nature of things the church and the great feudatories were the most available sources for extortion and toward them Flambard chiefly directed his energies. He did not, however, overlook the Danegeld and he seems to have levied it with perfect absolutism. The chronicler Florence gives an instance of the petty extortion which the justiciar practiced upon the people. Flambard was in the habit of enforcing military service from the shires. On one occasion, so says Florence, he met the array, informed the militiamen that there was no necessity for their appearance, and then proceeded to mulct them of the ten shillings which their shires had given to each by way of providing for their maintenance.[21] Against plunderings of that sort the people were too weak and too disunited to make resistance. In such a reign, with one side unwilling to progress and the other unable, it is apparent that no steps could be taken toward the granting of taxes by a responsible body.
Henry I, 1100-1135
The reign of Henry I is of greater importance, not only because of the long forward strides which the king and his justiciar Roger of Salisbury took in the direction of judicial and financial organization, but because we find in the records of his time certain pieces of evidence which seem to support the contention that the Council gave some measure of consent to taxation. The former is palpably beyond the scope of this essay, but the latter is more pertinent.
His Charter