Changes in
the modes
of taxation.
After the time of Henry I. important changes had taken place in the matter of taxation, many of which have been noticed in our former pages. Henry II., as we saw, introduced the payment of scutage, by which the land-owners contributed money instead of serving personally in arms. He likewise got rid of Danegeld, and consulted the towns and shires on the amount of grants required, by means of his itinerant judges. Until now all taxation had been defrayed by the land, except in the boroughs, where the contribution required was often raised by a poll-tax, an equal sum per head imposed on every inhabitant. Towards the end of the reign of Henry II. the custom of taxing movables, household furniture, and stock was introduced; first, in order to raise the national contribution for the Crusade, known as the Saladin tithe. Great part of the money required for Richard’s ransom was levied in the same way, and under John and Henry III. this became the most common way of taxing. A seventh, a tenth, a fifteenth, or a thirtieth of “movables” was from time to time asked for, and the more frequent the need became the more fully was developed the idea that the tax-payer had a right to be consulted on the amount which he was to pay, and to gain, if he could, some advantage in return. John’s frequent demands for money, and the illegal ways in which he took it, led to the exaction of the famous promise embodied in the 12th article of the Great Charter; “No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom unless by the common counsel of our kingdom, except to ransom our own person, to make our first-born son a knight, and to marry once our first-born daughter.” The 14th article describes the assembly which is to be called when any such impost is required: “We will cause our archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons to be summoned severally by our letters, and besides we will cause all who hold of us in chief to be summoned by general summons by our sheriffs and bailiffs.”
The revenue
under
Henry III.
The growth of the country in wealth during the first half of the reign of Henry III. made this plan of raising revenue the most convenient and the easiest. As there were few foreign expeditions there was little opportunity of asking for scutage, and nearly all the regular taxation was raised from movables, or, as we should now say, personal property. On each occasion on which such a grant was demanded, the barons and bishops tried to obtain some compensation in the shape of a re-issue of the charters or an amendment of the law. The many confirmations of the charters during that long reign were, it may be said, purchased from the crown in this way. But Henry could not obtain grants sufficient to meet the requirements of his greedy and extravagant court. He exacted, contrary to the letter and spirit of the charter, large sums from the citizens of London, under the name of gifts; from the Jews, whom he looked upon very much as if they were part of the farming stock of his realm; and from every class of persons whom he could draw within the meshes of his legal nets, he exacted money by fine or composition for real or imaginary offences.
The customs
revenue.
Imports and
exports.
But besides the land and the personal property of its inhabitants there was another source of income which ultimately was to become most lucrative—the taxation of merchandize, imported and exported, and especially the wool, wool-fells, and leather, which were, if not exactly the chief produce of the land, at least the most profitable, the least easy to conceal, and the most easy for the king’s ministers to confiscate. These two branches of indirect taxation, although distinct in themselves, were managed by the same machinery—that of the customs; and they have to be treated together. But the taxes on imported merchandize had their origin in the licenses to trade or to introduce particular sorts of goods, which it was one of the ancient rights of the king to grant, whilst the taxes on exported produce were primarily a part of the general system of taxing movables. Both had been long in requisition; the privileges of the foreign merchants had been a source of profit even before the Conquest; the wool of the Cistercian monks and other great sheep-farmers had been demanded for Richard’s ransom, and both classes had suffered under John and Henry III. Magna Carta had contained, in its 41st article, a distinct provision in favor of free trade, which would have obviated the evils of mismanagement in this department, if it could have been carried out. All merchants were to have safe ingress and egress to and from England, and to pay only the right and ancient customs. But such a provision did not forbid separate negotiations between the king and traders, by which both made a profit to be wrung from the consumers. One part of Edward’s financial policy was to bring the customs into order and make them permanently and regularly profitable, and this he undertook in his first parliament.
Parliamentary
settlement of
revenue on
Edward I.
He had come home, deep in debt, to an inheritance heavily encumbered by his father’s debts. He had obtained from the Pope, whom he visited at Orvieto on his way, permission to exact a tenth of the income of the clergy for three years. But this would not be sufficient. He took counsel, therefore, with the Italian bankers, who had already obtained a footing in England, and devised the plan of obtaining from his assembled estates a permanent revenue from wool; half a mark—that is, six shillings and eightpence—on each sack of wool exported. This is the legal foundation of the English customs. It was formally granted in the parliament which met soon after Easter 1275, and with a grant of a fifteenth of movables, and the tax already imposed on the clergy, provided him with a revenue which carried on the government for some years. Nor did it require material increase until Edward, in 1292 and 1293, became involved in a new series of wars.
The exigencies of the Welsh war, the necessity for legal changes, and the orderly arrangement of the royal revenue, could not have failed to make their mark on the growth of parliament, even if Edward had not learned the lessons of constitutional lore which his father’s reign had furnished; and, even without those lessons, Edward was eminently qualified by the very habit of his mind to be a constitutional reformer. Accordingly, in the parliaments of his reign, especially in those which were called at irregular intervals from 1275 to 1295, are found the clearest, most distinct, steps of growth, which led to the complete organization of the three estates of the realm in one central assembly. And here, again, we must take a brief retrospect.
Summoning
of representative
assemblies
for
purposes of
taxation.