supple the new feu dal taxes; and forfeitures. Not until the period of the last Danish invasion did it become necessary for the king and the witan to impose a general tax for the public service, the tax known as the Danegeld, which was levied not only for the purpose of buying off the invaders but also for the raising of fleets.2 With the imposition of the Danegeld, which was a land-tax imposed upon the hide as a unit of assessment, the history of English taxation really begins. It seems to be clear that after the Conquest the Danegeld or land-tax assumed the form of ordinary revenue, and was collected by the sheriffs as a part of the ferm or farm of the shire. In the case of the towns, to which the reckoning by hides could not be applied, the Danegeld or hidage was probably compounded for, and such composition represents no doubt the later talliage. In the ninth year of Henry II. the Danegeld as such finally disappeared from the Rolls, but only to reappear as aid or hidage, and in the reign of Richard I. as carucage. Under all these names -whether as Danegeld, aid, or hidage, carcucage, or, in the case of the towns, talliage - the Old-English land-tax, originally imposed by Æthelred on the hide, can be surely distinguished. 5 The sum of fiscal rights which thus accrued to William as mented by a national king was greatly augmented in the reigns of his successors by the feudal incidents which resulted from the position of the king as supreme landlord. The conclusion is now established that the development of military tenures in England was gradual, and that the transition from the military system by the thegn's service to the new system by knightservice was also gradual. While William did not directly introduce military tenures as afterwards understood, the effect of his vast confiscations and regrants was to firmly establish the principle that the king was the supreme landlord, and that all lands were held by grant mediately or immediately of him. As soon, then, as the idea gained ground that the military service due from the landowner was due to the king, not as head of the state, but as lord, the conception of feudal tenure became complete. The new military service which thus arose. out of the development of tenures brought about a departure from the old custom which imposed the equipment of one fully armed man upon every five hides of land. Finally the older system based upon the hide was gradually superseded by a new division of the land into knights' fees, and by the fixing of the knight's fee to a particular amount of land. Under the new arrangement, which was certainly not completed before the reign of Henry II., the specific obligation was imposed upon each knight's fee to furnish a fully armed horseman to serve at his own expense for forty days in the year. This duty of military service was the substantive duty due from the tenant in chivalry to his lord; the lord's right to aids, reliefs, wardships, marriages, alienations, and escheats were mere incidents. Such was the general character of the revenue which accrued to the Norman kings as feudal lords, as an addition or supplement to the taxes and dues which came to them by virtue of the ancient constitution. In the fourth year of Henry II. a serious change was made in the feudal revenue by the institution of scutage or shield-money, a pecuniary compensation in lieu of military service. Those tenants of the crown who did not desire to go to the war against Toulouse were allowed to pay two marks on the knight's fee.2 the great The following summary may now be made: at this point in hidage and Henry's reign-leaving the receipts from the customs out of scutage view - all taxation fell upon the land, and consisted (1) of the land-taxes-ancient customary dues, and the tax on the hide, survivals of the Old-English system, and (2) of the feudal incidents, and the scutage, or tax on the knight's fee, - products of the new system of military tenures. The two great burdens on land which thus stand prominently forth are the ancient tax on the hide, whether known as aid, hidage, carucage, or, in case of the town, talliage, and the new feudal tax on the knight's fee known as scutage. And here the vitally important fact must be kept steadily in view that the knight's fee superseded the hide as the unit of assessment only so far as the barons and knights were concerned. The two taxes affected two distinct classes of landowners: the scutage was the tax assessed 1 Vol. i. pp. 294–296. 2 Vol. i. pp. 283, 284. by taxes personal upon the lands of the tenants in chivalry; the hidage or carucage upon the lands of the freeholders.1 The tax last named, when applied to the towns, bore the name of talliage. On great occasions, under the general name of auxilium, both taxes were sometimes raised at once; but as a general rule a year in which a scutage was imposed upon the military tenants was not marked by hidage, carucage, or talliage upon the freeholders. 3 gradually The process must next be drawn out through which the two superseded historically distinct land-taxes just described were gradually upon superseded by a novel system of taxation based exclusively property; upon personal property, a new and tempting source of revenue which the growth of national prosperity consequent upon Henry II.'s policy of order and reform rapidly brought into existence. The new method of taxation begins with the imposition by Henry in 1188 of the famous Saladin tithe of a tenth of rent and movables on all except crusaders.2 The system thus based upon the grant of fractional parts of movables, which varied in the earlier grants from a fortieth 3 to a fourth, continued in use about a century and a half, during which time the ancient land-tax on the hide, whether known as hidage, carucage, or talliage, and the new feudal tax on the knight's fee known as scutage, and all other forms of direct taxation, were gradually superseded by it. In 1224 carucage, the name under which the ancient land-tax appeared in the reign of Richard I., was granted for the last time;5 in the records of fines imposed for a failure to serve in the war against the Scots in 1322 are found the last vestiges of scutage; while after the memorable events of 1332 talliage became obsolete. In applying the new system to the taxation of movables, it finally became the custom to grant a fifteenth from the counties outand tenths; side demesne, and a tenth from cities, towns, and demesne. Such was the form of the grant made in 1332, whose rigid enforcement gave rise to such complaints that in the grant of another fifteenth and tenth in the next year power was given to the commissioners to treat with all bound to pay the tax, fifteenths 1 Vol. i. p. 297. 2 Vol. i. p. 298. 3 The fortieth of 1232 produced 16,475 . o s. 9 d. Hist., vol. ii. p. 549. 4 See Dowell, History of Taxation, vol i. pp. 59-74, 85-126. 5 Matt. Paris, Hist. Mag., p. 322. composi and to settle upon a sum to be paid as a composition for the fifteenth and tenth, the tax payers in each township being required to assess and collect the amount agreed upon from the various contributors. After this memorable composition of memorable 1334 a fifteenth and a tenth became a mere fiscal expression tion of for the sum then agreed upon, which amounted to between 1334; £38,000 and £39,000. In that way, when a fifteenth and tenth was granted every county knew the amount to be raised for the fifteenth, and every city and borough the amount to be raised for the tenth. When less than the whole sum was required, half a fifteenth and tenth was granted; and when a greater sum was required, it was granted under the name of two fifteenths and tenths, or as the case might be. The new system as adjusted upon the basis of 1334 for a long time held its own against all attempts to supersede it by fresh devices.3 A new departure was attempted when in 1377 the first poll unsuccesstax was levied, which was succeeded by another in a graduated to levy poll form in 1379, and by still another in 1380, the famous tax taxes; whose enforcement culminated in the Peasant revolt of the following year. So unsatisfactory did these expedients prove in practice that there was an immediate return to the old form of a fifteenth and tenth, which was continued down to the accession of the house of Tudor and long after that event. So fixed did the idea become that taxes should be imposed in a stated sum, divisible among the various districts upon the basis of the composition of 1334, that the tax-payers came to regard it almost as a constitutional right to contribute in that manner. ful attempt payer to as The exclusive right of parliament to authorize the imposition right of taxof the direct taxes whose histories have now been briefly sum- sent to taxmarized was the final product of the idea that the tax-payer ation; had the right to be consulted in some form before he was taxed. That idea was rapidly gaining ground at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the period during which was completely established throughout Europe the arrangement generally known as the estate system, which consisted of the tion with assemblies; with each taxation; recognized 1 division of a nation into the three classes or orders generally its connec- known as clergy, baronage, and commons. The outcome of the growth that system was that type of a national assembly in which each of national class or order appeared in person, or by representatives authorized to speak for those by whom they were sent. Not until late in the reign of Edward I. (1295) was such a central or national assembly finally built up in England with power to separate ne- represent every class of tax-payers.2 During the two centuries gotiations which intervene between the completion of the Conquest and estate as to that great event, the crown, in the absence of any better means, was compelled to negotiate separately with each of the three estates for its special contribution. The idea that the taxpayer had the right to be consulted before he was taxed reached no doubt its lowest point during the Norman reigns, from whose dim fiscal annals it is hard to determine whether taxes were imposed by mere edict of the sovereign, or with tax-payer's the counsel and consent of the great feudal council composed right dimly of the lay and spiritual baronage. The theory that the nation during was in some form consulted, even during the Norman period, is strengthened by two records which belong to the reign of Henry I. in the one, the king describes "the aid which my barons gave me;" in the other, the charter ordering the restoration of the local courts, he speaks of summoning the county courts whenever his royal necessities should require it. From these documents two important conclusions may be drawn: first, that whatever consultation took place with the baronage as to taxation occurred in the great council; second, that whatever consultation took place with the rest of the nation as incorporated in shires and towns took place in the county courts. The first serious dispute as to taxation which arose between the crown and the baronage grew out of the frequent demands which the former made upon the latter for the payment of scutage, after that moneyed compensation in lieu of military service was established by Henry II. at the rate of two marks on the knight's fee. During the reigns of Richard I. and John the demands for scutages became more and more frequent until, in the reign of the latter, they became almost Norman period; conflict with the baronage results in 1 As to the rise of the three estates, see vol. i. pp. 337-357. 2 Ibid., pp. 466-469. |