the government. They knew that nothing, perhaps, had tended more directly to render the nobles in France unpopular and induce the Jacquerie, than the taxes on salt, gabelle du sel, and the sale of all merchandise which king John had imposed upon the people in order to keep up the magnificent court with which he lived surrounded; and again, that only a few years before this the Black Prince had lost to us Aquitaine by the fouage or hearth tax he endeavoured to exact from the poor population of the Landes, to meet the expenses of his support of Don Pedro the Cruel. And yet now they chose, for the purpose of meeting the expenses of a disastrous campaign, a new poll tax, imposed upon the precedent of the novel and unpopular tallage of groats of 1377, and touching every one in the kingdom. Commissioners, appointed to assess and collect the tax in the various counties and towns, were sworn to faithful performance of their duty; but so difficult did the collection prove to be, that it was necessary to get in the arrears by farming the tax. The farmers acted with rapacity and insolence. Endless disputes occurred regarding the limit of age; and the immediate cause of the outbreak in Kent is stated to have been an act very similar to that which caused Sicilian Vespers, viz. the attempt of one of the collectors to ascertain in a rude manner the age of a girl for whom exemption was claimed as under fifteen years. The revolt was soon over. Within three weeks of its commencement Wat the Tyler, the leader of the Kentish men, had fallen under the mace of Walworth, and the king had granted those charters of freedom that formed the real object of many of the insurgents.1 The charters, granted illegally, as in infraction of the rights of private property, were indeed subsequently revoked; but the peasant insurrection had its effect. During the next century and a half villeinage died out so rapidly that it became an antiquated thing, the landowners taking in many cases small money payments in lieu of service. The alteration in the management of estates which had commenced before this was continued, and in lieu of keeping their vast domains in hand and farming them by means of bailiffs or reeves, the landowners parcelled them out in farms to tenants, either with the stock thereon, which was at first the usual practice in consequence of lack of capital, or without. While as regards taxation, we returned to the use of the old fifteenth and tenth upon the basis of the settlement of 1334. 1 Bondus they blwn bost, Vel nollent pacificari. "They refused to listen to any terms until they were freed from their servile bondage, and obtained, in effect, charters of their freedom.'-On the rebellion of Jack Straw, Political Poems and Songs, i. 224. PART III. 1380-1445. Return to the old form of tax. The landowners take the whole burden of a fifteenth and tenth in 1382. Other grants made during the fourteenth century. New land tax of 5 per cent. on large landowners in 1404. A similar tax, at 13rds per cent. on a wider basis, in 1411. Novel tax on inhabitant householders in rural and urban parishes combined with a land tax on the fee in 1428. Grant of fifteenths and tenths in 1431 supplemented by a land tax on the fee, lands of freehold not fees, and rents seck and rent charges. The king, in 1432, releases the grant. Grant of a fifteenth and tenth in 1435, and, in supplement, a graduated tax on income from lands, rents, and annuities and offices of freehold which are brought into charge. Attempt by the commons, in 1449, to tax the clergy. Grant, in 1450, of another graduated tax on income from lands, rents, annuities, and offices and fees. Copyhold estates are brought into charge. Jack Cade's rebellion. End of the Hundred Years' War in 1453. AFTER the failure of the attempt made to introduce into this country a new system of taxation by means of poll taxes upon a French model, the fifteenth and tenth continued to be, in practice, the form of taxation ordinarily used. But in 1382 the landowners, on account of the poverty of the country, took upon themselves the whole burden of a fifteenth and tenth, in the following manner. The sums levied on the occasion of the last fifteenth and tenth were to be assessed, in the various districts, upon the landowners only-' dukes, earls, barons, bannerets, knights, esquires, and all other secular lords of manors, townships, and other places'— in respect of the total amount of their crops and cattle, or the total amount of the profits of all their demesne lands, in every township or other place; the clergy also were to pay in respect of all their temporalities acquired since the taxation of pope Nicolas in 1291,1 a precedent which was followed in taxation subsequently. But only for this occasion, for reverence of God and for the support, aid, and relief of the poor commonalty, who appeared to be weaker and poorer than theretofore,' was a tax so unusual granted. It was not to be taken as a precedent for charging thereafter the landowners otherwise than they formerly had been and ought reasonably to be charged.2 The allusion to the reverence of God had relation to the destination of the money collected; the proceeds were to be handed over to Henry le Despenser, the warlike bishop of Norwich, for the service of God and the holy church in the crusade granted to him by pope Urban; in other words, for his year's campaign in France against the anti-pope and for the relief of Ghent. 6 Next year parliament reverted to the old system, and granted a fifteenth and tenth, or more precisely, two half fifteenths and tenths, to be levied in the ancient manner.' 4 This was followed by grants, in 1384, of half a fifteenth and tenth and of two fifteenths and tenths, one of which was afterwards remitted; and this form of taxation continued in use thenceforth, through 1 The temporalities of the church acquired before that date were assessed according to that taxation and included in the clerical grant. 2 Par. Rolls, iii. 134. 3 Ibid. iii. 145, 146. 4 Ibid. iii. 151. the period of truce with France after 1389, down to abdication of the throne by the king in 1399.1 In the first half of the fifteenth century new taxes were occasionally proposed, either alone or as additional to fifteenths and tenths. In 1404, the sixth year of Henry IV., parliament discussed and probably voted a new tax on land, which was confirmed and enacted at Coventry, in October,2 in the next parliament, termed 'the unlearned parliainent,' from the absence of lawyers, in consequence of a direction by the king, in the writs of summons, that no lawyers should be returned. The French threatened the coast, the Welsh rebellion under Owen Glendower was in full blaze, and the king was greatly in want of money. The new tax was additional to two fifteenths and tenths. It was granted by the lords temporal, for themselves and the ladies temporal and all other temporal persons, and touched only the large landowners possessing, in land or rent, to the value of 500 marks a year or upwards. The rate was 5 per cent., 17. for every 20l., and the tax was to be levied at Christmas.3 Seven years after this, towards the close of the reign, the parliament of 1411 granted another land tax, similar to that of 1404, but imposed upon a broader basis. On this occasion no grant of a fifteenth and tenth was made, and the land tax stood alone. It touched all landowners, having in land or rent to the value of 201. a year net-- outre les charges et reprises 1 Par. Rolls, iii. 167, 185, 204, 221, 244, 285, 301, 330, 368. |