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ment with reference to the taxes of their predecessors, which are generally stigmatised as hated imposts, forming an intolerable burden with which the people have been oppressed.

The statute runs as follows:

The king remembering how the commons of this his realm, by new and unlawful inventions and inordinate covetise against the law of his realm, have been put to great thraldom and importable charges and exactions, and in especial by a new imposition called a benevolence, whereby, divers years, the subjects and commons of this land against their wills and freedoms, have paid great sums of money to their almost utter destruction; (2), For divers and many worshipful men of this realm, by occasion thereof, had been compelled by necessity to break up their households and to live in great penury and wretchedness, their debts unpaid, and their children unpreferred, and such memorials as were ordained to be done for the wealth of their souls anentised and annulled, to the great displeasure of God, and the destruction of the realm; (3), Therefore the king will it be ordained, by the advice and assent, &c. that his subjects and the commonalty of this his realm from henceforth in no wise be charged by any such charge, exaction, or imposition, called a benevolence, nor by any such like charge; (4), And that such exactions, called benevolences, before this time taken, be taken for no example to make such or any like charge of any of his said subjects of this realm hereafter, but it shall be damned and annulled for ever.' 1

1 1 Rich. III. c. 2.

But, only a few years before this a chronicler, who had considerable knowledge of England, was noting down in his Memoirs the results of his personal observation in different countries. There are many melancholy pictures of the exiles in consequence of the wars of the Roses; relations of kings, in want and rags; and Plantagenets begging their bread in the train of the duke of Burgundy. But of the people of England, Philippe de Commynes writes:-'Or, selon mon advis, entre toutes les seigneuries du monde dont j'ay congnoissance, où la chose publicque est mieulx traictee, ou regne moins de viollence sur le peuple c'est Angleterre.' In England, of all countries I know, the people are the least oppressed of any.

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1 Mémoires, Dupont, i. 231, ii. 142.

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BOOK VII.

TAXATION UNDER THE TUDORS.

1485-1603.

CHAPTER I.

THE CUSTOMS SUBSIDIES OF WOOL, SKINS AND LEATHER, TUNNAGE ON WINE AND POUNDAGE ON GOODS.

CHAPTER II.

THE DIRECT TAXES, INCLUDING FIFTEENTHS AND TENTHS, POLL TAXES, AND THE GENERAL SUBSIDIES.

CHAPTER III.

BENEVOLENCES AND MONOPOLIES.

VOL. I.

M

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