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of the coins but not in respect of their quality, and this involved the assay. The general trend of argument here advanced appears likely enough. We start from a time when the king's revenue was paid in kind, and tenants on the royal demesne were directly called upon to contribute supplies for the maintenance of the king's household. The drawbacks of this cumbersome system in which taxes were paid in kind led to the adoption of a new expedient, and gradually payments in kind were superseded by payments in money (numero) for which the sheriff became responsible. The deterioration of money, however, resulted in deficiencies of weight and fineness, and first payment by weight and then by assay became the practice. But as an historical statement the Dialogus contains three serious errors. In the first place the 'blanch' system-by which money was paid in assayed or tested silver-was not unknown before the Norman Conquest. It may have been unusual and confined to the king's lands, but the testimony of Domesday Book is conclusive evidence that, however rare, it was not a reform invented by Roger of Salisbury1. In the second place the valuation of payments in kind in terms of money was not the work of Henry I., but can be traced to the reign of the Confessor 2. Many rents doubtless continued to be paid in kind, and honey payments especially survived, but they were all valued in money. The manors of the royal demesne were burdened with an obligation known as the firma unius noctis to provide supplies for the royal household for one or more days in the year, and this firma was already commuted for a fixed and definite sum, apparently eighty pounds'. In the third place the firma comitatus, the system by which the sheriff farmed the revenues of the shire and paid a composite sum into the Exchequer, did not originate in the twelfth century but was already familiar in Saxon

The

1 Round, Commune, 66; Vict. County Hist. Hampshire, i. 415. statement in the Dialogus (I. iv. p. 67) is bracketed by the Editors as being

untrue.

2 Round, Commune, 69.

At Southampton payment in kind was often accepted originally; e.g. merchants could pay for every bale of spices one pound of merchandise: or the value thereof: Oak Book, ii. pp. xiii. and 9.

4 Poole, Exchequer, 29.

times1. All this, however, does not exclude the possibility that important changes were instituted after the compilation of Domesday. The Pipe Roll of 1130 shows that the system of blanch payments had ceased to be exceptional and was now fully established. Again the farm of the shire seems to have been revalued, but it is doubtful if we can assign definite dates to the different changes which took place after 10862.

(3) The arithmetical system of the Exchequer, the The methods of method of calculation by means of the abacus, was almost calculation. certainly of foreign origin. Some doubt has been expressed on this point, but the Anglo-Saxon system of reckoning was duodecimal; the hide of land was the long hundred (majus centum) of 120 acres, the pound contained 240 pennies, and the pound's weight was twelve ounces. Now the abacus was a decimal system, and the substitution of one system for the other involved a real break in the continuity of the Treasury. The revolution transformed the Exchequer and opened up a new stage in its development. The Dialogus tells us that the old name for the Exchequer was tallies; in other words, financial business was at first conducted and accounts were kept by means of tallies and later by the chequered cloth. The substitution of a new arithmetical device in the audit of accounts, the counting of money on a squared table, completely reversed the existing system and introduced the Exchequer, as we now know it, into England. When the abacus was adopted at the Treasury we cannot determine. It is at any rate clear that a change so drastic was not a gradual process, but the achievement of some individual. The reign of Henry I. is the most likely period, and it has been conjectured that Adelard of Bath, an Englishman who studied at Laon in France and wrote a treatise on the abacus at the beginning of the twelfth century, introduced the system into England. Shortly

1 Round, Commune, 72; Vict. County Hist. Somersetshire, i. 396.

2 Dialogus, Introd. 36. The Editors (ibid. 38) suggest 1108 as the date when money payments were introduced at the Exchequer; and 1125 when they were made ad pensum, though the introduction of each method did not "necessarily coincide with its invention.”

3 Petit-Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary to Stubbs, i. 49.

4 Cf. Round, Commune, 74; Poole, Exchequer, 40.

Con

clusions.

Sources of Crown revenue.

afterwards the system was also in operation in Normandy, and the conclusion would seem to follow that the Exchequer passed from England to Normandy, and not conversely. In any case, however, the men who established it in England were not Englishmen, for the ministers of the Norman kings were of an alien race 1.

We can now state the conclusions which have been reached as to the antiquity of the English Exchequer. The Lower Exchequer can be identified definitely with the Anglo-Saxon Treasury, and we have clear evidence also that many features of the Exchequer system existed at an early date; the valuation of the royal rents in money, the farm of the shires and the different standards of payment, whether tested, counted or weighed, can all be credited with a pre-Conquest origin. Moreover, the employment of the assay involves the further assumption of a fairly elaborate machinery by which money was weighed and tested. Again, we cannot be certain that the financial staff of the Upper Exchequer did not already exist in the reign of the Confessor. But in any case the really characteristic feature of the Exchequer, the employment of a new system of audit based upon the chequered table and the abacus, constituted the decisive change which differentiates the Exchequer from the older Treasury. The Exchequer in the strict technical sense as a court of audit of accounts was to all appearance the work of Henry I., and we need not hesitate to regard it as of foreign origin. Whether the abacus was intended for the benefit of unlearned sheriffs, as Dr. Round thinks 2, or whether it was a specialized device only employed by skilled calculators, as the Editors of the Dialogus suppose 3, does not appear to affect the main conclusion as to the date of its introduction.

The Norman Conquest opened up a new epoch in the history of English taxation. The Conqueror's system of government exhibited a statesmanlike grasp in its preservation of all that was best in Anglo-Saxon institutions, combined 1 For Adelard, see Poole, Exchequer, 45, 47, 57 seq., and C. H. Haskins. "Adelard of Bath", in English Hist. Review, xxvi. 491 seq. * Dialogus, Introd. 42.

2 Round, Commune, 74, 94.

with all that was sound in Norman institutions. William I. associated in his person all the powers of national monarchy together with those of feudal sovereignty. As the successor of the native kings and father of his people, he retained Danegeld and the feorm derived from the royal estates; as the supreme landowner and lord of his people, he added feudal imposts. The various fiscal devices incidental to feudalism, aids, reliefs, escheats and the rest, constituted an important source of income; but we shall confine our attention to other branches of Crown revenue: (1) taxes on movables, (ii) custom duties, (iii.) profits of jurisdiction, (iv.) penalties on usury.

movables.

In the twelfth century a new and revolutionary expedient Taxes on of taxation was devised, the taxation of personal property. It was first introduced in the reign of Henry II., when a fractional part of every man's movables-known as the Saladin Tithe (1188)—was granted for a Crusade. On this occasion the tax was levied for an ecclesiastical object; it was first applied to secular purposes under Richard I., when a grant of one-fourth was exacted for the king's ransom. The amount of the tax varied for a time, but ultimately it was settled at a fifteenth in the case of a county and a tenth in the case of a town. The liability of the tax-payer was determined when necessary by a jury of assessment. The procedure in 1188 was set forth in the injunction that "if any one in the opinion of his neighbours give less than he ought, let four or six lawful men be chosen from the parish to state on oath the amount which he ought to have stated, and then he must make good the deficit "1. But in 1332 the attempt to levy the fifteenth and tenth provoked considerable friction. Whether the assessment in this year was made more strict or not we cannot say, but the commissioners were accused of unfairness and fraud. In the nature of things a direct tax arouses opposition, and the tendency of a government is therefore to follow the line of least resistance by accepting a nominal and unvarying assessment. Accordingly, in 1334, the commissioners 2 were empowered

1 The Ordinance of the Saladin Tithe is printed in S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England (1888), i. App. I. 2 Ibid. i. 85-86.

to bargain with the towns and the counties as to the composition which they were prepared to make in lieu of new assessments. The localities undertook responsibility for the payment of a definite sum of money, and then apportioned this amount among the contributors within their jurisdiction. Henceforth the old machinery of assessment and collection was abandoned, and a new method adopted by which every district was burdened with a fixed responsibility. The amount raised in 1334 was between £38,000 and £39,000, and henceforth "a fifteenth and a tenth was practically a fiscal expression for a sum of about £39,000"1. A new basis of taxation had in fact been established. A fractional grant of a fifteenth or tenth of a man's movables ceased to bear any relation to his actual resources, but implied a definite sum of money levied upon the localities in fixed and unvarying proportion. When more than £39,000 was required parliament made a grant of several fifteenths and tenths, and when less sufficed half a fifteenth and tenth would be voted. Ultimately the change was something more than a mere alteration in the form of the tax. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the prosperity of different parts of the country rose and fell; many of the older boroughs declined, and new centres of wealth and activity took their place. The settlement of 1334 became totally inadequate, but the effort to institute new methods of taxation was foiled by the invincible repugnance of Englishmen to fiscal innovations. The results which followed the poll-taxes under Richard II. did not encourage the government to devise new financial expedients, and the old system was retained throughout the Middle Ages. It was impossible, however, to ignore the complaints of decayed towns upon whom the burden of taxation, once perhaps lightly shouldered, now pressed heavily, and exemptions were made for their relief. After 1432 the grant of a fifteenth and tenth was expressly accompanied by a remission in their favour, amounting at first to £4000 and subsequently to £6000. In 1463 another departure was made, and a fresh concession allowed by which all persons, whose real property fell below 1 Dowell, Taxation, i. 87.

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