Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/262

 the correspondence of the period, which sets before us what the estimated expenditure was from time to time, and in the incidental references of the annalists which tell us how the imposts were from time to time felt by the people. Of the thirty-eight years of the reign, twenty-one passed away without a parliament, and therefore without a budget; and long prorogations had now become so much the rule, that only nine new parliaments, nine general elections, were held during the whole time; the country therefore had not much opportunity of showing a change of feeling in this respect.

It is thus comparatively simple to state the parliamentary grants: tonnage and poundage, and the subsidy on wool, wool-fells and leather, were, in the first parliament of the reign, granted to the king for his life: the ancient vote of tenths and fifteenths was made on eleven occasions, sometimes as a sufficient grant and sometimes as a supplementary grant when a more grasping exaction had disappointed the officers of the Exchequer; and nine several subsidies of a new kind, a graduated income and property tax, were levied at more critical periods, as for the expeditions of 1519 and 1513, for the payment of expenses in 1515, and for the warlike preparations made in 1523, 1539, and 1543. These latter taxes were exactions on lands and goods according to fixed scale, minutely drawn out in each of the acts that sanctioned them: but, as the impost invariably fell short of the amount expected from it, we must conclude that, like the old tenths and fifteenths, it was assessed on fancy valuations and produced no very pressing hardships; judging from the existing returns it pressed very lightly upon individual payers, from the highest class to the lowest.

Besides these legal taxes from the laity, the king had votes from convocation following those of parliament in due proportion, the clergy paying a tenth whenever the parliament voted a tenth and fifteenth, adding a subsidy when the parliament granted a subsidy; and, after the parliament of 1534, paying to the king a whole tenth annually, which had been previously paid, almost if not quite regularly, as a contribution to the funds of the papacy. These were the regular and constitutional sources of income.