Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/325

 Ch. 8. was uncertain, being levied by aements new made at every freh grant of the commons, a commiion for which is preerved by Matthew Paris : but it was at length reduced to a certainty in the eighth year of Edward III, when, by virtueof the king's commiion, new taxations were made of every townhip, borough, and city in the kingdom, and recorded in the exchequer; which rate was, at the time, the fifteenth part of the value of every townhip, the whole amounting to about 29000𝑙. and therefore it till kept up the name of a fifteenth, when, by the alteration of the value of money and the encreae of peronal property, things came to be in a very different ituation. So that when, of later years, the commons granted the king a fifteenth, every parih in England immediately knew their proportion of it; that is, the ame identical um that was aeed by the ame aid in the eighth of Edward III; and then raied it by a rate among themelves, and returned it into the royal exchequer.

other antient levies were in the nature of a modern land tax: for we may trace up the original of that charge as high as to the introduction of our military tenures ; when every tenant of a knight's fee was bound, if called upon, to attend the king in his army far forty days in every year. But this peronal attendance growing troubleome in many repects, the tenants found, means of compounding for it, by firt ending others in their tead, and in proces of time by making a pecuniary atisfaction to the crown in lieu of it. This pecuniary atisfaction at lat came to be levied by aements, at o much for every knight's fee, under the name of cutages; which appear to have been levied for the firt time in the fifth year of Henry the econd, on account of his expedition to Touloue, and were then (I apprehend) mere arbitrary compoitions, as the king and the ubject could agree. But this precedent being afterwards abued into a means of oppreion, (by levying cutages on the landholders by the royal authority only, whenever our kings went to war, in or- Rh