Provisions. Assize of Arms. In the reign of Henry III. legislative enact

Statutes and ordinances.

Taxation under the Old-Eng.

ments appear in the form of provisions; in the reigns of Edward I. and his successors they assume the form of statutes and ordinances.2 The ancient form of royal legislation is not superseded by the modern form of national legislation until the ancient council of the king is transformed into a national parliament.3

6. In the early days of the Old-English commonwealth, as the king's revenues from the folkland, from his private estates, lish system. and from customary dues were amply sufficient to maintain the royal state, and as the threefold duty (trinoda necessitas) of rendering military service and of repairing bridges and fortresses supplied all local requirements, there was no necessity for the imposition of taxes, in the modern sense of that term. Not until the reign of Ethelred, when money had to be raised for the purpose of defence against the Danes, did it become necessary for the king and the witan to levy extraordinary taxes for the public service. With the imposition of the Danegeld the history of English taxation really begins.5 This tax, which was levied not only for the purpose of buying off the invaders but for the raising of fleets, was necessarily a land-tax, for the reason that land, in the early days, was the only standard of value on which an assessment could be made. Under the famous rating of 1008, to which can be traced the origin of ship-money, the burden of raising a fleet was imposed upon the whole nation, but the proportion to be contributed in kind by each district was fixed by reference to the number of hides contained in each. It may be inferred from the terms of assessment that every three hundred hides were liable to furnish a ship, every ten hides a boat, and every eight hides a helmet and breastplate. From what we know of the

The Dane geld or land-tax.

Old-English fiscal system, the

land-tax, under the name of the Danegeld, was laid on every hide of ground; and to this national taxation the Norman kings added the feudal burdens of the new military estates created by the Conquest, reliefs paid on inheritance, profits of marriages and wardship, and the three feudal aids."-Green, Hist. Eng. People, vol. i. p. 321.

6 For the authorities upon this sub ject, see above, p 187, note 2.

sessment,

conclusion may be drawn that the only tax ever levied, in the The OldEnglish modern sense of that term, was the Danegeld or land-tax, and unit of asthat the unit of assessment was the hide. As the hide, then, semant was the unit of assessment from the earliest times, and continued to be so long after the Norman conquest, it is quite possible to understand why such great labor has been expended in the attempt to ascertain its character and extent.1 By the light of recent researches into the early history of the English land system, something like definite results have at last been attained. Mr. Seebohm, after a minute examination of the open-field system by the aid of the Great Survey and the Hundred Rolls, has ascertained that a virgate-the normal holding of a normal tenant in villenage - usually contained about thirty acres, and that the normal hide consisted Extent of as a rule of four virgates. Although the virgate did not hide" always contain thirty acres, and although the hide did not always contain the same number of virgates, still, as a rule, the normal hide seems to have represented about one hundred and twenty acres. In the Hundred Rolls the assessed value of manors is generally stated in hides and virgates. The hide and the virgate thus seem to have been used as measures of assessment as well for the demesne land of the manor as for the land in villenage. After the Conquest the Danegeld or land-tax assumed under the Conqueror and his sons the form of ordinary revenue, which, like the ferm, was compounded for by the sheriffs at a fixed sum. In the case

the normal

of the towns, to which the reckoning by hides could not apply, the Danegeld seems also to have been compounded for, and the composition or aid thus derived represents no doubt the later talliage. In the ninth year of Henry II. the Dane- Talliage. geld, as such, finally disappeared from the Rolls, but was suc

1 As to the original character and extent of the ethel, hide, or alod, see Kemble, Saxons in Eng., vol. i. ch. iv.; G. L. von Maurer, Einleiting, p. 120 seq.; Grimm, R. A., p. 535. The hube, the ethel, the hide, originally represented the family estate, which, "in the old English community, consisted of the house and arable lands, and the rights in the common land running with them." -Essays in A. S. Law, p. 74; K. Maurer, Kritische Ueberschau, i.

Hidage.

ceeded at once by a land-tax known as aid or hidage, which must have been only a reproduction of the old impost in a new form. In the reign of Richard I. the Danegeld reapCarucage. pears in a more oppressive shape as carucage.

Taxation under the Norman system.

Gradual develop

ment of military tenures.

The carucate the quantity of land which could be ploughed by a plough-team in a season seems in some cases to have been identical with the normal hide, while in others it seems to have varied according to the quality of the soil or strength of the team.2 Under all these names, whether as Danegeld, aid or hidage, carucage, or, in the case of towns, talliage, the ancient land-tax, originally imposed by Ethelred on the hide, can be surely distinguished.

When William, duke of the Normans, was elected, crowned, and anointed king of the English, he succeeded to every royal right that had ever belonged to any of his English predecessors, and he vigorously exacted every kind of revenue, ordinary and extraordinary, that had ever been employed by any of the kings who had gone before him. The sum of fiscal rights which thus accrued to William as a national king was greatly augmented, in the reign of his successor, by the feudal incidents which resulted from the position of the king as supreme landlord. The income from feudal tenures, which accrued to the Norman kings as feudal lords, may be regarded then as an addition or supplement to the taxes and dues which grew out of the ancient constitution. But not until after the Conqueror's death, not until after feudalism as a system of tenure had been developed under William the Red, did the profit from reliefs, wardships, marriages, fines for alienation, escheats, and from the three feudal aids, begin to swell the royal revenue.3 The conclusion is now established that the development of military tenures in England was gradual, and that the transition from the old military system by the thegn's service to the new system by knight-service was also gradual. At the time of the Conquest the Old-English system

1 "Each carucate containing a fixed extent of one hundred acres."-Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 582, citing Hoveden, iv. 47.

2 For a definition of the "carucate or land of a plough-team, used instead of the hide for later taxation," see English Village Community, p. 40.

8 For the authorities upon this sub ject, see above, pp. 271, 272.

4 Cf. Palgrave, Normandy and Eng land, vol. iii. p. 609 seq.; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 261 seq.; Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. v. p. 249, and note HH.

was rapidly moving in a feudal direction, the thegn was gradually passing into the tenant-in-chief, the man of a lord of a district into his tenant. The name thegn is supposed to cover the whole class which, after the Conquest, appears under the name of knights, with the same qualification in land and nearly the same obligation.2 Under the old system the thegn was not only a warrior but a landowrer, and as such he was bound to render military service; but such service was due to the state and to the king as its head, and not to the king as lord. There is no reason to believe that William directly introduced into England any new kind of tenure; in the language of Domesday there is no mention of military tenures as afterwards understood. There is no direct evidence to show that the old obligation of military service underwent any material change in the Conqueror's time; throughout the Survey the land is divided not into The Survey knights' fees, but into hides or carucates. But although Wil- based upon liam did not directly introduce military tenures as afterwards carucates. understood, still the effect of his vast confiscations and regrants was to firmly establish the principle that the king was the supreme landlord, and that all lands were held by grant mediately or immediately of him. As soon, then, as the idea gained ground that the military service due from the landowner was due to the king, not as the head of the state but as lord, the conception of feudal tenure became complete. The new military service which thus arose out of the development of tenures was probably measured at first by the existing custom which imposed the equipment of one fully armed man upon every five hides of land." By degrees the Growth of older system based upon the hide was gradually superseded of knights' by a new division of the land into knights' fees, and by the fixing of the knight's fee to a particular amount of land. This new scheme of distribution, which probably took a defi

hides and

the system

fees out of

the older

system of

hides.

The army composed of both

national

elements.

nite shape under Henry I., was certainly not completed before the reign of Henry II. Under the new arrangement the specific obligation was imposed upon each knight's fee to furnish a fully armed horseman to serve at his own expense for forty days in the year. This duty of military service was the substantive duty due from the tenant in chivalry to his lord; the right to aids, reliefs, wardships, marriages, alienations, and escheats were mere incidents.2

As successors of the Old-English kings, the Norman and Angevin rulers retained the right to summon, under the lead feudal and of the sheriffs, the ancient forces of the shires; as feudal lords, they gained the right through the growth of tenures to call upon the feudal array to perform the military service due from their lands. As the fruits of feudal tenures were an addition or supplement to the older revenues derived from the ancient system, so the feudal army was an addition or supplement to the older constitutional force of the land.3 To the army thus made up of feudal and national elements were sometimes added mercenary soldiers. In order to raise money for the employment of mercenaries in his war against Toulouse, Henry dealt a serious blow at the feudal power by the establishment of the institution of scutage, a pecuniary commutation for personal service in the host. This commutation, at first assessed arbitrarily at the king's pleasure, was finally made subject to legislative control by that clause in the Great Charter which provides that "no scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom unless by the common counsel of our kingdom." 5

Scutage.

Excepting

the customs, all taxes fell upon the land.

Up to this point in Henry's reign-leaving out of view the receipts from the customs-all taxation fell upon the land, and consisted (1) of the ancient customary dues, and the tax on the hide, survivals of the Old-English system; and (2) of the feudal incidents, and the scutage, or tax on

1 "It is, however, probable that a record of the number of knights' fees in England had been made before the death of Henry I., and that it was the basis of the computation adopted by his grandson."-Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 383.

2 Digby, Law of Real Property, pp. 35, 36, 40, 123.

8 "The English fyrd went on along. side of the Norman feudal array, and the king could make use of either or both, as suited his purpose." - Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 258. 4 See above, p. 283. 5 Cap. 12. "Nullum scutagium vel auxilium ponatur in regno nostro, nisi per commune consilium regni nostri."