clergy had been assessed by the commissioners named in the statute, without any objection being raised on their part or behalf. In this act was embraced, however, a proviso, that "nothing therein contained shall be drawn into example to the prejudice of the ancient rights belonging to the lords spiritual and temporal, or clergy of this realm." If by this proviso the clergy intended to save the right to tax themselves, as Mr. Hallam1 supposes, suffice it to say, that they have never since seen fit to reassert it. By their renunciation of the right of separate taxation,2 the clergy gained the members of new right of voting at the election of members of the house of commons by virtue of their ecclesiastical benefices, -a right which has been more than once distinctly recognized by statute.3 The clergy gain the right to vote for the house of commons. Early par of the commons in taxation. а 9. The refusal of the representatives of the clergy to habitticipation ually assemble as a separate estate of parliament fixed the fact that the national legislature of England should consist of two houses instead of three. Having explained how this division into two houses was finally settled, the task remains to draw out the process through which the younger body— composed of the representatives of the shires and townsgradually won, through persistent effort, first the right to participate in taxation, then to participate in legislation, then to impeach the ministers, and finally to participate in the control of the royal administration and in the deposition of the king himself. The whole process is one of struggle and of growth, which finds its origin in the doctrine- fast gaining ground at the beginning of the thirteenth century—that the tax-payer had the right to be consulted in some form before he was taxed. This doctrine touched, no doubt, its during the lowest point during the Norman reigns, from whose vague fiscal annals it is hard to determine whether taxes were imposed by mere edict of the sovereign, or whether with the counsel and consent of the great council. The idea that the nation was in some form consulted, even during the Norman period, is strengthened by two records which belong to the reign of Henry I.: in the one, the king describes "the aid Taxation Norman period. 1 Const. Hist., vol. iii. p. 243 and note. 2 "And, till this power was given up, an ecclesiastical benefice gave no right to vote in the election of members of the house of commons.". Freeman, the com through the courts. which my barons gave me ; in the other - the charter ordering the restoration of the local courts he speaks of summoning the county courts whenever his royal necessity should require it.1 These two documents clearly indicate the only two methods through which the nation—prior to the appearance in the national council of the representative members could be consulted in reference to taxation. The lay and spiritual baronage were consulted in the great coun- Lay and cil, but the grants there made did not bind absolutely the in- baronage spiritual ferior clergy, nor the main body of the nation incorporated consulted for government in shires and towns.2 Before contributions council; could be drawn from the clergy and the commons, separate the clergy through the negotiations had first to be conducted with the archdeacons archdeaof each diocese representing the spiritual estate, and with cons, and the several county courts in which representatives appeared mons from every portion of the shire community. Such negotia- county tions between the crown and the local communities were carried on by a detachment of justices from the exchequer during their fiscal circuits of the shires. The exchequer The exofficers, dealing with the shire communities in their corporate officers, capacity, sat in the county courts, and there debated "with when negotiating with the landowners the number of hides for which they owe the shires, Danegeld, or the number of knights' fees from which aids county and reliefs are due; they likewise assess the towns, which court. are now becoming important contributors to the revenue." 8 The county court was thus the only organ of communication in fiscal matters between the crown on the one hand and the shire and town communities on the other, prior to their representation in the national council. When the organization and procedure of the county court is considered, it is not hard to understand why the system of representation, so long employed therein for local purposes, should have been extended into a higher sphere. As heretofore explained, the The county county court which met the itinerant justices upon their visitations was not only a popular but a representative assembly, a county parliament, composed not only of the archbishops, 1 See above, p. 300, and notes 5 and 6. 2 In the grant made by certain bishops and barons of an aid "pur fille marier" in the parliament of 1290 the limitation is put, in so far as in them lay. The facts are thus stated in the 8 Select Charters, p. 18. chequer sat in the court a county par liament. reign of carucage chosen by the "will and coun county court. bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, and freeholders, but also of the reeve and four men as representatives from each township, and twelve burghers as representatives from each borough in the shire.1 Into both the fiscal and judicial work of the shire, election and representation entered as Early in the active and familiar principles. From a writ issued for the Henry III. collection of a carucage early in the reign of Henry III. it a care appears that a subsidy granted in the great council was two knights assessed in the shire, not as in the earlier days by the itinerant justices, but by two knights freely chosen in a full sel" of the assembly of the county court.2 In 1225 a writ, issued for the collection of a fifteenth, provided that the tax should be collected by the reeve and four men in each township, who were commanded to pay over the proceeds to four elected knights of the hundred, who in their turn were to inquire by the oaths of local jurors into all disputed cases.3 The reeve and four men, who were thus charged with the collection of the tax, had been immemorially charged with the higher duty of representing the township in the miniature parliament known as the county court. When John, in 1213, summoned for the first time the "four discreet men" from each county long famil- to appear as representatives in the great council, he simply applied to national purposes a system of representation that had existed from the very earliest times. "The four men and the reeve had from time immemorial represented the township in the shire-moot; now the four men and the sheriff represent the shire-moot in the national council."4 The fact The elected can hardly be questioned that the elected knights were at knights first summoned to parliament, for the purpose of consenting to taxation upon the part of the shire communities, as a matter of fiscal expediency merely. Instead of the officers of the exchequer going down into the shires to there negotiate separately as to the amount each would give, it was deemed more expedient for each shire court to send representatives to the national council armed with full power to express its corporate assent to whatever tax the general voice might there impose. The sentative repre system, iar to the County court, ap plied to national purposes. summoned to parliament as a matter of fiscal expediency. 1 See above, p. 320. 2 See above, p. 451. 8 Fadera, i. p. 177; Select Charters, PP: 355-357. 4 See above, p. 367. A tives from summoned son. ence. The same general causes which brought about the appear- Representa ance in parliament of the elected knights also brought about, the towns at a somewhat later day, the appearance of elected representa- for the tives from the cities and towns. Until the severance of the same reaborough communities from the general shire administration, the sheriff exercised the same jurisdiction over the towns as over the rest of the county; he collected from them the rents which formed a portion of the ferm of the shire, and he looked after the king's rights in their courts of justice. The borough communities which thus grew up within the jurisdiction of the shire, and upon the demesnes of the king or some other great lord, began the struggle for municipal independ- The struggle for ence with the effort to free themselves from the financial municipal and judicial administration of the sheriff upon the one hand, independand from the control of the lord upon the other. One of the first steps in this process was to require the sheriff to fix the amount of the ferm which the borough was to pay separate and apart from the general contribution of the shire. The next step was to obtain a charter from the crown permitting the town to pay directly into the exchequer a fixed rent in lieu of the sum contributed through the sheriff. The fixed The firma burgi. rent thus paid by the town directly to the exchequer, which was known as the firma burgi, the burghers apportioned and collected among themselves through their own internal regulations.1 But after this much had been accomplished the towns were subject to another form of taxation, which depended chiefly upon the royal pleasure. Whenever the great council made a grant to the crown, the king claimed the right to levy upon his tenants in demesne an equivalent exaction under the name of a "free aid." When the growing wealth The "free of the mercantile classes within the towns began to render them tempting objects of taxation, the imposition of "free aids" grew more and more frequent. During the reigns of Henry III. and John, such demands were often made by royal authority, even when no general grant had been made by the great council. When a dispute arose over the collection of a "free aid," the contention could only be settled after a tedious negotiation between the town magistracy on the one hand and the officers of the exchequer on the other. The 1 See above, p. 461. aid." Transition from special to general consent in taxation. Exclusive liament to taxation. representatives of the towns were therefore summoned to parliament simply because the crown found it more profitable to obtain grants of subsidies from them in a national council than to collect "free aids" from them through the more tedious process of separate negotiation.1 By so reorganizing the national council as to require every order of men to appear therein in person or by representatives, Edward I. finally completed the transition from the older system of separate consent to taxation, which grew out of feudal ideas, to the more efficient and comprehensive one of general consent expressed as the corporate act of the nation in an assembly of estates. Although in such an assembly each estate taxed itself separately at first upon its own basis, the concurrent act was a national act, resting upon the consent of every class of tax-payers to be affected by it.2 10. The corollary, which naturally followed the principle right of par- that each estate had the right to consent to taxation in an authorize assembly of estates, was that no taxes whatsoever could be legally imposed upon the nation save such as were expressly authorized by parliamentary authority. The first great effort for the establishment of this principle was made by the baronage in the famous struggle with John in 1215; and the fruit of that effort was embodied in the twelfth and fourteenth articles of the Great Charter, which provided that no scutage or aid, except the three regular feudal aids, should be imposed but by the common counsel of the nation, and that such common counsel could only be taken in a national council duly Declaration summoned under writs regularly issued. The fact that these clusive vital clauses were invariably omitted from all subsequent reright of the issues of the Great Charter is persuasive to show that the authorize precise and positive definition of the exclusive right of the nation to authorize taxation, which the barons in the hour of victory forced upon John, was premature, that for such an premature. absolute assertion of the right, the nation itself was at the time hardly prepared. It is true that during the eighty years which followed the issue of the Great Charter the im of the ex nation to taxation, contained 8 1 All this has been restated by Green with his usual clearness. See Hist. Eng. People, vol. i. pp. 355, 356. 2 "The process of transition belongs to the years 1282 to 1295, and the transition implies the admission of the commons to a share of the taxing pow er, together with the clergy and the baronage." Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 243. See above, pp. 387, 388. |