Shepard Ashman Morgan

“ William the Conqueror was precisely the man most likely to exercise supreme control over taxation. Elected to the kingship according to the Saxon forms and with his title to the crown backed up by force of arms, he created a system of government of which he himself was the center and in which his authority, even to the vassals of vassals, was supreme. ”

“ James’s third Parliament, 1620-21
But the rule could not long continue. James summoned his third Parliament for the 30th January, 1620-21. He addressed both Houses in a conciliatory manner, hopefully and with many promises. “For you to hunt after grievances,” he said, “to the prejudice of your king and yourselves, is not the errand: deal with me as I deserve at your hands; I will leave nothing undone that becomes a just king, if you deal with me accordingly.” [316] The commons were in a good temper and a reconciliation seemed far more likely to eventuate than a struggle. ”

“ The Wars of the Roses, the struggles with France for various causes and with varied consequences, the doting of monarchs upon foreign favorites, all contribute toward popular distraction from that interest in government, that keen hostility to maladministration, which makes for constitutional progress. There was no leader to prick the public conscience; no Simon de Montfort or Edward Plantagenet to inaugurate reforms in the great matters of government. ”

“ During the reigns of Henry III and Edward, machinery was constructed which could carry out the chapters of Magna Carta providing for taxation by assent. The Parliament of the three estates, assembled for the purpose of meeting the pecuniary necessities of the king, proved itself to be the easiest and most effective means by which the whole nation could grant taxes. But the evolution from the Commune Concilium, the rough prototype of Parliament, had scarcely gone farther than to supply a convenient instrument of taxation. ”

“ Parliament met at Nottingham the following month full of pride in the military prowess of the king, and granted him liberal aids. Not only did the barons and knights contribute a twentieth, the towns a tenth, the clergy a sixth, but the merchants, who were at this moment, so it appeared, on the verge of attaining to the dignity of a fourth estate in Parliament, granted him forty shillings on the sack of wool; and the foreign merchants were to pay an additional twenty shillings. ”

“ Furthermore, the immense activity of commerce, the progress of literature, the religious reconstitution during the sixteenth century, were in themselves reasons for slow advance in matters of government; the stress of trade consequent upon the discovery of a new world, the absorbing interest in new subjects for thought, the intensity and magnitude of new religious conceptions, engaged the minds of men on subjects other than those of Parliament and king. ”

“ The grants seem, indeed, to have been binding upon the nation at large, and consequently it might be argued that the barons were really representatives of the nation, capable of acting for it. But the argument is based upon a confusion of terms; representation in the modern sense was not at that time in England invented or thought of. A baron who by virtue of his prominence or his power makes a promise which is binding upon those of less prominence or less power, is not a representative but a small despot. Such a position the barons held who composed the National Council under Henry III ”

“ The first Parliament of Charles I recalls vividly the mid-reign experiences of James. It convened on the 18th June, 1625, and was met with a request for a large and unconditional grant with which to prosecute the war which Charles had inherited from his father. The commons, however, were careful; they looked rather for a solid establishment of government at home than for a war abroad. Breaking the habit of two centuries, they offered Charles tunnage and poundage for a year instead of the term of his life, a measure which, because of lack of precedent, was rejected in the House of Lords ”

“ The history of the wool customs shows this if it shows nothing else, that Parliament was inclined to make supply wait upon redress of grievances; that the inclination was not a determination was owing to the fact of Edward’s wars; withholding supply would wreck English military prestige far more quickly than the arms of France. Yet the time was not far distant when the grant would be reserved until the end of the session, and thus secure the redress of grievances before the granting of a supply. By other means, also, Parliament was reaching out to control the executive. ”

“ We, therefore, your Majesty’s most humble Commons assembled in Parliament, following the examples of this worthy case of our ancestors, and out of a duty to those for whom we serve, finding that your Majesty, without advice or consent of Parliament, hath lately, in time of peace, set both greater impositions, and far more in number than any of your noble ancestors did in time of war, have with all humility presumed to present this most just and necessary petition unto your Majesty: That all impositions set without the assent of Parliament may be quite abolished and taken away ”

“ II. The law and constitution of England provide certain extraordinary revenues when the ordinary revenues should prove insufficient, and for the defense of the realm. Chief among these were the subsidies and aids which were granted in Parliament. That Parliament was the only body capable of levying these charges was exhibited by the fact that the kings of England were wont to denominate their arbitrary exactions as “loans” and “benevolences.” ”

“ Forced loans were indeed exacted from the wealthy, but Elizabeth took care to repay honorably and as promptly as she could. A means of revenue which relieved her from the frequent necessity of applying to Parliament was the granting of monopolies, based upon the right of the crown to assure to an inventor or orginator the exclusive benefits of his invention or innovation. By 1601, however, the royal power had encroached so far upon the rights of the individual that the grants of monopoly comprised exclusive control over many of the necessaries of life. ”

“ During the whole period from the coming of the Normans in 1066 to the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 there can be brought forward only two or three instances of assent by the National Council to taxes levied by the [13] king, and these few instances are at best equivocal. They are insufficient to justify the belief that the National Council had any final power over the levying of taxation. But the period is not altogether gray; it concludes with the enunciation in Magna Carta of rights which cast a halo of color over the whole subsequent narrative of the struggle for parliamentary taxation. ”

“ It is not unlikely, however, [9] that in practice the assent of the Witan was less or more of a formality varying according to the weakness or strength of the king. A strong king’s will would dominate the Witan, whereas a weak king would be subservient to its desires and interest.
In order to arrive at a clear comprehension of the taxing power of the Witan as compared with that subsequently exercised by the English Parliament, The Witenagemot and its powers it is essential that one understands the make-up of the Anglo-Saxon body. As its name implies, the Witan was an assembly of the wise. ”

“ If Parliament should maintain that principle in practice, then its hold would be secure upon the executive. Power in 1297 was not far from a balance between king and nation.
If the evolution of a government can ever [153] be attributed to the directing skill of man rather than to the slow weaving of events, the construction for England of an engine of popular taxation can be ascribed to Edward Plantagenet, and in less degree to the drafter of the working plan, Simon de Montfort. ”

“ It is sufficient to observe that the payment of even so small a sum as a groat, served to bring freshly to the minds [199] of the most ignorant the maladministration in London, and to arouse in them the impulse, however ill-advised or ill-directed, to correct abuses in the executive. The Rising of the Villeins is illustrative of the not unusual conception that bad government is chiefly reprehensible because it is expensive.
The taxation during the years 1389-1397 was regular and moderate. ”

“ As it is not a kingdom without subjects and government, so he is not a king without revenues.... The revenue of the Crown is the very essential part of the Crown, and he who rendeth that from the king pulleth also his crown from his head, for it cannot be separated from the crown. ”

“ The promise of Edward to abide by the recommendation of Parliament in the matter of the subsidy on wool, was an admission by the king that not he but they had final control over the laying of customs duties. Thus was established the principle to be defended and likewise to be questioned in the future, that Parliament alone had power to lay a tax on wool. In the second place, by the statute which provided that no charge or aid should be levied but by consent of Parliament, tallage died a legislative death. ”

“ The reign of Henry I is of greater importance, not only because of the long forward strides which the king and his justiciar Roger of Salisbury took in the direction of judicial and financial organization, but because we find in the records of his time certain pieces of evidence which seem to support the contention that the Council gave some measure of consent to taxation. ”

“ The seven judges whose opinions were favorable to the king, upheld the prerogative of the crown as against the legislative power of Parliament. Sir John Finch, chief justice of the common pleas, stated their attitude clearly. “No act of Parliament,” he said, “can bar a king of his regality, as that no lands should hold of him, or bar him of the allegiance of his subjects or the relative on his part, as trust and power to defend his people; therefore acts of Parliament to take away his royal power in the defense of his kingdom are void ”

“ And whereas of late great companies of soldiers and marines have been dispersed into divers counties of the realm, and the inhabitants against their wills have been compelled to receive them into their houses, and there to suffer them to sojourn, against the laws and customs of the realm, and to the great grievance and vexation of the people....
They do therefore humbly pray your most Excellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament ”