venient for the leader of an army than to he under the necessity, on the expiration of the forty days, either to cnt short the campaign, or purchase, by payments or promises, the continued service of his best soldiers? To overcome this difficulty a new system was arranged, it is said, by Thomas à Becket, which marked an important era in English taxation; whereby the king, in lieu of personal service by his barons and their retainers, agreed to substitute a tax called "scutage," or shield tax; which, as levied at the rate of ten marks (£1 6s. 8d.) on every estate held by tenure, of the annual value of twenty pounds, was a land tax, payable in money, which before that period had not been definitely recognized. And thus it was that the king practically disarmed the feudal power by accepting money from the knights in place of armed service; and at the same time greatly strengthened his own power. As with the money thus raised he created a permanent and subservient army of mercenaries—a process which Michelet, the French historian, has characterized as a provision by the nobles of a bit and bridle for their own restraint.[1]
Historians can find no evidence that the right of the English kings to levy taxes was in any case made contingent on any formal grant of any national council until toward the close of the reign of Richard II (1190);[2] and we have a statement from the historian Hallam that, previous to that time, the system of extortion practiced by the Norman kings upon their English subjects was "what we should expect to find among Eastern slaves."
Progressive civilization and the necessity for larger revenues
- ↑ The reign of this English king—Henry II—is also signalized by an organization of the royal (state) revenue system which in some of its features has continued to the present time. Under it the management and general superintendance of the royal revenues were intrusted to certain officers of the king's household, who constituted the "Court of the Exchequer," so called from the checkered cloth laid upon the table upon which the tax collectors or treasurers told out the king's money; and the chief financial officer of the British Government at the present time is designated by the title of "Chancellor of the Exchequer." The payments when made were entered into an account book, and from this transferred to a strip of parchment; which last was sent through a pipelike opening into a room specially provided, and called a "tally count," where a "tally" was made of it. This tally was a piece of dry wood on which "the cutter of the tallies" had to cut notches corresponding to the sum paid, while the "writer of the tally" wrote the sum down on both sides of the wood in figures. According to the length of the incision, one notch denoted £1,000; another £100; £20; 20s.; 1s.; and so on. The chamberlain then split the notched stick down the middle in such a manner that each half contained the written sums and the incised notches. The two matching parts thus split asunder were called "tally" and "counter tally," or "tally" and "foil" (folium). The one was retained by the chamberlain, the other was kept by the payer as a receipt and proof to be produced to the account department of the exchequer. This curious system of receipts was maintained in force until 1783; and it was through the burning, with a view to getting rid of an accumulation of these tally sticks, that the old House of Parliament in London was burned in 1834.
- ↑ Constitutional History of England, Stubbs, vol. i, p. 577.
