1G Taxation Flashcards
Direct Taxation
The form of royal income that had the greatest impact on a
monarch’s expression of political power in late medieval England. most controversial
method of a king raising money According to custom, such
taxation had to be agreed by parliament and was usually to meet
the costs of defending the realm, a reason which included war
overseas, most frequently in France
In response to a request for money from the monarch, it was most
usual for parliament to grant the tenths and fifteenths’,
a phrase
that originally had referred to taxation on movable goods. This
form of taxation could only be levied if both houses of parliament
had agreed to it. In theory, those living in the countryside paid the
crown a fifteenth of the value of their movable goods, while those
living in towns and cilies, or who lived on roval deregne land
paid the higher rale of one-lenth of the value of heir possessions
In 1334, however, rovel officials assessed counties or (owns rather
Than individuals, from this point onwards the phrase referred to
this fixed sum which continued to be charged to each community
There were a number of problems with this system, which
weakened its usefulness to the monarchy: inflexibility
The syster of charging a county or town with a f xod levy
made the system inflexible In particular there had been
a severe drop in population in Ibis lime, owing to frequent
outbreaks of the Black Death from 1347 onwards Therelore
there were ever people to pay the laxes, wrich made lie
- burden on poviduals ruch heavier Some commonues n
desperation, petitioned the crown asking for relief, with perodic
success, but if is often difficult for historians to dis distinguish
genuine pleas from those seeking to avoid paying taxes that
they could actuelly afford
There were a number of problems with this system, which
weakened its usefulness to the monarchy: evasion
It is highly likely that tax evasion occurred, but it is difficult
to discern this as obviously it was not recorded in the official
documentation. Parliament frequently complained, however,
that the expected sums were not in fact received by the Crown
There were a number of problems with this system, which
weakened its usefulness to the monarchy: gap between anticipated income and reality
In general, a prominent local man was put in charge of
collecting taxes in the area and, in theory at least, was liable
to make up the difference to the crown if he did not collect
enough, although this penalty was not always incurred in
practice. This gap between the anticipated income and reality
could mean that the king was unable to raise enough money to
support his policies, especially in relation to war, which could
be highly problematic in military and political terms and could
weaken his reputation for authority both at home and abroad
A key difficulty laced by monarchs during the Hundred Years
War (1337-1453) was
that the costs of the conflict were usually
high, the main exception being a period of truce in the 13605
Ability to collect taxes depended on the king
Kings such as Henry V. who wero militarily highly successful.
had relatively little dill cu ty in obtaning the necessary grants of
taxation from a grateful parliament, whereas there was lable lo
be far more criticism when the English were sullering deleats The
parliament of November 1450, or example, held alter the Eng ish
loss of Normandy, was highly critical of Henry VT’s government
and especially Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somersel, who was
the military leader in France When the war was going bad y
particularly in the mid 15th century taxes were more resented
and therefore narder to collect This lack of funds then obviously
hindered the war effort, making this a downwards spiral.
People not wanting to pay taxes under weak king
This situation was particularly evident with the attempts to collect
the tenth and fifteenth granted by parliament in 1440. Although
parliament had taken the precauton of changing payment thresholds to make the tax less harsh upon the poor, royal officials still expcrienced huge ditficulty in collecting the money owed and by 1453 it is estimated that only around three-quarters of the total had reached the crown.
experimentation with different forms of taxation- why
Given the problems associated with the tenth and filteenth
taxation, and its failure to provide adequate income for sustained
war overseas
Experimentation with tax in the reign of Henry VI.
In 1428, for example, a tax
was imposed upon parishes and in 1431 a tax on land. The fact
that neither of these measures was renewed suggests they did
not prove particularly successful The reign also saw an attempt to introduce income tax in 1435, described as a ‘subsidy’. Such measures reflected the growing cost of maintaining ENGLISH control in France
What was used by Edward IV
in 1472-73
Income tax to raise money for a planned invasion of France.
Contemporaries tended to look unfavourably on this form of
taxation, however, and this suspicion seems to have influenced the
collection of Edward’s 1472-73 levy, which only gathered half of
the anticoated amount of f60 000. Edward needed this money
for his invasion of France in 1414-15 but after 1475
Edward IV, Richard Ill and Henry VIl all benefited considerably
from the need to spend less on war. Gaining consent for taxation
from parliament was therefore less of a political issue in the later
stages ol the perod
