FRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. jij 



and gentry) to the consent of the crown; and in some instances 

 large sums were paid for the privilege ; Simon de Montfort pay- 

 ing Henry III a sum, equivalent to five hundred thousand dol- 

 lars at present, for permission to control the marriage of the heir 

 of Gilbert d'Unfrankville. Mr. Dowell, in his History of Tax- 

 ation in England, quotes the following as among one of the 

 "fiscal curiosities" to be found on the Rolls of the Exchequer 

 during the early Norman period : " Ralph Bardolph fines in five 

 marks for leave to rise from his infirmity. The Bishop of Win- 

 chester owes a tonnell of good wine for not reminding the king 

 (John) about a girdle for the Countess of Abunarle ; and Robert 

 de Vaux fines in five of the best palfreys that the same king 

 would hold his tongue about the wife of Henry Pinel." 



Another branch of the ancient revenues of the English crown 

 worthy of special notice from its singular recognition within a 

 comparatively recent period, was the right to " royal fish," meaning 

 thereby the whale and the sturgeon, when the same were either 

 cast ashore or caught near the coast ; and which were originally 

 acquired by the crown on the assumption that the sovereign 

 guarded and protected the seas from pirates and robbers. This 

 perquisite had so long been in abeyance that its sanction by 

 law was hardly recognized in 1S50, when the Duke of Wel- 

 lington, as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, claimed and ex- 

 acted the price fifty pounds of the carcass of a whale brought 

 ashore and sold by certain boatmen on the coast of Kent. A point 

 of contention was made by the boatmen, that since the law was 

 enacted, natural science had proved that the whale was not a 

 fish ; but the duke insisted upon his right under the letter of the 

 law of compact with his ofiice of warden i. e., to protect the 

 seas as representative of the sovereign, and maintained it. He, 

 however, subsequently practically admitted the lack of any moral 

 foundation for his claim by dividing the price, after it had been 

 formally paid him, with the boatmen. 



Taxation in England. Previous to the reign of Henry II 

 of England (1154), the "tenure" or holding of lands from the 

 crown required the personal attendance, at his own expense, of 

 every tenant knight or baron with a certain number of re- 

 tainers, upon the king in arms, for a period of forty days in each 

 year ; and failure to attend, or render the quota of men required 

 by the tenure, would have involved a forfeiture of the tenant's 

 lands for nonperformance of duty. Such a military system, 

 however sufficient for home protection or border warfare, proved 

 ill adapted to foreign wars, which in the case of France were for 

 a long period almost continuous ; inasmuch as in those days of 

 slow traveling a forty days' service upon a distant expedition 

 would have been of little account. For what could be more incon- 



