164 TAXES AND CONTRIBUTIONS. 



payment, and the 'importable clamour and noise that should 

 run upon me, and great indignation of the Lords, the which 

 I may not bear in no wise.' 



On Dec. 23, 1435, the Commons, after ordering that security 

 should be given for the king's debts, undertake several financial 

 operations. In the first place, they impose a graduated income 

 tax on all manors, lands, tenements, rents, annuities and offices, 

 and all other temporal possessions of freehold above 100 

 shillings in annual value. From this sum up to ;ioo an income 

 tax of 6d. in the is imposed. Between ;ioo a year and ,400, 

 the tax is to be 8^. in the^". On those above 400, a tax of two 

 shillings in the on all residual income in excess of 400. 

 Spiritual persons are to be charged on such possessions of theirs 

 as have been amortized since 20 Ed. I. A further grant of 

 a fifteenth and tenth is made, 4000 being deducted for the 

 reasons given before, the towns specially excepted being 

 Andover and Lincoln. Next a tax of five nobles is given 

 on every sack of wool and 240 woolfells for two years, and 

 the old taxes are renewed. The Speaker, by whom of course 

 these financial expedients were devised, was John Bowes, 

 member for Notts. The Commons, with commendable good 

 sense, petitioned the king that no archbishop, bishop, abbot or 

 prior should be a collector of these subsidies or taxes, adding 

 ironically that the dioceses of the bishops and the neighbour- 

 hood of the abbeys were greatly oppressed by these parties, 

 who would be better in their convents or at their duties. But 

 the king's council unwisely answered Le Roy s'advisera. 



On May 27, 1437, the Commons grant another fifteenth and 

 tenth, 535-. 4^. on every sack of wool and 240 woolfells exported 

 by aliens, 53 s. ^d. on all exported by denizens, and appropriate 

 2cs. from every sack to the sustenance of Calais. The old 

 taxes are also renewed. In 1439, they grant a fifteenth and 

 a half, and a tenth and a half, with the omission as before of 

 .4000 in consideration of the wasted and decayed towns in 

 the realm. The towns exempted are Lincoln, Elm, Wisbcach, 

 Leverington Newton and St. Giles Tidd in the county of 





