TAXATION AND FINANCE. 151 



as subsidies, tenths and fifteenths in the case of the laity. The 

 grants of the clergy were a rate on the annual value of their 

 benefices, as computed by 26 Hen. VIII. cap. 3, i.e. 1534-5. 

 Now the average price of wheat in 1531-40 was ;j. 8|</., and 

 between 1583-92 was 23^. 8]*/., more than treble the price in 

 Henry's valuation, and a similar proportion would be found in 

 other tithable produce ; and therefore a grant by the clergy in 

 1585, if nominally at the same rate as in Henry's time, would 

 be, the whole income of the clergyman being presumably 

 derived from tithe, only one-third the amount of the older 

 rate paid fifty years before. These clerical grants made in 

 the Convocation of the clergy were gradually confirmed by 

 Parliament, at first it seems only formally, subsequently as a 

 matter of regular procedure, till at last, in the Long Par- 

 liament, an unconfirmed grant of the clergy to the Crown, 

 such as was made after the Short Parliament was suddenly 

 dissolved in 1640, was treated by the Commons as a grave 

 offence against the constitution. 



Now Davenant in his essay on Ways and Means 1 (1695) 

 alleges that in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and 

 Philip and Mary, 'a new survey in a manner was made of all 

 the land in the kingdom, and thereupon the subsidies that 

 came after raised larger sums than formerly : ' and he goes on 

 to say that from i Elizabeth to 29 Elizabeth a subsidy 

 amounted to .100,000 at least, alleging that this is shown by 

 the accounts in the Exchequer. The ground on which he 

 appears to draw this inference is the fact that Henry and his 

 two successors were allowed by Parliament to nominate their 

 own commissioners, or assessors, to bind them by oath, and to 

 permit them to examine on oath all contributories to the tax 

 as to the value of their real and personal estate. But it does 



>t appear that any formal valuation (such as we have found 

 made frequently after the beginning of the Long Parlia- 

 it) was made in Parliament ; and we may conclude that if 



ic actual amount of the subsidy was increased, it was due to 



1 NVhitworth's edition of Davenant's Works, vol. i. p. 33- 



