158 TAXATION AND FINANCE. 



writs yearly. Davenant is I think entirely in the right when 

 he says that every care was taken to make the assessment as 

 equitable as all the experience of those who assessed it could 

 make it, and I have already treated this famous assessment as 

 the first evidence for over a century which can be relied on 

 for the distribution of wealth in England and Wales. The tax 

 was in the highest degree unpopular : it was believed, notwith- 

 standing the extra-judicial opinion of the twelve judges, to be 

 utterly illegal. Nor did the divided judgement in Hampden's 

 case mend matters. The tax we are told was worse paid 

 after that judgement than it was before. Ship-money was 

 levied on properties which had always escaped subsidies. 

 Thus Corpus Christi College in Oxford pays it in 1635-6-7, and 

 Eton in the last of these years. It may have been felt that 

 after the plea for the imposition, however false and delusive it 

 was, it would have been inexpedient to show any favour. 



The Long Parliament set vigorously to work with the object 

 of restoring the finances. It voted, by 16 Car. I. cap. 2, four 

 subsidies for the army and the northern parts of the kingdom, 

 and by cap. 4 two more ; it voted tonnage and poundage from 

 two months to two months. As the subsidies came in slowly, 

 it passed a Bill, cap. 9, imposing a graduated poll-tax of 5 

 on every person possessed of more than 100 a year ; 40^. on 

 those who had 50 a year ; 5^. on those who had 20 ; 2s. on 

 those who had ;io, and is. on those who had ^5. They 

 put a tax of 6d. on all persons above sixteen years of age who 

 were not receiving alms, besides other charges, which may 

 be found in the Act, on * persons in dignified offices.' 



By 1 6 Car. I. cap. 32, they directed a further levy dis- 

 tributed over the counties and chief towns, apparently those 

 which were counties by themselves, for the suppression of the 

 Irish rebellion, in which there are I think strong marks of 

 haste or negligence on the part of Parliament, or reaction 

 against what even in Davenant's time was thought to be the 

 undue leniency with which the Western and Northern counties 

 were treated, or perhaps of indifference, in the passionate 



