THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE LAY TAXES 

 OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 



By James F. Willard 



The later Middle Ages witnessed in England the introduction of 

 taxation upon a national scale, which reached, at the same time, most 

 of the classes and the greater part of the wealth of the kingdom. 

 This was, however, only after a long period of experiment and failure 

 with other and less comprehensive forms. The old land taxes, the 

 danegeld and the carucage, had proven inadequate, feudal levies only 

 reached at best a hmited number of people and the tallage was only 

 levied upon the towns and lands within the royal demesne. Yet the 

 total revenue from these taxes and from the more permanent sources 

 of income, such as those from the courts and the sheriff's ferm, was 

 insufficient to supply the needs of the government. Gradually because 

 of its manifold advantages, the taxation of personal property superseded 

 the older forms. This new plan of taxation, first introduced by Henry 

 II, reached all classes of laymen, the villein, the freeman in town or 

 country and the upper classes. It was assessed upon all kinds of 

 movable goods in or about the homes of the people, their grain, cattle, 

 household utensils or goods for sale. Such taxes, or subsidies, were 

 granted in varying percentages of the value of this personal property, a 

 tenth, a fifteenth, a twentieth or other rate. In the early fourteenth 

 century it became customary to make a distinction between the borough 

 and the county rate, the former being always the higher. After the year 

 1332 this became stereotyped, the boroughs always paying a tenth, the 

 counties a fifteenth.^ 



When, during the reign of Henry III, this new plan of taxation had 

 become a permanent part of the system of gaining a revenue for the 

 government, the personal property of the clergy, always excluding certain 

 articles in use in the churches, was taxed with that of the laity. At first 



' The question of the real as opposed to the theoretical rate of taxation cannot be discussed in this 

 paper. The assessments of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries like those of to-day seem to have been 

 at times nominal. Only on this basis could these extremely heavy levies have been borne. 



217 



