2l8 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



there seems to have been no attempt made to include their spiritual prop- 

 erty or revenue, their tithes, oblations and other strictly ecclesiastical 

 sources of income, within the assessment of the lay taxes. These, their 

 spirituaHties, are always distinguished from their temporaUties, their 

 lands and rents. The latter they owned as any layman might hold 

 them. During the thirteenth century the popes began to demand taxes 

 levied upon the income from both the temporalities and spiritualities of 

 the clergy of England for crusades or for the expenses of the papal court. 

 Following the example of the head of the church, Henry III, from time 

 to time, demanded similar grants from the clergy for the national 

 expenses. In response to these demands, the clerical estate, though 

 often reluctantly, conceded taxes upon its revenues both spiritual and 

 temporal. 



This process of development was brought to a sudden close in the 

 year 1291. In that year, the twentieth of the reign of Edward I, upon 

 the command of Pope Nicholas IV, there was taken an assessment of 

 all of the revenues of the clergy of England, in order that a tenth of the 

 same revenues might be used for the support of a crusade to the Holy 

 Land. The results of this assessment were set forth in full in the book 

 known as the "Taxatio Ecclesiastica."^ This valuation of ecclesiastical 

 property was accepted by the king as the basis for all future grants by 

 the clergy down to the time of Henry VIII. In the fourteenth and 

 fifteenth centuries, a grant of a tenth by the clergy meant, not that 

 proportion of the real value of their income, but a fixed sum, the tenth 

 part of their revenue as assessed in 1291. No provision was made, even 

 in later years, for any increase of this total to correspond to the growing 

 wealth of the church. If, however, a church lost a part of its income 

 through fire, flood, war or other disaster, it might have its assessment 

 lowered. Such was the case with the northern dioceses after the inroads 

 of the Scots during the reign of Edward II had devastated that district. 

 By such means the value of the grants made by the clergy gradually 

 decreased and the assessment of 1291, was to that extent modified. 



This settlement was accepted by the clergy of England and when 

 parliament granted taxes upon the laity in 1294, 1295 and 1296 the first 



» Printed by the RecordlCommission in 1802. 



