222 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



these manors farmed by the college through its bailiffs, there is noted the 

 payment of aU kinds of lay taxes, taxes upon personal property, and 

 taxes upon wool, among others. In this case again the persistence in 

 practice is shown, for the colleges had to gain Hcenses to acquire land in 

 mortmain and were regarded as ecclesiastical corporations. Certain of 

 the account rolls of the monastic houses contain occasional references to 

 the payment by the official representatives of these houses of the same 

 sort of taxes, evidently for lands acquired after 1291.* 



The most fruitful sources of information are, however, the various 

 rolls upon which the royal writs are registered, the records of the letters 

 patent and close that were sent out into the kingdom. In the year 

 1327, the first in which the old clause with respect to the clergy was 

 omitted, the Abbot of Ramsey complained that his temporalities annexed 

 to his spiritualities were being taxed by the collectors of the lay subsidy 

 granted in parhament, although he was accustomed to pay only clerical 

 tenths for the same. A royal letter was immediately issued command- 

 ing the collectors to put a stop to such action.' An excellent commen- 

 tary upon the continuance of the older practice is the statement annexed 

 to the grant of the clergy in convocation during the same year, that 

 their tenth was to be levied "of their ecclesiastical goods and of their 

 temporalities annexed to their spirituaUties."^ 



During the years that follow the rolls contain many settlements of 

 the status of the lands of the clergy and decisions of disputes as to 

 whether the land was acquired before or after the twentieth year of 

 Edward I."* In 1341 and the following years there is an especially long 

 list of exemplifications or statements of the goods of the ecclesiastical 



' Accounts of the ObedierUiars of Abingdon Abbey, Camden Society, Vol. CXXXVI, p. 8: "Expense 

 apud Drayton. In XV' Domini Regis VIII s. IX d."; Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis (Rolls Series), 

 appendix, 353, payments for the wool subsidy. 



> Carlularium Monaslerii de Rameseia (Rolls Series), Vol. Ill, p. 31. In the accounts of the collectors 

 of the subsidy, printed on pages 30-31 of the above work, it is noted that the goods of the abbot were exoised 

 because of this writ from the king. 



3 Letters from the Northern Registers (Rolls Series), p. 349. 



« K. R. Memoranda Roll, No. iii (10 Edward III), m. 27; The prioress of Elnestowe claims that 

 the collectors of the isth are attempting to tax the goods of the priory although all its lands are tem- 

 poraUties annexed to spiritualities. Ibid., m. 2yd, a similar complaint by the abbot of Woubum. In the 

 patent rolls we have an inspeximus of the temporalities of the abbot which are taxed in the clerical tenth, 

 C. P. R., 1334-38, pp. 492-93. Ibid., m. 174, where the Prior of St. John of Jerusalem in England claims 

 that all of the goods of the order have always been taxed with the laity. Cf. Rot. Pari., Vol. II, p. 98; K. R. 

 Mem. Roll, No. no, m. ij4(i, i8srf; C. C. R., 1339-41, pp. 430, 48s, etc. 



