ENGLISH CHURCH AND LAY TAXES 225 



and were accustomed so to pay before the said twentieth year, should 

 be discharged of fifteenths for the possessions upon which they pay the 

 tenths." The fifteenths were lay taxes, the tenths, in this instance, 

 clerical. The following clause reads: ''And for the lands upon which 

 they pay no tenths, they should be charged with the tenths come assiert. " 

 This neither conforms to the existing practice nor answers the petition 

 of the commons. Unless we read fifteenths for tenths in the second 

 part of the last clause it is, seemingly, a mere absurdity or an exceedingly 

 evasive answer. 



All the evidence that has been collected upon this subject bears out 

 the conclusion that there was regularly laid upon the clergy of England, 

 for their personal goods upon lands acquired since the twentieth year of 

 King Edward I, the burden of sharing with the laity the national taxes 

 granted in parliament. So far as this portion of their property was con- 

 cerned, no distinction can be made between them and the mass of the 

 laymen of the kingdom. When we read the complaints of men like 

 WycHffe and the commoners of the later fourteenth century, against the 

 wealth of the church and its insufficient taxation, we must, therefore, 

 look for the background of these attacks in other spheres of activity. 

 That there must have been some reason, and some good reason, for these 

 attacks, must be granted, but it is difficult to see, on this side at least, 

 how the clergy could have been expected to pay more than the laity when 

 parhamentary subsidies were levied. 



