By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 



147 



commonalty felt aggrieved and petitioned against this new impo- 

 sition. The result of their remonstrances was important, and not 

 a little interesting as connected with the history of wool. Whilst 

 they gave their sanction to those dues which custom had authorized 

 and thus fully recognized them as part of the hereditary revenues 

 of the Crown, they obtained an acknowledgment on the part of 

 the King that no additional taxes could be levied without their 

 consent. They procured, in fact, a solemn re-affirmation of one of 

 the chief articles of Magna Charta, viz. : that the Crown could not 

 levy taxes without the consent of the people. Reluctantly conceded 

 in the first instance by King John, this provision was thought to 

 bear so hardly on the royal prerogative, that on the confirmation 

 of the Charter, in the 1 Henry III., it had been reserved for future 

 consideration, and both that monarch and his son Edward I. con- 

 trived for awhile to keep it in abeyance by delays and evasions. 

 But in 1296, on the occasion above alluded to of the dispute 

 concerning the taxes on wool, the point was fully yielded. Even 

 in our own days the Commons think not lightly of the privilege 

 still jealously retained in their own hands, of holding the purse- 

 strings of the nation. It was a right of far greater importance 

 when war was indeed the " malady of Kings." By investing the 

 people with the sole right of raising the supplies, it armed them 

 with the power of checking the extravagance and controlling the 

 despotism of their monarchs. 



The Crown was not slow in availing itself of the rights which 

 were conceded to it. Customers were appointed for the several 

 ports from which wool was permitted to be exported, and it was 

 their duty to see that the King received all that was fairly owing 

 to him. Amongst other things the Mayor of London and other 

 citizens, in obedience to a royal command, had a scale made for the 

 weighing of wools, which they afterwards brought to the Barons 

 of the Exchequer with the assurance that it had been examined 

 and approved by the scale (or ham) which was used for weighing 

 wools in London. The Treasurer and Barons straightway delivered 

 the same to the Commissioners of the King's customs of wools and 

 leathers at the port of Len, and together with it, in a purse sealed 



m 2 



