ended to encourage
the collection of dues which had a legal ground in preference to
taxation of the community. Of similar character was the employment of
the old right of purveyance (q.v.), in restraint of which a series of
statutes had been passed.

Whatever possibilities of obtaining some additional revenue from the
crown lands or prerogative rights may have existed in the 16th century,
and these were slight, all the political and social conditions tended
more and more to make the need of taxation as the principal financial
resource imperative. Amongst the cases of increased calls for funds to
maintain the machinery of state, the rise of prices, due to increased
supplies of the precious metals, must be included as one of the chief,
and its effect extends into the 17th century. It was under this
influence that the old forms of revenue became less profitable and that
fresh developments were necessitated.

Direct taxation still retained in one of its branches the pattern set in
the reign of Edward III. "Tenths and fifteenths" continued to be voted,
and for some time all attempts to introduce new methods failed. In 1488
a military grant framed on the model of the abortive tax of 1472 yielded
only a little over one-third of the estimate (L27,000 out of L75,000),
and the unsatisfactory result prevented further experiments on the part
of Henry VII. The foreign policy of Henry VIII.--particularly his French
expedition--with its attendant outlay, accounts for the graduated
capitation tax of 1513, which was even less in accordance with
anticipation than the tax of 1488 (it yielded only L50,000 instead of
L160,000). But these failures cleared the way for a more effective form
of direct impost, which appeared in the "subsidy" or general tax on land
and goods. The first case of this tax (1514) was a modest one-2-1/2%; it,
however, soon took on a typical form, so that the subsidy came to mean a
charge of 4s. in the pound on land and 2s. 8d. in the pound on goods, a
scale evidently devised with reference to the older tenth and fifteenth,
which was henceforth put in a subordinate position. The subsidy became
the established mode of grant under both Tudors and Stuarts, though by
degrees it underwent a change similar to that experienced by its
predecessor. The taxing statutes made elaborate provisions for the
assessment and collection of the tax in order to secure a full return.
Old habits proved too strong and the subsidy "slipped in