0_l._ While this custom
continued, convocations were wont to sit as frequently as parliaments:
but the last subsidies, thus given by the clergy, were those confirmed
by statute 15 Car. II. cap. 10. since which another method of taxation
has generally prevailed, which takes in the clergy as well as the
laity; in recompense for which the beneficed clergy have from that
period been allowed to vote at the elections of knights of the
shire[m]; and thenceforward also the practice of giving ecclesiastical
subsidies hath fallen into total disuse.

[Footnote l: 4 Inst 33.]

[Footnote m: Dalt. of sheriffs, 418. Gilb. hist. of exch. c. 4.]

THE lay subsidy was usually raised by commissioners appointed by the
crown, or the great officers of state: and therefore in the beginning
of the civil wars between Charles I and his parliament, the latter,
having no other sufficient revenue to support themselves and their
measures, introduced the practice of laying weekly and monthly
assessments[n] of a specific sum upon the several counties of the
kingdom; to be levied by a pound rate on lands and personal estates:
which were occasionally continued during the whole usurpation,
sometimes at the rate of 120000_l._ a month; sometimes at inferior
rates[o]. After the restoration the antient method of granting
subsidies, instead of such monthly assessments, was twice, and twice
only, renewed; viz. in 1663, when four subsidies were granted by the
temporalty, and four by the clergy; and in 1670, when 800000_l._ was
raised by way of subsidy, which was the last time of raising supplies
in that manner. For, the monthly assessments being now established by
custom, being raised by commissioners named by parliament, and
producing a more certain revenue; from that time forwards we hear no
more of subsidies; but occasional assessments were granted as the
national emergencies required. These periodical assessments, the
subsidies which preceded them, and the more antient scutage, hydage,
and talliage, were to all intents and purposes a land tax; and the
assessments were sometimes expressly called so[p]. Yet a popular
opinion has prevailed, that the land tax was first introduced in the
reign of king William III; because in the year 1692 a new assessment
or valuation of estates was made throughout the kingdom; which, though
by no means a perfect one, had this effect, that a supply of
500000_l._ was equal to 1_s._ in the pound of the value of the estates
give