rofits of
marriages and wardship, and the three feudal aids. But foreign warfare soon
exhausted these means of revenue; the barons and bishops in their Great
Council were called on at each emergency for a grant from their lands, and
at each grant a corresponding demand was made by the king as a landlord on
the towns, as lying for the most part in the royal demesne. The cessation
of Danegeld under Henry the Second and his levy of scutage made little
change in the general incidence of taxation: it still fell wholly on the
land, for even the townsmen paid as holders of their tenements. But a new
principle of taxation was disclosed in the tithe levied for a Crusade at
the close of Henry's reign. Land was no longer the only source of wealth.
The growth of national prosperity, of trade and commerce, was creating a
mass of personal property which offered irresistible temptations to the
Angevin financiers. The old revenue from landed property was restricted and
lessened by usage and compositions. Scutage was only due for foreign
campaigns: the feudal aids only on rare and stated occasions: and though
the fines from the shire-courts grew with the growth of society the dues
from the public lands were fixed and incapable of developement. But no
usage fettered the Crown in dealing with personal property, and its growth
in value promised a growing revenue. From the close of Henry the Second's
reign therefore this became the most common form of taxation. Grants of
from a seventh to a thirtieth of moveables, household-property, and stock
were demanded; and it was the necessity of procuring their assent to these
demands which enabled the baronage through the reign of Henry the Third to
bring a financial pressure to bear on the Crown.

[Sidenote: Indirect Taxation]

But in addition to these two forms of direct taxation indirect taxation
also was coming more and more to the front. The right of the king to grant
licences to bring goods into or to trade within the realm, a right
springing from the need for his protection felt by the strangers who came
there for purposes of traffic, laid the foundation of our taxes on imports.
Those on exports were only a part of the general system of taxing personal
property which we have already noticed. How tempting this source of revenue
was proving we see from a provision of the Great Charter which forbids the
levy of more than the ancient customs on merchants entering or leaving the
realm. Commerce