APPENDIX II

(TO CHAPTER IV)

TABLE exhibiting the changes made in the occupants of Episcopal sees in the reign of William the Conqueror and part of the reign of William Rufus.

ABBREVIATIONS.—E=English, N=Norman, L=Lotharingian, F=French,

APPENDIX IV

NOTE ON THE TAXATION OF THE CLERGY

AFTER the Norman Conquest the bishops and Religious Houses held much of their land under the Crown on the tenure of military fiefs, from which the service of a certain number of knights, according to assessment, could be required; but the system of paying scutage, a money composition in lieu of furnishing a military contingent, was established as early as the reign of Henry I. Henry II. in 1159, in addition to the legitimate scutage, imposed an arbitrary tax on each See and Religious House ranging from small sums to 500 marcs, a proceeding which was bitterly resented. St. Hugh of Lincoln in 1197, as we have seen (above, p. 203), maintained that he was not bound to provide personal military service outside England, and in this contention he was supported by the main body of the bishops.

In process of time not only the landed property of the clergy, but also their spiritual revenues, consisting of tithes and offerings, were subjected to taxation. One of the first occasions on which this took place was "the Saladin tithe," a tenth levied on all revenues and movables in 1188, to contribute to the crusade after the capture of Jerusalem. The books, vestments, and sacred vessels of the Church were exempted from this tax, but in the subsequent levy for the ransom of King Richard I. even these did not escape.

The most direct and systematic attempts to tax clerical revenues began with the reign of John. In January 1207 he summoned the bishops and asked them to permit grants to be made from the revenues of the beneficed clergy to aid him in the recovery of Normandy. The request, which was repeated in the following month, met with an indignant and unanimous refusal, as being an exaction quite unprecedented and intolerable.

The reign of Henry III. was, as the pages of this book will have abundantly shown, one long struggle on the part of the clergy to resist the reiterated efforts of their two oppressors, the King and the Pope, to extort money from them on various pretexts. The importance of this struggle, from a constitutional point of view, was considerable. Oppression stimulated the spirit of independence in the clergy, and the discussion of public questions in their assemblies became more frequent. "It was by action on these occasions," says Bishop Stubbs (Constit. Hist. vol. ii. p. 176), "that the clerical estate worked out its distinct organisation as an estate of the realm, asserting and possessing deliberative, legislative, and taxing powers, and in so doing provided some not unimportant precedents for parliamentary action under like circumstances."