On Parliament and Taxation in the 17th Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Burden of Taxation on Sixteenth-Century London
The Historical Journal, 2001
This article seeks to establish the burden of direct taxation in the city of London in the sixteenth century. Previous discussions have been confined to the yield of parliamentary subsidies which cannot give a full picture because of the way responsibility for equipping military levies was increasingly devolved on to the locality. Estimates of the costs of the various additional military levies are therefore made. Innovations in parliamentary taxation enabled the crown to levy extraordinary sums in the 1540s, but they required a level of intervention by the privy council which Elizabeth's government was not prepared to make. The subsidy performed especially badly in London in the later sixteenth century. Local military rates compensated to some extent, but tax levels in real terms were very much lower in the 1590s than the 1540s. Nevertheless taxation was becoming increasingly regressive, which helps explain the greater level of complaint in the 1590s.
The Economic History Review, 2012
Fiscal policies and the institution of a tax state in Anglo-Saxon England within a comparative context 1 By ANDREW WAREHAM* This article begins by noting that military revolutions and civil wars in early modern Europe provide an unduly narrow framework for understanding the transition from a domain to a tax state.Taking Anglo-Saxon England as a case study, it is suggested that political restrictions led to the establishment of direct and indirect taxation, thereby providing rulers with revenues which surpassed those from domain resources. The main section of the article uses sources from coinage and wills to poetry and letters in order to give a general idea of the chronological development of a medieval tax state. This analysis challenges the views of the new fiscal historians, who argue that a collapse in a medieval domain state acts as the precondition for the emergence of a tax state. Instead, this article suggests that new policies arose because of the need of Anglo-Saxon kings and their advisers to take account of the requirements of ecclesiastical authorities, as well as a heavy revenue imperative, in paying for resistance against the Vikings. The article ends with a discussion of the comparative applications of the contexts and catalysts which lead to the adoption of pioneering fiscal policies.
2012
Fiscal policies and the institution of a tax state in Anglo-Saxon England within a comparative context 1 By ANDREW WAREHAM* This article begins by noting that military revolutions and civil wars in early modern Europe provide an unduly narrow framework for understanding the transition from a domain to a tax state.Taking Anglo-Saxon England as a case study, it is suggested that political restrictions led to the establishment of direct and indirect taxation, thereby providing rulers with revenues which surpassed those from domain resources. The main section of the article uses sources from coinage and wills to poetry and letters in order to give a general idea of the chronological development of a medieval tax state. This analysis challenges the views of the new fiscal historians, who argue that a collapse in a medieval domain state acts as the precondition for the emergence of a tax state. Instead, this article suggests that new policies arose because of the need of Anglo-Saxon kings and their advisers to take account of the requirements of ecclesiastical authorities, as well as a heavy revenue imperative, in paying for resistance against the Vikings. The article ends with a discussion of the comparative applications of the contexts and catalysts which lead to the adoption of pioneering fiscal policies.
Trusting Leviathan: the politics of taxation in Britain, 1799-1914
Martin Daunton's major study of the politics of taxation in the 'long nineteenth century' examines the complex financial relationship between the state and its citizens. Around 1800, taxes stood at 20 per cent of national income; by the outbreak of the First World War, they had fallen to less than half of their previous level. The process of fiscal containment resulted in a high level of trust in the financial rectitude of the government and in the equity of the tax system, contributing to the political legitimacy of the British state in the second half of the nineteenth century. As a result, the state was able to fund the massive enterprises of war and welfare in the twentieth century. Combining new research with a comprehensive survey of existing knowledge, this lucid and wide-ranging book represents a major contribution to our understanding of Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
Financial History Review
Taxation is accepted as a fact of modern life, despite recurring political conflict over the nature and direction of fiscal policies. Most financiers regard obligations issued by the state as a safe investment option. Neither taxation nor state obligations were taken for granted during much of the history of public finance, however, at least not before the early 1800s. The ‘tax state’ developed in fits and starts, driven by the exigencies of warfare, which provided the main rationale for raising state income. Although wartime fiscal innovations eventually facilitated the rise of an efficient military state, the options available for implementing such improvements and preferences for specific fiscal or financial instruments varied greatly across early modern states. Focusing on the ‘long’ eighteenth century, this introduction presents a framework for assessing these differences and introduces the other articles in this special issue.
Essay on the Prehistory of Taxes and Taxation: Invitation to a Discussion
The author proposes to view the history of taxation existed before the rise of state formation. Concluded that property in one form or another is immanent in the whole of human history. The author believes that the history of taxes and taxation to be significantly older than the history of the state itself. Such payments as taxes had appeared at pre-state epoch already. Availability of property objectively generates relations on its redistribution in the form of change of material resources from personal to collective ownership. Some forms of such redistribution relations in the prestate era created prerequisites for the emergence of taxes and taxation. In this case, taxation is defined as alienation of labor or property which belongs to individuals by the public authorities for its own benefit with the purpose of its further redistribution.
The Lords, Taxation and the Community of Parliament in the 1370s and Early 1380s*
Parliamentary History, 2008
Centre-for Medieval Strdies, University cf York * T h e research for this article was made possible by the award of a British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship. I am indebted to the editors of the 'Parliament Roll Project' for allowing me to consult the translations of the rolls before publication. However, all references to the parlianient rolls are to the eighteenth-century edition; R/otii/i/ P/or/inrr~rrrtorrrrri/ (6 vols, 17x3).