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Updated: June 1, 2025
As though there was a poundage of joy and additional muscle in self-mastery, the frame of the chestnut filled, his neck arched, and there came into his eyes that gleam which no man can describe and which for lack of words he calls the light of the wild.
He obtained grants of tonnage and poundage enjoyed by some of his Yorkist predecessors, had recourse to the system of forced grants known as benevolences, set up the Star Chamber nominally to preserve order but in reality to repress his most dangerous opponents, and treated Parliament as a mere machine, whose only work was to register the wishes of the sovereign.
At the reopening of the Session indeed the king met the Commons with a proposal that they should grant him tonnage and poundage and pass silently over what had been done by his officers. But the House was far from assenting to the interpretation which Charles had put on the Petition, and it was resolved to vindicate what it held to be the law.
The supplies for the ensuing year fell very little short of nine millions, of which the greater part was raised on a loan by subscription, chargeable on a new subsidy of poundage exacted from all merchandise imported into Great Britain.
The rigor of the subsequent parliaments had been extreme with regard to many articles, particularly tonnage and poundage; and had reduced the king to an absolute necessity, if he would preserve entire the royal prerogative, of levying those duties by his own authority, and of breaking through the forms, in order to maintain the spirit of the constitution.
In 1675 the Parliament granted 300,000 pounds for the building of twenty large ships of war, one first-rate of 1400 tons, eight second-rates of 1100 tons, and eleven third-rates of 700 tons. At the same time the tonnage and poundage money was applied to the benefit of the Royal Navy.
In order to raise this sum they continued the land tax; they renewed the subsidy of tonnage and poundage for five years, and imposed new duties on different commodities.* The triennial bill enacted, that a parliament should be held once within three years at least; that within three years at farthest after the dissolution of the parliament then subsisting, and so from time to time for ever after, legal writs under the great seal should be issued by the direction of the crown for calling, assembling, and holding another new parliament; that no parliament should continue longer than three years at farthest, to be accounted from the first day of the first session; and that the parliament then subsisting should cease and determine on the first day of November next following, unless their majesties should think fit to dissolve it sooner.
But the great article on which the house of commons broke with the king, and which finally created in Charles a disgust to all parliaments, was their claim with regard to tonnage and poundage. On this occasion, therefore, it is necessary to give an account of the controversy.
Accordingly, in 1683 he directed by letters of Privy Seal that one third of the money raised by imposing a poundage on the troops should go to the Hospital. He also added a clause to the effect that this was to be retrospective, to take effect from 1681. Hence the first haul amounted to over £20,000.
For besides that she never ransacked her customers, whose tastes too she ever studiously consulted, she never racked her pupils with unconscionable extortions, nor ever put their hard earnings, as she called them, under the contribution of poundage.
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