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She received from the parliament, during the course of her whole reign, only twenty subsidies and thirty-nine fifteenths. But such was the extreme, I had almost said, absurd parsimony of the parliaments during that period. * D'Ewes, p. 630. * Lord Salisbury computed these supplies only at two millions eight hundred thousand pounds, Journ. 17th Feb. 1609.
They pillaged the manors of their lords, demolished the houses, and burned the court rolls; cut off the heads of every justice and lawyer and juror who fell into their hands; and swore all others to be true to King Richard and the commons; to admit of no king of the name of John; and to oppose all taxes but fifteenths, the ancient tallage paid by their fathers.
But he was not to insist positively on the payment of the tenths and fifteenths if it discouraged their submission; and if this course failed to bring in the rovers, he was to use every means in his power "by force or persuasion" to make them submit. Lynch immediately set about to secure the good-will of his Spanish neighbours and to win back the privateers to more peaceful pursuits.
Subsidies and fifteenths are frequently mentioned by historians; but neither the amount of these taxes, nor the method of levying them, have been well explained. The same tax in corporate towns was called a tenth; because there it was, at first, a tenth of the movables. But this was only the ancient state of a subsidy. During the reign of James, there was not paid the twentieth part of that sum.
Presently, upon the massive bass, great chords grew up, succeeding each other in a simple modulation, rising then with the blare of trumpets and the simultaneous crash of mixtures, fifteenths and coupled pedals to a deafening peal, then subsiding quickly again and terminating in one long sustained common chord.
In 1491 Henry VII levied an amazingly heavy tax upon personal property, that is to say, two fifteenths and tenths upon all "movable goodes cattales and othre thinges usuelly to suche xvmes and xmes contributory," with the exception of Cambridge and a few other favored towns. In 1495 the famous Oklahoma statute is anticipated by a law regulating abuses in the stuffing of feather beds.
The commons granted her a supply quite unprecedented, of four subsidies and eight fifteenths; and they were so dutiful as to vote this supply before they received any satisfaction in the business of monopolies, which they justly considered as of the utmost importance to the interest and happiness of the nation.
The commons readily voted two subsidies and four fifteenths; but this sum not appearing sufficient to the court, an unusual expedient was fallen upon to induce them to make an enlargement in their concessions.
When the king laid before the house his necessities, and asked for supply, they immediately voted him three subsidies and three fifteenths; and though they afterwards added one subsidy more, the sum was little proportioned to the greatness of the occasion, and ill fitted to promote those views of success and glory, for which the young prince, in his first enterprise, so ardently longed.
No "tenths" or "fifteenths" were exacted from clergy and people. There could be no "constitutional resistance" when the Crown made no unconstitutional demands. In Scotland the germ of Parliament is the King's court of vassals of the Crown.
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