Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain (15 page)

The unpopularity as well as the prosperity of many Jews made them a fertile source of money, extracted not just through taxes. In 1177 Jurnet the Jew was fined the unimaginable sum of £1,333 at Winchester for crossing the channel without the king’s permission. Moreover when a Jew died the king received a third of his estate. In 1186 when Aaron of Lincoln died Henry II received so much (over £15,000) that he set up a special department, the Exchequer of Aaron, with four full-time staff to administer it. The Jewish community remained until 1290, their blameless lives occasionally punctuated by massacres. In that year Edward I imposed a tallage of £12,000 on the Jews. A tallage was a tax imposed by the king on his own property and, as we have seen, Jews were regarded as belonging to the king. The tallage raised £4,000 so Edward, dissatisfied with this sum, ordered their expulsion. Sheriffs were ordered to ensure safe conduct for the Jews to London from where they were sent to the continent. It had the convenient effect, for the king, of cancelling the debts he already owed to them.

They were invited back by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s and their financial acumen was of importance in promoting British trade from that time onwards. In the meantime other means had to be found of raising money for the royal exchequer. One of these was the Poll Tax.

T
he ‘Poll Tax Riots’ of 1990 which precipitated Margaret Thatcher’s fall from power had a precedent in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Jack Straw, Wat Tyler and the priest John Ball. Our medieval ancestors were much more patient over this burdensome taxation that the rioters of 1990 since they only rebelled against the
third
attempt to tax them. The first poll tax was levied in 1377 by the government of Richard II who was then only ten years old, having succeeded his grandfather, Edward III, the same year. Richard’s father, the Black Prince, had died the previous year after campaigning in France and the tax was necessary because of the cost of waging the war in pursuit of Edward III’s claim to the French throne. This was the conflict that was to become the Hundred Years’ War. This first poll tax was a flat rate tax of 4d (about 1.6p) on every person aged 14 or over except clergy who paid a shilling (5p). Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, whose London home was the Savoy Palace in the Strand, then launched a futile attack on the French port of St Malo which incurred further expense and necessitated a second poll tax in 1379. For this second poll tax the rate varied from 4d for the poorer citizens to two shillings (10p) for the more prosperous and as much as £4 for the nobility, though the clergy were exempt from this second tax. The amount raised still proved inadequate to pay off the English troops in France before they deserted so a third poll tax was levied in 1381.

It was this third poll tax of 1381, again levied at a flat rate for everyone of three groats (one shilling, or 5p), that provoked the uprising which began in Essex and Kent. The king’s tax collectors were attacked, the Archbishop of Canterbury was beheaded and the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, whose failed raid on St Malo in Brittany had created the need for the tax, was sacked. Richard II, now 14, agreed to meet the rebels at Smithfield where the Mayor of London, William Walworth, stabbed Wat Tyler and the revolt fizzled out. Richard II did not live up to his early promise. He became increasingly unpopular throughout his reign and was eventually deposed by his cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, who became Henry IV in 1399. In 1641 Charles I, a monarch even more unpopular than Richard II, tried to introduce a poll tax. This was one of the events that sharpened his conflict with Parliament and helped to precipitate the Civil Wars which resulted in his death. So poll taxes do not have a good record and Mrs Thatcher, if she had known her history, might have thought better of her poll tax or ‘community charge’ as she preferred to call it. But then she was a chemist by training, not a historian.

I
n 1374 Geoffrey Chaucer, poet, philosopher, courtier and author of
The Canterbury Tales
, was appointed by Edward III as Controller of the Customs for hides, skins and wool in the port of London. During the latter part of the 14th century exports of woollen cloth from England increased almost tenfold. Earlier in the century the crown had agreed that Parliament should have the right to be consulted on measures of taxation. In return Parliament had granted the wool subsidy, a measure by which a customs duty was levied on exports of English wool. The revenue from this trade accounted for between half and two thirds of royal revenue in Chaucer’s time. The tax on exports was attractive because it was easy to administer and the demand for English wool in the later middle ages was so great that the trade could bear it. However as it became evident that it wasn’t exactly a trade promotion measure other methods had to be found.

J
ohn Morton (1420–1500), who judiciously changed sides during the Wars of the Roses, became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1486 and Henry VII’s Lord Chancellor the following year. Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who was one of his successors as Lord Chancellor, left an account of Morton’s tax-raising methods which passed into history as ‘Morton’s Fork’. According to Bacon, when Morton visited one of the king’s subjects and was lavishly entertained he would conclude that the host was well-placed to make a generous tax payment or loan to the king; and when Morton was thriftily entertained he would arrive at the same conclusion by declaring that the host’s modest lifestyle must have enabled him to accumulate a large fortune. Whatever the truth of Bacon’s claim, Henry VII’s ability to raise taxes and keep the royal finances in good shape was legendary and owed a good deal to his Lord Chancellor for whom he secured a Cardinal’s hat in 1493. In the following reign Henry VIII, a more extravagant monarch than his father, filled the royal coffers by dissolving the monasteries and confiscating their wealth.

I
n the 18th century the costly wars with France led the government to try to raise money by taxes on imports of products like brandy, wine, tobacco and above all the increasingly popular tea. Unfortunately for the government these were all high-value low-volume products which were easy to smuggle and the taxes spawned a huge alternative economy, especially around the south-east coasts of Britain which faced the continent. Large contingents of customs men fought gangs of smugglers who were so numerous and well-organized that they amounted to well-financed small armies. The most notorious was the Hawkhurst Gang which, from 1735–49, operated from the village of Hawkhurst in Kent, conveniently close to the flat coastline of Romney Marsh which was a favoured landing for smugglers. The gang was put out of business when its two leaders, Arthur Gray and Thomas Kingsmill, were hanged in 1748 and 1749. Others replaced them and they were merciless in their dealings with the customs men who hunted them. One customs officer who was captured by brandy smugglers was forced to drink as much brandy as he could before passing out, whereupon a further two and a quarter pints were poured down a funnel into his mouth, after which he was tied to a horse and set loose. The smugglers’ trade was eventually ended by two developments. First, the chain of Martello Towers constructed to oppose Revolutionary and Napoleonic French landings provided convenient bases for the national coast guard which was established in 1824.