THE PARLIAMENT OF NORTHAMPTON AND THE POLL-TAX

It was into the midst of an England seething with the complicated grievances that we have described that the ministers and Parliament of Richard II launched their unhappy Poll-tax in the winter of 1380-1. The Chancellor- Archbishop had promised the Houses, when last he met them in the spring, that he would do all in his power to avoid another session till a full year had passed. As early as October he had to confess that his pledge could not be kept, and that he had promised to perform the impossible. The Earl of Buckingham's costly and fruitless expedition to France— the great military event of the year 1380—had drained the Exchequer so far beyond the expectation of the ministers, the financial outlook had grown so utterly hopeless, that it had become necessary to appeal once more to the nation. Very unwillingly the ministers dispatched writs for a Parliament to meet at Northampton on November 5. The place was inconvenient—there was no sufficient housing, we are told, for the members of the two Houses and their retinues, and food and forage ran short. It was a wet winter, floods were out in every direction, and some of the magnates summoned were late at the rendezvous. All met in a most discontented mood. The cause, so it is said, of the choice of Northampton as a place of session, was that the ministers wished to avoid London, as they had in hand a great criminal trial in which the Londoners were deeply interested. A rich Genoese merchant, representing a syndicate of his compatriots, had been negotiating with the Government for a concession to establish a 'staple' for Mediterranean goods at Southampton: this grant would have taken away commerce from London, and the enterprising Italian was murdered by some London traders of whom the chief was a certain John Kirkeby. The ministers were set on making an example of him and his fellows, but there was so much sympathy felt for the assassins in the capital that they did not wish to face the London mob. They had therefore chosen to meet Parliament in a distant county town.

Archbishop Sudbury, from whose virtues and integrity so much had been hoped, was now forced to own himself as great a failure in politics as any of his predecessors in the Chancellorship. He had to report that all the grants made for the sustentation of the war had proved hopelessly inadequate. The tenths and fifteenths were all exhausted, and by an unhappy chance the customs had yielded less in 1380 than in any recent year. Their shrinkage was caused by the outbreak of troubles in Flanders, the first beginnings of the deadly war between Count Louis and his subjects of Ghent, which was to last down to the fatal day of Roosebeke. Distracted by their civil troubles the Flemings had not bought their normal quantity of wool, and the subsidy on exported fleeces, the mainstay of the customs, had therefore fallen off in the most unsatisfactory style. Sudbury reported to the discontented members that he had been forced to borrow on all sides—he had even pledged the King's jewels, which would soon be forfeited if not redeemed. There was three months' pay owing to the garrisons of Calais, Cherbourg, and Brest, and Buckingham's army was in even larger arrears.

It is astonishing to find that the Parliament-men, though they grumbled loud and long, showed no signs of flagging in their determination that the French war should be carried on at all costs. They merely requested Sudbury to name a definite figure for the grants required, and to state it at the lowest possible amount 'because the Commons were poor'. After some hesitation the Chancellor gave them the appalling sum of £60,000 as the smallest contribution that would suffice for the King's needs. The Commons replied that, willing as they were to do their best, they regarded such an estimate as outrageous, and did not see how the money could be raised. They requested the peers and prelates to take counsel in the Upper House, and to suggest some way out of the difficulty. There was a long debate in the Lords on the topic, which resulted in the drawing up of three alternative propositions, which were laid before the Commons. It was first suggested that the money might be raised by a Poll-tax of three groats per head on the whole adult population of England,. so arranged, however, that 'the strong might aid the weak' and the poorest individuals should not pay the whole shilling. Secondly, it might be feasible to collect the money by a 'poundage' on all mercantile transactions within the kingdom, the seller in every case accounting for the percentage to the King's officials. Or thirdly, the ordinary course of voting 'tenths' and 'fifteenths' might be tried, though the number granted would have to be much larger than usual.

The Commons took these three proposals into consideration, and finally chose the Poll-tax as the least objectionable of the three. It seems likely that they were influenced by their own middle-class interests in doing so. They had a strong, and not altogether groundless, idea that the lower strata of society were not contributing their fair share to the defence of the realm, or, as they phrased it themselves 'that all the wealth of England was gone into the hands of the labourers and workmen'. The poundage would have fallen mainly on the merchants, the tenths and fifteenths on landholders in the counties and householders in the boroughs. The Poll-tax would hit every one. Accordingly, the Commons voted that in spite of their great poverty and distress, they would grant £100,000 to be raised by Poll-tax, if the clergy, 'who occupy the third part of the lands of this realm', would undertake to raise the rest of the money demanded by the Chancellor.

The clergy, anxious in all probability to give no occasion to their enemies for suggesting broad measures of disendowment as an easy way of filling the national purse, rose to the occasion with unexpected liberality. They protested that they would make no grant in Parliament, but promised that the convocations of the two provinces should vote fifty thousand marks. On this assurance, which was loyally carried out, the Commons proceeded to draft their scheme for the raising of the Poll-tax. It was provided that every lay person in the realm, above the age of fifteen years, save beggars, should pay three groats: but that the distribution of the whole sum of one shilling per head should be so graduated that in each township the wealthy should aid the poor, on the scale that the richest person should not pay more than sixty groats (£1) for himself and his wife, nor the poorest less than one groat for himself and his wife. This was a very different and much more onerous affair than the two previous Poll-taxes which the realm had paid. In 1377 the sum raised had been only a single groat all round the nation. In 1379 the levy had been carefully graduated from one groat on the ordinary labourer up to £6 13s. 4d. on the Duke of Lancaster. On neither occasion had more than the fourpence per head been raised from the poorest classes. But in 1381 the form of the grant was such that in many places the whole shilling had to be extracted from the most indigent persons, and that even in those where some graduation turned out to be possible, the number of individuals who got off with a payment of 4d. or 6d. a head was comparatively small. How this inequality of pressure between place and place worked out with grave injustice we shall explain a little later. It is probable that the legislators had not in the least realized how inequitable their arrangement would prove.

In addition to granting the Poll-tax the Commons continued the existing subsidy on wool, though owing to the troubles in Flanders it was likely to prove less productive than usual. They suggested to the Government that all alien priories should be dissolved, and foreign monks living in them be forced to return to their own country. But this was not done, and it was left for Archbishop Chichele to take up the scheme half a century later, and to found with the revenue of many alien priories his college of All Souls.

Shortly after the two Houses had dispersed1 and gone home through the flooded midland shires, the Treasurer, Bishop Brantingham of Exeter, resigned. He had probably had enough of his invidious task of endeavouring to make two ends meet: perhaps he was clear-sighted enough to foresee something of the trouble that was at hand, and to resolve that he at least would have no share in it. Undoubtedly he saved his own neck by throwing up his appointment. In his place Sir Robert Hales, Prior of the Knights Hospitallers, was placed over the treasury. By accepting this office he brought upon himself a dreadful death six months later.

After the new year the ministers set to work to collect the Poll-tax, which was raised in January and February 'non sine diris maledictionibus'. The method adopted was to appoint a small body of collectors for each shire, who were to deal by means of a more numerous body of sub-collectors with the constables of townships and the mayors or bailiffs of towns, and to see that from each place as many shillings were paid as there were adults over fifteen years of age. The grievance which at once leapt into sight was that this form of levy bore most hardly on the poorest places. Wherever there were rich residents, as in large towns, or manors where a great landowner chanced to reside, the poorest classes got off cheaply; because the wealthy households gave many groats, and so the labourers paid no more than fourpence or sixpence a head, as Parliament had provided. But in poor villages, where there was no moneyed resident, every villein and cottager had to pay the full shilling, because there was no 'sufficient person'...