Anglo-Saxon Institutions. 449-1066 51
just as in the case of any landlord; in the second place, of
his judicial income, the penal fines from the local courts;
in the third place, of purveyance. All medieval kings
travelled much, for much of their income was paid them
in kind and might have to be collected and used on the
spot. In their endless progresses through the kingdom,
they were conveyed and maintained largely at the expense
of the districts through which they passed, sometimes
taking commodities outright, sometimes below market
price. This was purveyance. Besides these chief sources
of revenue, there were many of a minor character, such as
the proceeds from mines and salt-works, wrecks, treasure-
trove, various special tolls, etc.
It will be noticed that no mention has been made of
taxation. In its usual and specific sense, a tax is "a
charge or burden laid upon persons or property for the
support of a government." There was something of this,
no doubt, in purveyance, but only in an irregular and ob-
scure way. There was but one true, national tax in the
Anglo-Saxon period, the Danegeld. This was a land tax
and is usually dated from the important levy of 991 ;* but
throughout the reign of Ethelred II., it was a tax, in the
strictest sense of the word, only from the point of view of
incidence, assessment, and collection. It was not a regu-
lar levy to pay the expenses of government, but a matter of
emergency with nothing of the sort preceding it and with
no thought of its continuance in any form. But Cnute
did continue it and began its transformation into a regular
charge for the support of government. It was only upon
its revival by William the Conqueror, however, after an
interruption during the reign of Edward, that this trans-
formation was at all complete. And it must be under-
1 There had been money raised to buy off the Danes at earlier times, but
it was from 991 that such levies became frequent enough to make possible
the development from them of a true tax. It is possible that lastage, a
system of export duties collected at certain ports, existed before the Con-
quest and was something in the nature of a national or semi-national tax—•
more at that time than later. See N, S. B, Gras, The Early English Cus-
toms System, pp. 28-33,