Parliament 401
I The knights of the shire and the burgesses were from
I the start conscious of the financial purpose which drew
f them to Parliament. Especially was this purpose em-
phasised by the circumstances which attended the sum-
mons of the Model Parliament and the events of the two
succeeding years. Parliament was a taxing body from
the first. It was natural then that the first great contest
with the king should have been financial and that the
%dL£2S^^ 'aave been control .over
taxation. Conscious control of taxaKoirwaFtheTasis of
all that Parliament came to do in government which lay
^)utside of the royal initiative. Something must be said
t of the development of the taxing idea since early post-
^.^juest times and the circumstances of Parliament's
a; ^.rtion of -control in the reign of Edward III.
"^ l*,1>
-r1 «'
A.—When the king got together the different estates
in Parliament and taxes were dealt with, it was evidently
upon the assumption that taxal^ij^^
all classes were_conc^ned, B^^^^^J^^on. It has
beenlsKown that for a considerable time after the Norman
Conquest there was no understanding of taxation in the
modern sense.I The king had various sources of revenue
and means of supplying the needs of government, but his
attention was fixed upon classes of men. Each class had
a specialty, in some cases based upon private contract
or proprietary relations, for supplying the royal needs.
The king made his demands upon this, that, and the other
class of the population as opportunity dictated and upon
this, that, and the other different ground. Although the
action of later kings, such as John and Henry III., tended
toward the transmuting of these old grounds into a public
obligation, yet the system gradually passed into disuse
sion, or at most in a few instances for two or three years. There was a
change in this respect in the fifteenth century through the development
of the tunnage and poundage taxes. See below, pp. 406, 427.
1S. K. Mitchell, Taxation Under John and Henry III., p, 2. This is an
important authority on taxation in the pre-Parliamentary period.