by Edmund Burke
To form a just idea of the power and greatness of this king, it will be convenient to take a view of his revenue. And I the rather choose to dwell a little upon this article, as nothing extends to so many objects as the public finances, and consequently nothing puts in a clearer or more decisive light the manners of the people, and the form, as well as the powers, of government at any period.
The first part of this consisted of the demesne. The lands of the crown were, even before the Conquest, very extensive. The forfeitures consequent to that great change had considerably increased them. It appears from the record of Domesday, that the king retained in his own hands no fewer than fourteen hundred manors. This alone was a royal revenue. However, great as it really was, it has been exaggerated beyond all reason. Ordericus Vitalis, a writer almost contemporary, asserts that this branch alone produced a thousand pounds a day, — which, valuing the pound, as it was then estimated, at a real pound of silver, and then allowing for the difference in value since that time, will make near twelve millions of our money. This account, coming from such an authority, has been copied without examination by all the succeeding historians. If we were to admit the truth of it, we must entirely change our ideas concerning the quantity of money which then circulated in Europe. And it is a matter altogether monstrous and incredible in an age when there was little traffic in this nation, and the traffic of all nations circulated but little real coin, when the tenants paid the greatest part of their rents in kind, and when it may be greatly doubted whether there was so much current money in the nation as is said to have come into the king’s coffers from this one branch, of his revenue only. For it amounts to a twelfth part of all the circulating species which a trade infinitely more extensive has derived from sources infinitely more exuberant, to this wealthy nation, in this improved age. Neither must we think that the whole revenue of this prince ever rose to such a sum. The great fountain which fed his treasury must have been Danegelt, which, upon any reasonable calculation, could not possibly exceed 120,000l. of our money, if it ever reached that sum. William was observed to be a great hoarder, and very avaricious; his army was maintained without any expense to him, his demesne supported his household; neither his necessary nor his voluntary expenses were considerable. Yet the effects of many years’ scraping and hoarding left at his death but 60,000l., — not the sixth part of one year’s income, according to this account, of one branch of his revenue; and this was then esteemed a vast treasure. Edgar Atheling, on being reconciled to the king, was allowed a mark a day for his expenses, and he was thought to be allowed sufficiently, though he received it in some sort as an equivalent for his right to the crown. I venture on this digression, because writers in an ignorant age, making guesses at random, impose on more enlightened times, and affect by their mistakes many of our reasonings on affairs of consequence; and it is the error of all ignorant people to rate unknown times, distances, and sums very far beyond their real extent. There is even something childish and whimsical in computing this revenue, as the original author has done, at so much a day. For my part, I do not imagine it so difficult to come at a pretty accurate decision of the truth or falsehood of this story.
The above-mentioned manors are charged with rents from five to an hundred pounds each. The greatest number of those I have seen in print are under fifty; so that we may safely take that number as a just medium; and then the whole amount of the demesne rents will be 70,000l., or 210,000l. of our money. This, though almost a fourth less than the sum stated by Vitalis, still seems a great deal too high, if we should suppose the whole sum, as that author does, to be paid in money, and that money to be reckoned by real pounds of silver. But we must observe, that, when sums of money are set down in old laws and records, the interpretation of those words, pounds and shillings, is for the most part oxen, sheep, corn, and provision. When real coin money was to be paid, it was called white money, or argentum album, and was only in a certain stipulated proportion to what was rendered in kind, and that proportion generally very low. This method of paying rent, though it entirely overturns the prodigious idea of that monarch’s pecuniary wealth, was far from being less conducive to his greatness. It enabled him to feed a multitude of people, — one of the surest and largest sources of influence, and which always outbuys money in the traffic of affections. This revenue, which was the chief support of the dignity of our Saxon kings, was considerably increased by the revival of Danegelt, of the imposition of which we have already spoken, and which is supposed to have produced an annual income of 40,000l. of money, as then valued.
The nest branch of the king’s revenue were the feudal duties, by him first introduced into England, — namely, ward, marriage, relief, and aids. By the first, the heir of every tenant who held immediately from the crown, during his minority, was in ward for his body and his land to the king; so that he had the formation of his mind at that early and ductile age to mould to his own purposes, and the entire profits of his estate either to augment his demesne or to gratify his dependants: and as we have already seen how many and how vast estates, or rather, princely possessions, were then held immediately of the crown, we may comprehend how important an article this must have been.
Though the heir had attained his age before the death of his ancestor, yet the king intruded between him and his inheritance, and obliged him to redeem, or, as the term then was, to relieve it. The quantity of this relief was generally pretty much at the king’s discretion, and often amounted to a very great sum.
But the king’s demands on his rents in chief were not yet satisfied. He had a right and interest in the marriage of heirs, both males and females, virgins and widows, — and either bestowed them at pleasure on his favorites, or sold them to the best bidder. The king received for the sale of one heiress the sum of 20,000l., or 60,000l. of our present money, — and this at a period when the chief estates were much reduced. And from hence was derived a great source of revenue, if this right were sold, — of influence and attachment, if bestowed.
Under the same head of feudal duties were the casual aids to knight his eldest son and marry his eldest daughter. These duties could be paid but once, and, though not considerable, eased him in these articles of expenses.
After the feudal duties, rather in the order than in point of value, was the profit which arose from the sale of justice. No man could then sue in the king’s court by a common or public right, or without paying largely for it, — sometimes the third, and sometimes even half, the value of the estate or debt sued for. These presents were called oblations; and the records preceding Magna Charta, and for some time after, are full of them. And, as the king thought fit, this must have added greatly to his power or wealth, or indeed to both.
The fines and amercements were another branch, and this, at a time when disorders abounded, and almost every disorder was punished by a fine, was a much greater article than at first could readily be imagined, — especially when we consider that there were no limitations in this point but the king’s mercy, particularly in all offences relating to the forest, which were of various kinds, and very strictly inquired into. The sale of offices was not less considerable. It appears that all offices at that time were, or might be, legally and publicly sold, — that the king had many and very rich employments in his gift, and, though it may appear strange, not inferior to, if they did not exceed, in number and consequence, those of our present establishment. At one time the great seal was sold for three thousand marks. The office of sheriff was then very lucrative: this charge was almost always sold. Sometimes a county paid a sum to the king, that he might appoint a sheriff whom they liked; sometimes they paid as largely to prevent him from appointing a person disagreeable to them; and thus the king had often from the same office a double profit in refusing one candidate and approving the other. If some offices were advantageous, others were burdensome; and the king had the right, or was at least in the unquestioned practice, of forcing his subjects to accept these employments, or to pay for there immunity; by wh
ich means he could either punish his enemies or augment his wealth, as his avarice or his resentments prevailed.
The greatest part of the cities and trading towns were under his particular jurisdiction, and indeed in a state not far removed from slavery. On these he laid a sort of imposition, at such a time and in such a proportion as he thought fit. This was called a tallage. If the towns did not forthwith pay the sum at which they were rated, it was not unusual, for their punishment, to double the exaction, and to proceed in levying it by nearly the same methods and in the same manner now used to raise a contribution in an enemy’s country.
But the Jews were a fund almost inexhaustible. They were slaves to the king in the strictest sense; insomuch that, besides the various tallages and fines extorted from them, none succeeded to the inheritance of his father without the king’s license and an heavy composition. He sometimes even made over a wealthy Jew as a provision to some of his favorites for life. They were almost the only persons who exercised usury, and thus drew to themselves the odium and wealth of the whole kingdom; but they were only a canal, through which it passed to the royal treasury. And nothing could be more pleasing and popular than such exactions: the people rejoiced, when they saw the Jews plundered, — not considering that they were a sort of agents for the crown, who, in proportion to the heavy taxes they paid, were obliged to advance the terms and enforce with greater severity the execution of their usurious contracts. Through them almost the whole body of the nobility were in ‘debt to the king; and when he thought proper to confiscate the effects of the Jews, the securities passed into his hands; and by this means he must have possessed one of the strongest and most terrible instruments of authority that could possibly be devised, and the best calculated to keep the people in an abject and slavish dependence.
The last general head of his revenue were the customs, prisages, and other impositions upon trade. Though the revenue arising from traffic in this rude period was much limited by the then smallness of its object, this was compensated by the weight and variety of the exactions levied by an occasional exertion of arbitrary power, or the more uniform system of hereditary tyranny. Trade was restrained, or the privilege granted, on the payment of tolls, passages, paages, pontages, and innumerable other vexatious imposts, of which, only the barbarous and almost unintelligible names subsist at this day.
These were the most constant and regular branches of the revenue. But there were other ways innumerable by which money, or an equivalent in cattle, poultry, horses, hawks, and dogs, accrued to the exchequer. The king’s interposition in marriages, even where there was no pretence from tenure, was frequently bought, as well as in other negotiations of less moment, for composing of quarrels, and the like; and, indeed, some appear on the records, of so strange and even ludicrous a nature, that it would not be excusable to mention them, if they did not help to show from how many minute sources this revenue was fed, and how the king’s power descended to the most inconsiderable actions of private life. It is not easy to penetrate into the true meaning of all these particulars, but they equally suffice to show the character of government in those times. A prince furnished with so many means of distressing enemies and gratifying friends, and possessed of so ample a revenue entirely independent of the affections of his subjects, must have been very absolute in substance and effect, whatever might have been the external forms of government.
For the regulation of all these revenues, and for determining all questions which concerned them, a court was appointed, upon the model of a court of the same nature, said to be of ancient use in Normandy, and called the Exchequer.
There was nothing in the government of William conceived in a greater manner, or more to be commended, than the general survey he took of his conquest. An inquisition was made throughout the kingdom concerning the quantity of land which was contained in each county, — the name of the deprived and the present proprietor, — the stock of slaves, and cattle of every kind, which it contained. All these were registered in a book, each article beginning with the king’s property, and proceeding downward, according to the rank of the proprietors, in an excellent order, by which might be known at one glance the true state of the royal revenues, the wealth, consequence, and natural connections of every person in the kingdom, — in order to ascertain the taxes that might be imposed, and, to serve purposes in the state as well as in civil causes, to be general and uncontrollable evidence of property. This book is called Domesday or the Judgment Book, and still remains a grand monument of the wisdom of the Conqueror, — a work in all respects useful and worthy of a better age.
The Conqueror knew very well how much discontent must have arisen from the great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men’s property, and in the general tenor of the government. He, therefore, as much as possible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light or fire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, had sounded. This bell rung at about eight in the evening. There was policy in this; and it served to prevent the numberless disorders which arose from the late civil commotions.
For the same purpose of strengthening his authority, he introduced the Norman law, not only in its substance, but in all its forms, and ordered that all proceedings should be had according to that law in the French language. The change wrought by the former part of this regulation could not have been very grievous; and it was partly the necessary consequence of the establishment of the new tenures, and which wanted a new law to regulate them: in other respects the Norman institutions were not very different from the English. But to force, against nature, a new language upon a conquered people, to make them, strangers in those courts of justice in which they were still to retain a considerable share, to be reminded, every time they had recourse to government for protection, of the slavery in which it held them, — this is one of those acts of superfluous tyranny from which very few conquering nations or parties have forborne, though no way necessary, but often prejudicial to their safety.
A.D. 1071.These severities, and affronts more galling than severities, drove the English to another desperate attempt, which was the last convulsive effort of their expiring freedom. Several nobles, prelates, and others, whose estates had been confiscated, or who were in daily apprehension of their confiscation, fled into the fens of Lincoln and Ely, where Hereward still maintained his ground. This unadvised step completed the ruin of the little English interest that remained. William hastened to fill up the sees of the bishops and the estates of the nobles with his Norman favorites. He pressed the fugitives with equal vivacity; and at once to cut off all the advantage they derived from their situation, he penetrated into the Isle of Ely by a wooden bridge two miles in length; and by the greatness of the design, and rapidity of the execution, as much as by the vigor of his charge, compelled them to surrender at discretion. Hereward alone escaped, who disdained to surrender, and had cut his way through his enemies, carrying his virtue and his sword, as his passports, wheresoever fortune should conduct him. He escaped happily into Scotland, where, as usual, the king was making some slow movements for the relief of the English. William lost no time to oppose him, and had passed with infinite difficulty through a desert of his own making to the frontiers of Scotland. Here he found the enemy strongly intrenched. The causes of the war being in a good measure spent by William’s late successes, and neither of the princes choosing to risk a battle in a country where the consequences of a defeat must be so dreadful, they agreed to an accommodation, which included a pardon for Edgar Atheling on a renunciation of his title to the crown. William on this occasion showed, as he did on all occasions, an honorable and disinterested sense of merit, by receiving Hereward to his friendship, and distinguishing him by particular favors and bounties. Malcolm, by his whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities with William: he was satisfied with keeping this great warrior in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom in the same calamitous fate that had oppressed England; w
hilst his wisdom enabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, in drawing so many useful people into his dominions, and from the policy of the Conqueror, in imitating those feudal regulations which he saw his neighbor force upon the English, and which appeared so well calculated for the defence of the kingdom. He compassed this the more easily, because the feudal policy, being the discipline of all the considerable states in Europe, appeared the masterpiece of government.
A.D. 1073.If men who have engaged in vast designs could ever promise themselves repose, William, after so many victories, and so many political regulations to secure the fruit of them, might now flatter himself with some hope of quiet. But disturbances were preparing for his old age from a new quarter, from whence they were less expected and less tolerable, — from the Normans, his companions in victory, and from his family, which he found not less difficulty in governing than his kingdom. Nothing but his absence from England was wanting to make the flame blaze out. The numberless petty pretensions which the petty lords his neighbors on the continent had on each other and on William, together with their restless disposition and the intrigues of the French court, kept alive a constant dissension, which made the king’s presence on the continent frequently necessary. The Duke of Anjou had at this time actually invaded his dominions. He was obliged to pass over into Normandy with an army of fifty thousand men. William, who had conquered England by the assistance of the princes on the continent, now turned against them the arms of the English, who served him with bravery and fidelity; and by their means he soon silenced all opposition, and concluded the terms of an advantageous peace. In the mean time his Norman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce by nature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook that subordination in which their safety consisted. Upon some frivolous pretences, chiefly personal disgusts, a most dangerous conspiracy was formed: the principal men among the Normans were engaged in it; and foreign correspondence was not wanting. Though this conspiracy was chiefly formed and carried on by the Normans, they knew so well the use which William on this occasion would not fail to make of his English subjects, that they endeavored, as far as was consistent with secrecy, to engage several of that nation, and above all, the Earl Waltheof, as the first in rank and reputation among his countrymen. Waltheof, thinking it base to engage in any cause but that of his country against his benefactor, unveils the whole design to Lanfranc, who immediately took measures for securing the chief conspirators. He dispatched messengers to inform the king of his danger, who returned without delay at the head of his forces, and by his presence, and his usual bold activity, dispersed at once the vapors of this conspiracy. The heads were punished. The rest, left under the shade of a dubious mercy, were awed into obedience. His glory was, however, sullied by his putting to death Waltheof, who had discovered the conspiracy; but he thought the desire the rebels had shown of engaging him in their designs demonstrated sufficiently that Waltheof still retained a dangerous power. For as the years, so the suspicions, of this politic prince increased, — at whose time of life generosity begins to appear no more than a splendid weakness.