Now  aU  these  taxes  were  property  taxes.  The  assessment  was
made  by  numerous  commissioners,  in  order  that  the  valuation
might  be  taken  at  as  simultaneous  a  time  as  possible.  ■  The
farmer's  stock  and  crops  were  not  taxed,  but  what  had  been  stored
and  was  for  sale  became  liable,  his  com,  for  instance,  and  wool
in  the  bam.  The  latidowner's  rent  and  value  was  taxed.  The
stock-in-trade  of  the 'dealer,  never,. I  suspect,  any  great  matter,
was  taxed,  as  were  also  the  household  goods  of  the  poorest  as  weU  as
the  richest-.  It  appears  that  personal  apparel  was  not  valued.  I
have  examined  many  of  these  assessments,  and  I.  speak  from
memory,  but  confidently,  when  I  say  that  the  valuation  was  from
30  to  40  per  cent,  below  the  value  of  the  goods  appraised.  .  It
would  have,  I  think,  been  dangerous  to  have  exacted  the  tax  from
the  full  value.
The  taxes  levied  on  the  towns  were  peculiar.  They  had  been
beld  in  a  certain  sense  to  be  the  property- of  the  king,  or  under  his
immediate  lordship,  or  to  have  stood  in  the  same  relation  to  some
isecular  or  ecclesiastical  chief.  For  example,  the  town  of  Oxford
was  under  the  Crown,  the  town  of  Bury  was  under  the  great  Abbot


128  TEE  CEABACTEB  OF  EABLY  TAXATION.
of  St.  Edmund.  These  personages  granted  charters,  or  confirmed
privileges  for  a  sum  of  money  down,  and  for  an  annual  rent  or
farm,  which  went  by  the  name  of  the  firma  burgi,  and  was  like
other  charges,  fixed  and  unalterable.  Hence  the  grant  of  the  fee-
farm  rent  of  a  town  was  a  common  benefaction  of  king  or  lord.
