Westminster Abbey was founded by Edward the Confessor, and substantially refounded by Henry III, who had shown immense care and lavished large sums on a grandiose scheme for the rebuilding of the great house of religion which contained the shrine of his favourite saint, in whose honour he had given his son the name of Edward. The rebuilding went on into the reign of Edward I, who was not much inferior to his father in his zeal for the church, and was doubly bound to honour his father’s wishes and the memory of his own patron saint. In the closing years of the thirteenth century circumstances compelled Edward I to desist from this work. The king now found himself dragged into enormous expenses by the French, Scottish, and Flemish wars. He was perforce turned from church-building to get men and money for his wars. The finances of England under Edward I were less elastic than under Mr. Lloyd-George, and modern credit and banking were then in their very infancy. Edward I, though he imposed taxes which would make the most stalwart militarist of to-day quiver, soon found himself hopelessly in debt. To meet his burdens the king constantly employed differentiated taxation, but the differentiation was calculated by rather a different method from that in fashion nowadays. It was differentiation according to status, not according to wealth. The clergy, who were not expected to fight, were expected to pay more heavily than the laymen. Let us take as an instance of how things were then done the taxes levied in 1294 when the fighting country districts were called upon to pay a tenth of their moveables in taxation, and the wealthier and more peaceful towns were asked for a sixth. From the clergy a tax equal, I think, to a modern income tax of ten shillings in the pound, was demanded, and it is said that when the dean of St. Paul’s heard of this unprecedented impost, he fell dead on the spot. If such heroic efforts—I mean the king’s not the dean’s—were necessary in 1294 at the beginning of England’s troubles, how much worse things must have become by 1303, after ten years of storm and stress? By this date Edward I’s finances were indeed in a bad state. Historians are only now gradually beginning to realise how embarrassed the great king was in the last years of his reign, and how desperate were some of his attempts to fill his exchequer.