_Exactions of Henry VII._--The two first of the Tudors rarely experienced opposition but when they endeavoured to levy money. Taxation, in the eyes of their subjects, was so far from being no tyranny, that it seemed the only species worth a complaint. Henry VII. obtained from his first parliament a grant of tonnage and poundage during life, according to several precedents of former reigns. But when general subsidies were granted, the same people, who would have seen an innocent man led to prison or the scaffold with little attention, twice broke out into dangerous rebellions; and as these, however arising from such immediate discontent, were yet a good deal connected with the opinion of Henry's usurpation and the claims of a pretender, it was a necessary policy to avoid too frequent imposition of burdens upon the poorer classes of the community.[12] He had recourse accordingly to the system of benevolences, or contributions apparently voluntary, though in fact extorted from his richer subjects. These having become an intolerable grievance under Edward IV., were abolished in the only parliament of Richard III. with strong expressions of indignation. But in the seventh year of Henry's reign, when, after having with timid and parsimonious hesitation suffered the marriage of Anne of Brittany with Charles VIII., he was compelled by the national spirit to make a demonstration of war, he ventured to try this unfair and unconstitutional method of obtaining aid, which received afterwards too much of a parliamentary sanction, by an act enforcing the payment of arrears of money, which private men had thus been prevailed upon to promise.[13] The statute indeed of Richard is so expressed as not clearly to forbid the solicitation of voluntary gifts, which of course rendered it almost nugatory.