No determinate principle can now be discerned why such dues were exacted, small towns being in many cases required to pay more than others of double their size. In some places the taxes were paid in produce or merchandise—as, for instance, at Gloucester, where, besides 36_l._ levied in toll, the inhabitants had to contribute twelve gallons of honey, and one hundred iron rods to the king’s ships, together with a few other petty customs. Again, Leicester had also to provide honey, and twelve burgesses to supply the king’s army, and four horses to carry arms and stores to London when any maritime expedition was about to sail from the Thames. In Shrewsbury the king levied a tax of ten shillings on the marriage of every maid, and twenty shillings on that of every widow, besides numerous taxes upon the people in the shape of services or customs; and in Hereford, the king had one hundred and three tenants, including six blacksmiths, who performed certain services in lieu of rents, while the burgesses had, among other burdens, to provide “a bear, and six dogs for the bear.” At Sandwich, forty thousand herrings were demanded for the use of the monks of the neighbourhood.[524] [Sidenote: State of the people at the time of the Conquest.] In many places, the records of Domesday show that considerable portions of the inhabitants were too poor to pay any taxes. Thus, in Norwich, while six hundred and sixty-five are rated among the burgesses, there are no less than four hundred and eighty heads of families who had no means of contributing. Notices are also preserved of the number of houses at that time in a state of decay or disuse: thus, at Winchester, whole streets and many churches were in a state of ruin; in Thetford, there were one hundred and twenty houses empty; in Ipswich, more than three hundred and twenty-eight falling to decay. In Chester, once so flourishing and so heavily taxed, there were, soon after the Conquest, two hundred and five houses lying waste; while, in York, four hundred houses were so much decayed, as to pay only one penny each, or even less; five hundred and forty were waste, and paid nothing; and one hundred and forty-five were occupied by Frenchmen, who were relieved from the tax. But while poverty and oppressive taxation ground down the masses of the people, the nobles abandoned themselves to the excesses of gluttony, drunkenness, and promiscuous concubinage, frequently not scrupling to consign the objects of their lust, and even their own offspring, to the miseries of slavery, for paltry sums of money to be squandered in wretched folly. Learning was almost at as low an ebb as it had been at the commencement of the reign of Alfred; while the middle classes, with some, though few, exceptions, were, in many respects, no better than the nobles, and trade and commerce languished and declined. Such was the state of things in England when the Norman conqueror landed on its shores.[525] FOOTNOTES: