In 1206 the tension had reached such a point that John did not venture to impose a scutage of the full amount--two marks on the knight’s fee--which had been usual since his father’s time, but contented himself with twenty shillings.[527] In 1207 he evidently dared not attempt to levy any fresh scutage at all. Nor was a carucage likely to prove either less unpopular or more productive; for the agricultural interest of the country was in a state of extreme depression, owing to a long succession of bad seasons; while the taxation of moveables was an expedient which seems to have found, as yet, but little favour with either the people or the government. John now put forth a suggestion which was, so far as we can see, a novelty in English finance. He “held a council in London on January 8, and there requested the bishops and abbots that they would allow parsons and others holding ecclesiastical benefices to give to the king a fixed sum from their revenues.”[528] Neither in equity nor in policy was the idea a bad one. While the military tenants and the socage tenants had each their own peculiar burden--scutage in the one case, carucage in the other--the beneficed clergy, as such, had never yet been subjected to taxation. The king might well argue that it was time for them to take their turn in making a special contribution to the financial needs of the State; and the argument was sure to meet with the approval of the laity. The prelates, however, were unwilling; and the question was adjourned to another council, in which “an infinite multitude” of ecclesiastical and temporal magnates came together at Oxford on February 9.