In the matter of taxation, it is probable as in the case of other legislation that the Conqueror advised with his Council, though the evidence pointing toward such a conclusion is entirely of a later date. But in so far as practical advantage to the payers of the taxes was concerned, the power might quite as well have lain solely in the hands of the king; if indeed the Conqueror did secure the assent of the Council, it was no more than an instance of his policy of adhering to the forms of law while making the practices under it serve his own purposes. The reimposition in 1084 of the Danegeld which William revived as an occasional instead of a regular tax, is not stated by the chronicler as receiving assent from the Council; the king is said to have “received six shillings from every hide.”[16] Roger of Wendover’s Chronicle of the same year brands this exaction as an “extortion,”[17] by which we are scarcely to understand a tax granted in any modern sense by the chief legislative body of the kingdom. The Saxon Chronicler speaking of the same imposition says, “The king caused a great and heavy tax to be raised throughout England, even seventy-two pence on every hide of land.”[18] The amount of such an impost, if drawn from two-thirds of the hidage of the kingdom, would be a sum approximating £20,000.[19] It is unlikely that an exaction of so great magnitude could have been levied without the assent of the Council if the Conqueror was under any obligation to obtain their consent or even their advice; and it is still more unlikely that four chroniclers of the events of that year should have let pass unnoted a vote of assent if it had been passed by the National Council. We are therefore to conclude that either the Conqueror levied the tax without consulting his Council at all, or that he did consult them, and that their assent was of so formal and valueless a nature as not to deserve notice in the records of the year.[20] [Domesday Survey, 1086] The year 1086 witnessed the Domesday Survey. By it William obtained a detailed register of the land and its capacity for taxation. To the administrative side of taxation the Survey is of supreme importance, since the valuation of land thus arrived at was never entirely superseded as a definite and fair basis for the laying of taxes; to the actual granting of the tax, however, its importance is of much less degree. In such light the interest centers chiefly on the fact that representatives were elected from every hundred upon whose sworn depositions the information that William wanted was obtained. [William Rufus, 1087-1100]