The Petition which thus became a regularly passed Act of Parliament, is of transcendent importance in the development of the control of the people over the public purse. In terms absolutely unequivocal, it asserts that “your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent in Parliament.” The statutory sources whence that freedom was inherited are cited in detail. The citations, are, however, ill-taken. _Statutum de tallagio non concedendo_ was in all likelihood no statute at all, but a chronicler’s abstract of Edward I’s Confirmatio Cartarum, or perhaps an unauthoritative copy of the pardon which was granted to Humfrey Bohun and Roger Bigod at approximately the same time with the Confirmation of the Charters. It is not unlikely that the citation of the statute of the 25th of Edward III was an error; at any rate, the text of the statute has not been discovered,[343] and the date at which it was said to be enacted was at the height of the great plague, a time scarcely adapted to the assertion of a great constitutional principle. But the precise historical foundation upon which Sir Edward Coke and his associates based their charges against the king, is of quite secondary importance. The true value of the Petition of Right lies in this, that Charles I had been obliged to subscribe to a statutory provision by which no man thereafter was to “be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament.” That was indeed supremely important. [The Petition of Right and customs duties] But the language of the Petition of Right might reasonably be taken to refer only to internal taxes and that the matter of customs duties, the charges upon merchandise at the outports, was left still in the air. Protests had indeed been made against the exaction of these duties by the crown, especially during the reign of James in the great agitation over the Book of Rates, but no statute had been passed providing definitely for parliamentary control. To that end, the commons delayed the passage of a bill which gave the king tunnage and poundage for life, pending the acceptance by him of a remonstrance against impositions. The remonstrance as framed by the commons declared that “there ought not any imposition to be laid upon the goods of merchants, exported or imported, _without the common consent by Act of Parliament_.”[344] It further made assertion that the laying of impositions at the outports was contrary to the Petition of Right. The king’s attitude was decisive; before the remonstrance was handed to him, he evaded the issue by proroguing Parliament. Never, so he said, would he give away tunnage and poundage; he must needs retain them for himself. The session ended 26th June, 1628.[345] [Tunnage and poundage]