Divine right as against Parliamentary supremacy--James I dictates the composition of the House of Commons--Tunnage and poundage for life--Royal poverty--The Bate Case--Opinions of the Barons in the Bate Case--The position of Parliament--The Book of Rates--Remonstrance from the Commons--Cowel’s “Interpreter”--The Great Contract--Petty extortion after the dissolution of Parliament--The “Addled” Parliament--Case of Oliver St. John--James’s Third Parliament--Delay of a supply pending redress of grievances--Revival of impeachment by the Commons--James’s last Parliament--Charles I--His early Parliaments--Forced loans--Threats of non-Parliamentary exaction--The Petition of Right--Omission of the customs--Tunnage and poundage--Charles’s eleven years without Parliament--His financial expedients--Ship Money--Extra-judicial opinions--Hampden’s Case--Judgment for the Crown--The Short Parliament--The Long Parliament--Royal exaction of tunnage and poundage declared illegal--The Ship Money Act--The Grand Remonstrance--The Puritan Revolution--Charles II--Appropriation of Supplies--James II--William and Mary--The Bill of Rights. INDEX 309 PARLIAMENTARY TAXATION I THE SAXONS: CUSTOMARY REVENUES AND EXTRAORDINARY CONTRIBUTIONS [Evolutionary character of the English Constitution] THE English Constitution looks ever backward. Precedent lies behind precedent, law behind law, until fact shades off into legend and that into a common beginning, the Germanic character. Standing upon the eminence of 1689, one sees the Petition of Right, and then in deepening perspective, Confirmatio Cartarum and Magna Carta. The crisis of 1215 points to the Charter of Henry I, and behind that are the good laws of Edward the Confessor. The Anglo-Saxon polity looks back of the era of Alfred, to the times when Hengist and Horsa were yet unborn, and the German tribesmen were still living in their forests beyond the Rhine without thinking of migrating westward. And there, behind the habits of those barbaric ancestors of Englishmen, lies the national character, the Anglo-Saxon sense of right and wrong, of loyalty, justice, and duty. The growth of the English Constitution has been as subject to the laws of evolution as the development of man himself. The germ of national character evolved habits of thought and action, and these habits, or as they are better termed, institutions, were beaten upon by conditions and fused with the institutions of another people, until at last they took on the shape of free government. [Early ideas of taxation] [Amongst the Germans]