In 1380, Parliament found itself in this difficult position, that it was under necessity of supplying an immensely large sum, no less than £160,000, as speedily as possible. The French war, an expedition about to be undertaken against Scotland, and the usual expenses of the kingdom had so depleted the royal treasury that the king was sorely embarrassed; he was greatly in debt and his jewels were already pawned. The commons were at a loss to devise the means whereby so great a sum could be raised, and showed a disposition to shirk the burden. The lords undertook it and suggested three methods: a graduated poll-tax, a custom on merchandise, or a number of fifteenths and tenths. The commons, seeing in the first the virtue of rapid assessment and collection, chose it in spite of the disappointing proceeds of the poll-tax of two years previously. A subsidy on wool, the normal income from which would amount to £60,000, was to serve as an auxiliary tax. The clergy undertook to raise a third of the remaining £100,000, leaving some £66,667 to accrue from the poll-tax. The rate varied according to individuals from sixty groats to three, with an understanding that the rich should help the poor, but that in no case should a man pay less than a groat for himself and his wife.[251] [The Rising of the Villeins] Here was the exciting cause for the Rising of the Villeins which Bishop Stubbs describes as “one of the most portentous phenomena to be found in the whole of our history.”[252] Following closely as did the poll-tax of 1380 upon those of 1378 and 1379, both of which bore heavily upon the lesser people, the impost set fire to tinder which had been long preparing for a conflagration. To enter into an inquiry as to the underlying causes and the ultimate consequences of this rising, would be to travel far afield. It is sufficient to observe that the payment of even so small a sum as a groat, served to bring freshly to the minds of the most ignorant the maladministration in London, and to arouse in them the impulse, however ill-advised or ill-directed, to correct abuses in the executive. The Rising of the Villeins is illustrative of the not unusual conception that bad government is chiefly reprehensible because it is expensive. The taxation during the years 1389-1397 was regular and moderate. Richard’s rule for the time was that of a constitutional monarch and his Parliaments exercised the power of initiating taxation without opposition. Parliament was practicing what it had accomplished in theory in the long years of struggle since Magna Carta; it was accustoming itself to the exercise of the powers which in principle it had acquired. Fulfillment in fact was following upon enunciation of principle. Consequently it was with the greater shock to the nation that Richard II suddenly changed from his constitutional habit and took upon himself the powers of a despot. [Richard’s despotism and his dethronement]