Henry did without Parliament for the next seven years, but he was not deprived thereby of money with which to carry on the business of government. In 1526, commissions were issued for the collection of a sixth from the goods of the laity and a fourth from the clergy.[276] The people immediately evinced their knowledge of the law and complained that the proceedings were illegal; the clergy led the movement asserting that “the King could take no man’s goods without the authority of Parliament.”[277] The people began to murmur and insurrection seemed imminent. “If men should geue their goodes by a Commission,” they said, “then wer it worse than the taxes of Fraunce, and so England should be bond and not free.”[278] In Suffolk rebellion actually broke out; in London and in Kent the people were in a ferment. Henry, being what he was and knowing the nature of his subjects, eased the tension by shoving the responsibility of the measure on to the shoulders of Wolsey,[279] and declared that he would receive no money save as an “amiable graunte,” which was collected in 1528, and was nothing more agreeable than a benevolence. To this the citizens of London raised objection on the ground of the statute of Richard III. The judges thereupon handed down an opinion that that statute, being the work of an usurper, was void. Thus did the courts evince their subservience to the crown, and showed themselves as open to royal influence as the tribunals of the Stuarts a hundred years later.[280] So in theory Henry’s attempt at arbitrary taxation was frustrated; in practice, however, the imposition, though its burden was transferred from the turbulent lower classes to the more amenable people of substance, merely underwent a change of name. The exaction was unparliamentary whether it was levied as a king’s tax or under the thin guise of a benevolence. [Forced loans, 1522 and 1544]