Sometimes these fees or fines were paid in money, as when the Londoners paid King Stephen a hundred silver marks for leave to choose their own sheriffs. York paid Henry the Third two hundred marks for burgess liberties; the vintners of Hereford paid forty shillings for permission "to sell a sestertium of wine for tenpence for the space of a year.”

the "benevolence' principle literally appeals to the charity of their subjects. Edward the Fourth, being very handsome, was remarkably successful at this method of extortion, particularly with the fair sex. It is related that one rich widow, capti vated by his good looks, tabled twenty pounds with a good grace. The king was so pleased that he kissed her, and the The Plantagenets instituted some curi- lady immediately doubled her benevoous taxes. One, in 1377, agreed to by lence, "because she esteemed the kiss of Parliament, was a tax of "fourpence to be a king so precious a jewel." Queen Eliz. taken from the goods of each person in abeth also raised a great deal of money the kingdom, men and women, over the by appeals to the "benevolence" of her age of fourteen years, except only beg subjects. It is related that on one occagars." This was the "tallage of groats,' sion the mayor of Coventry brought her and it yielded twenty-two thousand six a handsome, well-filled purse, when the hundred and seven pounds two shillings queen remarked: “I have few such gifts, and eightpence, from one million three Mr. Mayor; it is a hundred pounds in hundred and seventy-six thousand four gold." "Please your Grace,' "said the hundred and forty-two lay persons, the mayor, "it is a great deal more we give return not including Chester and Durham, you." "What is that?" said the queen. which kept separate accounts. This tal-It is the hearts of your loving subjects," lage of groats was afterwards superseded replied the mayor. To which the queen by a poll tax, graduated according to ranks rejoined: "We thank you, Mr. Mayor. and means. Thus dukes were taxed ten That is a great deal more indeed." marks each; earls and countesses, six We can only briefly indicate curiosities marks; barons, bannerets, and knights, of taxation under the Pitt administration, and their widows, three marks; knights. some of which survived for a considerabachelors and esquires, a mark and a half; | ble time. Solicitors, attorneys, and notasmall esquires and merchants, a mark; and esquires without land and in professional service, three shillings and fourpence. Judges were taxed at five pounds each; sergeants-at-law, two pounds; lower legal dignitaries, one pound; and attorneys, six shillings and eightpence. The regulations for other ranks are interesting. The mayor of London was ranked as an earl, and had to pay accordingly. A London alderman had to pay two pounds, like a baron, and provincial mayors of large towns were rated in the same category. Small mayors ranged from one pound down to six shillings and eightpence.

ries had to take out licenses, for which five pounds was charged for London and Edinburgh, three pounds for other parts of Great Britain.

Among other curious taxes of our fiscal history was the tax on silver plate. The tax on male servants was first imposed in 1777, and was at the rate of twenty-one shillings each servant, but in 1785 Pitt arranged a progressive scale by which the tax rose in proportion to the number of servants kept up to four pounds five shillings each. A further advance during the Peninsular War brought the maximum up to nine pounds thirteen shillings each, this extreme rate being payable by bachelors who kept eleven servants or more.

This tax did not yield as much as was expected, and in 1380 the government was So "hard up" that the army was over a It were too long a story to detail here year in arrears of pay, the king was over all the experiments which have been made head and ears in debt, and the crown in taxing eatables and drinkables, coal jewels were in pawn. Therefore, another and timber, bricks and tiles, candles, patax was levied of "three groats from every per, bottles, playing-cards and dice, newslay person in the kingdom, male or female, papers, advertisements, starch, tooth-pow. of whatever estate or condition in life." der, hats, gloves, and a host of other This tax was ordered with the provision subjects. In fact, after the great French that the strong should help the weak, but War, there seemed nothing sacred from no man of means was to pay more than the tax-gatherer's lynx eye. Even plum sixty groats, or twenty shillings, and no puddings were taxed, and it is said that one less than twopence. This was what" the favorite currant dumplings of the led to the peasant insurrection, in which lower classes produced two hundred and Wat Tyler figured. eighty thousand pounds" to the revenue!

The Plantagenets also raised money on

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From The Fortnightly Review.
WYCLIF AND THE BIBLE.

till his time with almost undisputed sway. Another point ought to be noticed which admits of no dispute the purity of his life. His worst foes never breathed susAt a

THE attention recently called to the
great reformer of the fourteenth century
will be legitimately revived by the appear-picion against him upon that score.
ance of the revised edition of the Bible.
It will not therefore be inappropriate to
endeavor upon this occasion to grasp the
fundamental elements of his character
and the guiding principles of his life, as
well as to determine the most important
lessons which he left behind him, both
for his own and succeeding times. Wyc-
lif's extraordinary abilities were fully ac-
knowledged during his lifetime, and have
never been disputed. He was not merely
a theologian, but was widely acquainted
with the science of his day. He was
familiar with what had been done in math-
ematics, chemistry, optics, and natural
history; and the effect was not only to
widen the field of his mental vision, but
to supply him, in lectures, sermons, and
published treatises, with illustrations
which lent vivacity to his reasonings, and
brought them into closer contact with the
every day life of man. In his own more
peculiar field, again, of scholastic disputa-
tion, he was an unquestioned master.
Even his bitterest enemies magnified the
extent of his learning, the subtlety of his
intellect, and the keenness of his insight.
Professor Shirley ranks him with Duns
Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, as one
of the four great schoolmen of the four-
teenth century. He was a diligent stu-
dent of the fathers without being a slavish
follower of their opinions. He thought
and spoke for himself. That in doing so
he labored under the disadvantages of the
scholastic method, is true. He could not
entirely separate himself from the tradi-
tions of centuries. Had he broken with
these he would not have effected what he
did. But it is something to be able to
say of him that, if he still adheres in no
small degree to the dry disquisitions, the
trifling distinctions, and the wearisome
repetitions of the schools, no man did
more to introduce a brighter sunshine and
a healthier atmosphere into the modes of
thought and exposition which had ruled

time when the morals of the clergy were
far from correct, he was not only unstained
by reproach, but noted for his austere and
blameless walk. This high tone of life
was in full correspondence with his exalt-
ed conception of the moral character of
Christianity. He felt strongly, too, the
responsibility attaching to his own posi-
tion as a priest.

• Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. li.

By nothing, however, was he in all probability so much fitted for his work as by the deliberate and exhaustive manner in which he first surveyed his ground, and then by the coolness, not less than the resoluteness, with which he occupied it. In this respect he differed essentially from Luther, and the difference must be kept in view when we weigh the nature of the results achieved by them. Luther, no doubt, possessed many advantages which did not fall to the lot of his predecessor. The revival of learning had taken place. The mind of Europe had been expanded by contact with the treasures of ancient literature poured into it after the fall of Constantinople. The laity felt their power. Scholasticism had declined, and the Yet printing-press had been invented. the main difference between the work of the two men does not lie in these things. It lies rather in the men themselves, and in their personal experiences. Luther was from the first quick, emotional, passionate, a child of the people, at every point of his life intensely human. Wyclif was more the scholar, the recluse, the speculator, the calm and diligent investi gator. Not that he wanted passion; but passion was in him a hidden fire, great in volume, burning clear, while in Luther it was a furnace, bursting forth into great sheets of flame, and kindling whatever came into contact with it. Luther's work began in the struggles of his own soul with sin, and in the cry for pardon and reconciliation with God; Wyclif's began rather in the region of the intellect, in the assertion of the right to think, and in the claim to investigate truth. Above all,

Luther beheld around him only men the trance upon public life; and during the victims of superstition, men betrayed in greater part of his after career he was the highest of all relations by the paltriest closely associated with all those move. and most unsatisfying substitutes for true ments of his time in which his country religion, blind guides leading the blind in vindicated her independence of a foreign matters of eternal moment, and both fall-yoke. But when we look more closely ing into the pit of spiritual darkness and into the matter, we shall find that relidespair. Wyclif, in at least the most ac- gious principles and religious aims did far tive period of his life, beheld around him not simply men but fellow-countrymen, oppressed by a foreign yoke, and handed over to a distant and tyrannous power by those who ought to have been the guardians of their liberties and the protectors of their national birthright. It may be doubted if the later reformer had much of the idea of country in his mind at all. Certainly he had no traditions to make his soul burn or his eye flash when foreign hands were laid upon the wealth of his native soil, or when efforts were made to silence the voice of her people's Parliaments for the sake of a corrupt court and dissolute nobles. The earlier reformer had the traditions of a little island where the winds had been always free, and where the waves, as they dashed upon its rockbound coast, had long been answered by a like stirring spirit in its people. Such things made a great difference between the two reformers, and must be taken into account when we think either of their personality or of their works.

more to determine what he was than the aspirations of a merely patriotic heart. It was these that made him what he was. His Christianity was the root of his patriotism, not his patriotism the root of his Christianity. In his religious and Christian convictions, reached and, except in the extent of their application, matured during the years of his Oxford training previous to A.D. 1366, lay the seed of the plant that was afterwards to bear so large and ripe a crop of fruit. No one will deny that that seed was the Scriptures, or that from the very beginning of his studies he must have been drawn to them, and must have found in them both the nourishment of his own spiritual life and the treasure on which he drew for others. Except on this supposition it is impossible to explain the singular degree to which he identified himself with them, the strength of language with which he recognizes their authority, the minute acquaintance with them which appears in all his writings, or the title which he received of the Evangelical Doctor, which then meant the doctor devoted to the Scriptures in contrast with all other teaching.

In the mean time, however, we have to do with Wyclif; and the most interesting question that meets us in connection with him has reference to the fundamental, the It is not enough, however, to say this. guiding, principle of his life and work. The point upon which we desire at presThe natural qualities of his character, ad- ent especially to dwell, and in which we mirable as they were, were after all no seem to find a key to Wyclif's life that has more than the formal preparation of the not yet been used, is, that in his study of man or the instruments he was to use. Scripture he would seem to have come Something more was needed to be his powerfully under the influence of the real preparation, the determining princi- writings of St. John. He quotes him often, ple of his course of action, the power by and Dr. Lechler tells us that again and which the whole machinery of his nature again in his "Trialogus " and other works was to be put in motion. In this respect be refers to John i. 3, 4, as if it were the he has been too often thought of mainly germ of all his views. Strangely enough as the Englishman; as the patriot inter- Dr. Lechler thinks that he misunderstood ested in the liberties of his country; as the passage, and that the words will not the civil rather than as the religious re- bear the rendering that he gave them. In former. It is not unnatural that such a both the authorized and revised versions view should be entertained, for it was in the translation, with an unimportant dif this capacity that he made his first enference, is as follows: "And without him