Book 2, Chapter 9, Edward 975 AD to 1016 AD – Ethelred
The ordinary revenues of the crown were quite inadequate to the cost of these expedients, and therefore it was found necessary, with the consent of the witenagemot, to impose a tax first of one Saxon shilling, and afterwards of two or more shillings, on every hide of land in the kingdom. As there were two hundred and forty three thousand six hundred hides of land in England, this tax, at one shilling on each hide, raised twelve thousand one hundred and eighty Saxon pounds, equal in quantity of silver to about thirty six thousand five hundred and forty pounds sterling. This tax seems to have been first imposed A.D. 991, and was called Danegeld, or the Danish tax or payment.
It was soon after raised to two, and at last to seven shillings on every hide of land, and continued to be levied long after the original occasion of imposing it had ceased. While the invasions by the Danes were almost annual, our kings derived little profit from this tax, which was all expended in bribing or fighting these invaders, but after the accession of the Danish princes to the throne of England, it became one of the chief branches of the royal revenue.
This tax was raised so high, and collected with so much severity, by King Canute, A.D. 1018, that it amounted to the prodigious sum of seventy one thousand Saxon pounds, besides eleven thousand of the same pounds paid by the city of London. It appears, however, from very good authority, that this was too great a sum for England in one year at that time. Those who had money to pay their proportion of this grievous tax, paid it, but those who had not money, irrecoverably lost their lands and possessions. The Danegeld was remitted in after years by Edward the Confessor, but it was reimposed by William the Conqueror, under another name, for his own purposes, and was, in reality, the precedent for the imposition of the more modern land tax.
Chapter 9, Edward the Martyr
Edward, Commonly Styled “the Martyr”
Chapter 9, Ethelred
Origin of the Danegeld
Ethelred’s Marriage with Emma of Normandy
Chapter 9, Sweyn’s Revenge
Chapter 9, Thurkill Ravages England
Sweyn prepares for the Conquest of England
Sweyn Dies and’ is Followed by Canute
Chapter 9, Edmund Ironside
Divisions and Treachery among the English
Edmund Ironside Proclaimed King
Successive Battles with Canute
Categories: Book 2
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