Book III: Chapter 3 - Page 2

was seldom granted without a
valuable consideration, and this tax might perhaps be considered as
compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other
taxes. At first, both those poll-taxes and those exemptions seem to have
been altogether personal, and to have affected only particular individuals,
during either their lives, or the pleasure of their protectors. In the very
imperfect accounts which have been published from Doomsday-book, of several
of the towns of England, mention is frequently made, sometimes of the tax
which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king, or to some
other great lord, for this sort of protection, and sometimes of the general
amount only of all those taxes. {see Brady's Historical Treatise of Cities
and Boroughs, p. 3. etc.}

But how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the
inhabitants of the towns, it appears evidently, that they arrived at liberty
and independency much earlier than the occupiers of land in the country.
That part of the king's revenue which arose from such poll-taxes in any
particular town, used commonly to be let in farm, during a term of years,
for a rent certain, sometimes to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to
other persons. The burghers themselves frequently got credit enough to be
admitted to farm the revenues of this sort winch arose out of their own
town, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent.
{See Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 18; also History of the Exchequer, chap. 10,
sect. v, p. 223, first edition.} To let a farm in this manner, was quite
agreeable to the usual economy of, I believe, the sovereigns of all the
different countries of Europe, who used frequently to let whole manors to
all the tenants of those manors, they becoming jointly and severally
answerable for the whole rent ; but in return being allowed to collect it in
their own way, and to pay it into the king's exchequer by the hands of their
own bailiff, and being thus altogether freed from the insolence of the
king's officers; a circumstance in those days regarded as of the greatest
importance.

At first, the farm of the town was probably let to the burghers, in the same
manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In process
of time, however, it seems to have become the general practice to grant it
to them in fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain, never afterwards
to be augmented. The payment having thus become perpetual, the exemptions,
in return, for which it was made, naturally became perpetual too. Those
exemptions, therefore, ceased to be personal, and could not afterwards be
considered as belonging to individuals, as individuals, but as burghers of a
particular burgh,