XI.] FINANCIAL SUMMARY. 287 views of Wolsey, of the wisdom and virtue of More, of the mysterious unconscientiousness of Cromwell, and the like, may be taken as we proceed. The first region of constitutional action that lies before us is the finance of the reign; a subject on which we have abundant, though not very conclusive data, in the acts of the parliaments which now begin to put on record the amounts expected from the several grants ; in the subsidy rolls, which show how the sums granted were assessed and collected, in the correspondence of the period, which sets before us what the estimated expenditure was from time to time, and in the incidental references of the annalists which tell us how the imposts were from time to time felt by the people. Of the thirty-eight years of the reign, twenty-one passed away without a parliament, and therefore without a budget ; and long prorogations had now become so much the rule, that only nine new parliaments, nine general elections, were held during the whole time ; the country therefore had not much opportunity of showing a change of feeling in this respect. It is thus comparatively simple to state the parliamentary grants : tunnage and poundage, and the subsidy on wool, woolfells and leather, were, in the first parliament of the reign, granted to the king for his life : the ancient vote of tenths and fifteenths was made on eleven occasions, sometimes as a sufficient grant and sometimes as a supplementary grant when a more grasping exaction had disappointed the officers of the Exchequer; and nine several subsidies of a new kind, a graduated income and property tax, were levied lat more critical periods, as for the expeditions of 1512 and 1513, for the payment of expenses in 1515, and for the warlike preparations made in 1523, 1539, and 1543. These latter taxes were exactions on lands and goods according to fixed scale, minutely drawn out in each of the acts that