Eileen Power - The Taxation of Wool

Eileen Power

'The king needed the collaboration of the merchants, not parliament, it was the merchants who directly paid the tax though the incidence was elsewhere. Direct experience showed where the true incidence of the tax lay. The merchants might even benefit if the quid pro quo was a compensating advantage of a monopoly in trade with Flanders. The merchants could easily pass on the tax in the form of lower prices to the growers. The whole community represented by parliament felt itself burdened by the tax on wools; a million freeholders, a million tenants and also the urban interests; the wool growers had less money to spend in the town markets. The wool tax precipitated a constitutional crisis in 1336. Parliament was gradually and grudgingly converted to the view that the king must have his tax, but parliament agreed to a regular subsidy granted by itself. Parliament retained its solidarity but the estate of the merchants broke up; they did not represent all the merchants. The result of this fissure was a parliament in which were corralled all interests, except the financier - the rogue elephant - who was left outside and for the moment bankrupt. The wool trade monopoly continued in the hands of the English Company of Staple and it was not likely to fail. But taxation & monopoly rarely work out as governments & monopolists intend them to do; the king & the monopolists had killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Exports of English wool declined, it was the free trade periods which were the periods of greatest expansion.'

 

 

back to markets & fairs