Landed property was the chief subject of taxation, and was assessed nominally at four shillings in the pound.

But the assessment was made in such a way that it not only did not rise in proportion to the rise in the value of land or to the fall in the value of the precious metals, but went on constantly sinking, till at length the rate was in truth less than twopence in the pound.

In the time of Charles the First a real tax of four shillings in the pound on land would probably have yielded near a million and a half; but a subsidy amounted to little more than fifty thousand pounds.

[364] The financiers of the Long Parliament devised a more efficient mode of taxing estates.

The sum which was to be raised was fixed.