God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [163]
Even more alarmingly, on 28 March, Pym proposed an excise – a tax on consumption which was regarded with deep hostility in Stuart England. There was no current means of taxing commercial wealth, since taxes fell either on the value of land or on personal goods. Taxing consumption provided a means of getting at commercial wealth, but this awful expedient was regarded with horror. In 1628, it has been said, ‘excise’ was almost a swear word. Faced with Pym’s suggestion in 1643 one speaker expressed astonishment ‘that he who pretended to stand so much for the liberty of the subject should propose such an unjust, scandalous, and destructive project’.18
Although the excise was too loathsome to be countenanced Parliament had, the previous day, found it possible to stomach the Sequestration Ordinance. To the modern eye this was hardly a less objectionable measure, and was certainly extraordinary by pre-war standards. It established local committees with remarkably wide powers to seize the estates of ‘notorious delinquents [who] have been causers or instruments of the public calamities’. The profits of the estates would thereafter be ‘applied towards the support of the great charges of the commonwealth and for the easing of the good subjects therein, who have hitherto borne the greatest share in these burdens’. The definition of ‘notorious delinquent’ was a generous one. A number of bishops were named but the act extended well beyond them to all persons ‘Ecclesiastical or Temporal’ who had raised arms, voluntarily contributed to the royalist war chest, supported the royal armies in any other way, co-operated with robbery and spoil of parliamentarian activists, taken any oath or association against Parliament, or imposed any tax or assessment on behalf of the royalist forces. Such powers were justified in the light of the ‘unnatural war raised against the Parliament’, but it is possible to imagine that such measures might begin to erode support.19
In early May the principle that the royalists should pay was taken further with the imposition of the Fifth and Twentieth Part. Those who had not contributed or lent to the parliamentary cause, or at least had not done so in proportion to their wealth, were to be subject to formal taxation of up to one fifth of the yearly value of their real estate and one twentieth of the value of their personal goods. This was placed in the hands of yet more committees.20 Here were taxes far heavier than Charles had imposed, with little better legal justification; and financial penalties with a much wider impact than the notorious fines of the Personal Rule. There was a real risk that the cure might begin to seem worse than the disease.21
Parliament was in effect improvising a system of government, since it had never previously been an executive body, and many of the functions it was now forced to undertake were therefore pretty much unprecedented. Although this gave it greatly increased powers, it did not necessarily foster efficient use of them. In military matters Parliament ended up with two parallel systems: the defensive forces mustered under the deputy lieutenants and the field armies under the command of the Earl of Essex. As other volunteer forces were raised they were subject to Essex, but the militias continued under local command. When the associations were formed Parliament nominated a major-general for each, but the commissions were formally given by Essex, who also licensed the subordinate commissions issued by regional commanders.22 Essex’s commission had been issued by the parliamentary Committee of Safety, which had been created on 4 July 1642, replacing the Committee of Defence. The liaison