Taxation in medieval England

Taxation in medieval England was the system of raising money for royal and governmental expenses. During the Anglo-Saxon period, the main forms of taxation were land taxes, although custom duties and fees to mint coins were also imposed. The most important tax of the late Anglo-Saxon period was the geld, a land tax first regularly collected in 1012 to pay for mercenaries. After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the geld continued to be collected until 1162, but it was eventually replaced with taxes on personal property and income.

Britannia, the southern and central part of the island of Great Britain, was a province of the Roman Empire until the Roman departure from Britain in around 400 AD. The Emperor Honorius told the Britons in 410 that they were responsible for their own defence, and from then until the landing of Augustine of Canterbury in the Kingdom of Kent in 597 as part of the Gregorian mission, little is known about Britain's governmental structures or financial systems.

The first unequivocal mention of taxation in Anglo-Saxon England comes from the Law of Æthelberht, the law code of King Æthelberht of Kent, which specifies that fines from judicial cases were to be paid to the king. No other forms of taxes are mentioned in Æthelberht's law code, but other forms of taxation are implied by the grant of an exemption from taxation given by another king, Wihtred of Kent, to a church. Other mentions of taxes are contained in the law code of King Ine of Wessex. Although other early Anglo-Saxon kings are not mentioned as collecting taxes, the medieval writer Bede does mention that land in Anglesey and the Isle of Man were divided up in hides, defined in Ine's law as a unit of land that could be used for collecting food and other goods from the king's subjects. A document from the 7th or 8th century, the Tribal Hidage, shows that much of the Anglo-Saxon lands had been divided into hides by that time. Charters from the time of King Offa of Mercia show that tolls were collected on trade, and it was during Offa's reign that coinage in silver pennies was first introduced into Anglo-Saxon England. Coinage became a royal right, and was probably introduced to make payment of taxes easier.

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