system that was found hard to make effective even in more advanced societies. Hence, from 1334 onward, the following method of apportionment was employed, i.e. a fifteenth and tenth was taken as affording a definite sum measured by the yield on the ancient valuation. As this gave between £38,000 and £39,000 in the aggregate, the fifteenth and tenth became for the future practically a fiscal expression for a sum of about £39,000, the total to be divided or apportioned between the several counties, cities and boroughs according to their former payments. This settlement, which remained in force for centuries and affected all later direct taxes, had the great advantages of certainty and adaptability. The inhabitants of any particular town knew their total liability and could distribute it amongst themselves in the manner most convenient to themselves. From the royal standpoint, the arrangement was also satisfactory, for the fifteenth and tenth could be multiplied (e.g. in 1352 three-tenths and fifteenths were voted for three years), and supplied a stable revenue for the service of the kingdom. Moreover, the power of regulating the policy of the crown by the bestowal or refusal of grants was naturally agreeable to parliament. Thus, all sections of the nation united in support of the system established in 1334, just before the opening of the Hundred Years' War, in connection with which it was particularly serviceable. Poll tax Akin to the above—at any rate in its nature as a direct impost—was the poll or capitation tax. Financial pressure at the close of Edward III's reign (1377) led to the adoption of a tax of fourpence per head on all persons in the kingdom, with mendicants and persons under fourteen years being exempt. This "tallage of groats", which seems to be derived by analogy from the hearth money for Peter's Pence, was followed by the graduated poll taxes of 1379 and 1380, the former ranging in scale from ten marks (£6 13s. 4d.) imposed on royal dukes and viscounts, to six marks on earls, bishops and abbots down to three on barons and to the groat or fourpence on all other persons over sixteen years of age. It proved to be unproductive, only half the estimated yield of £50,000 being obtained. Indeed, the tax of 1380 varied within narrower limits—from twenty shillings to fourpence (or sixty groats to three), with the proviso that the strong should aid the