subsidies were granted for specified fixed terms, albeit that the victory of Agincourt gained a life grant for Henry V. After the enthronement of Edward IV, however, the tenth was literally taken up and voted (1472) by Parliament as a special military provision only. However, it failed to raise the necessary revenue, thus forcing the King to fall back on older forms of grant. Extra taxes on aliens were levied under both Lancastrian and Yorkist rulers but with little profit. The most original contribution of Edward IV's reign to fiscal policy was that of benevolences or payments by wealthy subjects of sums requested by the king. Voluntary in form, these were, in fact, compulsory, and later became one of the great grievances against which Parliament had to struggle. Broader financial issues marked the Tudor period as the era of national monarchies arrived, necessitating the maintenance of greater military and naval forces, as well as more costly machineries of administration. Both external and fiscal policy were affected by the set of ideas that developed into mercantilism while the state of finance reflected the monarch's personal character, particularly in the 16th century, so that decided contrasts could be found. For example, Henry VII carried his desire to replenish the royal treasury depleted by the Wars of the Roses to the point of establishing a "reign of fiscal terror", through the rigid enforcement of feudal incidents rather than appeals for parliamentary aids, and the establishment of a system of "Chamber Finance" run by the staff of his Privy Chamber mirroring the functioning of the slow and inefficient Exchequer. He was followed by the lavish prodigality of Henry VIII while Elizabeth's financial policy was very different from that of either. In addition, the desire for a vigorous foreign policy, the hope of encouraging native industry and the sentiment of retaliation against the trade regulations of other countries interfered with the strict aim of earlier times, namely the obtaining of the largest possible yields. The whole public economy was regarded as existing only for the furtherance of national power. It is this more complex policy together with new influences such as the discovery of America, the Renaissance and the Reformation that gives special interest to the financial problems of the sixteenth century. The first head of public income at the disposal of the sovereign was that of the crown lands. Although these were diminished over