salt and various textiles. Meat and domestic salt were relieved in 1647, and the taxation became definitely established under the administration of commissioners appointed for the purpose. Powers to allow collection by farmers were granted, a bid for both excise and customs amounting to £1,100,000 in 1657. Confiscations of church and royalist lands, feudal charges and special collections helped to make up the total of £83,000,000 raised during the nineteen years of the revolution. Another change was the removal of the Exchequer to Oxford, which nevertheless left the real fiscal machinery at the disposal of those committees that directed the affairs of Parliament. Under Cromwell the Exchequer was re-established (1654) in a form suited for such financial change, the office of Treasurer being placed in the hands of commissioners. The Restoration and beyond A complete reconstruction of the revenue system became necessary during the Restoration. The feudal tenures and dues, with the prerogative rights of purveyance and pre-emption, could not be restored and careful inquiry showed that whilst, before the Civil War, the king's annual revenue amounted to just under £900,000, the needs of the restored monarchy would now be about £1,200,000 per annum. The commons therefore set about raising such a sum, an hereditary excise on beer and ale being voted in as compensation for the loss of old, feudal dues, whilst temporary excises on spirits, vinegar, coffee, chocolate and tea were put in place. All differences between old and new customs and subsidies had disappeared under the Commonwealth. The General or Great Statute (1660) provided a scale of duties, 5% on imports and exports, with special duties on wines and woollen cloths accompanied by a new book of rates. A house tax levied after the French pattern on each hearth, was introduced and established in 1662. Poll taxes were used as an extraordinary resource, as were the last subsidies, voted in 1663, and then forever abandoned. Licences on retailers and fees on law proceedings were further aids to revenue, which, in the later years of Charles II, and in the short reign of his successor, was kept up to the level of increasing expenditure, but only with difficulty. The Commonwealth assessments were revived on several occasions, indirect taxation being made more rigorous by the imposition of extra duties on brandy, tobacco and sugar as well as French linens and silks. One major development was the placing of customs