Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 83

Besides this powerful economic bond which produced a unity from within, as time went on there came constant pressure from without which tended to the same result. Especially after the Conquest and down to the middle of the thirteenth century, the vill was being constantly used by the central authorities as the lowest unit of local government. As the Crown interfered more and more with local questions, so we find more and more reference in public documents to the vill, first one and then another duty being thrust upon it. The middle ages were fond of the very rough-and-ready, but effective, method of imposing a duty upon a group of people and holding them jointly and severally bound to perform it; any arrangement for apportioning the burden among the individual members of the group was their private concern, the Crown refusing to take any notice or to give any assistance to the process. At the close of the twelfth century the Crusades caused a good deal of taxation. The method by which it was assessed was simple; each county was assigned a quota proportionate to its estimated wealth (this estimate is the technical meaning of the word taxatio); the county then divided this quota in a similar manner among the hundreds and the vills, and so a vill would be responsible for raising a particular sum of money—no doubt by negotiation among its members, although often under the eye of royal taxers.