It was significant of the economic condition of
England that the great custom was a tax on exports, not imports, and
that, with the exception of leather, it was a tax on raw materials.
Granted the more willingly since the main incidence of it was upon the
foreign merchants, who bought up English wool for the looms of Flanders
and Brabant, the custom proved a source of revenue which could easily
be manipulated, increased, and assigned in advance to the Italian
financiers, willing to lend money to a necessitous king. A new step in
our financial history was attained when this tax on trade steps into
the place so long held by the taxes on land, from which the Normans and
Angevins had derived their enormous revenue.
The statute of Westminster the First had a long series of fellows. Next
year came the statute of Rageman, which supplemented an earlier inquest
into abuses by instituting a special inquiry in cases of trespass. In
1277 the first Welsh war interrupted the current of legislation. The
break was compensated for in 1278 by the passing of the important
statute of Gloucester, the consummation of a policy which Edward had
adopted as soon as he set foot on English soil.
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