Note 152 — Chapter III · THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.[82]

Taxation, in our modern sense, is seldom a matter of great importance in an early state of society. Public or demesne lands, various imposts on lands, feudal dues and compositions of various kinds, largely supply its place. Taxation in the modern sense is scarcely heard of in our earliest history, except for one shameful and unhappy purpose, that of buying off the Danish invaders. For this purpose a real tax, the famous Danegeld, was levied, and levied, as appears by several passages of the Chronicles, by the joint authority of the King and his Witan. So, during the same unhappy reign of Æthelred, we shall find the King and his Witan laying on an impost, of which I shall speak more when I come to it in the course of my narrative, one of a kind intermediate between ship-money and an Athenian λειτουργία.