But these failed in their turn; and at the close of the year the Parliament again fell back on a severer Poll-tax.

One of the attractions of the new mode of taxation seems to have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, paid in this way a larger share of the burthens of the state; but the chief ground for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its bringing within the net of the tax-gatherer a class which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free labourer, the village smith, the village tiler.

But few courses could have been more dangerous.

The Poll-tax not only brought the pressure of the war home to every household; it goaded into action precisely the class which was already seething with discontent.

The strife between labour and capital was going on as fiercely as ever in country and in town.