(4): London’s attempts to escape tallage.

There is ample evidence that London in John’s reign was galled by the liability to tallage, and was ready to seize any loophole of escape. John’s letter to the city in 1206 refers to the serious damage done to his capital by the manner in which tallages had been assessed and collected. A document compiled about 1210, in the interests of London, partly from authentic sources, purporting to be a Charter by William I., declares that all freemen shall hold their lands and possessions “free from every unjust exaction and from every tallage.” Finally, Miss Bateson in 1902 called attention to a document of nine articles, which seem to be the heads of a petition prepared by the Londoners, probably in 1215, in which they ask inter alia the abolition of all tallages except per communem assensum regni et civitatis.