(7): Later history of the Crown’s right to tallage the towns.

The Crown continued at intervals to take tallages from London until 1340. It has sometimes been maintained, indeed, that the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297 was intended to abolish this prerogative, and a document once considered an authoritative version of the Confirmatio bore the suggestive title of De tallagio non concedendo. It is now well known that the latter document is unauthentic; while, if the Confirmatio itself was intended to relieve the towns from tallages, it signally failed. Edward III. exacted tallages from London and other towns. Parliament, however, succeeded, in 1340, in passing a statute which abolished unparliamentary taxation of every kind. This act, sometimes styled by modern writers “the real statutum de tallagio non concedendo,” finally settled the law, but did not prevent the King from trying to break that law. Edward frequently disregarded the restrictions placed upon his financial resources, and with varying success. He rarely did so, however, without meeting protests; and the rule of law laid down in the act of 1340 was never repealed.