Tallage

Town dwellers paid tallage; tolls were charged for certain roads, bridges and town entrances; and overseas trade generated customs duties on imports and exports. Market transactions and fair licences brought further payments. The economic importance of towns thus went beyond the prosperity of individual inhabitants: they supported exchange across the country and supplied money to the king.

Kings treated their possessions as resources on which the Crown could draw. They could impose a tallage, an arbitrary levy, and interfere with debts owed to Jewish lenders.