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In 1643 the Long Parliament created a number of new taxes to finance the army it had raised to fight Charles I. The pressure of civil war forced them to innovate. The result was a fundamental transformation in the nature of English parliamentary taxation. These were also some of the most important...
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Public bills ostensibly affecting the entire realm could be significantly influenced and shaped by the self-interest and prejudices of the legislators dealing with them. The Irish Cattle Bill was introduced in the autumn of 1666 in order to benefit English landowners by prohibiting the import of...
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During the reigns of William III and Queen Anne backbench concerns about the vast sums of money spent on war led to a series of parliamentary commissions to investigate government expenditure.
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The London Orphans’ Debt was the substantial debt of money which was owed by the Corporation of the City of London to widows and orphans of freemen for whom legacies had been deposited in the City’s treasury. Over the course of the seventeenth century these funds had been frequently raided to...