Keywords: medieval economy towns cities taxation tolls customs administration officers commerce revenues charters privileges exemption smuggling police

 A cost of doing business 

The levying of taxes on commercial activities – sometimes on the goods imported into or exported from towns, sometimes on transactions themselves (or the privilege of being assigned a place at which to conduct transactions) – was commonly one of the sources of income used by an urban community to help pay the fee farm upon which urban trading privileges and powers of self-government were dependent. Likewise, it became in the Late Middle Ages an important source of revenue for the king, capitalizing on the growth England's involvement in international trade. Such impositions were not liked by merchants or lesser traders, for they were just another cut into profits; since the interests in favour of such taxes were stronger than those in favour of free trade, efforts both legal and illegal were made to escape payment.

 Local tolls 

It is not clear how ancient were impositions of tolls. But that exemptions from tolls were among the earliest liberties which townsmen sought to acquire from their overlords indicates that at least some kinds of tolls predated urban self-government; and there are a number of tolls with Anglo-Saxon names. The revenue from tolls was one reason why lords were motivated to foster the development of settlements, through the introduction of official markets and fairs, or even to found new towns.

It became a standard feature of borough charters for the recipient to be granted exemption from urban tolls elsewhere. If the king were the lord of the borough, he could make this exemption applicable to all the other towns of which he was lord throughout the kingdom. A town with a lesser lord could win exemption from only the smaller number of towns with the same lord, unless that lord could acquire an extension from his own lord, the king. Particularly in the thirteenth century, this led to disputes between boroughs, as the right to collect tolls on one side and the right of exemption on the other came into conflict. Urban authorities must have had some means of keeping track of which towns were exempt, which not. We know of lists of such towns compiled by Southampton and Exeter, for instance, while some towns made and filed reference copies of the exemption grants to others.

As well, they needed some means of identifying whether a given trader was an enfranchised member of an exempt town. One of the reasons urban authorities compiled lists of freemen, or members of the merchant gild, was because those individuals were exempt from tolls. Exemption from toll provided a significant advantage to enfranchised members of the community, the lower overhead allowing them to sell more competitively; it was an incentive for residents to purchase the franchise, thereby providing revenue for urban administration. Not surprising then that town authorities made efforts to acquire and defend exemption privileges. Since lists of freemen were not available to the towns that traders visited, a claim by an individual trader to be exempt may have rested upon a solemn personal oath, or on corroboration from fellow traders from his home town or from residents of the visited town who knew the trader. In the absence of clear evidence, towns were inclined to exact toll and let the aggrieved trader try to claim it back in the courts. Towards the close of the Middle Ages we find examples of letters testimonial issued by borough authorities to identify specific merchants as being citizens, although these may have been only in exceptional cases of individuals who had experienced difficulties in the past.

With exemption from tolls being a common royal grant to boroughs, it seems likely that those paying the tolls were largely residents of non-urban settlements, town-dwellers who had not taken out citizenship, and foreigners. Even in those cases, tolls were not applicable to necessaries bought for personal or household use (or, by extension, bought by a servant for his lord's use), but only to goods that the owner was intending to sell, although sometimes it was necessary to purchase membership in the franchise or the gild in order to be assured of this.

Lists of the tolls payable on different kinds of goods have survived in a number of towns' records, and a few of these are reproduced here. There are fewer records of specific collections (i.e. listing payments by specific individuals over a set period); perhaps such detailed itemized records were not commonly kept, although such that exist give no internal evidence of being exceptional, and there must have been some method of issuing some kind of receipt, tally, or other proof-of-payment to those who had paid, particularly in cases where individuals apparently could pay a one-time toll to cover multiple shipments over a period of time. There does not seem to have been any kind of national standard defining how much toll should be paid on particular types of goods; yet, although this was presumably left up to local authorities to decide, the amounts levied seem to be broadly similar from town to town – possibly there was some form of consultation between towns on the matter.

These local tolls might be collected at the main points providing entrance to and exit from a town – and were an incentive to reinforce such points of entry/egress with barred gates. However, tolls could also be paid directly to borough officials within the town, such as at municipal buildings called "tollbooths", or in the marketplace and at harbourside (tollbooths were often set up in such locations); in these cases, a buyer was going to have to prove to the wardens of the exits from town that toll had been duly paid on any goods they were carrying out – or prove that the goods had been purchased for personal use, rather than resale.

Beyond the standard local import/export tolls, which could apply to merchandize regardless of whether it was to be sold in the location where toll was demanded or was just passing through, special additional tolls often existed or arose later; for example:

• anchorage or quayage, imposed on ships for the right (in essence) to load or unload goods;
• cranage, for a service in assisting with loading and unloading;
• pesage or tronage for the (requisite) service of weighing merchandize;
• pontage, pavage and murage, surtaxes for the particular purpose of building or maintaining the town bridges, roads, or defences – all parts of the physical infrastructure that made commercial activities easier or more secure.

Some of the above could be imposed only by specific permission of the lord of the borough, for a set period, typically just a few years, but equally typically renewable. The burden of these tolls fell largely on the shoulders of outsiders; so, again, towns tried to obtain exemptions for their citizens. Certain other exactions, such as stallage (the right to present wares for sale on a market stall), were in their origin a kind of toll, but came to be treated more along the lines of what we would today consider as licence payments, since they were not necessarily based on the volume or value of the goods for sale and they might be purchased to cover an extended period. Towns appointed minor officers to take responsibility for collection of tolls. As time wore on, some experimented with farming out the revenue sources – i.e. leasing the revenues to an individual for a set period, in return for a lump-sum payment negotiated in advance (e.g. at Ipswich); it was expected that this would provide a reliable income while reducing administrative costs, although farmers were not always able to meet their commitments.

 National customs 

As the system of royal administration became more complex, more assertive, and more truly national in scope, a second system of customs collection was created. Ancient customs such as lastage and scavage, which had often come into the hands of local lords, were supplemented by royal prises – notably on wine, which took the form of an in-kind exaction of wine for the king's use. In the early thirteenth century, King John introduced a monetary duty on imports and exports and appointed a corp of officials to collect the new tax, but this experiment lasted only a few years. Experimentation was resumed in the latter part of the century and led to (1275) a duty on wool, woolfells and hides which lasted through the rest of the Middle Ages. Additional customs followed and, by mid-fourteenth century had more or less consolidated into a set comprising:

• the 1275 custom;
• an additional subsidy on wool, woolfells and hides;
• the "petty custom", which amalgamated a custom introduced in 1303 on goods other than wool, woolfells, hides, and wine, and a custom on cloth (sometimes called pannage) introduced in 1347 which had different rates for English merchants than for foreign merchants;
• and a subsidy on tunnage and poundage.

The purpose of customs was, in some cases, to protect domestic industry and commerce by imposing a surcharge on commerce conducted by foreigners, but in others simply to raise revenue for the king. The customs system, together with other legislation, helped English merchants win control of English commerce away from foreigners – with the exception of the favoured Hanseatic merchants – but this did not endear the customs to those English merchants who had to pay them, nor to foreign merchants.

Although 1275 marked the beginnings of a permanent national system of customs administration, with a certain number of ports designated as collection centres, customs collection was initially in the hands of existing royal officials, or farmed out to private individuals or consortia. In the fourteenth century, however, the designated ports became involved in choosing, or nominating, local collectors along with other officials responsible for related duties, such as searchers (one of whose duties was to prevent the import of counterfeit coinage or unlicensed export of gold and silver), and troners and weighers (whose work was necessary to the estimation of the volume of goods imported/exported and therefore the amount of customs due). Nonetheless, these officers remained answerable to, and paid by, the king. Mid-century there was further experimentation with farming out the customs to private consortia, because the king needed money for the French war.

 Smuggling 

Although the term "smuggling" was not in use in the Middle Ages, attempts to evade tolls and customs were rife. Sufficiently so that the central government appointed officers known as searchers, charged with combatting smuggling, and others known as controllers, to keep a duplicate copy of customs records as a check on the honesty of the collectors. While foreign merchants appear to have felt it wiser to purchase exemptions from customs, English merchants who knew the lie of the land better tried a number of strategies for avoiding payment. There was a long shoreline, and very few royal officers to patrol it.

One strategy might be to try to land goods elsewhere than at ports where customs were collected, or similarly to sneak goods into, or through, a town without passing a checkpoint. Another was to suborn collectors – easier for merchants who were themselves in such office; but for those who were not, the officer was often one of their colleagues, a fellow entrepreneur who might be receptive to an under-the-table arrangement. There appears to have been a good deal of corruption in the customs service, in terms for example of embezzlement, bribery, or complicity in smuggling, although we are perhaps somewhat biased because surviving documentation tends to focus on the dishonest, rather than the honest, officials.

A further strategy was for resident merchants to pretend that the goods of outsiders were their own, and therefore not subject to tolls. The numerous by-laws against this offence (see examples at Ipswich, Maldon, Norwich, and Yarmouth) are themselves an indicator of how prevalent was this form of evasion.

 Further reading 

BAKER, Robert. "The English Customs Service, 1307-1341: A Study of Medieval Administration," Journal of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol.51, pt.6 (1961), 3-76.

GRAS, Norman Scott Brien. The Early English Customs System, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918.