Prisage
Archive
Week forty-seven: PRISAGE (probability 3312), by David Sutton
PRISAGE is the former right of the English kings to two tuns of wine from every ship importing twenty tuns or more. In what may seem our own excessively taxed age, it may come as some comfort to reflect that historically the common man and hard-working citizen has been screwed every which way more or less since time began by fat cats in positions of power desiring to finance wars, royal weddings, large tombs and the like. Here are some other words for ancient taxes, tolls and duties, that must often have made the mediaeval peasant wonder if it was really worth getting up in the morning:
| CARUCAGE | a tax on the CARUCATE, first imposed by Richard I in 1198, a CARUCATE being as much land as a team of oxen could plough in a season |
| CORNAGE | a feudal service, being a form of rent fixed by the number of horned cattle |
| FUMAGE | a tax on owning a hearth |
| GABELLE | a tax on salt |
| GRAINAGE | a duty on grain |
| HIDAGE | a tax formerly paid to the kings of England for every hide of land |
| LASTAGE | a duty formerly paid for the right of carrying goods, etc |
| MERCHET | a fine paid to a lord for the marriage of a daughter |
| METAGE | a charge for having your goods weighed |
| MURAGE | a rate levied for upkeep of a city's walls |
| PAVAGE | a charge for paving streets |
| PONTAGE | a toll paid on bridges, or a tax for repairing bridges |
| POUNDAGE | a charge for keeping stray cattle |
| SCAVAGE | a toll formerly levied in boroughs on goods offered for sale by outsiders |
| SESS | a local rate for maintenance of soldiers |
| STREETAGE | a toll for street facilities |
| TALLAGE | a tax levied by the Norman and Angevin kings on their demesne lands and towns, or by a feudal lord on his tenants |
| THIRLAGE | a form of servitude by which the grain produced on certain lands had to be ground (or at least paid for) at a certain mill |
| TITHE, TYTHE, TEIND | the tenth of the produce of land and stock taken as a tax for church purposes |
| WARDCORN | the payment of corn in place of military service |
Against these must of course be set certain traditional rights like TURBARY, the right to take peat, and PANNAGE, the right to pasture one's swine in a forest, but we'll leave those for another day.