SHIP-MG:MY, a tax lir.c1 recourse to in England at various times, hut especially in the reign of Charles I., for the equipment of a fleet. Iir 1007, when the country was threatened by the Panes, a law was made obliging all proprietors of 310 bides of land to equip a vessel for the protection of the coast. Elizabeth, at the time of the threat ened Spanish invasion, required the various ports to fit out a certain number of ships at their own charge; and so great anxiety was shown by the public for the national defense, that London and some other ports furnished twice as many vessels as had been i demanded. It was in 1d26 that Charles first had recourse to an impost of this deseripz tion, requiring each of the maritime towns, with the assistance of the neighboring counties, to arm a given number of vessels, 20 being required from London. In 1634 the tax was extended over the whole kingdom. A general spirit of resistance was immediately aroused, not so much in consideration of the amount of the tax, as of the objectionable feature, that it was imposed by the arbitrary authority of the king alone, which had come to be regarded as an unwarrantable stretch of the royal pre rogative. In 1637 the celebrated JohnHampden, a gentleman of property in Bucking
hamshire, resolved to confront the power of the government by disputing the legality of this exercise of the prerogative, and resolutely refused payment of the impost, an example in which he was followed by nearly the whole county to he belonged. He was prosecuted in the exchequer chamber for non-payment, and his trial was watched with great interest and anxiety by the nation on account of the constitutional point involved in it. The judges, four excepted, pronounced in favor of the crown; but the trial had the effect of thoroughly arousing the public mind to the danger of the impo sition of taxes by the royal authority alone The long parliament, shortly after its meeting in 1040, voted ship-money illegal, and the sheriffs and others who had been employed in assessing it or collecting it to be delinquents; and canceled the sentence against Hampden.