BENEVOLENCE, a species of forced loan or gratuity, and one of the various arbitrary modes of obtaining supplies of money, which, in violation of Magna Charta, were formerly resorted to by the kings of England. The name implies a free contribution, with or without the condition of repayment ; but so early as the rein of Edward IV. the practice had grown into an intolerable grievance. That king's lavish liberality and extravagance induced him to levy benevolences very frequently ; and one of the wisest and most popular acts of his successor, Richard , 111., was to procure the passing of a statute (cap. 2) in the only parliament assembled during his reign, by which benevolences were declared to be illegal; but this statute is so expressed as not clearly to forbid the solicitation of volun tary gifts, and Richard himself afterwards violated its provisions. Henry VII. ex acted benevolences, which were enforced in a very oppressive way. Archbishop Morton, who solicited merchants and others to contribute, employed a piece of logic which obtained the name of " Mor ton's fork." He told those who lived handsomely, that their opulence was mauifested by their expenditure ; and those who lived economically, that their frugality must have made them rich : so that no class could evade him. Cardinal Wolsey, among some other daring projects to raise money for Henry VIII., proposed a benevolence, which the citizens of Lon don lected to, alleging the statute of Richard III. ; but the answer was, that the act of an usurper could not oblige a lawful sovereign. Elizabeth also "sent out her privy seals," for so the circulars demanding a benevolence were termed ; but though individuals were committed to prison for refusing to contribute, she re paid the sums exacted. Lord Coke, in the reign of James I., is said to have at
first declared that the king could cot so licit a benevolence, and then to have re tracted his opinion, and pronounced upon its legality.
The subject underwent a searching in vestigation during the reign of Charles I., as connected with the limitation of the king's prerogative. That king had ap pointed commissioners for the collection of a general loan from every individual, and they had private instructions to re quire not less than a certain proportion of each man's property in land or goods, and had extraordinary powers given them. The name of loan given to this tax was a fiction which the most ignorant could not but detect. Many of the common people were impressed to serve in the navy for refusing to pay ; and a number of the gentry were imprisoned. The de tention of five knights, who sued the Court of King's Bench for their writ of Habeas Corpus, gave rise to a most important question respecting the freedom of English subjects from arbitrary arrest, and out of the discussion which then arose, and the contests respecting the levying of ship money, &c., came the distinct assertion and ultimate establishment of the great principle of English liberty. The 13 Car. II. stat. 1, cap. 4, provides for a voluntary present to his majesty, with a proviso, however, that no aids of that nature can be but by authority of parliament. The Bill of Rights, in 1688, repeats what Magna Charta declared in 1215, that levying of money for or to the use of the crown, by pretence of prerogative, with out grant of parliament, for longer time or in any other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal.
(Hallam's Constitutional History of England, and Turner's History of land.)