ABSTRACT
The period between the meeting of the Long Parliament and the Treaty of Utrecht is of great importance in English financial history. It marks the transition between two very different systems of finance, those of the early seventeenth and of the eighteenth centuries, and it is one of the few formative periods in English tax policy and opinion. The most important aspect of the development of the seventeenth century was the adoption of income as the standard for all who paid direct taxes. Customs duties in the eighteenth century became taxes almost entirely on imported commodities, levied at high rates and imposed for two purposes, both of which were important, revenue and trade policy. Customs revenue was treated simply as part of the general revenue of the State, and the protection of trade was a subsidiary service required of the Navy compared with its employment in the Dutch and French wars which stretched across the period.
