The baronial order assembled at Runnymead to force the hand of the king.  From that time forward their power increased, while the king’s power waned.  But there was no Runnymead for the Saxon cultivator.  He continued, as to this day he continues, to pay the share of his cattle and crops to the Norman baron or his successor, in return for services—­no longer rendered—­to the king.  The whole civil state of England, therefore, depends on the principle of private taxation; the Norman barons and their successors receiving a share of the cattle and crops of the whole country, year after year, generation after generation, century after century, as payment for services long become purely imaginary, and even in the beginning rendered not to the cultivator who was taxed, but to the head of the armed invaders, who stood ready to enforce the payment.  The Constitution of England embodies this very principle even now, in the twentieth century.  Two of the three Estates,—­King, Lords and Commons,—­in whom the law-making power is vested, represent the Norman conquest, while even the third, still called the Lower House, boasts of being “an assembly of gentlemen,” that is, of those who possess the right of private taxation of land, the right to claim a share of the cattle and crops of the whole country without giving anything at all in return.

This is the system which English influence slowly introduced into Ireland, and with the reign of the first Stuarts the change was practically complete, guaranteed by law, and enforced by armed power.  The tribesmen were now tenants of their former elected chief, in whom the ownership of the tribal land was invested; the right of privately taxing the tribesmen was guaranteed to the chief by law, and a share of all cattle and crops was his by legal right, not as head of the tribe, but as owner of the land, with power to dispossess the tribesmen if they failed to pay his tax.

But very many districts had long before this come under the dominion of Norman adventurers, like the De Courcys, the De Lacys, and the rest, of whose coming we have told.  They also enjoyed the right of private taxation over the districts under their dominion, and, naturally, had power to assign this right to others,—­not only to their heirs, but to their creditors,—­or even simply to sell the right of taxing a certain district to the highest bidder in open market.

The tribal warfare of the Middle Ages had brought many of the old chiefs and Norman lords into open strife with the central power, with the result that the possessions of unsuccessful chiefs and lords were continually assigned by the law-courts to those who stood on the side of the central power, the right to tax certain districts thus changing hands indefinitely.  The law-courts thus came into possession of a very potent weapon, whether for rewarding the friends or punishing the enemies of the central power, or simply for the payment of personal and partisan favors.