an ancient duty on wine and other goods, the origin of which seems to have been this: About the 21st of Edward III. complaint was made that merchants were robbed and murdered on the seas. The king thereupon, with the consent of the peers, levied a duty of 2s. on every ton of wine, and 12d. in the pound on all goods imported; which was treated as illegal by the commons. About twenty-five years after, the king, when the knights of shires were returned home, obtained a like grant from the citizens and burgesses, and the year after it was regularly granted in parliament. These duties were sometimes diminished and sometimes increased; at length they seem to have been fixed at 3s. tonnage and 1s. poundage. They were at first usually granted only for a stated term of years, as, for two years in 5 Ric. II.; but in Henry VI.'s time they were granted him for life by a statute in the 31st year of his reign; and again to Edward IV. for the term of his life also: since which time they were regularly granted to all his successors for life, sometimes at the first, sometimes at other subsequent parliaments, till the reign of Charles I., when, as Clarendon expresses it, his ministers were not sufficiently solicitous for a renewal of the legal grant. And yet these imposts were imprudently and unconstitutionally levied and taken, without consent of parliament, for fifteen years together; which was one of the causes of those unhappy discontented. The king found it expedient to pass an act, whereby he renounced all power in the crown of levying the duty of tonnage and poundage without the express consent of parliament; and also all power of imposition upon any merchandises whatever. Upon the Restoration, this duty was granted to King Charles II. for life, and so it was to his two immediate successors; but by three several statutes, 9 Anne, c. 6, 1 Geo. I. c. 12, and 3 Geo. I. c. 7, it is made perpetual, and mortgaged for the debt of the public.