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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 977589" data-attributes="member: 5328">10% is a "gentle" tax take by modern standards (most advanced countries take over 45% when you take all tiers of government into account and include indirect taxes). But it is not "gentle" by ancient, mediaeval, or even early modern standards.The income tax that got Britain through the Napoleonic Wars was sixpence in the pound (2.5%), and applied only to incomes over 120 pounds per year. It was considered onerous, and promptly repealed when the wars ended (both times). The income tax that got Britain through the First World War started at a shilling in the pound (5%) (and has never been repealed since, only increased).In mediaeval England there were no taxes in the normal course of things. Taxes were levied only on special occasions such as wars and the knighting of the King's sons and the marriage of his daughters. In the normal course of things that King was expected to run the government out of the income of his own estates. That is gentle taxation!Now, the King of England in middle and High mediaeval times was the richest king in Western Europe. He ruled about 6 million people, and in the 13th century his income was about 30,000 pounds per year. The wages of an unskilled labourer at this time was about 1.5 pence per day. So the king of 1 million subjects earning 1 SP per day might on the same standard be earning 80,000 GP per annum. But not (principally) through taxes.This king is very nearly as rich as the one you calculated. But you seem to have got the cost of Raise Dead wrong. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Abbot of St Denis don't have Mitres of Resurrection or even Palliums of True Resurrection there is something seriously wrong. And if they do, the King can afford to have everyone who dies in his kingdom Raised, provided that the bodies are to hand.Adds a new meaning to the idea of Habeas Corpus.Now obviously, the amount that a mediaeval kingdom could and would pay up to resurrect a king who died in battle would be comparable to the amount it could and would cough up to ransom one who was captured. For some indication, the English paid a ransom of 150,000 marks (100,000 pounds) for Richard I in 1194, and after the Battle of Poitiers the French agreed to pay (but never managed to raise) 4,000,000 ecus d'or to ransom Jean II.Regards,Agback</blockquote>

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