Tallages and other taxes for the financial benefit of the community have often been levied from some but not others, so that the middle people and poor people inhabiting and making a living in the city feel themselves injured and oppressed. Therefore the collectors of such taxes and the receivers and chamberlains are to give an account under oath of such monies each 8th September (and at other times if necessary) before the twenty-four, or a quorum of those being in the city. After having accounted, and delivered receipts and any arrears owing, they shall be given an acquittance [of future liability] for the time when they served as collectors. [The purpose of] this is so that it shall be publicly known how the levied money was spent, and so that the middle and poor people are not excessively burdened [by taxation] while the greater people are exempted therefrom. Such taxes are to be imposed [i.e. assessed?] by the more judicious men elected at need by the community from each of the crafts in the city.

[Local taxation had been a bone of contention since at least the beginning of the fourteenth century. A protest about unauthorized taxation by the bailiffs and the rich had been made to the king by the "middle people" in a petition of ca.1326, and it may have been these that gave rise to this chapter; however, complaints about taxation are sufficiently commonplace that we cannot use the petition as a device to date this chapter with confidence.]