been no general treasury at the disposal of the hundred or of the
county, but merely certain treasurers charged with the disbursement of
this or that special collection for this or that special purpose. A
collection is made by order of the justices, for instance, in certain
hundreds, or throughout the shire, for the support of the prisoners in
the county gaol, and a treasurer for the fund is appointed. Or it may
be that this treasurer is a more or less permanent official. And so
with collections for hospitals, for houses of correction, for great
bridges, etc. If the constables levied more than was sufficient for a
parish, or if the contemplated disbursement turned out to be less than
originally estimated, the surplus, if the justices had no immediate
use for it, might be returned to that parish to go back into the
pockets of the rate payers.[320] Furthermore, it seems scarcely
accurate in Elizabethan times to speak of any _county rate_,[321] for
there was no recognized basis of assessment common to all parishes,
unless it were at any given time the then prevailing subsidy rate, and
a rating according to the subsidy books by the justices would fail to
reach many whom a parish rating might attain. As a matter of fact the
justices, when they had a large sum to levy on the county at large,
almost always apportioned it in lump sums among the hundreds, or among
the parishes of their respective divisions, according to "the bygnes
or smallnes of their parishes."[322] It comes, then, to all practical
intents and purposes to this: that each parish is left to produce
according to its own local methods, or rating, the wherewithal for
carrying on county government.

While in local government itself the parishioners have practically no
voice, the large measure of freedom they enjoy for the devising of
ways and means to meet the demands made upon them (though they have no
option whatever in granting or withholding supplies) gives to the