Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 29 
ments, or hereditaments was not forthcoming, the 
commissioners might “ decree and ordain” them from 
their owners. Crown land was to be subject to the 
same laws as all other land! 
It is evident that the general principle of the early 
sewers rates or taxes for sea defence was that they 
should be levied in respect of all kinds of property 
liable to danger, in proportions determined by the 
extent or value of that property. But the ordinances 
and statutes certainly do not make it very clear to the 
modern mind from whom the taxes were to be levied 
when the owner and the occupier or tenant were dif- 
ferent persons. On this point we may take the opinion 
of Mr. Serjeant Callis, who delivered lectures on the 
Statute of Sewers (23 Hen. VIIL, c. 5), at Gray's 
Inn, in August 1622. As he was for many years a 
commissioner of sewers in his native county of Lin- 
colnshire, he must have been acquainted with the 
practice as well as the strict law of the matter. He 
says that we must “ distinguish and make a difference 
between annual repairs in ordinary things and extra- 
ordinary repairs. For to furnish the defence with petty 
reparations, they shall be laid only upon the lessee for 
years or for life; but if a new wall, bank, or goat or 
sewer, be to be built new and erected, or if the ancient 
defences be decayed in the main timber, or in the 
principal parts thereof, here as well the lessor as the 
lessee shall be put to the charge, for these things be not 
ordinary ‘and annual charges, but do reach from the 
beginning of the lease to the top of the inheritance. 
1 Before this time the king had often voluntarily contributed his 
share, recognising that the sea would not respect his lands any 
more than that of Lis subjects. See Dugdale, Embanking, pp. 88-go.