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Britain Needs Us › 1066 vs Today
Section 03 — The Provocation

1066 vs 2026:
The Number They Don't Want You to See

William the Conqueror took Britain by force. The modern system was built with your consent. So why does it take more?

1066 — Feudal System
~30%

Church tithe (~10%), labour services, cash rents, dues and occasional royal taxation. Imposed by conquest with 7,000 soldiers. No vote. No consent. At least they were honest about it.

2024/25 — Modern System
57.7%

Income Tax + NI + VAT + Council Tax + 40+ stealth levies on your labour, spending, savings and death. You vote every 5 years. But nobody asks where it goes.

You pay 27.7 percentage points more than a medieval serf
Britain's modern citizen contributes proportionally more than those living under feudal conquest — with less say in how it is spent
"In 1066 the extraction was visible. The Norman lord rode through your village and took the grain. In 2024/25 the extraction arrives as thirty separate line items across twelve different agencies, timed to land when you're busy, named to sound reasonable, and designed never to be totalled in one place.

Britain Needs Us totals it. £3,319 a month. From every household. The question is simple: do you know where it goes? Do they?"
Sources · Medieval extraction estimate

The ~30% figure represents a mid-range estimate across free and unfree tenants, combining church tithe (~10%), labour services/cash rents to the lord (~15-20%), feudal dues, and occasional royal taxation. Academic sources: Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989); Junichi Kanzaka, "Villein Rents in Thirteenth-Century England," Economic History Review (2002); Bruce Campbell on manorial economics (LSE). Villeins (unfree serfs) faced higher extraction of ~40-50%; free tenants ~15-25%. The modern 57.7% figure includes all direct, indirect, and stealth taxes per IFS/ONS/HM Treasury methodology.

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Data Sources

Historical data from Domesday Book (1086), academic sources on medieval taxation. Modern figures from HM Treasury PESA July 2025, ONS, OBR, IFS. Last verified: March 2026.