William's taxation of the church and the recovery of the church's property and power naturally caused a fierce secular struggle between William and the papacy.

For this reason, William was excommunicated by Pope Leo IX, which led to the Scots invasion of the south.

Fortunately, William relented to Pope Leo IX in time, and only after paying a lot of price did he restore his papacy and restore peace to the pope.

However, as long as William does not stop controlling and claiming the Church of England, this contradiction will not disappear, and when Leo IX has his free hands, he will definitely target William again.

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William's policies during these two years were somewhat unpopular, and were regarded as "harsh" by the aristocracy, clergy, merchants, and gentry.

Due to the frequency of wars, William often had to recruit the armies of his vassal nobles into the wars, but many times due to various factors, he could not recruit all the vassals in the kingdom.

Moreover, William had always despised the levies of the vassal nobles, believing that they were far less powerful than his own standing army, and that they were inconvenient to deploy and command.

Therefore, William demanded that the vassal nobles choose between personally leading the feudal army to serve or paying for their service.

Thus the feudal military service was changed to payment, which William called shield money.

In addition, William imposed a war tax on all purchases, and for every pound of goods traded, a penny was drawn, which at the time was equal to 40pence.

William extended the toll tax levied on his domain to the kingdoms of England and the Norman kingdoms under his rule, taxing goods entering and leaving the kingdom.

Wool and cotton textiles, weapons, grain, and wine were the main commodities of import and export, and William, in addition to setting up tax cards on major transportation arteries and collecting customs duties directly at ports, also controlled imports and exports by selling import and export licenses at high prices, which in turn greatly expanded his customs revenues.

In general, however, William received very limited tax revenues because of the chaotic administration of import and export duties in the Kingdom of England and the corruption of tax officials.

Reform of the tax system was gradual, and William's lack of professional tax officials and lack of adequate oversight led to rampant corruption.

To this end, he had to set up a special tax court, which was tried by no less than 60 tax officials every year, and the stolen goods confiscated amounted to 30,000 pounds.

At the same time, William also opened two administrative and tax schools in London and Winchester, and established a university in Rouen to train tax officers and executives.

William also began to impose a general business tax, and his near-catastrophic taxation of commerce and his series of pro-commercial policies went almost simultaneously.

He raised the original goods taxes and customs duties, imposed a new business tax, and to this end increased the number of tax inspectors, notaries and inspectors.

Commerce in England and the Norman kingdom was shackled by administrative snares, and like flower growers, only merchants under the direction of the king and the government could do business in the country.

At the same time, a large number of lucrative industries were monopolized by the Normandy consortium, a royal conglomerate, and the business of the Lombards, Italians, and Jews suffered a huge blow.

On the other hand, Norman business was supported by William and the government, and as long as the Norman merchant houses were owned, they received tax and administrative benefits.

These foreign merchants were of no benefit to William, they could not contribute funds to the kingdom, and they were unwilling to respond to William's call to donate, but they always lay on the kingdom and sucked the blood, and took pounds and gold coins from the kingdom's hands, which he absolutely did not allow.

Compared to these foreigners, William trusted the merchants under his control, who were also the spokesmen of the country's aristocracy, most of whom served the Norman nobles, and most of their business belonged to the Norman nobles.

As a result, William looked at his own merchants differently, and even devoured the property of other merchants with them.

William's expropriation of foreign merchants, commerce, and town fairs, and the Lombards, Jews, and Italians, crushed by heavy taxes, preferred to ship Oriental goods by sea to Rouen and Wessex and then leave them rather than invest in England.

Only foreign businessmen like William were treated equally.

In addition, William also tried to establish a direct tax system, including property tax, inheritance tax, income tax, chimney tax, window tax, marriage tax, etc., but was resolutely resisted by the people and it was very difficult to implement.

For example, in February 1049, he began to levy a sales tax on a type of goods, which caused an uproar in Rouen, which led to a boycott by the towns, and finally William had to suspend the sales tax.

William's "harsh administration of taxes" was somewhat compelling, and since he took charge of the Duchy of Normandy, he has experienced as many as five major wars in ten years, and there have been several rebellions in the country.

The constant wars led him to search for money, even reaching out to the coffers of the Church, and collecting taxes again and again by persecuting the Jews.

In 1048 last year alone, William received £44,000 from the Jews.

From another point of view, William's approach seems to be a continuation of the practice of the feudal aristocracy and manor owners over many centuries.

The difference is that these revenues have become levied by the crown and have become a common practice throughout the royal domain.

But it is precisely this that makes its revenue mechanism a new, national, more authoritative and modern objectionable tax policy.

In general, William's growing power led to the establishment of various fiscal policies leading the way in his time, greatly expanding his own revenues and thus strengthening the power of the king.

Although the growth of royal revenues could not keep up with the sharp increase in expenditure demand, administrative revenues did not account for a large proportion of government revenues, and William's direct tax system was difficult to implement and enforce, it at least laid the foundation for later reforms.

William believed that with the further centralization of royal power and the development of fiscal management and taxation systems, the direct tax system would eventually be fully rolled out within the kingdom.

At this time, in addition to land tax, the main tax revenue of the government was the commodity transaction tax, the poll tax, the salt tax and the customs duty, which became the four major taxes in England.

Owing to the lack of tax collectors and administrative officials, with the exception of the large cities and ports of the Crown Territories such as Normandy, Wessex, and York, the vast rural and vassal aristocratic domains relied on a package tax system to settle taxes.

Usually William granted the monopoly of salt to the royal consortium, which in turn distributed, transferred and monopolized it to the financiers and merchants of the Normandy consortium.

Every year, these financiers and merchants had to pay the royal family an advance loan equivalent to the salt tax, and wait for the salt to be sold for 10,000 yuan before repaying the loan.

In fact, indirect taxes in England are largely implemented in this way.