Danegeld was the first general tax in our modern sense in Western Europe, since older Roman taxes had become the personal liabilities of members of municipal councils long before the vikings began to lay tributes on their conquered lands. In France and elsewhere along the shores of the North Sea and the English Channel tributes were occasionally levied by marauding vikings, but there was no regular assessment, nor did it become general. In England, however, its insular position, and the two foreign conquests by Danes and Normans within a half-century fastened upon the whole population a tax, universal in application and therefore generally hated.