It is often forgotten that the poll tax made a reappearance in the seventeenth century. Seven were raised in all: in 1660, 1667, 1678, 1689, 1691, 1694 and 1697. Records survive for the last four assessments. As ever, it was a tax on people, including both householders and lodgers, and sometimes children, but exempting paupers. The records are to be found at TNA, in class E182, arranged by county, then by hundred, then by parish. The amount levied depended on the social status and occupation. The LMA has a transcribed copy of the assessment for the City for 1692.

Subsidies

There were other taxes levied in the Middle Ages, of course, and some of these records survive. They were known as ‘Lay Subsidies’; these were not paid by the church (though clergymen owning land in their own right were liable). These were usually levied because the monarch needed money in wartime and were paid at a fraction of the individual’s moveable goods. They were levied for a particular stated purpose. Those which survive exist at TNA and date from 1275–1525, though not every year by any means; there were none in the fifteenth century, for example. For many of these levies, only total sums owed by place are noted. Yet there are names given for some of the levies in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and also in 1524, when land was taxed at 20% and moveable goods at 28% and, because payment thresholds were low, most adult men were assessed and so named in these records. Because there was widespread evasion, very full lists were compiled for both 1523 and 1543, both of which are at TNA. Tax records can be found at TNA in E179, but also at county record offices. For example, Essex Record Office holds transcripts of three lay subsidy returns for the fourteenth century and one for 1524–5. Two of these have been indexed and one has been translated. Some have been published, including those for Devonshire for 1323 and for Gloucestershire for 1327.