Poll-Tax payers of 1377

POLL-TAX PAYERS OF 1377

The poll taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381 were designed as a supplement to the fifteenths and tenths levied in 1377, 1380, and 1384. In this respect they fall into the same class as the other attempts to supplement revenue by novel devices: (fn. 1) the 'ninth sheaf and fleece' of 1341; the parish levies of 1371 and 1427; the 'income taxes' of 1404, 1411, 1435, and 1449. There is a record of the parliamentary discussion in 1377 when, after rejecting an income tax, a purchase tax, and other novelties, it was decided to levy the flat rate of 4d. a head ('poll') from everyone over the age of 14 who was not a professional beggar. This was a regressive tax, taking in proportion more of a poor man's income than a rich man's, and when Richard II's Parliament granted a second poll tax in 1379 there was an attempt to make the tax more acceptable by grading the payments according to rank. (fn. 2)

Thus, while the poll-tax receipts of 1377 are simply a statement that the collectors have received so many groats from the village representatives, the returns of 1379 have lists of names and occupations usually lacking in 1377. (fn. 3) But wherever there are surviving documents for 1377 and 1379 it is plain that the second collection saw extensive evasion. Although the documents (fn. 4) of 1379 have some use as indicating the minimum range of occupations in a particular place and the minimum number of taxpayers they are useless in preparing population estimates. In 1381 the poll tax was collected for the last time, (fn. 5) with even more marked evasion.

More poll-tax receipts survive for Wiltshire than for any other county. The West Riding of Yorkshire, twice the area of Wiltshire, has 66 fewer, Leicestershire (fn. 6) has only half of Wiltshire's number, and Dorset, Gloucestershire, and Hampshire have none at all. The 529 surviving Wiltshire receipts, probably almost all that were made, are preserved in six files and there are also six loose ones. (fn. 7) They give the names of over 550 places, about the same number of places indeed, though not always the same places, as are to be found in the 1334 assessment.

The receipts in Files 37 and 38, nearly 350 in all, carry their original seals, and there are many endorsements which show that the present arrangement of files has come about by the amalgamation of many smaller files each originally that of one hundred. The endorsement of some receipts and their dirty colour show that they have been the outer membrane or cover of their file, and there are still long runs of successive membranes all from the same hundred. (fn. 8) The amalgamation of files has, however, caused other receipts to be filed unmethodically. The fact that many membranes from one hundred are often grouped together in a file helped solve problems of bad legibility and ambiguous nomenclature.

The geographical unit for which the receipt was given usually appears as 'vill' although there are some 'boroughs' and one 'tithing'. The city of Salisbury has no surviving receipt but its assessment is known from the Great Enrolment of the city and county totals in another class of document. (fn. 9)

Collections were made at Highworth on 5 April, at Ramsbury, Marlborough, and Calne on 6 April, and at Calne again on 8 April and 16 June. The last of these was for two vills only. There were also collections at unspecified places on 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12 April. Each receipt bears the names of the collectors, (fn. 10) the village constables, and probi homines and the date of collection as well as the standard formula of so many shillings and pence from so many heads.

Table 1 printed below is arranged by the hundreds as they are believed to have existed in 1377 together with a category called 'Boroughs and Liberties'. The constitution of nine of the hundreds is known from the hundred-names inscribed or endorsed upon the receipts. These are Blackgrove, Calne, Cricklade, North Damerham, Kingsbridge, Malmesbury, Ramsbury, Staple, and Thornhill. The constitution of the hundreds of Chippenham, Highworth, Kinwardstone, and Selkley is ascertainable with almost equal certainty, for nearly all the receipts are likewise endorsed. There are comparatively few other inscriptions or endorsements, so the hundreds have had to be notionally reconstituted by studying the proximity, within apparently unbroken files, of uninscribed to inscribed receipts, and the constitution of the hundreds as shown in the list of 1334. Where the probability of error in attributing a particular place to a particular hundred (or the category 'Boroughs and Liberties') is small, the place-name has been marked with a single asterisk (*), where greater with a double one (**). A few of the attributions to particular hundreds must be regarded as quite speculative. This is especially true where there are places of the same name in adjacent or almost adjacent hundreds and no distinguishing prefix or suffix has been added to the vill name. Imber (Heytesbury and King's Rowborough), Orcheston (Dole and Heytesbury), Tilshead (Dole and Whorwellsdown), and Winterslow (Alderbury and Amesbury) furnish instances. While it is fairly certain that there was a place bearing one of these four names in each of the four groups of hundreds it is hard to know whether the right vill has been fitted into the right hundred.

A comparison between the lists of 1334 and 1377 shows two differences in the organization of the Wiltshire hundreds in the two periods. First, North Damerham hundred which seems to have begun to separate itself from Chippenham hundred in the later 13th century (fn. 11) is a distinct hundred by 1377, though it was not so treated in 1334. Secondly, Malmesbury hundred, which did not exist eo nomine in 1334, has replaced Chedglow and Startley hundreds by 1377. (fn. 12) Thirdly, the arrangement of receipts on the files suggests that several of the detached parts of Elstub hundred were reckoned to fall within their surrounding geographical hundreds in 1377 rather than in Elstub. They have therefore been distributed, it must be owned, somewhat speculatively. The Liberty of Longbridge Deverill, as it was called in 1334, has similarly been placed in Heytesbury hundred. Endorsements on two receipts (fn. 13) show that there was originally a grouping for boroughs and liberties, and those places, the receipts for which are so endorsed or which cannot readily be assigned to a hundred, have been entered here under that heading. West Bedwyn is inscribed with the name of Kinwardstone hundred but endorsed 'burg' et libert'. It has been left in its hundred, as have Calne, Chippenham, Cricklade, and Downton in theirs.

In constructing this table The Place-Names of Wiltshire has been used in the same way as it was used in constructing Table 1 in the section on Fifteenths and Tenths (see p. 295) and the words in brackets after the names of vills bear the same signification here as there.

There is much difference between the number of taxpayers in the different fiscal areas. A ladder could be constructed leading down from the peak of Salisbury's 3,226 taxpayers to the point very near the ground level where the tax collector recorded the 3 taxpayers whom they found at the vill of Shaw in Selkley hundred or the 5 at Walton in Downton hundred. The head and foot of this ladder are shown in Tables 2 and 3, while Table 4 sets out the percentage of fiscal areas that fall into various categories of size, beginning with those having 10 taxpayers or fewer and ending with those having more than 160. For comparison, similar figures for Devon, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and Oxfordshire are also given. (fn. 14) The distribution in Wiltshire, Devon, and Oxfordshire is surprisingly similar. Poll-tax documents for Dorset and Gloucestershire, the counties used for comparative purposes above when considering the tax quotas of 1334, have not survived.

Table 1: Poll-Tax Payers of 1377

For the explanation of the asterisks (* or **) see above p. 305.

Boroughs and Liberties

Table 2: The Smallest Fiscal Units, 1377

Table 3: The Largest Fiscal Units, 1377

Table 4: Fiscal Units of 1377 Classified According to the Number of Taxpayers