Taxation Records before 1688

page prepared by Peter Tipton 12 Sep 2006 revised 17 Sep 2006

Can they help us estimate the number of potters in each parish?

After an initial brief look at only three lay subsidies the short answer answer is be NO, but they can provide other very useful information.

Although I have transcripts of about 10 lay subsidies for Yateley‘s inner tithing I had access to only 3 for the outer tithing (Hawley and Cove) and only 2 for Farnborough. I have now visited Kew and have prepared a page reviewing all the assessments from published sources and from original documents in the Herriard Collection.

Click here to access the Lay Subsidy Assessments

Evidence for foreigners living in England

It was the 1586 lay subsidy roll at Hampshire Record Office transcribed by Roger Davey, and published as volume 4 in the Hampshire Record Series, which provided the evidence that Herman Reinold was an alien, and therefore almost certainly a German potter.

The lay subsidy was essentially a tax voted by parliament, and collected locally from ordinary people, to provide the monarch with sufficient money to run the country and fight its wars. Records were kept of everyone who paid tax, the assessment of their worth, and how much they paid. The PRO Publication Lay Taxes in England and Wales 1188-1688 by M Jurkowski, C L Smith and D Crook is the authority on taxation records for this period. On page 161 the authors give the background to the subsidy transcribed by Roger Davey. Individuals had to pay tax either on their moveable goods or on the value of their land. On goods the threshold was £3, and on land the value threshold was 20s. The rate paid varied with the subsidy, and sometimes there were several collections over two or more years. This provides a good many helpful records for local historians to track comings and goings in a community.

Whatever the taxation rate for those born in England and Wales, aliens paid double that rate. If aliens were not liable for either goods or land then they still had to pay a poll tax of 4d per head per collection. 'Harmon Raignold allian' paid 4d in 1586 in Farnborough, so it appears he was not otherwise liable to tax. I don‘t think we should read too much into that (as I shall discuss below). I think local assessors always tried to minimise the effect on individuals and to spread the burden around amongst those best able to pay.

What do the taxation records tell us about the Blackwater Valley potters?

In the 1586 lay subsidy Robert Wright in Cove paid £0.15 tax on goods assessed as worth £3.00. We know his inventory when he died in 1596 was worth £65. He possessed a sword and a dagger so probably considered himself of reasonable status and comfortably off. Herman Reinold paid tax, as an alien, of only 4d. Perhaps his neighbours in Farnborough were allowing him to avoid double taxation. There are no other known potters in the lists for Farnborough, Cove or Hawley, but there are surnames I do not recognise as local. They have all gone by the next assessment I have for Cove and Hawley in 1603 and there are no potters listed which I recognise.

The 1571 assessment lists Richard Wright in Farnborourgh the earliest potter for whom we have an inventory. However the most interesting discovery is to find Richard Dye listed. This is also certainly Richard Dee, the Lambeth Potter, and I will explain why in his biography.

By 1621 John Rogers and John Milton paid tax in Farnborough, and Robert Hall is listed in Cove. They all paid tax on land at the threshold level.

I therefore believe that the taxation records are picking up the more affluent potters, but not those working on the second wheel or the one-man-band potters such as Richard Edsall.

Asssessed values of goods

There is a vast difference between the assessed values for taxation, and the values of probate inventories. Why are some people taxed at not others, when the probate inventory values of most people is above the threshold level for taxation?

There are approximately 100 probate inventories in the Hampshire Record Office for Yateley people, both men and women. They cover a span of over 50 years, so perhaps represent two generations, and perhaps the livespan of an individual who reached maturity. The number of copyholders in Yateley and Hawley is given in the Crondall Customary of 1567. Michael Holroyd in his article in Yateley through Six Centuries estimates that the Cathedral had 55 tenants in the Yateley inner tithing. A similar count for Hawley produces 20 tenants including 6 members of the Watts family. We cannot make a count of Cove tenants since that hamlet was freehold within Crondall Hundred. However it may, at that time, have been only half the size of Hawley, since Hawley included the hamlets of Bramshot, Southwood and Minley.

Most people who paid tax, paid on the minimum assessment of £3 for their goods or £1 for the value of their lands. The tax rates varied from year to year. The largest assessments in Yateley parish were made on Richard Allen, gentleman of Yateley, and John Watts the elder of Hawley. Both men were assessed as worth £10 in goods on which they paid £0.50 tax ie about a sixth of the total for the inner tithing and a quarter of Hawley respectiveley.

Of the approximately 100 extant Elizabethan inventories about 75 were transcribed by the Yateley History Project. So we probably have the probate inventories of a substantial proportion of ordinary Yateley residents in Elizabeth‘s reign. The value of the smallest probate inventory (£1.75) was that of Alice Mitchener, a maid servant. Another maid servant, Alice Piper, died with an inventory worth £6.33 -- already higher than the threshold assessment to pay lay subsidy. The median inventory value, of John Kitmer, added up to £22.86. His highest value items were 4 cows, a calf and a bullock worth £5.50 and 18 sheep and 4 lambs worth £3.33. He also had 3 hogs, a goose, gander and 3 hens, 2.5 acres of rye and one acre of oats. so we would class him as a husbandman. However his inventory in 1573 was valued at more than double the value of the highest assessment of £10 in the lay subsidy 10 years later.

When Richard Allen died in 1607 his inventory was valued at £182.21 despite the fact that his goods had been assessed for the lay subsidy in 1603 as worth only £8.00.

It appears therefore that the local assessors were given a targetfigure for tax payment they had to meet, and they probably divided up the amount between the better off, based on their ability to pay. In 1586 only 43 people, men and women, paid tax across the whole parish including Yateley, Hawley and Cove. This was propably about half the total number of tenants of the manor, and far less than the total adult population which included servants and labourers. Roger Piper, carpenter, paid £0.07 tax on land and had an inventory worth £14 when he died in 1591. Christopher Milward, yeoman, paid £0.20 on goods. His father died in 1591 leaving an inventory valued at £45 pounds. These two tax payments are in almost exactly the same ratio to the real worth of the two men. If you had goods you paid tax at a higher threshold. So if your neighbours in Yateley assumed your total wealth at below about £15 then they probably excused you from the tax. In Hawley and Cove the worth threshold was probably different from Yateley since there were fewer people. There are documents in the Herriard Collection at Winchester which are instructions to Asssessors. They might throw more light on this.

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