“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”
– Benjamin Franklin
Throughout Dorset’s history the certainty and importance of tax collecting has lead to some meticulous record keeping. Auditors and future collectors might refer to the records of a tax collection that had been produced decades earlier.
For local and family historians these records form an invaluable source that enables us to put people in a context within their communities. Some of the records pre-date the earliest parish registers, they show surnames appearing in locations which may then be examined for manorial or estate records.
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How much tax an individual paid was an indication of their wealth relative to their neighbours; how much tax a community paid can be used to show its growth or decline based upon its earlier assessments. Caution must be used when comparing taxes as they had different thresholds and rates at which people were charged (like rates and the poll tax), but places may be ranked within each collection. Poole ranked 200th in Dorset when it was assessed for the tax raised in 1332, but by 1523 had grown to be in the national top 200 wealthiest towns.
An assessment for the villages in Sturminster Newton Castle, Brownshall and Redlane hundreds for two months payment of the Act for Raising the Sum of £584,978 2s. 2d. ha’penny for the Speedy Building of Thirty Ships of War in 1678.
Charles II had much greater success in raising Ship Money than his father had in the 1630s. The accounts were sent to the Exchequer and this copy was retained by the family of Robert Seymer in their family archive.
Historical demographers use these documents to examine the numbers of people liable for taxes in towns and villages and regional population density: the poll tax returns for 1370-1380 show that Purbeck was the least densely populated area in England south of a line between the Severn and the Trent rivers.
Some taxes were raised on particular commodities: the hearth tax and the window tax in the late seventeenth centuries were designed to be progressive taxes by taxing wealthier householders with more hearths and windows, but actually resulted in many windows and fireplaces being blocked up.
From the Anglo-Saxon burghal hidage through the Domesday book, medieval fractional taxes, Tudor subsidies and later Stuart taxes on buildings; the records of taxation provide assessments and accounts, prosecutions for evasion and certificates of exemption which explore areas of social and economic history untouched by other records.
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We hold a selection of books in our local studies library:
A. Rumble, The defence of Wessex: the Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon fortifications (942.01)
A. Rumble, The lay subsidy roll of 1327 (929.3)
D. Mills, The Dorset lay subsidy roll of 1332 (942.33)
Fenwick, The Poll Taxes of England and Wales, 1377, 1379 and 1380, Bedfordshire – Leicestershire (336.216)
L. Stoate, Dorset Tudor subsidies granted in 1523, 1543 and 1593 (352.44214)
C.A.F. Meekings, Dorset Hearth Tax Assessments 1662-1664 (336.22)
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You can also find descriptions of taxes, when they were collected, the rates and the public reaction to different collections for grants made before 1688, and other details by consulting http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/
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