Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/346

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NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. OCT. 12, 1907.

tion of the country from these returns would one-half or less of what was due. Below the lead to the conclusion that England was 51. and 101. limit the tax seems to have been desperately poor as compared with what, | only 2d. in the pound on lands, and Id.

from other sources of information, we know to have been the case.

At a later period efforts were made to change this ad valorem system of taking a sum proportionate to the actual wealth of the individual for a species of graduated poll-tax, with a minimum of one or three groats (the former in 1379, the latter in 1381). The odiousness of this tax was not justified by the way in which it was levied. The Wat Tyler myth has long been disposed of ; and any one taking the trouble to examine the returns must be convinced that the minimum sum was accepted from a great many who could well have afforded to pay at a higher rate. But it is clear that by this time no distinctions between the " probi " and the " nativi " were any longer observed. Indeed, the latter class had by now shrunk to such a limited number that they were not worth treating separately. A well-to-do villen might bring up his son as an ecclesiastic of high rank or a judge, as was at least reported of the Paston ancestor ; or if he were a man of fighting qualifications he might distinguish himself in the wars like Sir Robert de Salle. On the other hand, many freeholds had become so small that the holders were hardly deemed worthy of exercising political privileges. Statutes were passed limiting the franchise, which had once been inherent in the " probus et legalis homo " irrespective of the size of his holding, to the tenant of a forty-shilling

on goods, up to 51. ; above that sum the goods are taxable, like the lands, at 2d. in the pound. It will be seen, therefore, that the 51. landholder pays 5s., while the 41. holder gets off with Sd. ; in the same way the owner of 9Z. worth of goods pays 18d., but if he have 10Z. he is mulcted 6s. 8d. The largest contributor in the Agbrigg and Morley Wapentakes is Sir Henry Saville, who is credited with the respectable income of 400Z. in land. The largest owners of personalty appear to be three wealthy tradesmen of Wakefield Richard Pymond, Christopher Field, and Robert Cookson. Each of these men is rated at 80Z. worth of goods. These are extraordinary cases : the average landholder has from 51. to 10Z., and the average non-landholder from 10Z. to 20Z. personal estate.

Notwithstanding all incongruities and the additional difficulty arising from the differ- ence between the amounts assessed and the actual sums paid, so far we have what may reasonably be assumed to be an attempt to value the real and personal property of the taxpayers. It is fairly conceivable that in estimating the estate of the landholders the actual rents were taken into considera- tion, though it is hard to believe that many gentlemen who cut a brave figure in the Visitations were possessed of no greater properties than are here credited to them. In the same way it may be assumed that a rough estimate, on very broad lines, of the

freehold or of a five-pound free-farm. But personalty was made in every case. Here although the assessment of these earlier j again it may be noted how infrequently a subsidies was carried out somewhat capri- | relationship between the status of the better- ciously, and with the manifest intention of class taxpayer and the contemporary gentle- letting off the taxpayer with as small a sum man of the heraldic Visitations is discovered, as possible, the principle is fairly intelligible. The names of Pymond, Field, and Cookson When, however, we come to a later period, j are not to be found in the 1564 Visitation, represented by the frequent subsidies i though one would have thought that

granted to the Tudor sovereigns, the method of assessment becomes more obscure, and finally seems to present insuperable diffi- culties.

In the published returns for a portion of the West Riding of Yorkshire (Thoresby Soc., vols. ix. and xi.) of a subsidy levied 33 Hen. VIII., the basis of assessment adopted appears to have been Is. in the pound on freeholds over 51., and Sd. in the pound

men of such wealth would have either founded families themselves or mated their daughters with members of the recognized gentry.

But when we pass from this to later examples of assessment " still the wonder grows." In 1621, 19 James I., a subsidy was completed, of which the return for the Wapentake of Skyrack has been printed by the Thoresby Society. This may be said

on personalty of 1QI. and over where no to be late for the Tudor period, but it is freehold is owned. For some reason which i the only one of which I have returns complete does not appear, this is not always kept to ' enough to venture to quote it, and from the in the returns, many of the sums paid both earlier ones of which I have obtained for personalty and freehold estate being extracts I judge this to be a fairly average