The Poll Tax of 1379 - General Introduction
Kings in the middle ages were always short of money, even in times of peace. When the Hundred Years War broke out again in 1369 the need became even more acute, and parliament was persuaded allow the king to collect taxes.
At this time the existing system of tax assessment had been in place for over 100 years. It was based on a valuation of movable property; the townsman paying a tenth of his assessed movables but the countryman only a fifteenth. The amount raised by this method was around £38,000.
Between 1357 and 1371 no direct taxes had been levied, but in 1371 the king asked for a subsidy of £100,000. Rather than grant multiple 10ths and fifteenths, Parliament was prepared to try something new. They agreed to raise half the sum if the clergy would pay the other half. The secular tax was parish based, and once the collectors had discovered there were about 8,600 parishes (not the 45,000 they had originally thought) the charge for each parish was £5 16/-.
In 1377 there was again an urgent need to raise more than the usual amount. Fifteenths and tenths had been levied in 1377, 1380, and 1384, but the war with France required even more money. As in 1371, the commons rejected an income tax and a purchase tax, but agreed to levy the flat rate of 4d. a head ('poll') from everyone over the age of 14 who was not a beggar. The plague of 1348-9 and subsequent outbreaks had destroyed the relationship between landlord and tenant - with the advantage moving toward the latter - and parliament was looking to share the tax burden (as they thought) more equitably. This was a regressive tax, as 4d was far more to a poor man earning a penny a day than to a Lord with £1,000 a year. The charge was levied on anyone aged 14 or over, and raised just over £22,500, implying an adult population (excluding Durham and Cheshire) of around 1.35 million. There may have been some evasion, but probably not as much as some historians speculate.
The next parliament met in October 1378, but refused to grant any further taxes, and the government was forced to take a loan. By the time the third parliament of Richard's reign met in 1379, the financial situation was even worse. £50,000 was needed to support John de Montfort in his attempt to regain the Duchy of Brittany, which Charles V of France had seized. Right at the end of the session the grant of another poll tax was made, this time with with differing amounts for different ranks and occupations (estates), and a scale of charges within these. Anyone who fell outside these grades was charged 4d, with some (presumably better-off) paying 6d
The graduated scale of rates was as follows:-
Dukes of Lancaster and Brittany - 10 marks
earls - £4
barons, bannerets and wealthy knights - 40s.
bachelor knights and esquires of knightly estate - 20s.
esquires of lesser estate - 6s.8d.
esquires without property who are in service - 3s.4d.
justices - 100s.
serjeants and great apprentices at law - 40s.
other apprentices at law - 20s.
apprentices of lesser estates and attorneys - 6s.8d.
mayor of London - £4
London aldermen - 40s.
mayors of large cities - 40s.
mayors of small cities - 20s., 10s. or 1/2 mark (according to estate)
great merchants - 20s.
sufficient merchants - 13s.4d.
lesser merchants and artisans - 6s.8d., 3s.4d., 2s., 12d. or 6d. (according to estate)
serjeants and franklins - 6s.8d. or 40d.
farmers of manors, parsonages or granges and merchants of animals - 1/2 mark, 40d., 2s. or 12d.
married advocates, notaries and procurators - 40s., 20s. or 1/2 mark
married pardoners and summoners - 3s.4d., 2s. or 12d.
all hostellers not of merchant estate - 40d., 2s. or 12d.
Widows were to pay the same rates as their husbands would have paid. Married men paid only the one charge for themselves and their wives, the same as unmarried men and women.
The decision to tax married couples at the same rate as single people effectively reduced the tax base to around 1 million. In addition, raising the age of liability from 14 to 16 reduced the headcount still further. The hope was that this would be more than compensated for by the higher rates for the better-off. However, 86% of the 1379 tax payers were assessed at 4d, 8% at 6d and 3% at 12d. Together this would only have amounted to around £17,700, so even to equal the amount raised in 1377 the remaining 3% (30,000 people) would have had to raise around £5,000 - an average of 3/6d (42d). In Howden, no-one was rated at more than 40d so it's not surprising that the total raised was only around £18,600.
A final attempt to raise money by a poll tax was made in 1381. This time everyone was assessed at 12d and married women were not exempt. For some couples this would have meant a charge 6 times as high as in 1379. Not surprisingly, evasion was rife. There are no surviving records for Howden, but - as an example - Holme on Spalding Moor had 220 taxpayers in 1377, but only 103 in 1381. Ultimately the 1381 poll tax would be a major trigger for the Peasants revolt the same year.
This description is taken from the E179 database, the Victoria County History for Wiltshire, Vol 4, the introduction to Caroline Fenwicks ' The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381: Bedfordshire-Lincolnshire. Part 1' and 'An Experiment in Taxation: The English Parish Subsidy of 1371' ( W. M. Ormrod, Speculum Vol. 63, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 58-82)