Analysis of hearth tax assessments

ANALYSIS OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE HEARTH TAX ASSESSMENTS, LONGSTOWE AND WETHERLEY HUNDREDS, 1662, 1666, AND 1674

Introductory Note

The following analyses have been prepared from the Cambridgeshire Hearth Tax Assessments preserved in the Public Record Office for 1662 Michaelmas [E 179/84/436], 1666 Lady Day [E 179/244/22], and 1674 Lady Day [E 179/244/23]. The assessments have been fully described, and the nature of the tax and value of its records have been briefly discussed, in V.C.H. Cambs. iii. 500 and iv. 272. The 1662 lists were prepared by petty constables in June and early July 1662 and were designed to be simply lists of taxpayers, though during the next eighteen months many persons in the lists secured exemption. The 1666 lists were made out in the summer of 1666, after collection had taken place, by the officers of George Wilmot, the sub-farmer, and are drawn up under the headings 'Paid' and 'Unpaid'; many of the persons with one or two hearths included under the latter heading may have been entitled to exemption but the lists do not indicate them, since they were included as taxpayers in default. The lists for 1674 were made out by the sub-collectors of the receiver, Edward Miller, with the assistance of parish officials, during the spring and summer of 1674, after the collection had been made. These lists are divided into taxpayers and those legally exempted by certificate. Among taxpayers the owners of empty or recently destroyed houses or hearths, and the occupiers of houses recently built or with recently added hearths in them, are distinguished. The exempt may include paupers, even though paupers did not need to be certified. The exemption certificates themselves survive incompletely and heavily damaged [E 178/326/10].

The three documents have been analysed on the same principle. Against each place is given, in separate columns, the total of entries recording persons as occupiers of from one to ten hearths and a further column gives the occupiers of houses with 11 or more hearths; final columns give the total number of entries and hearths in each place. For 1662 only one line is needed for each place. For 1666 three lines are generally needed: for those recorded as 'Paid', for the 'Unpaid', and for the combined total of the two categories. For 1674 up to four lines may be needed: for the taxpayers, for those among the taxpayers who owned empty houses etc., for the exempt, and for the combined total of the three categories. For 12 out of the 25 places in the two hundreds no exempt are recorded. There are three possible reasons: there may have been no exempt to certify; the certified from two neighbouring parishes may have been included in a single certificate for one or the other (Caldecote and Toft, the Eversdens, Bourn and Hardwick were certainly so combined and others may have been); the certificate may have reached the clerk of the peace too late for enrolment. Among the 1674 certificates which survive there are none for places which are without exempt in the roll. Certificates also survive which were made out in 1672, or early in 1673, apparently for the three collections Lady Day 1672 to Lady Day 1673 [E 179/84/440]. They include certificates, or lists for two places on a single certificate, which cover seven places that are without exempt in 1674. There are none for the other five places (Caldecote, Hatley St. George, Kingston, Coton, Harlton), which suggests that those places may have had none needing certification, though all may have had paupers who did not need certificates. It has therefore been thought useful to give the number of persons in the certificates for 1672 in footnotes to each hundred in the table for 1674. The number is in some cases less than the number of names originally entered on the certificate, because in a few certificates some names were cancelled before, or when, the justices of the peace countersigned them. In general, attention is also drawn in footnotes to a few special entries, chiefly of alms-houses or town houses; and to differences, resulting from faulty addition, between the total number of hearths in the recorded entries and the total given in the documents.

In conclusion, a word may be said about the relative comprehensiveness of the assessments. It may be understood that in all lists a person may occur more than once when as a landlord he, or she, is entered for the hearths in a tenant's house, but in general the number of entries represents households. There is not much difference between the totals of entries in 1666 and 1674. The difference is of two or fewer for six places in Longstowe hundred and for five in Wetherley. It is only greater than six in four places, of which two, Orwell and Wimpole, lack exempt in 1674 but would, with exempt of about the same number as in 1672, show little if any difference. The only substantial difference in favour of 1674 is at Bourn (17); the largest difference in favour of 1666 is at Comberton (7). In Longstowe hundred the 1666 lists give the highest number of entries for nine places; for two places 1666 and 1674 have an equal number; for three places 1674 has the highest number. In Wetherley hundred the 1666 lists have the highest number of entries for nine places and in one place the 1662 and 1666 lists have an equal number; in one place the 1662 list has (slightly) the highest of all three. In the hundreds as a whole the 1666 lists have slightly the highest number of entries, even after allowing an addition to the 1674 totals for those places without exempt for which there were certificates in 1672. Since the 1662 lists were intended to include taxpayers only, their number of entries is naturally the lowest of the three assessments, but since far more details of the 1662 assessments than of any other are available for the country as a whole those lists are the most useful for comparative studies of England and Wales generally.

ANALYSIS OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE HEARTH TAX: LONGSTOWE AND WETHERLEY HUNDREDS

1662 Michaelmas

1666 Lady Day

1674 Lady Day