On This Day – 30th May 1381

On the 30th of May 1381, a chief tax-collector went to Fobbing in Essex to levy the second installment of the third Poll Tax. He was told in no uncertain terms where he could go, and the villagers refused to pay. This incident is seen as the starting point of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

Much has been written about this tax; it is said that it was onerous, that it was inequitable and that there was widespread evasion. Poll taxes were certainly ‘new and novel’, and, like all new taxes, were designed to ensure that those who did not normally contribute to taxation did so in future.

In the 13th and early 14th centuries Crown taxation was based on the value of a person’s moveable property: cows, sheep, corn, tools, and other such items. Tax-commissions were appointed by the Exchequer, but it is quite clear that the valuation and assessment was undertaken by ‘discreet and honest’ men of the villages and parishes. The valuation excluded all items necessary for a person’s livelihood: food for the family, boats and nets of fishermen, and the first chalice, armour and gold belt of a lord and his lady. Those with goods below a certain value were exempt from taxation and the rate at which tax was levied varied: a twentieth, a fifteenth (in rural areas) and a tenth (in boroughs). There are thousands of documents in the National Archives which list the names and payments of individuals and even some which list their property as well.

In 1332, there was much unrest about the amount of tax levied – it is quite clear that some local and chief -taxers had put their fingers in the tax pot and had defrauded the Crown! In 1334, the Commons authorised the levy of a fifteenth and tenth, based on the 1332 tax, which allowed each village and parish to negotiate a sum with the commissioners and permitted each place to raise the sum in whatever way they liked. This system was so successful that it was used for every tax thereafter.

It seems pretty certain that the onus of paying towards Crown taxes became attached to land – and that worked fairly well until the 1370s when successive outbreaks of Plague had reduced the population to such an extent that peasants were able to rent land on their terms and not on those of the landowners… increasingly the Lords of the Manor found that they were unable to pass the tax burden down to their tenants and were liable to pay the taxation themselves.

Virtually no taxation was levied in the 1350s and 60s, but in 1371 the Commons met and were not happy at being asked to vote for a taxation. To cut a fairly long story short, in 1377 the first Poll Tax was granted. The reasons were very simple: the Commons, who represented landowners, were outraged that labourers, artisans, servants and others who had taken advantage of the economic stress caused by the Black Death to demand higher wages and raise prices did not contribute to taxation and they were determined to devise a tax that made them pay. Sound familiar? Nothing much new under the sun!

The first poll tax was levied at a rate of 4d per head (one day’s wages) from everyone over the age of 14. Just over 1,300,000 people were taxed. There seems to be no reason to assume that it was levied in any other way than former taxes were collected and that the poor were exempt from this tax as they had been from other taxes. The documents show that the tax was collected by local men and paid to the tax-commissioners. The writs were sent out from London on the 4th of April 1377 and six weeks later the Exchequer was receiving payment of the tax – I reckon that was extremely efficient.

In 1379, a second poll tax was levied from people over the age of 16, married women were exempt, and there was a graduated scale of charges. Comparing documents from 1379 and those from the later tax of 1381, it is clear that the local taxers did not charge their neighbours according to the schedule and allowed them to pay at a low rate.

On the 7th of December 1380, the Commons authorised the levy of a third poll tax to be collected in two parts. Everyone over 15 was to pay 12d, but the collectors were required to levy the tax so that the ‘richer should aid the poorer’. No married couple should pay less than 4d or more than five pounds, and the sum from each village was to be 12d times the number of taxpayers. The documents show clearly that the ‘richer’ were charged more than the ‘poor’ and often significantly more.

It was obvious that the Commons expected trouble – part of the price for granting the tax was that none of them would be called upon to be involved in the collection of the tax!

Just over 800,000 taxpayers contributed to the 1381 poll tax. The Exchequer assumed, as do many historians that there was wide-spread evasion, but there had been a very poor harvest and the winter of 1380/1 was one of the hardest on record – many more people would have been legally exempt from the tax. Reassessment commissions were sent out to check on the collection and the original commissioners were ordered to collect the second part of the tax immediately.

In fact, the reassessment commissions did not find many people who had evaded the tax, but they combined with the demands for immediate payment of the second part of the tax led many to believe that another, new and unparliamentary tax, was being levied… the men of Fobbing and elsewhere were not having it…

Thereafter, Crown taxes were levied on the basis of the 1334 quotas. In the early 1400s these sums were reduced by approximately 10% because of loss of population. They remained the Crown’s only form of taxation until the 1520s, and while the Crown could, occasionally, persuade the Commons to grant multiples of a fifteenth and tenth it is hardly surprising that monarchs were frequently short of money. The last fifteenth and tenth was granted in about 1621.