ONGAR HUNDRED 



debarred from looking under the water. It is not very useful to regard the recorded number of tax- 

 payers as being a fixed proportion of the whole village. A prosperous village would have a much higher 

 proportion of its inhabitants named on the tax-list than a poor village with only one or two names 

 recorded. 



Taking Ongar hundred as a whole, these early assessments enable one standard to be applied which 

 may yield interesting results when all the hundreds have been compared. Thus, in the earliest extant 

 roll, that for 1237-8, Ongar hundred^ paid ^t,^ lis. iid. out of the Essex total of £'jio js. id., or 

 about 5 per cent, of the whole. In 1320 it paid ^^68 is. 6d. out of ;^i,333 I2s., or about 5 per cent, 

 of the whole, while in 1332 it paid ;^62 lys. gd. out of ;^i,i78 lis. 6d.,or again a share of just over 

 5 per cent. In 1334 the share of this area was ;^66 6^. 3^. out of ;^i,234 14^. yd., or a share of just 

 under 5 per cent. 



The various local assessments are set out in Table i for the 25 units of collection, or 29 named 

 places. In studying the table the first matter to be considered is the range of size exhibited in the village 

 quotas of 1334. In Ongar hundred most villages paid between 20s. and 60s. Only two, Shelley and 

 Stondon Massey, paid less then 20^., and only 5 paid more than 60s. The average of the 25 sums is 53^., 

 4 of these sums representing a payment for 2 places. In 1 334 the corresponding average for Essex as a 

 whole is 68/. yd. 



Although the basic village quotas of 1334 remained unaltered there were occasions when they were 

 temporarily modified, abatements or reliefs being allowed in view of the impoverishment of a particular 

 vill. Such occasions were the three collections of a tenth and a fifteenth granted in 1351 when im- 

 poverished vills were reimbursed out of a fund provided by fines collected under the Statute of Labourers. 

 Thus one effect of the Black Death was mitigated by applying moneys drawn from those who were 

 attempting to profit from the general shortage of labour. The amount which the Justices of Labourers 

 had to distribute in relief to the villages depended, of course, on the fines imposed. The total in Essex 

 was large. In 1 352 ;{^7 1 i os. was so collected, of which, after expenses, £6j$ i is. was allotted among 

 the impoverished vills. Since the total tax obligation was only ;^ 1,234, more than half the year's 

 assessment on Essex was made up from the pool of fines.' 



Some villages received an allowance equal to the whole of the tax due: Thorpe-le-Soken, 51J. ^.d.; 

 Bocking 103/. iid. Comparison with the list of fines paid, which has also survived for this year, shows 

 that Thorpe had lost on the deal, £^ 11s. ^d. having been collected there in fines for breach of the 

 Statute. No place in Ongar hundred received such munificent relief, and only two places received any 

 relief at all: High Laver was given 40X. (55 per cent, of the tax due) and Magdalen Laver 20/. (48 per 

 cent.). It is difficult to resist the conclusion that local opinion considered these two vills to have been 

 especially badly hit by the plague, but, as the poll-tax figures for 1377 show, they were certainly far 

 from being depopulated.'" 



No record of reliefs allowed in 1 353 and 1 354 has survived, apart from county totals." In 1 358-60 

 the confiscated goods of fugitives and felons were applied to the same use but no record from Ongar 

 hundred has yet been found. '^ 



In 1433 there began a long series of abatements whereby a sum of ;^4,ooo and later ;^6,ooo was 

 distributed among the over-taxed and impoverished villages of the kingdom. For at least the first 30 

 years of the abatements the evidence indicates that a genuine reassessment of need was made at each 

 new collection of a subsidy; the Devonshire figures show quite wide differences in the sums allowed to 

 each borough from one collection to the next. Unfortunately there are only two surviving rolls for 

 Essex in this period, dated 1433 and 1436, and in these rolls the rate of allowances in Ongar hundred 

 is the same in each year; the county was relieved of its obligation to pay ;^i 23 js. ^d. (or about 10 per 

 cent, of the sum due) and in its turn the hundred of Ongar was relieved in the same proportion, 

 £6 i2s. 6%d. being allowed." In addition to the general abatements granted by statute, some villages 

 in Essex seem to have been allowed a second sum for losses suffered per inundacionem aquarum et alia 

 infortuna [sic] pericula. Thus Langham received I os. for flood damage. No flood relief was given in 

 Ongar, but Chipping Ongar obtained 3;-. \d. extra relief in 1436 for pericula infortuna which were not 

 specified. The abatements were assessed by the Abbot of Colchester and the two knights of the shire 

 in the current Parliament: in 1436 Edward Tyrell and Thomas Torell. A document from Totnes 

 suggests that at the end of the Parliament the knights actually brought the relief back with them for 

 distribution, but the procedure in Essex is not specifically known.'* 



The size of the abatement allowed in 1433 and 1436 for each of the places in Ongar hundred is 

 set out in Table 2. It will be seen that the rate of abatement was everywhere the same, apart from 

 the one extra allowance to Chipping Ongar. 



* E179/107/1. latter document provides other means of establishing 



' E179/276/67; E179/107/41. On the significance the minimum number of people in each village. 



of these abatements see B. Putnam, Enforcement of " Putnam. Statutes of Laiourers, 316*. 



Statutes of Labourers, passim. "^ E179/107/42-43. '3 E179/108/107-9. 



■0 E179/276/67; E137/1 1/2. The list of fines in the ■■» H. R. Watkin, Hist. Totnes, i, 409. 



Es. IV 297 Qq 



