A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



Had more documents survived one could have watched the rise and fall of abatements at each of the 

 subsequent Parliamentary grants until the abatements themselves became conventionalized and 

 inflexible, so that Elizabethan villages were receiving the abatement fixed under Edward IV or 

 Henry VII. The arrival of the new 'subsidy''' of Henry VIII, assessed on goods, wages, or land, 

 brings the wheel full circle: the Exchequer is again attempting what had been done before 1334, a 

 realistic assessment not on a whole village but on individuals with more than a minimum amount of 

 property or income. 



The medieval evidence examined so far has dealt only with sums of money, the relative wealth of 

 villages. It has had very little to say about numbers, and the only effective contribution to population 

 history which the tax lists before 1334 can make is to provide a minimum number of taxpayers. 



The parish tax of 1428 was of a nature quite different from the fifteenths and tenths so far con- 

 sidered.'* It was in proportion to the sum at which the parish was taxed for the ecclesiastical tenths, 

 but a special exemption was provided for those parishes with fewer than ten householders. The names 

 of such parishes were enrolled and have been printed in Feudal Aids. Five such tiny parish populations 

 were recorded in Ongar hundred: Theydon Bois, Theydon Mount, Little Laver, Shelley, and 

 Norton Mandeville. Only Shelley had been among the bottom five places in the 1334 assessment, 

 although three other places of those exempted in 1428 were in the bottom ten in 1334. None of the 

 five exempt in 1428 had obtained tax relief in 1352. 



Poll Taxes 



The final set of tax documents here considered is unequivocally concerned with heads as well as 

 with pockets. The poll tax was levied on three occasions, 1377, 1379, and 1381; but only the first 

 collection is useful to demographers. The poll taxes of 1379 and 1381 were extensively evaded, and 

 indeed the attempt to check the evasion in an Essex village is usually reckoned the immediate cause of 

 the Peasants' Revolt. The lists of names and occupations in the surviving documents of 1 379 and 1 38 1 

 are interesting to the genealogist and indicate the 'spread' of occupations, but they can only be regarded 

 as minimal lists, so great was the evasion. Table 3 shows in column i the actual number of taxpayers 

 in 1377.''' Column 2 is compiled from a nominal list which, though undated, is certainly either of 

 1379 or 1381.'^ The extent of the evasion is made clear if columns i and 2 are compared together. 

 Chigwell has lost 67 taxpayers, Beauchamp Roding 12, and Navestock 77. Even the tax of 1377 did 

 not fall on all heads: the groat was only exacted from those over 14, and if the total number of persons 

 in a village is to be estimated, it is necessary to invoke some such assumption as that of Professor 

 Russell," that one-third of a village was under 14 years of age. If this assumption is accepted, another 

 50 per cent, must be added to the numbers recorded on the tax receipts of 1 377. But there is no reason 

 why one should not add 40 or 60 per cent. In Ongar hundred the average number on each receipt is 

 85, perhaps 130 persons.^" 



The arbitrariness of such assumptions limits the utility of the poll-tax returns for demographers. 

 The returns, however, are a useful guide to the relative size of villages in 1377. So long as the pro- 

 portion of boys and girls to adults was roughly the same in each village then the numbers on the poll 

 tax receipts will be in proportion to the size of the village. We can say without too many qualifications 

 that Stanford Rivers, with 1 80 taxpayers, was about six times the size of Theydon Bois with its 30 tax- 

 payers. We can also arrange the villages in order of size, as has been done in Table 5, and say that 

 Chigwell, with 203 taxpayers, heads the list, with Little Laver and Morrell Roding bringing up the 

 rear with 24 and 19 taxpayers. All these statements can be made without knowing exactly how many 

 persons there were in each village when (or before) the tax collector called. 



Table 3 sets out the number of taxpayers in each vill as recorded on the receipts filed in the Exchequer. 

 These receipts, given by the collectors to the constables of each vill, give both the sum paid and the 

 number of heads, ''de capitibus' . No names, other than the constables', appear. Names were un- 

 necessary as long as everyone was paying a flat j^d. When, in 1379 and 1381, the flat rate was sup- 

 planted by a graduated tax, varying with social status, nominal and occupational lists had to be compiled. 



Ranking by size 



It is now possible to bring together the various tax assessments which have been considered. One 

 eflFective method of comparison is the technique of 'ranking', a simple comparison of the relative posi- 

 tion of each place in relation to its neighbour. A ladder may be imagined, with the successive rungs 

 representing the villages, the top rung being the largest tax assessment and so on to the lowest. It will 

 be seen from Table 4 that a village does not always maintain itself on the same rung from one tax col- 

 's E179/108/214. '9 J. C. Russell, Brit. Medieval Population, 23-24, 

 '* Feud. Aids, ii, 204-6. 143. 



'7 E179/107/51. ^0 The clergy were taxed separately and do not figure 



'* E179/107/60. in the returns. 



298 



