LONDON AND MIDDLESEX HEARTH TAX launched 26th June 2014 ...a snapshot of London and Middlesex on the eve of the
Great Fire
One of the great
documents of London, indeed English, history forms the heart of this
publication: the London and Middlesex hearth tax return for Lady Day 1666. Not
all that document has survived, so the missing parts have been augmented here
by those of 1662-3 Lady Day and 1664 Lady Day. Together these documents capture
the burgeoning City and its environs at a critical point in history, bearing
witness to the impact of the Great Plague of 1665 and Great Fire of 1666
against a background of the energy and resilience of Londoners.
The London
and Middlesex Hearth Tax is a two-part publication, over 1800 pages
long. Part 1 contains chapters by
well-known scholars on the history of London and Middlesex in the 1660s,
housing, migration and surnames, the administration of the hearth tax, a
biographical concordance of Pepys’s Diary
and much more (see details below). The transcript of the hearth tax
documents occupies all of Part 2.
This
publication is an important addition to scholarship and the history of
Restoration London and Middlesex. It will be an invaluable aid to those
interested in the topography of the area, house history, family and surname
history. The edition is fully indexed with colour illustrations and maps and
contains information to guide readers through the edition, including a guide to
using and interpreting the hearth tax documents.
***
What are the hearth tax documents? The tax was a levied on hearths and
stoves, payable twice yearly, introduced in 1662 and abolished in 1689. Unlike
the later window tax its documents are very informative, taking their place in
the history of taxation because they included the names of those who didn’t pay as well as those who did.
Some people were exempt from the tax on grounds of poverty or low rent and some
people quite simply could not or would not pay.
The transcript in this book, then,
contains the names of rich and poor with some indication of the size of their
dwellings; it also contains a great deal of additional information. It records
the myriad of insalubrious alleys (the names are a give-away: Stinking Alley,
Codpiece Alley, Dirty Lane) crammed with impoverished residents; ‘these people
are miserable poor’ wrote one collector. The documents bear witness to the nitty gritty of the collection process: notes of payment
and non-payment, doorstep arguments and complaints, excuses, doors shut in the
collector’s face, items taken in lieu of payment- even physical blows are
recorded. The bawdy houses of Long Acre were rented by the week, wrote one
collector, so the proprietor refused to pay the tax.
The tax was due in March 1666, but
because of Plague and disorganisation the tax officials did not even start
collecting until April 1666; many were still about that task in September,
unaware of the disaster about to happen. The collectors went from door to door
noting the names of the occupants of London’s houses and how many hearths,
stoves or ovens they had. They wrote the information down, parish by parish in
a series of books with each street, alley or court noted, allowing us today to
track the topographical route the collectors walked and see details about the
inhabitants which they recorded – full name, status, perhaps occupation and
whether or not the occupant might be poor. The collector who walked up Pudding
Lane noting that Thomas Farrinor, baker, had five
hearths ‘and one oven’, little knew that within a short space of time his work
would be completely undone and a large part of London consumed by fire from
that ‘one oven’.
There are parts of the document
where the collectors chose to record occupations. These provide welcome
additional information on individuals and on the topography and streets of
London. Through these it is revealed as a smelly, rattling, clattering – and
not entirely masculine - city. Women are recorded as independent heads of
households with sizeable dwellings, deploying craft trades as goldsmiths,
coopers, potters, booksellers and printers and more. The documents are a
valuable source of information on London at work at all levels of society: Inns
of Court and Chancery, government offices, church vestries, Livery Halls,
soldiers, sailors – and three washer women sharing a hearth to dry clothes.
In the transcript we can see also the
development of housing in London, particularly the spread of larger houses to
the west of the City in fashionable areas such as Lincoln’s Inn Fields and
Bloomsbury. The entry for the Earl of Southampton’s 50 hearth house in
Bloomsbury is flanked by dotted lines which probably indicate the laying out of
plots.
Some names in the published
transcript are well-known in English history, and can be seen in the context of
their homes and neighbourhood. Many
aristocrats and courtiers are there, but also John Milton the poet, Peter Lely
the painter, Praisegod Barebones and Henry Purcell
senior; there are key players in the drama of Civil War, regicide and
Restoration, and many more who were to contribute to
the rise of London as a cultural and scientific hub and England as a major power.
Pepys, however, whose tax was paid by the Navy Office, is not there, but there
is a biographical concordance in the edition of 460 people mentioned in his Diary who can be traced in the hearth
tax.
These detailed tax collectors’
accounts were to be rendered inadequate by Plague and the Fire. One part
reports that six parishes in one collector’s area were ‘burnt all’, with All
Hallows Barking by the Tower ‘burnt the greatest part’. Meanwhile the shadow of
plague reaches over the pages: ‘all deceased in the Visitation’ reports the
collector of one household, ‘pox in the Minories’
wrote another by way of refusal to enter a dwelling.
DETAILS OF THE PUBLICATION to be launched 26 June 2014
The two-part edition is produced by the British Academy Hearth Tax
Project and published by the British Record Society. The General Editor is Dr
Catherine Ferguson.
First part: 8 chapters on the history of London and Middlesex in the 1660s;
two focussing on housing and one on surnames and immigration.
Matthew
Davies:
Historical background to the edition
Vanessa
Harding:
London and Middlesex in the 1660s
Elizabeth
Parkinson:
The administration of the hearth tax in Metropolitan London and Middlesex
Ian Warren: Houses and society in
Restoration London: the ‘great’ and ‘middle sorts’.
Peter
Guillery: Houses in London’s suburbs
David Hey: Immigration, surnames and
the London hearth tax
Catherine
Ferguson:
Pepys’s Diary: a biographical concordance
Peter Seaman: Manuscript and codicological context
Second
part: the transcript of the 1666 hearth tax, augmented by 1664 and 1662-3
material.
In total
there are over 1800 pages, 37 coloured illustrations, 22 maps (17 coloured),
statistical tables, appendices and glossaries – and both the transcript and the
rest of the edition has been fully indexed.
Obtaining this two-part publication: The
edition will be sent to existing subscribers of the British Record Society.
Non-subscribers can obtain copies from the BRS Treasurer at a cost of £60 plus
P&P treasurer@britishrecordsociety.org