The E179 Project

What is it?

No - not another missile! It is in fact a new means of illuminating some fascinating aspects of local history, namely the records of central taxation of local communities, and thereby the nature of those communities themselves.

What Records are Involved?

Those of the King's (or Queen's) Remembrancer. This office, which was formalized in 1323, still exists, as part of the Supreme Court of Judicature. For our present purpose, however, we are concerned with its records relating to national taxation from 1188 and 1688, which are held in the Public Record Office in Kew. The vicissitudes which have befallen those records over the years, and more particularly between about 1780 and 1840, constitute another compelling tale, involving wooden sheds, soldiers, dustbins, rats and finally 751 sacks. But we will sidestep all that, merely adding that successive 19th-century custodians did their best to put the 30,000-odd documents into a reasonable but not very accessible order which has persisted until now.

PRO Class E179, which resulted from the 19th-century work, thus includes a large part of the records of the King's Remembrancer as secretary and record-keeper to the Barons of the Exchequer (the managing board).

They provide evidence for the existence of medieval communities and, frequently, for the numbers and names of taxpayers and the sums they paid, or on which they were assessed. For long periods they provide the best guide to the relative levels of lay wealth in towns and villages across the country.

But the existing indexes (which date from 1925) are not the most helpful and it has long been recognized that a complete reappraisal was required to meet the needs of researchers into the next century.

What is the Project and Who is Undertaking it?

With the aid of grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the Economic and Social Research council, and under the guidance of a panel of distinguished experts, a team of researchers have embarked upon a detailed examination of the documents and their background. Because of the huge size of their task, it is proceeding on a county-by-county basis, and will take several years to complete for the whole of England and Wales. Kent and the Cinque Ports are fortunate in being amongst the first to be started and completed.

What Research Aids have been Produced?

A major new database has been created, including all places listed in the documents. It comprises 3 sections: taxes, place-names, and document descriptions. It can be searched by date, type of document (for example assessments, exemptions, receipts, or inquisitions), or type of tax. It enables the documents to be 'questioned' in various ways: anyone interested in Sevenoaks, for example, will find a listing of all surviving documents in which Sevenoaks appears, and be referred to all that is known of each tax involved.

Whilst it cannot stretch to personal names, the database will nevertheless show to what extent personal names do appear in each document.

Further, each document is now supported by a detailed analytical description as part of the database.

It will soon be accessible in the Kew search rooms and ultimately via the Internet.

An important accompanying work recently published by PRO Publications is 'Lay taxes in England and Wales 1188-1688' by Maureen Jurkowski, Carrie Smith, and David Crook, each of whom has been closely involved in the project. It provides an unrivaled synopsis of the history of all the 450 or so known taxes occurring in the period, both generally and in detail.

The taxes range through carucages, scutages, tallages, feudal aids, fifteenths and tenths, poll taxes, income taxes, alien taxes, lay subsidies, prerogative taxes, forced loans, ship money, Civil War and Commonwealth taxes, and later Stuart taxes including the Hearth Tax. For each of these, the authors give the date of the grant, the background (often at considerable length) the method of assessment, the date of collection, and the total yield (where known). The book also discusses the related Exchequer Records.

The Cinque ports are often referred to in the book and, as a random example of the detail revealed, there is mention of a 'non-contributing cesse' in (parts of) Kent in 1642.

What Now?

There is clearly great scope for all this to be developed in individual research. Thought also needs to be given to whether the Society itself has a role to play.

Brian Cousins.

January 1999