Stephen Pierpoint

Despite England's growing international trading wealth, an expanding secondary sector, and more productive agriculture the mid-seventeenth century state with its outdated tax system was politically and militarily weak. Civil war and its aftermath created the urgent and protracted supply need which instigated the creation and honing of radically new effective tax forms and processes which proved indispensable during the Restoration and beyond. Drawing on Kent, London and Bristol case studies this thesis explores how the land tax became a mainstay of an increasingly powerful early modern English state by considering its administration, processes and tax mechanics from its 1643 inception to the excise crisis. Economic development offered fiscal opportunity and whilst the excise exploited product supply chains, the land tax targeted rent and income generated from agricultural, commercial and domestic real estate. Occupiers and landlords shared immediate fiscal burdens. Land taxes exploited cashflows around financial and seasonal production cycles, particularly in the more commercialised South and East, where fresh attempts were made to value and tax land. Effective local governors had for decades bolstered their own authority by delivering national initiatives and now worked in partnership with legislators to nurture the new tax and create resilience. The state's bargain was that parliament would determine deadlines and fixed tax amounts from each locale, but local governors had immediate process ownership to determine its detailed application. Continued fiscal success required fresh waves of innovation, adaption and involvement including: empowerment, delegation, the deployment of more experienced officials, simplification, and improved stakeholder oversight. As post-Revolutionary conflict drove fiscal burdens higher, land taxes became a permanent fiscal implement of the state, despite regular outbreaks of political angst at the tax's power. The resulting coordinated collective commitment of tens of thousands of off [...]

The period after the 1688 Revolution is often seen as one of the administrative declines for land taxes. This chapter challenges that judgement. It provides fresh data and analysis that contradicts established historiological narratives and questions the evidence presented in traditional texts around the effectiveness of early eighteenth-century land tax. In four detailed exemplary studies, this chapter shows that some areas of land tax administration that have often been seen as signs of weakness were in fact areas of considerable strength. Land tax processes did not work because they were complicated, requiring constant adjustment and intervention, they worked because they were sufficiently simplified but well-resourced to create an annually repeatable and resilient routine. Further evidence is presented from the three case study areas of ways in which processes were simplified and improved in the early eighteenth century as experienced officials coordinated their actions across county, city and nation.

A description of the archaeological collection amassed over five years from an erosion patch on Chunal Moor, Charlesworth. It consists entirely of lithic material and is of considerable importance for the Mesolithic of north-west Derbyshire.

Land tax burdens became even heavier and more permanent after 1688 as England became embroiled in continental conflict. There was much fiscal experimentation, but land tax, customs and excise were the dominant fiscal forces. Urban areas and the South and East of England took more than their fair share of fiscal weight. The challenge of successful land tax collection was met by a range of solutions created centrally and locally to meet these new demands. There was improved central stakeholder oversight, increased administrative resourcing, the deployment of more experienced personnel, increased delegation, simplification, flexibility, and a more careful choice of taxpayers. Why charge those who could not afford to pay or least likely to be there when the tax collector called? Most of the administrative burden was now delegated to long-serving paid officials who had appropriate skills and capabilities. They were overseen by an increasingly experienced body of senior tax commissioners.

This book goes further than previous authors in arguing that English land taxes were invented in the 1640s even if statutes used the term ‘assessment’. Contemporaries knew them as land taxes and they continued to be levied in England until 1963. Indeed the main innovative features of land taxes were created in the decade after 1643 by legislators aided by feedback loops from local administrators in the English regions. The result was effective taxation that could effectively target income from a developing English economy principally from land and included innovations around: clear deadlines, fixed tax quotas, enforcement, logistics, and process. The importance of the exploitation of monetary flows from production and around financial cycles was vital to the success of the early land taxes, in a period when physical cash was scarce.

The distinctive response to parliamentary legislation in the three case study areas is described as local administrators created solutions that would work in each area. There are common features including delegation to local sub-teams, administrative delayering, the deployment and empowerment of officials with greater experience and the greater use of the transfer of monies in paper form rather than coin. Traditional administrative roles including mayors, sheriffs, aldermen and justices of the peace were now populated by those doing well from a growing English economy. These men were appointed the chief administrators of the new levies and if they had to pay more tax, they would at least have a degree of process ownership and control.

The period after the 1688 Revolution is often seen as one of the administrative declines for land taxes. This chapter challenges that judgement. It provides fresh data and analysis that contradicts established historiological narratives and questions the evidence presented in traditional texts around the effectiveness of early eighteenth-century land tax. In four detailed exemplary studies, this chapter shows that some areas of land tax administration that have often been seen as signs of weakness were in fact areas of considerable strength. Land tax processes did not work because they were complicated, requiring constant adjustment and intervention, they worked because they were sufficiently simplified but well-resourced to create an annually repeatable and resilient routine. Further evidence is presented from the three case study areas of ways in which processes were simplified and improved in the early eighteenth century as experienced officials coordinated their actions across c...