This article begins by noting that military revolutions and civil wars in early modern Europe provide an unduly narrow framework for understanding the transition from a domain to a tax state. Taking Anglo‐Saxon England as a case study, it is suggested that political restrictions led to the establishment of direct and indirect taxation, thereby providing rulers with revenues which surpassed those from domain resources. The main section of the article uses sources from coinage and wills to poetry and letters in order to give a general idea of the chronological development of a medieval tax state. This analysis challenges the views of the new fiscal historians, who argue that a collapse in a medieval domain state acts as the precondition for the emergence of a tax state. Instead, this article suggests that new policies arose because of the need of Anglo‐Saxon kings and their advisers to take account of the requirements of ecclesiastical authorities, as well as a heavy revenue imperative, in paying for resistance against the Vikings. The article ends with a discussion of the comparative applications of the contexts and catalysts which lead to the adoption of pioneering fiscal policies.
The development of the family into a small unit in which descent was traced almost exclusively through the male line is regarded as a major turning point in medieval European history. The early stages of the formation of agnatic kinship have usually been connected to strategies designed to preserve and retain control of patrimonies and castles, arising from the breakdown of public order. In this article it is suggested that the emergence of new kinship values was connected to the investment of aristocratic energy and resources in monastic programmes, and to subtle changes in lay involvement with the rituals associated with death and the salvation of souls.
This article presents a new evaluation of the Restoration hearth tax and the social geography of London, first, by comparing the 1666 London hearth tax return with unpublished collectors’ accounts; second, by analysing the huge amount of extraneous data in these records on the social conditions in London; and third, by considering how different forms of tax avoidance and tax evasion operated on the streets of London. The article discusses wealth distribution by location and social status, and shows how privileged groups used diplomatic, ecclesiastical, and military rank to avoid the hearth tax, while ordinary householders turned to doorstep opposition, especially in the outer and poorer suburbs, in expressing their hostility towards the heath tax. The article demonstrates that in Metropolitan London the assessment and collection of the hearth tax depended not only upon the enforcement of the parliamentary legislation, but also upon negotiation and give‐and‐take between tax collectors and tax payers, sometimes in consultation with the Crown. As a result the hearth tax failed to fill the king's purse, was unpopular in the capital and in the country, and created onerous work for both auditors and hearth tax collectors, which contributed to the short life of the hearth tax (1662–89).
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