This Essex document evidently comprises a certificate of assessment and individual assessment for the hundreds of Ongar, Harlow and Waltham for the first payment towards the subsidy granted to Henry VIII in 1523.
The dating clause within the certificate was unfortunately left blank, and no explicit details of the tax concerned are given, but the rates charged clearly associate it with the 1523 subsidy, while the delivery dates noted on rot 1 and rot 6 are consistent with documents for the first payment. Both delivery dates refer to the commissioner, Humfrey Browne, and the appearance of two such dates suggest that the roll was originally in at least two sections, and these were joined together later at the Exchequer. However, the entire roll, certificate and assessment, is seemingly in a single hand.
The certificate attests that the assessment had been made, but also that the commissioners called before them all those persons 'to whome wat had vehement suspycyon of their last valuacions' (presumably those made for the previous subsidies) and forced them to swear on oath that the present valuations were true. These persons were also asked whether they had 'sett theym selves at any lesse value by reason of suche money as they prested' to the king, an allusion probably to the forced loan of that same year, to which they of course replied that they had not. The certificate also states that the moneys given in anticipation of the subsidy had been subtracted from the assessment, but there is no mention of this deduction in connection with any of the persons assessed. Rather, the entire amount paid in anticipation for each hundred is subtracted from the total due at the end of the assessment of each hundred.
The first rotulet of the assessment for Harlow hundred, containing the assessments for Harlow, Roydon and Great Hallingbury, has become separated from this roll, and is now at E 179/108/210. It originally preceded the present rot 7 of this roll.
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