When the returns from the loan levied in autumn 1522 proved inadequate for the king's military needs, another loan was imposed on laymen in spring 1523, again based on the information provided by the comprehensive 'military survey' of the previous year.

In the imposition of this 'second loan' the net was cast much wider. Whereas only those possessing a total estate of £20 or more were asked to contribute to the 1522 loan, the minimum threshold of liability was now lowered to £5-20 in goods and 20s.-£20 per annum in lands, on which all liable persons were to lend 10% of their income.

A number of loan books have survived in the PRO and other repositories; these are listed in Hoyle, |Tudor Taxation Records|, pp 51-53. To this list should be added E 179/185/237F, which has been identified on the basis of internal evidence as a loan book of 1523 for the hundreds of Woking and Godley in Surrey, and Surrey Record Office, Guildford, LM 1502/1, a list of contributors to the loan in the hundred of Godalming in Surrey, attached to Henry VIII's promissory note for repayment. An interim account rendered by the collectors of the loan in Godalming and Farnham hundreds also survives (LM 1502/2). Evidence that Cheshire contributed to this loan is provided by two documents in series E 179: E 179/85/1 and E 179/85/13. Since the county generally claimed exemption from taxation until the 1530s, on the grounds that it was not represented in Parliament, this appears to be an attempt to widen the scope of revenue raising in time of need, to an area not normally included in taxation.

Together with the 1522 loan, this loan raised over £200,000 for the king's war with France (see BL, Cotton MS Cleo. F.VI, fo. 272v, which lists the total amounts received from both loans, broken down by income bracket), but there is evidence that the loan commissioners were dilatory in carrying out their commissions, and that lenders were slow to pay. Draft warrants from the king to the commissioners and collectors of both loans, written in May 1524, complain of incomplete returns and small numbers of contributors, and exhort the commissioners to use 'all wise and pollitique meanes' at their disposal to solicit more contributions, which they were to bring to Westminster on 25 June. Another warrant orders letters to be sent to a number of individuals who were delinquent in paying the loans assessed against them (BL, Harl MS 309, fos. 42v-43v).

Both loans were to be repaid out of the next parliamentary grant. Henry VIII gave promissory notes, pledging repayment to the inhabitants of various hundreds, cities and boroughs who had contributed, a few of which survive (BL, Add MS 27,402, fo. 36; BL, Stowe MS 146, fo. 135 - both given in April 1523). The loans, however, were never repaid; nor were those imposed on the clergy in 1522. A parliamentary act of 1529 released the king from any obligation to make repayment on the grounds that the money had been used exclusively for war purposes and might legitimately be termed taxation.

(Goring, 'The General Proscription', 700; |Gloucestershire, Military Survey of 1522|, pp xiii-xiv)

declared account: E 36/221