On 25 June 1332 Edward III issued writs ordering the imposition of a tallage. Like the last such levy, this tax was to be a two-tiered imposition - a ninth on lands and a fourteenth on moveable goods. The instructions issued for the levy were similar to those of 1312, but such a levy was evidently deemed unacceptable in the parliament which met at Westminster on 9 September, and the king was offered a subsidy of a fifteenth and tenth in its place before that assembly adjourned on 12 September. The king accepted this offer, after statements about troubles in Ireland and the prospect of difficulties with Scotland had been set before the assembly. According to Hadwin, by agreeing to the substitution Edward 'gained a subsidy worth £34,000 instead of the £5,000 or so he might have raised by a tallage'.
p> Two assessors and collectors were appointed for each county on 16 September 1332. They were in turn to appoint under-assessors who would make the assessment, receive the money and transfer it to the principal assessors and collectors; these persons were responsible for paying the money into the Exchequer. Materials from the East Riding of Yorkshire demonstrate that the assessments were to be made on goods held at Michaelmas (29 September) 1332 (see e.g. E 179/202/15, 25; the survival of such materials from the East Riding may be related to the investigation of the activities of the collector there, one Thomas de Boulton: see Willard, J.F., |Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property 1290-1334| (1934), 215, 224-6, and cf. E 179/202/20). As before, duplicate rolls of assessment were to be prepared, one of which was to be returned to the Exchequer. This assessment proved to be the basis of the fifteenth and tenth granted in 1334, and for all those to follow, as was this two-tiered system for assessment and collection.
p> A writ to the Northumberland assessors sanctioning a delay in the making of the assessment for that county because of the frequent attacks of the Scots, reveals the dates on which the assessment and payment were due at the Exchequer for all other counties. The first instalment was due on 3 February 1333 and the second on 31 May 1333. These dates are confirmed by the writ appointing the Abbot of St. Mary's, York, as receiver for the northern counties on 27 January 1333 (|CFR 1330-34|, p.395).
p> There were numerous and persistent allegations of corruption among the collectors, but it was not until July 1335, almost three years after the tax was granted, that commissions of enquiry were appointed in groups of counties, with instructions to investigate these charges secretly.
p> Many county assessments made for the levy of this fifteenth and tenth have been printed. For references to these, see Glasscock, |The Lay Subsidy of 1334|. The total amount assessed for the subsidy was £34,295 17s. 2 1/2d.
p> (|Rot. Parl.|, II, p 66; |CPR 1330-34|, pp 357-358, 484-485; |CPR 1334-1338|, p 201; |The Wiltshire Tax List of 1332|, ed. D.A. Crowley (Wiltshire Record Society, XLV, 1989), p xi; Hadwin, 'The Last Royal Tallages', pp 354-358)
p> enrolled account: E 359/8A, rots 2-3; E 359/14, rots 18-19 p>
|