Parliament assembled at Westminster on 19 September 1334, and before its dismissal on 23 September, it granted a fifteenth and tenth for the defence of the realm against the Scots and 'other great matters'. The tax was payable in two instalments, on 7 December 1334 and 16 February 1335. Because of the depredations of the Scots, the inhabitants of Northumberland were excused payment.

With this levy one phase in the evolution of taxation of personal property ends. Complaints at the way in which the 1332 tax had been handled led to a change in the method of assessment. Commissions issued to the taxers and collectors on 4 October placed two men for each county - one a royal official, the other an ecclesiastic (usually an abbot or prior) - in charge of the assessment and instructed them to levy not less than the amount levied in 1332. On the same day they were also commissioned to treat with the commonalty of the cities and boroughs, and men of the vills and ancient demesne, and settle with them an overall amount which they should pay. If negotiations failed, the taxers were to assess the amount themselves. When the amounts due from the various local districts were determined, the two chief taxers were to record them upon an indenture, one part of which was to be sent to the Exchequer, and the other was to be kept by the chief assessor, the abbot or prior, for the purpose of collecting the subsidy.

Whereas the rolls of the 1332 tax contain names of taxpayers of the townships and boroughs, and a statement of the sums each person was to pay, the rolls of the 1334 tax contain simply the names of the townships and boroughs, and the total sums for which they were responsible. The sums agreed became the basis of a standardised fifteenth and tenth that, while granted periodically as extraordinary taxation, continued to be levied for 300 years. In 1332, however, London negotiated a fine of 1,100 marks in lieu of paying the fifteenth.

This new assessment increased the overall yield, and the quota system as a whole had other advantages as well. As G.L. Harriss has pointed out, 'any further tendency of the lay subsidy to shrink was counteracted by stabilising the quota for each county and each vill at a slightly higher figure than the preceding tax of 1332. This avoided delay in negotiating and collecting the tax, and was a further step towards familiarising the realm with the need for recurrent taxation. It may also have helped to shift the burden rather more onto the shoulders of the peasantry.' Fixing the amounts had the added benefit that theft by the collectors was more easily detectable.

The quotas allocated to each township and borough are printed in Glasscock, |The Lay Subsidy of 1334|, 1975.

A document relating to this tax grant for the hundred of Tandridge, Surrey is in Surrey History Centre (2575/fol 1).

(|CPR 1334-1338|, pp 38-40, 114; |CFR 1327-1337|, p 467; Harriss, |King, Parliament and Public Finance|, p 85; D. Hughes, |A Study of Social and Constitutional Tendencies in the Early Years of Edward III| (Philadelphia, 1915), p 11)

enrolled account: E 359/8A, rots 4-5; E 359/14, rots 20-22