Parliament opened on 15 April 1523. On 21 May it granted an annual subsidy for four years, to be assessed each year between 29 September and 11 November, and paid the following 9 February. It was hoped to raise a total sum of £800,000, although no mention of this amount was included in the text of the parliamentary act.

For the first two years, land was assessed at 12d. in the pound, and moveable goods at the rate of 12d. in the pound for those with over £20 of goods, and 6d. in the pound for those with 40s.-£20 of goods. Persons who were paid annual wages of over 20s. were charged with 4d. annually, although in practice many commissioners assessed such wage earners to pay 6d. Aliens paid a double tax of 8d. on their wages, if they received any, and if they did not, they were required to pay a poll tax of 8d. Henry VIII was in a hurry to obtain the money to fund campaigns in France and demanded that the wealthier taxpayers make loans, known as ‘anticipations’, of the first payment by 11 November 1523 (see E 179/108/147, for example).

An original commission ordering the collection of the anticipation in Worcestershire, dated 2 November 1523, gives details of its levy. Only those with £40 or more in lands or goods were to be obliged to pay in advance, and payment was to be made by 30 November. The commissioners were to levy the anticipation according to an assessment recorded in a ‘book’ originally annexed to the commission. This assessment was that which had been used to levy the forced loan of the previous year, and which had originally been completed as part of the ‘military survey’ of 1522. The return of the commissioners stated, however, that those persons liable to pay the anticipation refused to be assessed ‘after the rate as they were at the time of the loan, but would be assessed according to the act of parliament of the subsidy’, and in accordance with a new assessment which would reflect the 'diminishment' in their estates since the military survey had been made. The commissioners for Worcestershire claimed to be unable to proceed, therefore, until the new assessment had been completed (E 34/1B). A possible example of a collector's 'book' for Suffolk is now at E 179/180/180, with a record of amounts actually paid in E 179/180/179, although there is no reference to a need for a revised assessment in that county.

The last two payments taxed only the well-off. In the third year, only land was assessed: persons in possession of lands worth over £50 per annum paid 12d. in the pound, and in the fourth year, only moveable goods were assessed, again at 12d. per pound for over £50 worth. For both payments, aliens paid double. As before, no one was to be assessed on both land and goods.

The commissioners were to divide themselves after receiving their commission and make their assessments. The commissions each year were to be delivered to them by 16 September: a certificate of assessment for the first collection in Winchester (E 179/173/174 m 5) states that the relevant commission was dated 20 August 1523. The assessment and collection procedures were substantially the same as those first put in place in 1512. For the first time, however, commissioners were required to return duplicates of the individual assessments into the Exchequer, with the certificates of assessment, and this practice was to become standard procedure for the levy of all Tudor and Stuart subsidies. Other improvements to the administration of the subsidy included stricter control of the assessment of the nobility, which was put under the supervision of the lord chancellor and other senior royal officials instead of the commissioners, an eight-day grace period extended to defaulters before their distrained goods were sold, and provision for the exoneration of the collectors from sums deemed uncollectable because of the death or disappearance of defaulters. Commissioners were also to return a second copy of the certificate of assessment, including details of the total sums raised, to the Treasurer of the King's Chamber (e.g. E 179/212/118, a certificate for the first collection in various parts of the North Riding of Yorkshire, which bears an endorsement recording its delivery to the Treasurer).

Many county assessments of the first and second payments have been printed; for a complete list of these, see Hoyle, |Tudor Taxation Records|, pp 62-67.

The procedure for the levy of the first payment of the tax was subsequently modified, and its collection delayed as a result. The Exchequer was unhappy with the original certificates and lists received from the counties, and therefore, on 26 February 1524, a signet letter was sent to all the commissioners informing them that mistakes had been made in the interpretation of the subsidy act and enclosing a 'memorial' which gave more specific instructions for the assessment. Although no copy of this document is known to have survived, Dr Sheail has discerned its contents from his examination of the extant returns. In those cases where the amounts assessed were lower than those recorded in the military survey of 1522, the memorial probably asked for justification of the changes, and for more precise assessments. It also clarified ambiguities in the subsidy act, as conflicting instructions had been given for the assessment of those persons taxed on £2 worth of moveable goods: one clause included them in the category of £2 - £19 (to be taxed at 6d in the pound) and another stated that the assessments of £2 were to be rated at 4d in the pound. As a result of this revision, clearly the first collection would now be late: a Gloucestershire assessment states that it was due on or about 8 July 1524 (E 179/113/193: cf. E 179/113/194, a similar document produced before the revision). Finally, the commissioners were almost certainly told that they had to submit very full lists of the taxpayers to the Exchequer, replacing the rather rudimentary lists (containing only the sum totals and collectors for each settlement) that had been sent for earlier subsidies, and for the first assessment of this collection. As Hoyle has noted, this innovation probably marks the beginning of the detailed nominal returns which characterised Tudor subsidies.

These further instructions met with a varied response. In some counties which had already compiled and sent in their assessments, the lists were merely amended to address the points raised in the new directions, but in others the assessments were abandoned for fresh ones. In Oxfordshire, for example, two sets of lists - compiled before and after the memorial - have survived, as have various returns for parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire (e.g. the returns for Osgoldcross wapentake, the original certificate and assessment at E 179/206/109 and the more detailed second return at E 179/206/122 (assessment) and 206/135 (certificate)). The same is the case in Leicestershire, where the unexpectedly low assessments returned in January 1524 were held to be suspect, and where, as the revised returns of April and May 1524 state, there was ‘vehement suspicion’ that the inhabitants had subtracted the money for the forced loans imposed by the king in the previous year from the assessment of the value of their estates (E 179/133/104-109, 117, 122). In some counties, however, the commissioners still did not make full returns, and in others the rates continued to be misinterpreted.

A list of the commissioners for the fourth payment of this tax is now at E 179/281/2. Moreover, a large book at E 179/281/4 not only records the names of the commissioners and collectors for each of the final three payments of the tax, as well as the amounts due for each collection, but also includes transcribed details from the assessments for the entire country for the third collection, complete with the names and assessments of the taxpayers. A book containing copies of various onera of account for this tax is at E 179/281/3.

The total net yields for each payment of the subsidy, as calculated by Dr. Schofield, were: £72,306; £64,807; £5,667; £9,137. The returns are analysed, albeit with numerous and fairly major errors and omissions, in J. Sheail, ‘The Regional Distribution of Wealth in England as Indicated by the 1524-5 Lay Subsidy Returns’ (Unpubl., Ph.D., Univ. of London, 1968) now published as |The Regional Distribution of Wealth as indicated in the 1524/5 Subsidy Returns|, ed. R.W.Hoyle (2 vols., List and Index Society, Special Series 29, 1998).

(Stat. Realm, III, pp 206, 230-241; Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England, I, (London, 1806), p 488; Hoyle, ‘Crown, Parliament and Taxation’, p 1178; J. Cornwall, The County Community under Henry VIII (Rutland Record Series, I, 1980) p 13; Lay Subsidy Rolls, 1524-5 (Sussex Record Society, LVI, 1957), p xxvii; Hoyle, Tudor Taxation Records, pp 23-25; Schofield, thesis, pp 213-214).