Parliament opened on 16 January 1581. On 8 March the commons granted a subsidy over two years. On the same day they granted two fifteenths and tenths.

The terms of the subsidy were identical to those granted in 1571 and 1576; on moveable goods, individuals (and corporations) possessing £3 or more worth of goods, paid 20d. per pound for the first payment, and 12d. per pound for the second. The minimum threshold of liability for income from land was 20s., on which taxpayers paid 2s.8d. per pound for the first payment and 16d. per pound for the second. Aliens paid double these rates, and those not liable in either category, were subject to a poll tax of 4d per head per payment.

The first payment was to be assessed by 12 May 1581, certified at the Exchequer by 12 July 1581 and paid by 10 October 1581; the second was to be assessed by 20 September 1582, certified by 20 October 1582 and paid by 20 November 1582.

A form of writ listing commissioners to collect the second collection in England and Wales is at TNA: PRO C 212/22/8.

A copy (possibly early to mid seventeenth century) of an assessment of individuals for the first collection of this subsidy relating to Rhuthun hundred, Denbighshire, is in West Sussex Record Office, ref. Clough and Butler MSS 108. This paper document and another (ref. Clough and Butler MSS 109) for the first of two subsidies granted to Charles I in 1625, contain watermarks bearing decorations including a distinctive hunting horn and the name 'Giles Duran', about whom little appears to be known, although similar watermarks have been noted in a manuscript volume, thought to have been created in Italy or England in the mid to late sixteenth century, in the University of Oregon Libraries Burgess Collection MS 37. See John ML Booker (ed.), |The Clough and Butler Archives, A Catalogue| (West Sussex County Council, Chichester, 1965).

An assessment of individuals, evidently a collector's copy (on paper), dated 10 October 1582 at Dolgellau, therefore presumably for the second collection of this subsidy, for the hundred of Penllyn, Merioneth, is in the National Library of Wales, ref. Bodwenni (E. Francis Davies) 124.

(|Stat. Parl|., IV, pp 656, 685-687; Cobbett, |Hist. Parl|., I, p 810)

enrolled account: E 359/52, rots 63-90