The Lay Subsidy of 1327

The national tax levied in 1327 to raise revenue for the Crown came at a troubled time for the country, for this was the year in which Edward II was deposed by his wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March – ostensibly, in favour of the future Edward III, who was a fourteen-year-old minor. It was also a time of conflict with Scotland, with an army from north of the border making an incursion into England and engaging with English forces near Stanhope, in County Durham. The tax collected per head of population, on those able to afford it, was set at one-twentieth (5%) of the value of movable goods worth five shillings (5s) or more and Lowestoft had twenty-nine of its citizens found liable for payment. The table below reveals who they were and how much they paid.

The term movable goods related mainly to livestock (especially cattle and sheep) and field crops, and the tax therefore affected the inhabitants of rural communities rather than those of the larger urban populations. By the standards of the time, Lowestoft was only a small town at this point in its history and agriculture was an important part of its economy – but, it would have had a substantial part of its adult male population whose primary activity was fishing (particularly during the long-established autumn herring season) and a developing involvement in maritime trade, and whose connection with the land was therefore of lesser significance. Which meant that a number of its menfolk would probably have fallen below the five-shilling threshold if having just a small interest in farming or, in other cases, no links at all. And this, in turn, may explain why Lowestoft sat in ninth place of the sixteen Lothingland parishes in the “league table” of tax contributions – Gorleston (with its outlier Reston) being first with £7 6s 10½d collected and Ashby last with 16s 0d, and the very small coastal parish of Newton not being mentioned at all. 

Table 1 - Lowestoft tax-payers

• An asterisk indicates surnames that were still being used to identify manorial chief tenements throughout the Early Modern period. 
• Eight family connections are noted in this particular matter, five of which (Gerald, Ode, Hagenhild, Reynald and Dekne) appear in earlier Hundred Roll records (1274) – Howlot, Eston and Akethorpe being new additions. All tenants underlined have surnames which are to be found in the 1274 Hundred Roll data.
• Square brackets are used, where this was felt to be useful, to give common modern spellings of names.

With a lowest payment per head of 8d and a highest one of 2s (24d), the value of movable goods assessed ranged from 13s 4d to £2.The main use of the data at this stage will be to investigate possible changes in the nature of the town’s society, which seem to have occurred in the fifty years since the Hundred Roll enquiry of 1274 was carried out. One noticeable feature is the small number of families which appear to have continued living in the parish, when the surnames above are set against those recorded in that particular investigation. The only ones occurring in both sources are Aleyn, Dekne/Deacon, Elflet/Eylested, Gerald/Jerald, Ode, Haghenild/Haenyld, Reynald and Wyard – with a member of the Reynald family being the highest tax-payer, just as a forbear (his father most likely), had been the largest holder of land in 1274. However, it has to be borne in mind that two different kinds of criteria are in operation regarding the nature of the material presented. The Hundred Roll records people who held land and (where appropriate) the rents paid thereon; the Subsidy shows the tax paid on a twentieth part of agricultural stock-in-trade worth a sum of five shillings or more. Therefore, a large turn-over of population must not be assumed to have taken place in Lowestoft between 1274 and 1327, because land held both in demesne and in villeinage did not necessarily mean that the occupiers were wealthy – especially where smaller acreages were concerned.

Then there is the matter of members of the villein classbeing tied to the manor on which they lived. An absentee lord (especially one as remote as John de Dreux, Earl of Richmond, who had acceded to the estate in 1302) may have resulted in less tight control of the tenants than would have been the case under a resident one – but the manorial steward’s supervision would not necessarily have allowed the workforce to enjoy freedom of movement to any great degree. And, in any case, the question arises as to what conditions would promote such mobility in the first place? The breakdown of manorial structure and the national labour shortage resulting from the Black Death were still a generation away. Most of the Lowestoft tenants probably had no need to move elsewhere and there would be little, if anything, to be gained from doing so. They had their various land-holdings, large or small, and the means of maintaining themselves and their families thereby – in addition to any other sources of income available to them through involvement in maritime activity or through having practical skills of use to the community as a whole.

Having said that, some degree of inward movement is detectable. Twelve of the twenty-nine tax-payers named in the table (belonging to the family-groups mentioned two paragraphs above) were obviously connected with people found listed in the 1274 Hundred Roll. What, then, of the seventeen who seem to have had no previous links? Personal connections, in some cases, cannot be ruled out, but nor can they be presumed to have existed. In three cases, the surnames are encountered in other Lothingland communities in the 1274 Hundred Roll: le Monner (rendered as le Muner) in Gorleston, Elys (or Eleys) in Gunton, and Eston in Oulton (deriving, most likely, from the parish of Easton Bavents further down the coast to the south of Kessingland) – while the name Botild is to be found in fourteenth century documentation relating to Gisleham and Mutford. At any point, during the intervening fifty years, a member of these families could have migrated to Lowestoft and joined its population – not necessarily to become part of the peasantry, but to live by some trade or occupation which was useful to the community. 

Other incomers are indicated by having names either relating to a previous place of residence or to their family-group’s original home. There are three of them, all located in Norfolk: Bawdeswell, Dereham (probably East Dereham) and Brundall. What had brought them to Lowestoft and made them residents there? Again, the likelihood is that they were part of an emerging class of people involved in trade activity of one kind or another, rather than being of the level of society which was tied to the land. Two of the names recorded give individual associations of widely differing nature. Geoffrey the Chandler may be indicative of a developing community increasing its range of activities and skills, in that he was probably a maker and seller of candles – these being a more expensive and effective means of indoor illumination than tallow rush-lights. Peter the Blobbere [Blabber] was not nearly so fortunate; his name would seem to suggest that he either had thick, protruding lips and a spluttering manner of speech or that he was an indiscreet chatterbox – neither of which is a particularly flattering image.

John and Warin Howlot, John Coyt, Thomas Gilly, Richard Jakelin, William Gryme and John, son of Sarah, cannot easily be categorised by name alone, but they too had come into Lowestoft for particular reasons and become part of its social structure. Again, their presence among the community’s tax-payers would seem to suggest that they were not of villeinstatus, since this level of society was (in theory, at least) tied to its manorial place of residence, but had other means of livelihood than simply tilling the soil and therefore reflect a society undergoing change from agriculture alone to a more complex economy. However, given the fact that all of the incomers noted may have had trade occupations of some kind, they were obviously also involved in working the land to a degree sufficient to make them liable for the payment of tax. And it is interesting to note that Geoffrey the Chandler and Peter the Blobber were in the upper levels of tax-payers.

Edmund of Akethorpe, of course, was a local person and a member of the family which held title to Lowestoft’s former Domesday outlier – long integrated by now into its larger neighbour’s parochial structure, but still an independent manor in its own right at this time. And even though a relatively small unit, it would have had agricultural activity as its main operation and would therefore have been taxable on the movable goods produced. And, as part of the parish of Lowestoft, it would have been included in the levy made upon that particular community.

It also needs to be said, of course, that the tax demand made of certain of Lowestoft’s inhabitants came at a time when the community was in process of moving itself from a site placed somewhere in the north-eastern sector of the Municipal Cemetery, flanked by Rotterdam Road and Normanston Drive, onto a cliff-side location still mainly defined by the High Street area of today. And not only this, but also undertaking (at the same time) the construction of a large new parish church – with about three-quarters of the tower and the high altar crypt completed, before the Black Death (1348-9) and its effects disrupted things completely and put completion on hold until the mid-late 15th century. There must have been a notable degree of wealth among the upper levels of the population to enable all of this work to be carried out and the human endeavour involved would also have been considerable. Terracing the cliff from end to end, before setting out the building-plots along its length, must have been an enormous undertaking and one is left guessing at just how it was achieved and at its time-scale.

Twenty-nine taxpayers are recorded in the Subsidy list (twenty-seven men and two women), but what this number represents as a proportion of the town’s population at the time cannot be estimated. A notional number of 250 inhabitants can be be cited for the year 1274, using fifty-two eligible people named in the Hundred Roll of that year – but, it may well have been higher than this. As was pointed out earlier, in the third paragraph, only eight surnames recorded in the Hundred Roll appear in the Lay Subsidy (found among twelve tenants), which leaves sixteen new ones (Howlot being present twice) to be taken into consideration. Assuming that most (if not all) of the Hundred Roll families were still resident in the parish – though with a number of them below taxable level – and adding the sixteen new Subsidy surnames to the fifty-two earlier ones, the figure of sixty-eight is arrived at. Using an accepted family-size demographic multiplier of 4.75 produces a notional population of just over 320 people. 

However, there would have an unknown number of arrivals in the community who would not have been included in the Lay Subsidy list because they fell below the 5s taxable threshold – either through having a very low movable goods level of the things taxed or perhaps even none at all through being involved solely or mainly in maritime or other commercial endeavour. Fishing activity and coastal trade – and perhaps even cross-North Sea traffic – were on the increase during the first half of the 14th century and the commercial life of the town was strengthened even further during 1308 by being granted by lord of the manor, John de Dreux, the right to hold a weekly Wednesday market and an annual eight-day fair in honour of the town’s patron, St. Margaret of Antioch (feast day, 20 July). The market particularly, in serving the southern sector of Lothingland Half-hundred and most of the adjoining Mutford jurisdiction, would have been likely to encourage inward migration to the town and its population might have been as high as 400 or more by the time that the Lay Subsidy was levied. 

The table below shows details for the two local Half-hundreds. It was noted earlier that the parish of Newton was omitted from the Lothingland return – as was Barnby from that of Mutford. Neighbouring North Cove was located in Wangford (al. Wainford) Hundred.

Table 2 - 1327 Lay Subsidy (tax paid by local communities)

There has, of necessity, been a good deal of speculation in this piece, but an attempt has been made to keep it within the context of the documentary source used. This is to be found in S.H.A. Hervey (ed.), Suffolk in 1327, Suffolk Green Books series vol. 9 (Woodbridge, 1906), pp. 91-4 & 95-102 relating to Mutford and Lothingland half-hundreds respectively and p. 95 to Lowestoft itself. The work is available for study on Internet Archive at archive.org. 

CREDIT: David Butcher