The Lay Subsidy of 1568

Authorisation for this Elizabethan taxation was granted by Parliament on 18 December 1566 and the official date of collection was 24 February 1568. Lowestoft’s stated contribution of £34 19s 8d was 47% of the Lothingland total of £74 8s 6d and its 112 tax-payers constituted 42% of the half-hundred’s contributors (267 in number). These figures confirm the town’s dominant position in its local area, just as those of the 1524-5 collection did over forty years earlier. The 1568 Subsidy was structured differently from its predecessor in the way that the assessment was made. It had the same basic framework of payment on lands and goods, but wages(and the people who earned them) do not feature at all and so-called aliens – categorised as “Denizens” – made a poll-taxcontribution of 2d this time round instead of a payment based on their earnings. 

What is noticeable in the Lowestoft data is how many more of its citizens paid tax on land than had been the case in 1524-5: thirty-four of them (30%) as opposed to two (1%). Goodsremained the dominant category at sixty-two people (55%), as it had been previously with 123 (71%), but both it and land had a different calculation applied as the basis of collection. The term land is misleading to a certain degree, as it included buildings of various kinds, including houses and appurtenances, and it is perhaps best referred to as real estate. It was assessed at 1s 4d per £1 annual rental value of the property. Goodsreferred to trading-stock and equipment of various kinds, as it had done previously, and had the sum of 10d per £1 capital value applied. 

The calculations as to the subsidy’s best potential yield must have been worked out prior to collection and local knowledge must have been used to work out whether a payment on land or goods would be most productive of raising funds. What the Lowestoft assessment shows is that a substantial proportion of its inhabitants had invested in property both as a base for their homes and businesses and also as a means of creating income from the rents charged on the houses in which other people lived and (perhaps) worked. Using parish register and probate data (in addition to what is recorded in text), it has been possible to establish occupations for sixty-eight of the 112 contributors (with an additional six possibilities) and both of these main categories of assessment show a mix of merchants, tradespeople, seafarers and craftsmen as contributors. From the authorities’ point of view, it was all a question of whether it was the value of the real estate held by each individual or of his stock-in-trade which was able to yield the most tax. 

What the increase in property-holding shows to the modern observer is a rise in the amount of disposable income in the echelons of society above the servant and labouring levels, which allowed people the opportunity to purchase real estate for the reasons referred to in the previous paragraph. It is a feature observable in most of the other communities in Lothingland Half-hundred as well. Only Ashby (a parish of low population) and Bradwell show no one taxed on landin either subsidy, while Blundeston and Gunton (the latter, again, with a small population) showed a state of no change. All the other places showed an increase in the number of people taxed on land, with Gorleston providing the best comparison with Lowestoft because it was at least partly urban in nature – all the others being mainly of rural character. Its 36% of people listed paying tax on land compares quite closely with the 30% established for Lowestoft. 

Reference has already been made to the assessment of aliens (or foreigners) and outsiders living in the community for the purposes of collecting tax. Twelve of them are listed in the 1524-5 data (7% of the whole) and eighteen in 1568 (13%). The first, earlier set consisted of five Dutch, four French (one a Breton) and three Scots – all of them men (two Channel Islanders, from Guernsey, were rightly classified as English), but the second and later one has far less detail concerning countries of origin. The men are referred to as a separate group, under the name of “Denizens” – a category which (rather confusingly) included three adult males who were obviously sufficiently well established in town to be liable for paying tax on goods (John White and Dericke Harman) and lands (Markes Bardew). 

That leaves another fifteen (seemingly of more recent arrival) paying poll tax. All of them were male and seven of them are named individually – but that is all. Another one is simply referred to as the brother-in-law of one of the named men, but given neither name nor origin, while yet another is identified merely as being a particular merchant’s servant. Two further anonymous ones are described as “strangers” (both living with the same local mariner), while another couple are referred to as “Iceland boys” (each of them living and working at an inn). Finally, there were two surnameless Johns, one Dutch and the other French, both employed as servants by two of the town’s merchants. 

The word “denizen” derived from Old French deinz, meaning “within” and one of its meanings was in reference to foreign incomers who had settled in a particular place. But it can also be found applying to people from other parts of England who had moved to a different area and made it their home. Most of the ten surnames given to the denizens here, in their own right, would appear at first sight to be passable as English ones, but what is not known is how they might have changed in form and pronunciation over the years. And a particularly interesting case is that of James Philip, whose entry into Lowestoft from Normandy (with the surname spelled Phelip) is recorded in the year 1544. So, he had been in town for twenty-four years when the Subsidy was levied!

Table 1: 1568 Lowestoft Subsidy List

• Square brackets are used to add information, where this is felt to be useful, and to give more recognisable forms of people’s names.
•  Use of an asterisk preceding a person’s name indicates that the surname appears in the 1524-5 Subsidy and probably refers to the same family group.
• Use of a plus sign preceding a person’s name indicates a long-stay family remaining in town from the time of the 1568 Subsidy until the early-mid 18th century.
•  The five occupations given in text (cooper, smith/blacksmith, butcher, mariner and innholder) were probably meant to distinguish between townsmen having the same name as each other, with Smith, White, Burges, Hall and James being the particular surnames in question. 
•  James Cuttinge, the second tax-payer listed, was one of three trained gunners appointed from the royal armouries in the Tower of London, during 1541-2, to take charge of the three coastal gun-batteries set up on the Denes. Each of them was paid sixpence (6d) a day, adding up to annual payment of £9 2s 6d. Thus, the £9 annuity referred to was the sum total of Cuttinge’s wages, to the nearest pound (£).
•  The 11s 8d paid by John White and Dericke Harman on their goods was double the rate paid by established townsmen – as was the 10s 8d of Markes Bardew on his lands.
•  The word poll was a Late Medieval one meaning “head” and is used here to indicate a head-count of the outsiders in town liable to being taxed at 2d per individual. The term poll tax is still in use and voting in public elections is still referred to as polling.
•  The total amount given in the printed transcribed document is £34 19s 8d, as opposed to £35 1s 10d in the recalculated table – a small difference of 2s 2d.
•  The 112 people taxed by no means constitute the whole of Lowestoft’s adult population at the time. Setting aside the eighteen “denizens”, or outsiders, it looks very much as if the wealthier levels of society were taxed, leaving the servant and labouring classes free of the burden. Analysis of the parish register entries (which survive from the year 1561), for the 1560s and 70s, using approved crude birth-rate and crude death-rate calculations, produce a population of c. 1400 people.
•  The 1568 Lay Subsidy details are taken from Sydenham H.A. Hervey (ed.), Suffolk in 1568 – Suffolk Green Book series no. 12 (Bury St. Edmunds, 1912) – pp. 186-99.

Table 2 : Local Area 1568 Subsidy Payment 

• The Mutford Half-hundred total in the transcribed document is given as £27 16s 8d. The 5s 4d debit discrepancy, able to be established from Table 2, is most likely either the result of incorrect computation or misreading of the original document when being transcribed. Unless, of course, extra money came in from a source or sources unknown.
• The Lowestoft total adds up to £35 1s 10d, as seen in the notes following Table 1 – the only inaccurate individual community totalling-up in both half-hundreds.
• The communities are arranged in descending order of the amount of tax paid, which shows a broad overall correlation with the number of taxpayers liable.
• As noted elsewhere, however – in the analysis of the 1524-5 Lay Subsidy – a higher number of taxpayers (and therefore the larger size of population reflected by this) did not always lead to a greater tax burden. For instance, in Mutford Half-hundred, the township of Mutford itself paid more tax than Pakefield, largely because two of its citizens – William Laungeley [Langley] and Christofer Tilling – paid 16s 8d and 10s respectively. Even more eye-catching is Rushmere paying more than Kirkley, mainly on the back of Humfry Brewster (gentleman) paying £1 1s 10d, William Yarmothe [Yarmouth] paying 15s and John Bacon paying 10s. Kirkley’s three main contributions came from Jone Pottell (widow) at 5s10d, Thomas Colbye at 5s and Robert Wood at 5s.
• In Lothingland, the main feature of surprise, perhaps, is Somerleyton paying 2s 6d more tax than Gorleston, with ten fewer contributors than the latter. This was the result of the former having John Jernegan (lord of the manor) paying £1 6s 8d, John Hufflette (whoever he was) paying £1 14s 8d and John Stanton paying 16s 8d. Gorleston only had one taxpayer in the £1 plus category (Henry Glanvill, gentleman) at £1 6s 8d and only one in the 10s plus bracket (John Payne) at 10s 8d.
• It also has to be said that Gorleston had diminished in local significance and influence over the centuries. From being hub of the Lothingland manor at Domesday (1086) and co-controller of it with Lowestoft during the 13th century (as evidenced in the 1274 Hundred Roll), it had gradually lost its commercial and social importance because of its proximity to Great Yarmouth. Living in the shadow of its much larger and legally aggressive neighbour cost it dear in terms of what it was able and not able to do.
• The repressive effect of Great Yarmouth is also to be seen in the case of Southtown. This former northern sector of Gorleston had become a parish in its own right during the mid-late 12th century, but it too suffered from proximity to its dominant neighbour.
• Herringfleet standing ahead of Burgh Castle was largely the result of Miles Drake paying 13s 4d in tax and John Beard and Richard Cooke paying 8s 4d each – whereas the latter community’s two leading contributor’s, Edward Thomson and Robert Larke, paid 6s 8d each.

CREDIT: David Butcher