Eras

CREDIT: Ivan Bunn and David Butcher

Origins

This article is in its original form, with minor alterations. It was published (with editorial adjustments and changes) in English Ceramic Circle Transactions, vol. 21 (2010), forming pp. 49-74 of that journal.

**** DRAFT ONLY *** (Parish Register Entries)

The register entries below are presented in as close a way as possible to the original handwritten ones

In 1662, an Act of Settlement for the Better Relief of the Poor was passed by Parliament – a measure soon to become known as the Act of Settlement and Removal, as it aimed at restricting the movement of people from the parishes where they were living in a state of poverty into ones (nearby or further removed) where they believed that they would be better off.

Hearth Tax, as a means of raising money for The Crown, was introduced into England following the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II in 1660. It functioned on the principle of being a wealth tax, in that the number of fire-places in a house was taken as indicating the affluence of the occupant. The greater the number of rooms heated, the richer that householder was assumed to be – either as owner or renter.

So-called “Ship Money” had its roots in Late Medieval times, when coastal towns and counties in England were periodically called upon to supply vessels to the Crown for use in naval warfare during times of conflict – mainly with the French. After having suspended Parliament in 1629, following a series of disputes, and not reconvening it again until 1640, Charles I had to find ways of creating revenue other than the rents yielded by the Royal Estate.

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.

Comparisons of Lowestoft with other Suffolk communities

Suffolk’s Top 25 Townships (1524-5 Lay Subsidy) (2)  see also (1)

Order by wealth

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.

When Henry III died in November 1272, his son and successor Edward (thirty-three years old) was in Sicily, on the way home from fighting in the Seventh – and last – Crusade. A hardened warrior of many years experience, it wasn’t until the year 1274 that he finally reached England to take up his throne, with the coronation being held in Westminster Abbey on 19 August. He went on to subjugate Wales, invade Scotland (becoming known as “the Hammer of the Scots”) and generally impose his presence on all around him – his impressive height of 6’ 2” gaining him the nickname of “Longshanks”.

• A large, filled-in trench is visible on the North Denes, a little to the east of the net-drying spars. Its presence is indicated by a slight depression in the ground and by the vegetation growing along its length. The latter is much lusher and of a different type from what is to be found on The Denes generally, showing that the trench’s infill is of a different type from the soil around it.
• The dimensions of this feature were originally eighty to ninety paces in length, on a north-south alignment, and c.