Welsh Journals

INTRODUCTION 1. GENERAL HISTORY OF THE TAX One of the most pressing problems for Parliament when Charles II was restored to the throne was the question of finance. A Commons Committee reported in Sep- tember 1660 that the King needed a revenue of £ 1,200,000 per annum to run the royal household and the government during peacetime. Much of this revenue was to be obtained from customs dues, excise dues and other levies. By mid 1661, the sum was short by E300,000 and after further deliberation and prompting from the King, an entirely new levy on hearths was proposed. This bill became law on 19 May 1662 [14 Car. II c. 10]. In seventeenth-century Exchequer accounting, each individual source of revenue was treated not so much as part of the national income but rather as a sum of ready money to be applied to particular charges. Thus there are many references in the Calendar of Treasury Books to 'Chimney money' being used to pay the wages of foot guards, to repair the fortifications at Portsmouth and even to repay a debt to the King's musician.2 As from 25 March 1662, the act imposed a tax of two shillings on all domestic hearths, payable by two equal half-yearly instalments at Michaelmas (29 Septem- ber) and Lady Day (25 March). Payment was to be made by the occupier, or, if the house was empty, by the owner. Initially, for the purpose of assessment, occupiers or owners were required to submit to the local constable on demand a written noti- fication of the number of hearths and stoves, and only in cases of non-compliance was the constable empowered to view. These statements were to be delivered to the courts for approval by the justices in quarter sessions, where, under the clerk of the peace, they were to be enrolled in duplicate on parchment. One of these enrol- ments was for the sheriff, who was responsible for collecting the tax in each county, and the other was sent to the Exchequer, for deposit in the King's Remembrancer's Office as an official record of the county's assessment and as such to be used in auditing the sheriff's account. These latter records are known as Exchequer dupli- cates.3 The sheriff was to submit his return in a bag of Particulars of Account, which was also to contain all the vouchers required to justify the amounts of money collected or those still in arrears. The money was to be collected by the petty constables (supposedly within six days of Lady Day or Michaelmas) and forwarded together with the names of the defaulters, to the high constables who in turn remitted it to the sheriffs. The sheriffs were responsible for the safe transmission of the money to the Exchequer in London, for which they were paid a poundage of three pence. The petty constables were