The 1381 Poll Tax
England found itself in a strange situation in 1381. Ever since 1337, the country had been at war with France, a conflict that was eventually to be known as The Hundred Years War
By and large, it had been extremely successful for England with the winning of major battles such as Crécy and Poitier against numerically far superior opposition and, through negotiation, grabbing back vast tracks of land in France that had previously been lost by earlier English monarchs. Although these successes were at the cost of stepping back on the English claim to the French throne, they were very real successes indeed. Many historians have seen this as a time when a sense of England as a nation first took hold.
Taxes, taxes, taxes!
However, by 1381, domestic support for the events in France was waning. King Edward III and his son, Edward the Black Prince, the great military leaders of England, had died. They were succeeded by the boy king Richard II, and the power vacuum this created was filled by squabbling barons. But worse of all, the cost of maintaining the armies in France rose and rose. Parliament looked to the common people of England to foot the bill, and did so by the imposition of a series of Poll Taxes – in theory, a fixed sum of money demanded of all individuals with no reference to their ability to pay. When it came to it, there was some discretion as to how much individuals were obliged to contribute, but only ‘genuine beggars’ were entirely spared. Steventon did not escape being on the hit list.
A prosperous village
There are one hundred and seventy-one names, living in eighty houses, on the 1381 Poll Tax return for Steventon. As the tax was payable by all men and women over the age of fifteen this gives a good idea of the population of Steventon at the time. By the time children are added in plus the inevitable tax dodgers, there must have been around three hundred folk residing in the village. The tax return shows that Steventon was relatively wealthy. Top of the pile was a Richard Webbe who was assessed at five shillings, eight pence. In those days, this would have paid the wages of a skilled tradesman for two weeks. Today, it is worth around £180, which doesn’t seem much, but would have been a painful blow in the 14th century. By 1423, there was a farm known as Webbes on a plot of land on the eastern corner of where Little Lane meets the Causeway.
The rise of the Middle Class
Parliament decreed that the tax should be imposed at the level of twelve pence per head. In Steventon, more than a quarter of residents were assessed above this level. Thirteen homes were recorded as employing a servant. It seems that Steventon was relatively prosperous, perhaps a reflection of the cloth manufacturing trade that was flourishing in the village at the end of the 14th century, or the proximity to markets for the produce of its fertile farm lands. Local historian, Christopher Currie, has shown that there was a flourishing property market at this time in the village, with The Causeway providing the most desirable houses. What we can see is that the old medieval feudal system was in retreat and, although the people of the village were still tenants rather than land owners, they would certainly see themselves as yeomen and not serfs.
The middle class had started to emerge.
Across much of the country, the 1381 Poll Tax caused consternation. Not only was it the third such tax in four years, but it was to be collected in two instalments, in January and June. With peasant incomes stretched to the limit until the harvest could be brought ’in‘ late summer and the autumn, the timing couldn’t be worse. People all over England rose up in protest in the summer of 1381, a rising know as The Peasants Revolt, which for a time threatened the governance of the nation. But for wealthy Steventon, it all seems to have passed the village by!
