LIBRARY 
 
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 Accession No. ^/ [3^0 . Class No. 
 
STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE 
 
 EDITED BY W. A. S. HEWINS, M.A. 
 
 THE HISTOEY OF LOCAL BATES 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
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 STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE 
 
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 9 John Street, Adelphi, London, W.C. 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF LOCAL BATES 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 FIVE LECTUBES 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN CANNAN 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 
 1896 
 
BF THE S.4ME AUTHOR 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF PRODUCTION 
 AND DISTRIBUTION IN ENGLISH POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY FROM 1776 TO 1848. 
 
 RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL AND CO. 1893. 
 
 ELEMENTARY POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Fourth Thousand. 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1888. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 At the Ballaniyne Press 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE lectures which are here published in a some- 
 what amplified form were given for the London 
 School of Economics and Political Science in 
 November and December 1895. 
 
 The fact that the words " Five Lectures " appear 
 on the title-page will, I hope, protect me from 
 attack on the ground that I have not dealt with 
 the whole subject. To do so in five lectures would 
 be obviously impossible. It was necessary to select 
 a part; and, as is explained in the text, I haye 
 selected the part which interests the urban occupier 
 who thinks his landlord ought to pay the rates, the 
 urban landlord who fails to agree with him, and 
 the rural landlord and farmer who are united in 
 believing it unfair that certain kinds of property 
 not possessed by them should escape being rated. 
 
 The authorities employed are sufficiently indicated 
 in the text and notes. I have to thank Mr. Hewins 
 and Professor Cunningham for directing my atten- 
 tion to several which have been of much use. 
 
 OXFORD, January 1896. 
 
STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE 
 
 EDITED BY W. A. S. HE WINS, M.A. 
 
 Arrangements have been made for the publication of a series of 
 books containing the results of researches in economic and 
 political subjects conducted by the teachers of the London 
 School of Economics and Political Science, or under their 
 direction. The following volumes are in preparation : 
 
 1. THE HISTORY OF LOCAL RATES IN ENG- 
 
 LAND. By EDWIN CANNAN, M.A., Balliol College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 2. THE REFERENDUM IN SWITZERLAND. By 
 
 SIMON DEPLOIGE, University of Louvain. Translated, 
 with Introduction and Notes', by C. P. TREVELYAN, M.A., 
 Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 3. SELECT DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING THE 
 
 HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM, i. THE TAILOR- 
 ING TRADE. Edited by F. W. GALTON. With a Preface 
 by SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B. 
 
 4. SELECT DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING THE 
 
 STATE REGULATION OF WAGES. Edited, with 
 Introduction and Notes, by W. A. S. HEWINS, M.A. , 
 Pembroke College, Oxford ; Director of the London School 
 of Economics and Political Science. 
 
 5. HUNGARIAN GILD RECORDS. Edited by Dr. 
 
 JULIUS MANDELLO, of Budapest. 
 
 6. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND 
 
 THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE. By Miss E. A. MAC- 
 ARTHUR, Vice-Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 i 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ANCIENT NON-STATUTORY RATES TO 1601 i 
 
 II 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS STATUTORY RATES TO 1640 . . 27 
 
 POOR-LAW RATES TO 1601 54 
 
 IV 
 
 THE POOR-RATE SINCE 1601 . . . . 78 
 
 V 
 
 ASSIMILATION OF OTHER RATES TO THE POOR- 
 RATE ........ 102 
 
 INDEX . ...... 137 
 
HISTORY OF LOCAL RATES 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 i 
 
 ANCIENT NON-STATUTORY RATES TO l6oi 
 
 LABORIOUS students whoso investigations have in- 
 terested scarcely any one but themselves have been 
 known to seek comfort in the assertion that truth 
 is valuable for its own sake. I do not believe that 
 this is the case. A great deal that is true is not 
 worth knowing. The most inveterate bore is often 
 the most truthful of men. All history should, I think, 
 have some practical aim. Some moral, some lesson 
 or guidance, should be afforded by it. Even if this is 
 not true of all history, it is surely true with regard to 
 economic history. It would be absurd to study a 
 subject so dry, not to say so odious, as local rates 
 except with a view to practical aims. We do not 
 study such subjects from a love of truth in the 
 abstract or to while away a wet Sunday afternoon, 
 but because there are practical controversies about 
 them, and we hope that we may learn something 
 which may be of assistance in these controversies. 
 Recognising this frankly, I intend to try to collect 
 together those facts only which explain the origin 
 and progress of the two great characteristics of our 
 
2 History of Local Rates 
 
 rating system which give rise to most complaint. I 
 mean, of course, the characteristic facts that rates are 
 paid only in respect of certain kinds of property, and 
 are levied from the occupiers and not the owners of 
 that property. With the practical inferences to be 
 drawn from the information I hope to furnish, I shall 
 not meddle here. To do so would be to abandon the 
 attitude of impartiality appropriate to the occasion ; 
 and besides, I think the practical inferences to be 
 drawn are so clear that they scarcely need to be 
 expressed. 
 
 Almost all the money raised by English local taxa- 
 tion at present is raised either by means of the poor- 
 rate or by means of other rates which, though they 
 have names of their own, are in reality nothing but 
 additions to the poor-rate. It is consequently natural 
 for the legal mind, which never goes behind a statute, 
 to explain the fact that occupiers are rated in respect 
 of certain property by a simple reference to the act 
 of 1601, on which the poor-rate is based to this day. 
 In June 1894 the deputy-chairman of the London 
 County Council, in examination before the House 
 of Lords Committee on Betterment, ventured to 
 suggest that the reason people are rated on property 
 is "because it is the best criterion of the measure of 
 the ease with which a person can bear rating." Lord 
 Salisbury remarked that this was " rather a formidable 
 doctrine to lay down," Avhereupon the present Lord 
 Chancellor said, " The reason you are rated is because 
 the act of Elizabeth says you shall be." * But, first, 
 
 1 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Town 
 Improvements (Betterment], No. 292 of 1894, Minutes of Evidence, 
 Questions 2011-14. 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1601 3 
 
 as the witness did not fail to point out, there must 
 have been reasons for the act of Elizabeth ; and, 
 secondly, the act does not, as a matter of fact, say 
 you shall be rated in the way you are rated. It says 
 that the money required for poor relief in each parish 
 shall be raised "by taxation of every inhabitant, 
 parson, vicar, or other, and of every occupier of lands, 
 houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal- 
 mines, or saleable underwoods." 1 This surely is far 
 from being a correct and adequate description of our 
 present poor-rate. It is incorrect, because by no 
 means every inhabitant, whether parson, vicar, or 
 other, is taxed. It is inadequate, because occupiers of 
 lands, houses, tithes, coal-mines, and saleable under- 
 woods, are taxed on a peculiar and minutely regulated 
 basis the annual value of the thing occupied 
 whereas the words of the act say nothing about the 
 basis of the taxation, and would by themselves cover 
 an income-tax, a poll-tax, and many other taxes. 
 The reference to the act of 1601 thus takes us a very 
 little way. We want to know how and why that act 
 came to say what it does say, how and why its words 
 have come to bo interpreted in the way they are 
 interpreted, and how and why all other rates have 
 been swallowed up by the particular rate established 
 under it. 
 
 A preliminary question has to be answered. What 
 is a rate ? A kind of tax, no doubt ; but what kind ? 
 From the phrase " rates and taxes," and the common 
 grumble, " It isn't the taxes, it's the rates that I 
 
 1 The words have been misquoted in Bott, Poor- Laws, ist edition, 
 and perhaps elsewhere (see Cowper, Reports, p. 559), "other" being 
 inserted before "occupier," and the sense thus greatly altered. 
 
4 Plistory of Local Rates 
 
 complain of," it would be tempting to conclude that 
 " rates " is merely another name for local taxes. 
 Doubtless, " rates " are now practically synonymous 
 with local taxes in England. But this is a mere 
 accident. If a man has nothing but ducks, his 
 poultry and his ducks are the same thing, but it does 
 not follow that poultry is merely another name for 
 ducks. It is only a few years since the London coal- 
 duty was abolished, and that was certainly a local tax 
 which no one would call a rate. In other countries 
 local taxes not of the nature of rates flourish exten- 
 sively. The real difficulty is not to find a local tax 
 which is not a rate, but to find any tax which is not 
 local. A New York State tax is local in relation to 
 the United States, and so is a Prussian national tax in 
 relation to the German Empire. A true imperialist 
 would regard the insular imposts which we call " im- 
 perial taxes" as local ; and if British and New Zealand 
 taxes are local, there seems no reason why German 
 and Austrian imperial taxes should not be looked 
 upon as local. Moreover, while it is easy for a tax to 
 be local without being a rate, it is at least logically 
 conceivable for a rate to be world-wide. 
 
 The real difference between a rate and a tax which 
 is not a rate appears to lie entirely in the manner 
 in which the financial problem of raising money is 
 approached. In the case of a tax, the taxing authority 
 decides that individuals shall make particular pay- 
 ments on particular occasions, and the aggregate sum 
 it receives depends on how much these payments add 
 up to. In the case of a rate, the taxing authority 
 decides how much money it wants in the aggregate, 
 and this amount is raised by apportioning the pay- 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1 60 1 5 
 
 inent of it between the various ratepayers in ac- 
 cordance with some definite standard made for the 
 occasion or already in existence. Thus, in the case 
 of a tax the procedure is by way of addition, and in 
 the case of a rate by way of division ; in the case of a 
 tax the taxing authority hopes it will get a certain 
 sum, in the case of a rate it knows that it will get it. 
 All our national taxes would be turned into rates if 
 Parliament merely decided that so many millions 
 were to be raised from beer, so many from death- 
 duties, so many from income-tax, and so on, and left 
 it to the Treasury to impose the rates necessary in 
 order to raise the sums prescribed. 
 
 In these days the yield of a tax can generally be 
 estimated with such accuracy that the distinction is 
 not of practical importance. It can make no differ- 
 ence whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer says, 
 " An income-tax of 8d. will produce so many millions, 
 which is what we require," or "We want so many 
 millions, and that will necessitate an income-tax of 
 8d." But when all estimates of the yield of taxation 
 were wild guesswork, and taxes had an extraordinary 
 capacity for falling far below the estimates, the differ- 
 ence between the two methods was of the greatest 
 moment. In the case of a large area like that of the 
 whole country, it would evidently be impracticable to 
 adopt the rate method by apportioning the payment 
 of a lump sum among all the taxpayers. But in the 
 case of an area small enough for the taxpayers to be 
 known to the taxing authority and each other, and to 
 feel a common interest in raising the sum required, 
 the rate is the simplest and most obvious method 
 of meeting common expenses that can possibly be 
 
6 History of Local Rates 
 
 conceived. If, then, we were to argue on eighteenth- 
 century principles, from an " original state of things " 
 in which independent men began to combine in 
 society, we should probably be inclined to place the 
 origin of local rates, either in money or services, 
 almost as early as the institution of civil government. 
 To do this, however, would be a mistake. Many 
 of the most expensive institutions now maintained 
 by local rates had no existence in the Middle Ages. 
 Even the fifteenth-century citizen had not to provide 
 for compulsory education, purification of sewage, street 
 lamps, or police in the sense in which we now use 
 the word. There were always roads, of course, but 
 what were those roads like ? Those who have con- 
 tended that English roads were good in the Middle 
 Ages must, I think, have done so without much per- 
 sonal acquaintance with the roads of to-day. You 
 may travel many thousand miles and not find the 
 smallest thing to suggest that the road was what we 
 should consider tolerable centuries ago, and yet you 
 will see vast quantities of evidence to show that it 
 was thoroughly bad in fact, not what a townsman 
 would now call a road at all. For ninety-nine miles 
 out of a hundred it must have been what rustics now 
 call a " soft " or " green " road, in contradistinction to 
 the " hard " or metalled road of the modern highway 
 authority. 1 It keeps along the hillside regardless of 
 gradient, because some embanking and draining would 
 have been necessary on the flat land. It is sinuous 
 
 1 Ploughing up the highway was an offence known to the law. In 
 1286 the commonalty of Cambridge were charged with ploughing 
 up the highway to Hinton marsh. C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cam- 
 bridge, 1842, vol. i. p. 61. 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1601 7 
 
 owing to the effort to avoid every soft place ; and 
 where the adjacent landowners have observed the 
 eighth commandment, it is excessively wide between 
 the hedges, because on a " green " road the traffic is 
 constantly endeavouring to find a place where previous 
 passengers have not destroyed the surface. Every 
 improvement obviously dates from the turnpike days. 
 If we wish to picture an English road in the Middle 
 Ages, we should think of what we now call a mere 
 "track" across an open heath, or imagine a wide, 
 little-used country road, with the narrow metalled 
 strip in the middle entirely removed. 
 
 The cost of public works was to some extent 
 defrayed by the benevolence of private individuals 
 and religious houses. Testators bequeathed property 
 for building or maintaining bridges, as in the case 
 of the Bridge House estates of the city of London. 
 Monks improved the roads in the neighbourhood of 
 their convent; an excellent half-mile of road across 
 the flood-lands of the Thames still testifies to the 
 energy of the monks of Abingdon. The preamble 
 of an act of 1554 (i Mar., st. 3, c. 6) tells us not 
 only that the road between Gloucester and Bristol, 
 one of the most important cross-roads in the king- 
 dom, had so fallen into decay that many passengers 
 had lost their lives on it, but also that it had been 
 formerly "well repaired by the devotion of divers 
 good people." 
 
 The remainder of what we regard as the expenses 
 of local government, so far as they existed, were 
 borne on the broad back of the " feudal system." 
 Consider the first general highway act, which was 
 passed as late as 1555 (2 & 3 P. & M., c. 8), remember- 
 
8 History of Local Rates 
 
 ing that it is to bo looked on as an attempt to secure 
 and extend what was regarded as the best custom, 
 rather than as an extravagant innovation. It orders 
 the constables and churchwardens to call together the 
 parishioners once a year, and elect two honest persons 
 to be surveyors or orderers of the works for amend- 
 ment of the highways in their parish leading to any 
 market town. The constables and churchwardens are 
 to appoint four days for the amending of the high- 
 ways, and " shall openly, in the church the next Sun- 
 day after Easter, give knowledge of the same four days, 
 and upon the said days the parochians shall endea- 
 vour themselves to the amending of the said ways, and 
 shall be chargeable thereunto as followeth : that is to 
 say, every person for every plough land in tillage or 
 pasture that he or she shall occupy in the same 
 parish, and every other person keeping there a draught 
 or plough, shall find and send, at every day and place 
 to be appointed for the amending of the ways in that 
 parish as is aforesaid, one wain or cart, furnished after 
 the custom of the country with oxen, horses, or other 
 cattle, and all other necessaries meet to carry things 
 convenient for that purpose, and also two able men 
 with the same, upon pain of every draught making 
 default I os. ; and every other householder, and also 
 every cottager and labourer of that parish able to 
 labour and being no hired servant by the year, shall, 
 by themselves or one sufficient labourer for every 
 of them, upon every of the said four days, work and 
 travail in the amendment of the said highways, upon 
 pain of every person making default to lose for 
 every day 1 2d. ; and if the carriages of the parish or 
 any of them shall not be thought needful by the 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1 60 1 9 
 
 supervisors to be occupied on any of the said days, 
 that then every person that should have sent any 
 such carriage shall send to the said work for every 
 carriage so spared two able men, there to labour for 
 that day, upon pain to lose for every man not so sent 
 to the said work I2d. And every person and car- 
 riage aforesaid shall have and bring with them such 
 shovels, spades, picks, mattocks, and other tools and 
 instruments as they do make their own ditches and 
 fences withal, and such as be necessary for their said 
 work : and all the persons and carriages shall do and 
 keep their work as they shall be appointed by the said 
 supervisors or one of them, eight hours of every the 
 said days, unless they shall be otherwise licensed by 
 the said supervisors or one of them." 
 
 I think every one will agree that all this reads a 
 great deal more like an account of the feudal services 
 of tenants on a manor than a description of a highway 
 rate. There is no attempt to make the amount of 
 service rendered vary with the varying requirements 
 of different seasons and different districts. It is true 
 that the lawyers held that, if the labour prescribed by 
 the act was not sufficient to keep the roads in repair, 
 the parishioners ought to give more labour ; l but this 
 was a legal counsel of perfection of no practical im- 
 portance. The whole system was so alien to the 
 system of rating that the " statute labour," as it was 
 called, never developed into a rate. It lingered on to 
 the present century, 2 alongside of turnpikes and rates. 
 
 Bridges too, which were much more expensive 
 works in comparison with roads than they are now, 
 
 1 See Dalton, Country Justice, erl. of 1742, p. 115. 
 
 2 Till the passing of the act 5 & 6 W. IV., c. 50. 
 
io History of Local Rates 
 
 were generally maintained by obligations of a feudal 
 character, particular bridges being burdens on par- 
 ticular lands. 1 
 
 Thus it comes about that the importance of local 
 rates is not so ancient a matter as we might be 
 tempted to expect on general considerations. I doubt 
 if any very clear and important cases of local rates 
 are likely to be found earlier than the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 Plenty of such cases, however, existed in the middle 
 of that century. The customs of Romney Marsh, 
 which then were at any rate old enough to be described 
 as " ancient and approved," required certain services 
 from the men of the marsh which are marked by the 
 distinguishing characteristics of a local rate. In 1250, 
 we read, some dispute occurred between the twenty- 
 four jurats of Romney Marsh and certain men of the 
 marsh, who were bound to repair the sea-walls and 
 watercourses according to the quantity of their lands 
 and tenements. Sir Henry de Bathe, the justiciar, 
 was appointed to hear and determine the contentions 
 which had arisen, and issued an ordinance from which, 
 as Coke says, not only other parts in Kent but all 
 England received light and direction. 2 
 
 According to this ordinance, " By the whole com- 
 monalty of the same marsh twelve lawful men may 
 be chosen, to wit, six of the fee of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, and six of the barony, which, being sworn, 
 
 1 Lands so liable sometimes formed the basis of a kind of corpo- 
 ration. The " lands contributory to Rochester Bridge," for example, 
 had two wardens, twelve assistants, and a commonalty. See 18 Eliz., 
 c. 17, and 27 Eliz., c. 25. 
 
 2 Sir William Dugdale, History of Embanking and Draining of 
 Divers Fens and Marshes, 1662, pp. 17-19 : Coke, Inst. iv. c. 62, p. 276. 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1 60 1 1 1 
 
 shall measure the walls new and old, and those which 
 ought to be new erected. And the same measuring 
 should be done by one and the same perch, to wit, of 
 twenty foots. And afterwards the same jurors upon 
 their oaths also by the same perch shall measure by 
 acres all the lands and tenements which are subject 
 to danger within the same marsh : which measurings 
 being done, the twenty-four by the commonalty first 
 elected and sworn, having respect to the quantity of 
 the walls, lands, and tenements which are subject to 
 peril, by their oath shall ordain how much appertaineth 
 to every one to uphold and repair the same walls. So 
 that for the portion of acres of lands lying subject to 
 danger there be assigned to every one his portion of 
 perches by certain bounds." l If any man neglected 
 to repair the portion assigned to him, the common 
 bailiff might do the work, and charge him with double 
 the cost. Where land was held in common by 
 partners, a portion of sea-wall was to be assigned to 
 these partners in common. No suggestion is made 
 that the quality or value of the acres as well as their 
 number ought to be taken into account, but an ordi- 
 nance issued by Lovetot and Apulderfield in 1287, 
 extending the laws of Romney Marsh westwards into 
 Sussex, speaks of the walls being apportioned among 
 individuals according to the extent and value of their 
 acres (juxta portionem acrarum suarum et valorem 
 earundem). 21 I do not think that the mere fact that 
 the sea-walls themselves, instead of the money cost of 
 maintaining them, were apportioned among the men of 
 the marsh ought to prevent us from regarding this as 
 
 1 The Charter of Romney Marsh, Latin and English, 1686, p. 12. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 49, 50. 
 
12 History of Local Rates 
 
 an early sewers rate; and in any case before 1359 the 
 practice of each man maintaining a particular portion of 
 the defences seems to have been superseded by a system 
 of money rates. A commission was issued in that year 
 to the king's well-beloved and trusty Thomas Ludlow, 
 Robert Belknap, and Thomas Culpeper, in consequence 
 of complaints made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 who was lord of a portion of the marsh. This alleges, 
 without any apparent jus till cation, that the ordinance 
 of Henry de Bathe provided for the election of a bailiff 
 " to levy the assessments " (ad scotta assessa levandum) 
 for the repair of the defences. 1 
 
 In 1256, 20 193. 2d. was levied from the county 
 of Chester for the repair of Chester Bridge, " because 
 the King had ascertained from the book of the Ex- 
 chequer called Domesday that the men of the county 
 were bound to repair the bridge." 2 According to the 
 passage in Domesday referred to, but not quoted, a 
 man was to be sent from every hide to repair the city 
 wall and bridge, 3 so that we see here an old feudal 
 obligation transformed into a county rate. There is 
 nothing to show whether the 20 193. 2d. was appor- 
 tioned according to hides or in some other way. 4 
 
 1 The Charter of Romney Marsh, pp. 55-57. 
 
 2 Madox, Firma Buryi, 1726, p. 89. 
 
 a "Ad murum civitatis et ponteiu reaedificandos de unaquaque 
 hida comitatus unum hominem venire prsepositus edicebat. Cujus 
 homo non veniebat dominus ejus XL solidos eraendabat regi et 
 comiti. Ha3C forisfactura extra firmam erat." 
 
 4 In 1287-8 an agreement was made between the barons, knights, 
 and free tenants of the county and the mayor and city of Chester, 
 by which the latter grant that they will repair a part of the bridge. 
 "The expense thereof is also to be shared by all the town and 
 foreinsec lands which, being comprehended in the book called 
 Domesday in the Treasury of London, within the 52 hides reckoned 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1601 13 
 
 From 1334 onwards the fifteenths and tenths were 
 levied as local rates. They were originally, of course, 
 a national tax on movables, at the rate of one-tenth 
 of the capital value in the cities and boroughs and 
 lands belonging to ancient demesne, and one-fifteenth 
 from the rest of the country. But after 1334 it 
 became a settled principle that each Parliamentary 
 grant of a fifteenth and tenth should be subject to 
 the condition that the tax should be levied like 
 the last, and not otherwise. 1 This was intended, or 
 at any rate understood, to mean that the total sum 
 collected should remain exactly the same, and be 
 apportioned in exactly the same way between county 
 and county, town and town, and even parish and 
 parish. As the relative wealth of the different dis- 
 tricts changed, the tax of course ceased to be collected 
 at a uniform rate over the kingdom, and consequently 
 
 within the city of Chester, shall be found liable to pay tax. The 
 county is burdened with the rest of the bridge." Ormerod and 
 Helsby, History of Cheshire, 2nd edit., 1882, vol. iii. p. 891. 
 
 1 See Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii., 282, p. 599, lib. 
 edit., and of the authorities there quoted, especially Brady, Treatise 
 of Cities and Boroughs, 1690, p. 39. The grant of 1344 was in these 
 terms : "And the said commons do grant to him for the same cause 
 upon a certain form, ii Quinzimes of the Commonalty and ii Dismes 
 of the Cities and Boroughs, to be levied in manner as the last 
 Quinzime granted to him was levied, and not in other manner " 
 (Statutes of the Realm, 18 Edw. III., stat. 2, c. l). Similarly, in 
 1357 : "The said commons have granted to our sovereign lord the 
 King a quinzime yearly to be levied and gathered in the manner as 
 the last quinzime granted to the King was levied" (ib., 31 Edw. III., 
 st. i, c. 13) ; and two centuries and a half later, in 1623-4 : " Three 
 whole fifteens and tenths shall be paid, taken, and levied of the 
 movable goods, chattels, and other things usual to such fifteens 
 and tenths to be contributory and chargeable within the shires, 
 cities, boroughs, towns, and other places of this your Majesty's 
 realm, in manner and form aforetime used" (ib., 21 Jac. I., c. 33). 
 
14 History of Local Rates 
 
 came to possess the one essential characteristic of 
 local taxation, diversity of rate as between place and 
 place. The duty of the collectors in each parish was 
 simply to apportion a fixed sum among the inhabi- 
 tants, which is precisely the function of those who 
 assess local rates. An inhabitant disproportionately 
 assessed could go to the courts and demand redress 
 on exactly the same grounds as those on which a 
 modern ratepayer relies when he appeals against his 
 assessment to the poor-rate. Madox quotes the case 
 of one Johanna, widow of John Nicole, of Guildford, 
 against the sub-collectors of that town. She appeared 
 before the Barons of the Exchequer, by John of Holt, 
 her attorney, and said for the King and herself, that, 
 whereas the town of Guildford was assessed to the 
 tenth at ^15 2s. iod., and that sum ought to be pro- 
 portionately assessed among the men of the town 
 according to the quantity of their goods, without 
 favouring any one, and although the aforesaid Johanna 
 paid the proportion rightly due from her, which 
 amounted to 2os. if she was assessed like the other 
 men of the town, to the aforesaid sub-collectors on the 
 3oth of April, the aforesaid sub-collectors assessed the 
 said Johanna to 408. beyond the aforesaid 2os., in 
 order to favour the other men of the town. The sub- 
 collectors answered that the said Johanna was assessed 
 just as the other men of the town were assessed, and 
 the case went to a jury to decide the facts. 1 This 
 happened in i 354. 
 
 ; Church rates were well established by the beginning 
 of the fourteenth century. John of Athon, a canonist 
 who wrote about the year 1 340, sa} r s in his notes to 
 
 ,, x Madox, Firma Buryi, pp. 281, 282. 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1 60 1 15 
 
 the Constitutions of Otho and Ottobuoni : " Every 
 parishioner is bound to repair the church according 
 to the portion of land which he possesses in the 
 parish, and in proportion to the number of animals 
 he keeps and feeds there." 1 A constitution issued 
 by John Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 
 1342, ordains that "as well the religious as all others 
 that now have, or shall hereafter have, possessions, 
 lands, or revenues which are not of the glebe of the 
 churches to be repaired, or of the endowments that 
 belong to them, in any parishes whatsoever of our 
 province, whether they dwell in the said parishes or 
 elsewhere, shall be obliged to pay with the other 
 parishioners toward all the charges which are either 
 of common right or by custom incumbent on the 
 parishioners for the repair of the church and the orna- 
 ments belonging thereto, according to the quantity of 
 the possessions and revenues which they have in the 
 said parishes, as often as there shall be need for the 
 same." 2 Enforcement of church rates belonged to 
 the ecclesiastical authorities and courts, but they were 
 none the less compulsory for that, and on one ground 
 or another they occasionally came under the cognis- 
 ance of the secular courts. An important case of this 
 kind is recorded in 1370. A parish meeting had 
 decided to raise 10 to repair the roof of a certain 
 parish church. One of the parishioners objected to a 
 distraint for 98. which had been levied on him, upon 
 
 1 " Credo tamen contra sc. quod unusquisque parochianus teneatnr 
 ad hoc juxta portionem glebse seu terrae quam possidet intra ipsam 
 parochiam et juxta numerum animalium qua) nutrit ibidem." 
 Lyndwood, Constitutioncs Legatincc D. Othonis et D. Othoboni, cardina- 
 liurn cum profundis annotationibus Johannis de Athona, 1679, p. 113. 
 
 2 Lyndwood, Provincial e seu Constitutioncs Anylia*, 1679, p. 255. 
 
1 6 History of Local Rates 
 
 the grounds that the collection should only be en- 
 forced by the ordinary, and that he had not assented 
 to the rate. The collectors of the rate pleaded custom 
 which had always existed time out of mind. Kirton, 
 one of the judges, remarked, "There is a custom 
 through the whole country which the laws call by- 
 law, that is, by assent of neighbours to levy a sum to 
 make a bridge, a causeway, or a sea-wall, and by their 
 assent to assess each neighbour at a sum certain, for 
 which they may distrain. And also if commoners 
 have common rights in a place, they can by assent 
 ordain that they shall not exercise the right in a 
 certain parcel of land before a certain time, and if 
 they do that they shall be distrained." In both cases, 
 he thought, the assent of those who were present at a 
 properly summoned meeting bound those who were 
 absent. His colleague, Finchden, said, " If this ordi- 
 nance concern a thing which would be to the common 
 hurt, that is, for a bridge, to make a causeway or sea- 
 wall, you are right ; but if it be for their particular 
 profit, as in your case of the common, no man will be 
 bound but those who assent." In this case the 10 
 was raised by an assessment of 6d. in respect of each 
 carucate of land, id. in respect of each head of cattle, 
 and the same in respect of every ten sheep. 1 The 
 canonist Lyndwood, writing about 1430, says that the 
 quantity of a man's possessions and revenues should 
 be estimated for rating purposes by their value. 2 
 With our modern notions of the separate province 
 
 1 Year Book. (ed. 1679), Edward III., anno xliv., p. 19. Part of 
 the translation of Kirton's opinion is from Chief Justice Tindal in 
 Phillimore, Buries Ecclesiastical Law, 1842, vol. ii. p. 388/1. 
 
 2 "Qure considerari debent secundum valorem reditus." Prorin- 
 ciale, p. 255, 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1601 17 
 
 of imperial and local government, we find it strange 
 to read of town fortifications paid for out of local 
 funds, but this was the regular rule, and when other 
 sources of income did not suffice, a rate could be 
 raised for this purpose. There exists a royal letter of 
 1378 ordering that the walls of Chichester shall be 
 repaired, and that " all persons whatsoever, religious or 
 secular, who now have, or in future shall have, lands, 
 tenements, and revenues or merchandise within the 
 city or its liberty," shall contribute to the cost 
 " according to their ability and possessions, privileged 
 persons, the sick, and mendicant poor excepted." 
 Similar letters were sent to other towns. 1 
 
 The purposes for which a corporate town in the four- 
 teenth or fifteenth century required money were indeed 
 almost as multifarious as they are to-day, for though 
 we have multiplied our wants, we have also relegated 
 some expenses to the state, and others to private 
 enterprise or benevolence. In many cases, no doubt, 
 the corporate revenues and profits sufficed to defray 
 all expenses. Even at the present day they are often 
 sufficient to make it unnecessary to levy a borough rate, 
 though no borough is rich enough to do without a rate 
 for the expenses of its Council acting as urban sanitary 
 authority. But at any rate in the poorer boroughs 
 resort to local taxation was often necessary. In early 
 times equal poll-taxes seem to have been levied. The 
 London riot in 1 196, of which William FitzOsbert was 
 regarded as the instigator, is said to have been a revolt 
 
 1 Kymer, Fcedcra, R. iv. 52, and 49, 59 : 0. vii. 185. As late as 
 1607 the inhabitants of Southampton had "a long time at their 
 own cof't and charge upheld and maintained the walls thereof, 
 with many towers, turrets, bulwarks, great ordinances, powder, and 
 other offensive artillery" (Statutes of the If calm, 4 Jac. I., c. 10). 
 
 B 
 
1 8 History of Local Rates 
 
 of the poorer citizens against such a tax. 1 Poll-taxes in 
 which persons were taxed according to their rank are 
 found at a very much later period. At Ipswich in 
 1451 every portman was to pay 38. 40!., every burgess 
 i s. 8d., and every foreigner i s. ; and in the next year 
 every portman was taxed is. 8d., and every burgess is. 2 
 But by the fifteenth century, at any rate, the money 
 for defraying the common burdens was, as Madox says, 
 usually raised by an apportionment made amongst the 
 townsmen according to each man's ability and sub- 
 stance. 3 There is no town, so far as I know, of which 
 we have better records during this period than Ips- 
 wich. Here are some entries in Bacon's Annals relat- 
 ing to the proceedings of the governing body of the 
 town with regard to rates from 1452 to 1488 : 
 
 Oct. 13, 1452. Every burgess of this town shall pay 
 J of a 1 5th for certain affairs of this town, and collec- 
 tors specially named. 
 
 Jan. 21, 1454. Accompt shall be made before 
 auditors assigned of the money received for the suits 
 between this town and that of Bury St. Edmunds and 
 the prior of Ely. 
 
 May 17. Six collectors named to assess all the 
 inhabitants of this town at J quinzieme for the suit 
 aforesaid. 
 
 Jan. 7, 1455. Every burgess of this town shall pay 
 J of a quinzieme towards the suits between this town 
 
 1 Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i. 161, p. 657, lib. ed. 
 
 2 The Annals of Ipswich : the Laws, Customs, and Government of the 
 same, collected out of the Records, Books, and Writings of that Town, by 
 Nathaniel Bacon, serving as Recorder and Town Cleric in that Town, 
 anno dom. 1654. Edited by W. H. Richardson, 1884. 
 
 3 Firma Burgi, p. 280. 
 
Non- Statutory Rates to 1601 19 
 
 and the town of Bury, and every foreign burgess shall 
 also pay thereto. 
 
 April 1 1. The collectors of money of certain parti- 
 cular parishes in Ipswich for the suit with Bury have 
 a day set to bring in their accounts. 
 
 March 10, 1458. The burgesses of this town shall 
 pay J of a I5th for the suit with the prior of Ely, and 
 collectors are appointed. 
 
 May 5. All burgesses refusing to pay their part of 
 the said assessment shall be disfranchised. 
 
 Oct. 2. Collectors for J of a i5th granted for tJffe 
 suit with the prior of Ely. 
 
 Dec. 14. Collectors made for J of a i5th for 
 
 charges of a suit wherein John Geete was condemned 
 against Gregory Lanham, and for other urgencies of 
 the town. 
 
 Oct. 4, 1459. A sum of money assessed upon parti- 
 cular persons named for the maintaining of the suit 
 [with the king]. 
 
 Dec. 30, 1472. Auditors appointed and collectors 
 of the contributions of the several parishes for the 
 repair of the common quay. 
 
 March 7, 1485. Assessors named for the charges 
 for renewing the town charter, and the Serjeants are 
 ordered to levy the same. 
 
 June 26, 1486. Assessors named for a sum of money 
 for the king's entertainment at his next coming. 
 
 March 13, 1487. Ten assessors named for 50 marks 
 pro regardo Domini Regis when it shall be demanded. 
 
 Jan. 8, 1488. An assessment shall be made for the 
 town charter renewing, and assessors and collectors 
 mentioned and named in every parish. 
 
 May 30. An assessment shall be made for a loth 
 
2o History of Local Rates 
 
 and 1 5th for the king, and assessors and collectors 
 nominated in each parish. 
 
 We need scarcely go further to convince ourselves 
 of the frequency of rates in Ipswich before the era of 
 the poor-rate. Several of the later entries, however, 
 are worth quoting for various reasons. In 1495 occurs 
 an excellent example of the use of the fifteenth and 
 tenth for purely local purposes. " Assessors and col- 
 lectors in each parish for a moiety of a tenth and a 
 fifteenth for the repair of the new mill, the whole sum 
 being 18 48. 6d." The practice, which reminds us 
 of the modern French centimes additionels, was not 
 confined to Ipswich. It prevailed in London at least 
 as late as 1587.* In 1538 Ipswich levied a distinctly 
 sanitary rate. Bacon's entry is : " Constables assigned 
 to several wards to remove nuisances, and to levy 
 money to pay carts for their carriage of the filth 
 away." In 1545 we get a little more light as to the 
 principle followed in assessing the rates. Every port- 
 man was to pay ios., and every one of the four-and- 
 twenty, 53. ; " and every of the commons shall be 
 rated according to their substance by two honest 
 persons within their parish." No doubts as to the 
 
 1 See Orders appointed to be executed in the City of London for setting 
 Rogues and Idle Persons to Work, and for Relief of the Poor, 1587, re- 
 printed 1793 : " 57. For the provision of the said stock to the 
 accomplishment of the said good works, there may be granted by 
 the body of this city two fifteens, to be assessed and levied in usual 
 manner, whereof the one to be paid as speedily as may be, the other 
 one at the end of six months." In 1614 Ipswich used the subsidy 
 in the same way as the fifteenths. A benevolence of ^200 was to be 
 rated by the subsidy, "and if the same fall short," says Bacon's 
 entry, " it shall be rated upon the better sort of the inhabitants to 
 make up the sum." 
 
Non- Statutory Rates to 1601 21 
 
 legal powers of the governing body to impose rates 
 seem to have been felt till 1549. In that year 
 assessors were appointed " to assess the burgesses and 
 inhabitants " to pay " scott and lott for the town debts. 
 And the bailiffs shall assess the assessors. Provided 
 if the order be found contrary to the king's laws, the 
 same shall be void." The doubts must have been set 
 at rest, as the order was confirmed in the next year, 
 and the precedent was followed in 1558. In 1592 
 there was rating for a preacher's wages, and in 1 597 
 the burgesses' salary was rated on the inhabitants. 
 In those days ratepayers appear to have been expected 
 not only to pay, but to refrain from grumbling, for we 
 find that, on 4th December 1573, " Richard Golty, one 
 of the burgesses of this town, being allotted to the 
 sum of 408., did upon the 10 of October, in the 
 presence of two persons of credit, say that the scott 
 and lott rated, on him was done against reason, con- 
 science, charity, and honesty; and being convicted 
 thereof, he was fined 5, and ordered to pay the 
 said 408." 
 
 It would have been a miracle if Tudor legislation 
 had succeeded in creating a rate altogether unaffected 
 by the uninterrupted rating practice of three centuries. 
 To understand our present system, based upon the act 
 of 1 60 1, it is therefore necessary to know something 
 about the principles on which these early non-statutory 
 rates were apportioned. 
 
 The sewers-rate of Romney Marsh presents no diffi- 
 culty. It was clearly governed by the principle that 
 each person whose property was benefited should pay 
 a proportion governed by the acreage, and afterwards 
 the value, of that property, in comparison with the 
 
22 History of Local Rates 
 
 whole of the property benefited. But if we look at 
 the other rates through modern spectacles, the prin- 
 ciple on which they are based is not very evident. 
 The cloud which obstructs our vision will disappear, 
 however, if we once abandon the pernicious modern 
 habit of asking what was ratable. It is never things, 
 but always persons, that pay rates and taxes, and in 
 the fourteenth or even the sixteenth century the 
 metaphor which attributes payment to the thing in 
 respect of which the person is taxed had not taken 
 possession of the ordinary mind as it has now. In 
 the simplest form of rating there is nothing in the 
 nature of an assessment or valuation list made up by 
 a modern assessment committee. The total sum to 
 be raised is apportioned directly upon the contributors 
 as the assessors think fit or the common agreement 
 decides. It seems quite clear that in the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth century the accepted view was that each 
 inhabitant should pay according to his ability or 
 substance, 1 for in those days ability and substance 
 meant much the same thing: the man who has a 
 large income without having a large capital is a pro- 
 duct of modern civilisation. Something in the nature 
 of a valuation list soon sprang up, not because there 
 was as yet any idea that the things of which a man's 
 substance consists ought to be rated, but because the 
 assessors wanted some kind of guide as to the relative 
 ability or substance of the ratepayers. In a purely 
 
 1 In Latin, "juxta facilitates." See the letter to Chichester, 
 quoted above, p. 1 7, and another in Ryraer, Fcedera, R. vol. iii. Part i. 
 p. 57, A.D. 1345, giving directions for the reassessment of Tarn worth 
 to the fifteenth after a fire: "Vobis mandamus quod omnes et 
 singulos homines dictse villse juxta facultates suas quas modo 
 habent de novo taxari." 
 
Non-Statutory Rates to 1601 23 
 
 agricultural community, where every person of ability 
 to pay is a farmer, nothing can be more natural than 
 that the assessors, in forming their estimate of relative 
 ability, should consider the number and quality of the 
 acres cultivated by each, and perhaps also the number 
 of sheep and cattle pastured. In a town, an equally 
 obvious guide as to the substance of the inhabitants 
 is afforded by the size or value of the houses occupied. 1 
 When this has once become the settled custom, it is 
 supposed by a natural confusion of mind that the 
 acres and the houses are taxed, and any attempts to 
 carry out the original principle of rating according to 
 ability derived from every source are strenuously re- 
 sisted by the parties interested. The owner of lands 
 or houses which he has let for a rent objects to being 
 rated in accordance with his whole substance, on the 
 ground that the rates on his lands and houses have 
 
 1 Even the fifteenths and tenths, which were in their origin 
 fractions of movable property only, seem to have been assessed 
 in accordance with the annual value of tenements occupied before 
 they ceased to be granted. The language of Parliament is vague. 
 In 1562-3 (by 5 Eliz., c. 31), for example, it grants "two whole 
 XV nos and X th8 to be payd, taken, and levied of the movable 
 goods, catalles, and other things usual to such XV noa and X th8 to be 
 contributory and chargeable." Scattered allusions show that the 
 " other things " had long included property occupied. We find, for 
 example, in 1377-8, the revocation of a writ which exonerated the 
 chancellor and scholars of Cambridge University from tenths and 
 fifteenths in respect of their tenements, possessions, and books 
 (Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 1842, vol. i. p. 116). In 1385 the ex- 
 emption was re-established, tenements, schools, and books being 
 mentioned (ibid., p. 129, cf. 'p. 197). Orders of the city of London 
 issued in 1587 ( 58 ; see above, p. 20 n.) speak of foreigners being 
 contributory to the fifteenths "by the rate of their houses." In a 
 church-rate case heard in 161 1, the court talked of " a rate imposed 
 according to the value of the land, and that in the nature of a 
 fifteen " (Bulstrode, Reports, i. 20). 
 
24 History of Local Rates 
 
 already been paid by his tenants. 1 The tradesman, 
 the money-lender, and the salaried servant or official 
 decline to pay their full proportion, on the ground, as 
 they say, that it has never been the custom to rate 
 stock-in-trade, money, or salaries. On the other hand, 
 by way of compensation, whether it acquiesces will- 
 ingly in these contentions or not, the taxing authority 
 insists on having rates in respect of all the lands and 
 houses within its jurisdiction from the occupiers, 
 whether the ability or substance of those occupiers is 
 indicated by the value of their occupations or not, and 
 whether they are resident inhabitants or not. 
 
 The whole process may be seen going on in Coke's 
 report of the famous case of Jeffrey, which came 
 before the King's Bench in 1 5 89. 
 
 The church of Hailsham was out of repair, and it 
 was estimated that the cost of repairing it would be 
 not less than jo. The churchwardens " for the 
 time being, anno domini 1589 and two years before, 
 with the assent of the greater part of the parishioners 
 of the said parish, juxta quantitatem et qualitatem 
 possessionum et reddituum infra dictam parochiam 
 existentium according to the quantity and quality 
 of the possessions and revenues within the said parish 
 determined and agreed to make a taxation for the 
 repair of the said church." Notice of the parish 
 meeting was given in the church and proclaimed in 
 the market, and on the appointed day " the church- 
 wardens and the greater part of the parishioners of 
 Hailsham who were there met together, made a tax, 
 
 1 Lord Mansfield said in 1776, "The landlord is never assessed 
 for his rent, because that would be a double assessment, as his lessee 
 has paid before " (Cowper, Reports, p. 453). 
 
N on- Statutory Rates to 1601 25 
 
 scil, of every acre of marsh land 4d, and of every acre 
 of arable land 2d., to be paid by the occupiers of them 
 in Hailsham ; " and " all the said tax of the said town 
 did not exceed the sum of ,50." Now one William 
 Jeffrey, gentleman, who resided, not in Hailsham, but 
 in Chiddingley, some miles away, both owned and 
 occupied 30 acres of the marsh land and 100 acres of 
 the arable land so rated. He objected to pay his 
 26s. 8d., on the ground that he was not a parishioner 
 of Hailsham. Suffering defeat on this point before 
 the spiritual court, he invoked the civil, but met with 
 no better success. After taking the opinion of the 
 ecclesiastical lawyers, the court decided that he was a 
 parishioner and liable to be rated. " It was answered 
 and resolved, first, that although the house wherein 
 Jeffrey dwelt be in another parish, yet forasmuch as 
 he had lands in the parish of Hailsham in his proper 
 possession and manurance, he is in law parochianus 
 de Haylesham. For the place where he lies, sleeps, 
 or eats, doth not make him a parishioner only; but 
 also, forasmuch as he manures lands in Hailsham, 
 and by that is resident upon it, that makes him a 
 parishioner of Hailsham also as to this purpose. If," 
 continued the court and here no doubt is the crucial 
 point " in this case Jeffrey should not be charged to 
 the reparation of the church of Hailsham for those 
 lands which he himself occupies there, no person 
 would be charged for them, upon which great incon- 
 venience would ensue; for one who inhabits in the 
 next town may occupy the greatest part of the lands 
 in another town, and so churches in these days will 
 come to ruin." One of Jeffrey's complaints was that 
 the churchwardens had said that he "occupied or 
 
26 History of Local Rates 
 
 received rent " for the 1 30 acres, whereas it would, he 
 alleged, " be against law and reason, and against the 
 common experience of all England," that he should 
 be rated if he had let the land. In response to this 
 complaint, the court, which had not then the horror 
 of giving unnecessary decisions it now feels, resolved 
 that " when there is a farmer of the same lands, the 
 lessor who receives rent for them shall not be charged 
 for them in respect of his rent, because there is an 
 inhabitant and parishioner who may be charged, and 
 the receipt of the rent doth not make the lessor a 
 parishioner." While thus throwing over the old 
 principle in favour of the new and more convenient 
 practice, the court was still willing to do lip-service 
 to the old principle, for it observed, " In this case the 
 charge is on the person, and not on the land, but is 
 on the person in respect of the land, for the more 
 equality and indifferency." 
 
 Coke was counsel in this case himself, and he says 
 at the end of his report, " Note, reader, this is a good 
 case to many purposes, and therefore well observe the 
 consequences of it." l 
 
 1 Reports, Pt. v. pp. 67, 68. 
 
II 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS STATUTORY RATES TO 1640 
 
 THE unsophisticated mind, which cherishes the delu- 
 sion that our financial institutions have been created 
 by politicians instead of by the force of circumstances, 
 would naturally suppose that as soon as we come to 
 rates imposed or regulated by statute, we should find 
 no difficulty in discovering how rates were assessed 
 and upon whom they were laid. This expectation 
 would be disappointed. The early statutes take a 
 great deal for granted, and are often least explicit 
 just at the point where we most desire information. 
 
 The first of them is the sewers act of 1427 (6 
 Hen. VI., c. 5), which authorised the king to appoint 
 commissions to supervise works for sea defence 
 wherever they might be required. Within their 
 several jurisdictions the commissioners were to be 
 empowered to inquire by whose default damages had 
 arisen, and " who doth hold lands and tenements, or 
 hath any common of pasture or fishing in those parts, 
 or else in any wise have or may have the defence, 
 profit, and safeguard as well in peril nigh as from 
 the same far off, by the said walls, ditches, gutters, 
 sewers, bridges, causeys, and weirs, and also hurt or 
 commodity by the same trenches, and there to dis- 
 train all them for the quantity of their lands and 
 tenements, either by the number of acres or by their 
 ploughlands, for the rate of the portion of their 
 
28 History of Local Rates 
 
 tenure, or for the quantity of their common of pasture 
 or fishing, together with the bailiffs of liberties and 
 other places ... to repair the said walls, ditches," 
 and so on, " so that no tenants of lands or tenements, 
 nor any having common of pasture or fishing, rich or 
 poor, nor other of what condition, station, or dignity 
 which have or may have defence, commodity, and 
 safeguard by the said walls," and all the other things, 
 " or else any hurt by the said trenches, whether they 
 be within liberties or without, shall in any wise be 
 spared in this." Necessary and convenient statutes 
 and ordinances might be made by the commissioners 
 according to the laws and customs of Romney Marsh, 
 and they were to hear and determine all complaints 
 according to the law and custom of England and the 
 custom of Romney Marsh. 
 
 After being renewed several times, this act was 
 superseded by the 23rd of Henry VIIL, c. 5 (1531-2), 
 which authorises the commissioners to inquire " who 
 hath or holdeth any lands or tenements or com- 
 mon of pasture or profit of fishing, or hath or may 
 have any hurt, loss, or disadvantage, as well near 
 to the said dangers, lets, and impediments, as in- 
 habiting or dwelling thereabouts by the said walls 
 . . . and all those persons and every of them to 
 assess, charge, distrain, and punish as well within the 
 metes and bounds of old time accustomed as else- 
 where within our realm of England after the quantity 
 of their lands, tenements, and rents by the number 
 of acres and perches after the rate of every person's 
 portion, tenure, or profit, or after the quantity of 
 their common of pasture or profit of fishing or other 
 commodities there." If the tax on any lands, tene- 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 29 
 
 ments, or hereditaments was not forthcoming, the 
 commissioners might " decree and ordain " them from 
 their owners. Crown land was to be subject to the 
 same laws as all other land. 1 
 
 It is evident that the general principle of the early 
 sewers rates or taxes for sea defence was that they 
 should be levied in respect of all kinds of property 
 liable to danger, in proportions determined by the 
 extent or value of that property. But the ordinances 
 and statutes certainly do not make it very clear to the 
 modern mind from whom the taxes were to be levied 
 when the owner and the occupier or tenant were dif- 
 ferent persons. On this point we may take the opinion 
 of Mr. Serjeant Callis, who delivered lectures on the 
 Statute of Sewers (23 Hen. VIII., c. 5), at Gray's 
 Inn, in August 1622. As he was for many years a 
 commissioner of sewers in his native county of Lin- 
 colnshire, he must have been acquainted with the 
 practice as well as the strict law of the matter. He 
 says that we must " distinguish and make a difference 
 between annual repairs in ordinary things and extra- 
 ordinary repairs. For to furnish the defence with petty 
 reparations, they shall be laid only upon the lessee for 
 years or for life ; but if a new wall, bank, or goat or 
 sewer, be to be built new and erected, or if the ancient 
 defences be decayed in the main timber, or in the 
 principal parts thereof, here as well the lessor as the 
 lessee shall be put to the charge, for these things be not 
 ordinary and annual charges, but do reach from the 
 beginning of the lease to the top of the inheritance. 
 
 1 Before this time the king had often voluntarily contributed his 
 share, recognising that the sea would not respect his lands any 
 more than that of his subjects. See Dugdale, Embanking, pp. 88-90. 
 
30 History of Local Rates 
 
 As for petty reparations, they are by intendment 
 to continue but for a short tune, which are likely to 
 be spent during the term and lease; but these new 
 defences are apparently done to save the inheritance." 
 He quotes as analogous the case of landlord's and 
 tenant's repairs to a house, and concludes that "in 
 petty annual and ordinary repairs the lessee alone 
 shall do the same ; but where the same wants in great 
 timber or when a new defence is to be built, they shall 
 both be at the charge." The fact is that the commis- 
 sioners had a very wide discretion, and could, in 
 Callis's words, apportion the tax " as in justice, dis- 
 cretion, and true judgment is requisite." x 
 
 Just before the Statute of Sewers conies the Statute 
 of Bridges (22 Hen. VIII., c. 5), passed in 1530-1, 
 because, as the preamble says, " in many parts of this 
 realm it cannot be known and proved what hundred, 
 riding, wapentake, city, borough, town, or parish, nor 
 what person certain or body politic, ought of right " 
 to repair bridges which had fallen into decay. It is 
 easy to believe that a good stone bridge would often 
 outlast the memory of the oldest inhabitant, especially 
 when he had an interest in forgetting. For a remedy 
 the act provides that in all cases where it is doubtful 
 on whom the obligation to repair a bridge lies, " the 
 said bridges, if they be without -city or town corporate, 
 shall- be made by the inhabitants of the shire or riding 
 in which the said bridge decayed shall happen to be ; 
 and if it be within any city or town corporate, then 
 by the inhabitants of every such city or town corpo- 
 rate." It then gives the justices of the counties and 
 
 !. Reading on the Statute of Servers, 1647, pp. no, in ; 2nd edit., 
 pp. 141-143- 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1 640 3 1 
 
 towns power and authority to call before them the 
 constables, or else "two of the most honest inhabi- 
 tants," of every town or parish within the area charge- 
 able, and with their assent "to tax and set every 
 inhabitant in any such city, town, or parish within 
 the limits of their commissions and authorities to 
 such reasonable aid and sum of money as they shall 
 think by their discretions convenient and sufficient 
 for the repairing, rectifying, and amendment of such 
 bridges." After this taxation has been settled, the 
 justices are to " cause the names and sums of every 
 particular person so by them taxed to be written in a 
 roll indented." The act is extremely minute on many 
 points of detail which seem unimportant to us, but it 
 does not tell us who the " inhabitants " were, nor on 
 what principle the justices were to proceed in appor- 
 tioning the tax among them. Coke, in his Institutes, 
 says that the word "inhabitant" does not include 
 servants and such-like persons who have nothing upon 
 which distraint could be levied, and that it does in- 
 clude a non-resident who has lands or tenements in 
 his own possession and manurance within the area of 
 liability. Such a non-resident, he adds, "is an in- 
 habitant both where his person dwelleth and where 
 he hath lands or tenements in his own possession 
 within the statute." l His opinion as to the ratability 
 of non-resident occupiers is founded on Jeffrey's case, 
 not on anything in the act itself, nor on any legal 
 decision under it. He also remarks that the taxation 
 cannot be set on the hundreds, parishes, and towns in 
 lump sums, but must be assessed on individual in- 
 habitants. This is doubtless the true meaning of the 
 
 1 Institutes, ii. p. 702. 
 
32 History of Local Rates 
 
 act, but all the same the practice was to rate the areas 
 in lump sums, and leave them to apportion these 
 sums among the inhabitants as they thought fit. 1 
 
 An act of a local character (23 Eliz., c. n), passed 
 just fifty years later, shows that in taxing and setting 
 each inhabitant to a reasonable aid the justices were 
 expected to follow well-known precedents. A dispute 
 had broken out between Cardiff and Glamorgan about 
 the duty of repairing the bridge at Cardiff. " Such 
 doubts and ambiguities," the preamble of the act says, 
 were discovered "touching certain words and sen- 
 tences " in the Statute of Bridges, " that more money 
 was like to be spent in the determining and explain- 
 ing of the same than haply might have sufficed to 
 have re-edified the said bridge." To put an end to 
 this unhappy state of affairs, Parliament declared that 
 of right the building of the bridge belonged to the 
 town without all doubt or controversy, but at the 
 same time it ordered the county to bear five-sixths 
 and the town only one-sixth of the cost, in considera- 
 tion of " the poor estate of the said town of Cardiff, and 
 the inability thereof to perform so great a charge." 
 To avoid any "doubts and ambiguities" as to the 
 method of raising the contributions of the town and 
 the county, it went on to enact that the justices hi 
 the county and the mayor and bailiffs in the town 
 were " to rate and assess the county aforesaid, with 
 the several hundreds, and every town corporate, 
 parish, village, and hamlet within the same, and every 
 inhabitant and dweller within every and any of them, 
 
 1 See, for a Norfolk example in the first half of the seventeenth 
 century, Bodleian MS., Tanner, 311, f. 257. The practice seems to 
 have been first legalised in 1702 by i Ann., c. 12. 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 33 
 
 to such reasonable sum and sums of money as to 
 them shall be thought meet and convenient, in due 
 and proportionable manner, according as rates, tasks, 
 and tallages have been before this time used to be 
 there rated and levied, or as near thereunto as they 
 can." If we suppose, as we reasonably may, that this 
 provision was intended to declare the meaning of the 
 Statute of Bridges rather than to alter or add to it, 
 we may infer that in 1580 good authorities were of 
 opinion that the taxation under that statute should 
 be apportioned as rates, tasks, and tallages had usually 
 been apportioned. Thus the statute, instead of clearing 
 anything up, merely throws us back on pre-existing 
 custom. 
 
 Close upon the Statute of Bridges follows an act 
 for building county jails (23 Hen. VIII., c. 2), passed 
 in 1531-2. This authorised the justices of twenty- 
 five of the counties to call together the high con- 
 stables, tithing-men, or borough-holders, of every 
 hundred, lathe, or wapentake of the shire, and by 
 their assents, agreements, and discretion, tax and set 
 every resident in the shire having land, tenements, 
 rents, or annuities of estate of inheritance or for time 
 of life to the clear yearly value of 408. or above, or 
 being worth in movable substance the clear value of 
 20 or above. Here is one bright spot in the midst 
 of obscurity. The persons to be taxed owners of pro- 
 perty real and personal, " resident," not " inhabiting," 
 in the shire are plainly specified, and it is clearly 
 implied that they are to be taxed in proportion to 
 the value of the income derived from their property, 
 movables being assumed to produce an income of 
 10 per cent, on their capital value. 
 
 c 
 
34 History of Local Rates 
 
 The statute next in order, passed in the follow- 
 ing year (24 Hen. VIII., c. 10), leaves everything 
 undetermined. It enacts that the tenants and in- 
 habitants of every parish, township, hamlet, borough, 
 or village with more than nine inhabited houses, shall, 
 "at their own proper costs, charges, and expenses, 
 provide, make, or cause to be made one net " for the 
 destruction of choughs,' crows, and rooks, which " do 
 daily breed and increase " throughout the realm, and 
 " do yearly destroy, devour, and consume a wonderful 
 and marvellous great quantity of corn and grain of 
 all kinds," besides causing a " marvellous destruction 
 and decay of the covertures of thatched houses, barns, 
 ricks, stacks, and other such-like." 
 
 Three years later we find an act (27 Hen. VIII., 
 c - 63, 1535-6) regulating the government of Calais, 
 and providing for its representation in Parliament. 
 This prescribes that the necessary 2s. a day for the 
 wages of the burgesses in Parliament shall be " levied 
 in such manner of form as within other cities and 
 boroughs within this realm is used and accustomed." 
 The same reference to well-established custom is 
 found in the act of 1543-4 (35 Hen. VIII., c. 11), 
 making provision for the payment of the represen- 
 tatives of Wales. The sheriffs of the twelve Welsh 
 counties and Monmouthshire are to gather and levy 
 the fees of the knights of the shire from "the in- 
 habitants of the said twelve shires, and of the said 
 county of Monmouth, which ought to pay the same." 
 The boroughs which did not send burgesses of their 
 own to Parliament were grouped for electoral purposes 
 with the county town, and so, in order to provide for 
 the wages of the burgesses in Parliament, the justices 
 
. Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 35 
 
 were to " lot and tax every city, borough, and town," 
 and the "rates so rated and taxed in gross" were 
 to be "again rated and taxed on the inhabitants of 
 every of the said cities and boroughs by four or six 
 discreet and substantial burgesses of every the said 
 cities and boroughs in Wales thereunto named and 
 assigned by the mayor, bailiffs, or other head officers 
 of the said cities, towns, and boroughs for the time 
 being." 
 
 An act of 1 545 " for the marshes besides Greenwich " 
 (37 Hen. VIII., c. 11) says that most of the owners 
 of the said marshes pay " a rate for an acre " towards 
 the repairing of the banks which protect the land 
 from the tide, "yet some owners thereof be which 
 have not nor will not pay anything." These re- 
 fractory individuals are therefore made liable to 
 distraint. 
 
 More interest attaches to an act of 1545-6 (37 Hen. 
 VIII., c. 14) "for Scarborough Pier." This recites 
 that formerly when the harbour was in good con- 
 dition the inhabitants and dwellers were prosperous, 
 " and also all the owners of all the messuages, lands, 
 and tenements within the precinct of the said town 
 did set and let their said messuages, lands, and tene- 
 ments at great rents or farms, to their great advan- 
 tages and profits," but now that the quay or pier had 
 been partially destroyed and the safety of the har- 
 bour impaired, the inhabitants and dwellers were im- 
 poverished, and the rents and farms were hindered 
 and diminished. Parliament thereupon considered 
 that if the pier were repaired, the lands and houses 
 "might be set or letten for much greater rents or 
 farms," and also that the tenants and farmers were 
 
36 History of Local Rates 
 
 not able to repair the quay unless the owners were 
 "compelled to be yearly contributors and helpers." 
 It therefore authorised the bailiffs, coroners, and 
 searchers of occupations in Scarborough to appoint 
 two masters or keepers of the pier, and enacted that 
 these masters or keepers and their successors, should 
 yearly levy, towards the repair and subsequent main- 
 tenance of the pier, one-fifth of the rents receivable 
 by "all and every person and persons being owner 
 or owners, and having estate of inheritance, or being 
 tenant by the courtesy or tenant in dower of any 
 messuage or messuages, tenement or tenements, or 
 any kind of rents, garthings, orchards, or other lands, 
 grounds, or hereditaments set, situate, or lying within 
 the precincts, limits, or bounds of the said town of 
 Scarborough, or the liberties and jurisdiction of the 
 same, or of any kind of rent or rents being due to 
 be paid forth, or for any of the same." The fifth was 
 to be collected from the farmers or occupiers, but it is 
 provided that every occupier holding under a landlord, 
 upon paying the fifth part of his rent to the masters 
 of the pier, " shall be thereof and for so much clearly 
 acquitted and discharged against the owner" from 
 whom he holds, "any usage, custom, law, covenant, 
 indenture, obligations, or bonds to the contrary made 
 or hereafter to be made in any wise notwithstand- 
 ing." To make a long story short, tenants were 
 allowed to deduct the fifth from their rents, and all 
 contracts to the contrary, past, present, and to come, 
 were rendered void. If any owner occupied or held 
 his property in his own hands, he was to pay the fifth 
 part of so much rent as it " may be reasonably let to 
 farm for, as by the valuation of ten discreet persons 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 37 
 of the same town shall be adjudged without fraud or 
 
 coven. 
 
 In setting aside past and future contracts on the 
 part of tenants to pay rates, this act is unique, but 
 the paving acts of the period afford examples of the 
 practice of authorising deductions from rent where no 
 such contracts existed. It is not very easy to see 
 how a road through a town came to be distinguished 
 from a highway in the country, but it seems to be the 
 case that the duty of repairing the streets in a town 
 lay upon the owners (not on the occupiers) of the 
 property abutting upon them. The liability of the 
 corporation was often admitted in the case of large 
 public places, like market squares, but not in that of 
 ordinary streets. The owners on each side were ex- 
 pected to pave the way as far as the channel, which 
 in those days, of course, was in the middle of the road, 
 not on each side between the carriage-way and the 
 footpaths. The enforcement of this obligation, if it is 
 not exactly the same thing as the imposition of a rate 
 apportioned according to frontage and width of street, 
 is very closely analogous, and in later times it cer- 
 tainly developed into a rate. The first paving act in 
 the Statutes of the Realm was passed in the year 
 1532-3 (24 Hen. VIII., c. n). It recites that the 
 common highway between Charing Cross and the 
 Strand Cross is " very noyous and foul, and in many 
 places very jeopardous " to passengers on foot or 
 
 1 The 45. in the pound being fixed, whatever the requirements of 
 the pier might be, was, strictly speaking, a tax rather than a rate. 
 It was, however, a tax in respect of things usually ratable ; and 
 from the fact that the owners were to be " contributors and helpers " 
 with the tenants, we may gather that the proceeds went in aid of 
 an ordinary rate. 
 
3 8 History of Local Rates 
 
 horseback, because " the landlords and owners of all 
 the lands and tenements next adjoining" it have been 
 "remiss and negligent, and also refuse and will not 
 make and support the said highway with paving, 
 every of them after the portion of his ground adjoin- 
 ing." It is therefore enacted that " all and every 
 person and persons, their heirs and successors, the 
 which now, or at any time from henceforth, shall be 
 seized in possession or in use of any manor, lands, or 
 tenements in any wise adjoining to the said highAvays 
 ... of any estate of fee-simple, fee-tail, or for time 
 of life, shall . . . sufficiently pave or cause to be paved 
 with stone the said highway along from his or their 
 lands or tenements adjoining to the said highway 
 unto the midst of the same way, in such and like 
 form as the high street between Temple Bar and 
 Strand Cross aforesaid is paved." The penalty for 
 neglecting to pave the street in this manner before 
 Michaelmas 1533, and for failing to maintain the 
 pavement afterwards, was 6d. per square yard. The 
 next act (25 Hen. VIII., c. 8), passed in the following 
 year," for paving of Holborn," complains of the " lack 
 of renewing " of the pavement of the street by " the 
 landlords which dwell not within the City." In spite 
 of its title, this act was really applicable to the whole 
 of the city and its suburbs. With regard to Holborn, 
 it follows the Strand act, and then gives the mayor 
 and aldermen power to inquire, by the oath of twelve 
 men of the city, " as well of them that have not paved 
 according to the provision aforesaid, as also of them 
 that remissly or insufficiently shall hereafter maintain 
 the same pavement or any other pavement within the 
 said city and suburbs of the same." Any one in 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 39 
 
 default might be fined by the mayor and aldermen 
 according to their discretions. In South wark, outside 
 the jurisdiction of the city, the same powers were 
 given to the justices. It was further provided that 
 if the lessees of any lands " do sufficiently pave or 
 repair before their mansions or dwelling-places the 
 streets which have used to be paved, that then they 
 and every of them shall defalk, abate, and retain in 
 his or their own hands as much of the rents due to 
 the lessors as they can prove to have expended on the 
 same paving." The other eight Tudor period paving 
 acts printed in the Statutes of the Realm all agree/in 
 making the landlord liable, and six of them contain 
 the provision allowing the tenants to do the work 
 and deduct the outlay from their rents. Of the six, 
 however, one (13 Eliz., c. 24), passed in 1571 for paving 
 Ipswich, imposes a true money rate for defraying the 
 expense of paving in front of parish churches, and 
 in respect of this it fails to make any provision for 
 a deduction from rent. The streets in front of the 
 churches were to be paved " at the charges of the 
 parishioners of every such church, . . . the charges 
 thereof to be indifferently rated by the twelve head- 
 boroughs." 
 
 Returning from this digression on paving expenses, 
 we come to an act of 1553 (i Mar., st. 2, c. 32) 
 for repairing the causeway between Sherborne and 
 Shaftesbury. 1 The preamble of this act says it is 
 thought meet that the cost of putting the causeway 
 in repair should be borne by the "owners, tenants, 
 farmers, and inhabitants of the manors, lands, tene- 
 
 1 This act is not printed in its place in Statutes of the Realm, but 
 it will be found recited in full in I Mar., st. 3, c. 5. 
 
40 History of Local Rates 
 
 merits, and parishes lying nigh to the said causeway 
 and highway on either side of the same," and "the 
 owners, tenants, farmers, and inhabitants of the towns 
 of Shaftesbury and Sherborne." The act itself, how- 
 ever, says the cost is to be borne by "the owners, 
 tenants, and farmers of the lands, tenements, and 
 hereditaments lying nigh to the said causeway and 
 highway on either side of the same, and by the in- 
 habitants of and within the said towns of Shaftesbury 
 and Sherborne, and by the owners, tenants, and 
 farmers of the manors, lands, tenements, and heredita- 
 ments, and by the inhabitants of and within the forest 
 of Gillingham" and certain liberties and hundreds. 
 The justices of Somerset and Dorset are to make 
 assessments and taxations of money or otherwise on 
 these persons, "having good and indifferent respect 
 to the several abilities of them and every of them." 
 Probably no importance is to be attached to the 
 difference in the description of the ratepayers in the 
 preamble and the act itself. On the whole it seems 
 probable that both the " manors " adjoining the high- 
 way and "the owners, tenants, and farmers" of the 
 towns of Shaftesbury and Sherborne, spoken of in the 
 preamble, are not mentioned in the act merely because 
 the draughtsman considered they were covered by the 
 other expressions, "lands, tenements, and heredita- 
 ments," and "inhabitants." The word "owners" is 
 probably intended merely to include persons occupy- 
 ing their own lands. Whoever was to pay, it is plain 
 that the principle on which the payment was appor- 
 tioned was the relative ability of the contributors. 
 
 Another local highway act (i Mar., st. 3, c. 6) passed 
 in the following year (1554) does not make the same 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 41 
 
 rather unsuccessful attempt to be explicit. It merely 
 provides that the inhabitants of the cities of Bristol 
 and Gloucester, with the hundreds which lie between 
 them, shall be charged with the repair of the Glou- 
 cester and Bristol road. It authorises the justices 
 to rate and sess the inhabitants, but says nothing 
 about the distribution of the burden among them. 
 
 An act of 1555 (2 & 3 P. & M., c. i) "for the re- 
 edifying of castells and forts, and for the enclosing 
 of grounds from the borders towards and against 
 Scotland," that is to say, in Northumberland, Cum- 
 berland, Westmorland, and Durham, is on the model 
 of the Sewers Acts. It authorises the appointment of 
 a commission " to inquire by the oaths of the honest 
 and lawful men " of the four counties, " by whom the 
 truth may best be known, who hath or holdeth any 
 lands or tenements or useth or perceiveth any com- 
 mon of pasture or other profit apprender in the said 
 counties or bishopric throughout the whole parts of 
 the same, and all those persons and every of them 
 or such of them, to tax, assess, charge, distrain, and 
 pain by the number of acres and perches after the 
 rate of every person's profit, rent, or tenure, or after 
 the quantity of their common of pasture or profit 
 apprender or other commodities there." Crown lands 
 were to be liable to rating in the same way as others, 
 and the tenants of such lands might deduct the rates 
 from their rents. 
 
 The act of 1532 for destroying crows was allowed 
 to expire by effluxion of time ; but in 1 566 a 
 more comprehensive act " for preservation of grain " 
 (8 Eliz., c. 15) revived its provisions with regard to 
 the village net, and enacted further that, in order to 
 
4 2 History of Local Rates 
 
 raise money to be paid away in rewards for the eggs 
 and heads of birds and vermin, including foxes, the 
 churchwardens, with six other parishioners co-opted 
 by them, should annually, and as often as might be 
 necessary, "tax and assess every proprietor, fanner, 
 and other person having the possession of any land 
 or tithes within their several parishes, to pay such 
 sum of money as they shall think meet, according to 
 the quantity and portion of such lands or tithes as 
 the same person so assessed do or shall have or hold." 
 Of course the term proprietor is here qualified by the 
 having possession of land, so that a landlord not 
 occupying his land would not be liable to be rated. 
 It is only natural that a rate to be expended so 
 directly for the benefit of agriculturists should be 
 levied from them alone. 
 
 In 1571 (by 13 Eliz., c. 18) it was enacted that 
 the river Lea should be cleansed of all its shelves and 
 shallows " at the costs and charges of the country," 
 the freeholders and inhabitants being rated by the 
 sheriffs and justices of the three counties concerned, 
 and certain commissioners appointed by the Lord 
 Chancellor; but this somewhat vague provision was 
 greatly qualified by the condition that no one should 
 be charged except in so far as he would be chargeable 
 under the Statute of Sewers. 
 
 In 1575-6 the legislature was forced to take notice 
 of a difficulty in the enforcement of the labour required 
 by the Highways Act, which is closely connected with 
 the question, What constitutes an inhabitant for the 
 purposes of rating ? The statute of 1555 was amended 
 by an act (18 Eliz., c. 10) which, among other things, 
 explains that persons who occupy a plough-land 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 43 
 
 divided between several parishes are to be chargeable 
 in the parish where they dwell, and that persons who 
 have several plough-lands, each in a different parish, 
 are to be chargeable just as if they were resident 
 parishioners of the parish in which each plough-land 
 lies "in such manner and form as if he and they 
 were a parishioner dwelling within the parishes where 
 the same several plough-lands do lie." 
 
 Curiously enough this same act contains a local 
 provision or addendum, in which the difficulty about 
 residence was entirely overlooked. The addendum 
 presents several points of interest. It says : " And 
 whereas the ferry or passage called Kingsferry within 
 the Isle of Sheppey, in the county of Kent, before the 
 making of the statute of highways, was usually repaired 
 and maintained time out of memory of man at the 
 charges of all the inhabitants and land -occupiers 
 within the whole isle by taxation and sessment at 
 one court or law-day time out of mind yearly holden 
 on the Monday next after the feast of Pentecost at 
 Kingsborough within the said isle, in the name of 
 the Queen's Majesty and her progenitors, only for the 
 maintenance of the same ferry ; Be it therefore enacted 
 that the said court shall be duly kept in such manner 
 and form as hath been heretofore accustomed, and that 
 it shall and may be lawful to and for the jury em- 
 pannelled and sworn at the same court for the time 
 being, by their discretions, reasonably to assess and 
 tax themselves and all other the inhabitants and land- 
 occupiers of the said isle indifferently, according to the 
 rate of land in every man's occupying, towards the 
 maintenance of the same passage or ferry and the 
 ways belonging or leading to the same, so as no acre of 
 
44 History of Local Rates 
 
 fresh marsh and upland be taxed above the rate of a 
 penny in one year, nor of every ten acres of salt marsh 
 above the rate of a penny in one year." Here we 
 have a money rate which had been levied time out 
 of mind for what were regarded as highway pur- 
 poses from occupiers of land at so much per acre. 
 Not content with reviving this ancient rate, Parlia- 
 ment proceeded to create a similar one on the 
 opposite side of the Swale. The road from Kingsferry 
 to Middleton had fallen into disrepair, and the parish 
 was not "able" to repair it. Three justices of the peace 
 were therefore authorised "reasonably to assess and 
 tax all and every land-occupiers dwelling out of the 
 said isle and within four miles distant from the said 
 ferry, as to their discretion shall seem convenient, not 
 exceeding the sum of one penny upon every acre of 
 fresh marsh and upland in one year, and upon every 
 ten acres of salt marsh one penny in one year." The 
 wording of this clause was very unfortunate, as we 
 learn from an amending act (27 Eliz., c. 26) passed 
 nine years afterwards, which says, " Forasmuch upon 
 the letter of the same branch some doubt and question 
 hath risen whether the said justices could sess any 
 but such as be land-occupiers and dwelling out of 
 the said isle, and within four miles distant of the 
 said ferry ; and that thereby the taxations by them to 
 be made by the letter of the same law will not suffice 
 to repair the said decayed ways, for that the lands and 
 grounds lying out of the said isle and within four 
 miles distant of the said ferry are for the most part 
 occupied by such persons as be inhabiting without the 
 compass of the said four miles ; by reason whereof the 
 said highways remain still unrepaired. ... Be it now 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 45 
 
 enacted . . . that yearly from henceforth for ever . . . 
 it shall and may be lawful to and for six, five, four, 
 or three justices of the peace ... to assess and tax 
 upon all and every the lands and grounds lying and 
 being without the said isle, and within four miles 
 distant from the said ferry, such assessments ... as 
 to them shall seem reasonable, notwithstanding that 
 the owners or occupiers of the same lands or grounds 
 be dwelling without the compass of the said four 
 miles." This little history affords an excellent ex- 
 ample of the insuperable difficulty involved in basing 
 local taxation on the dwelling-place of the taxpayer. 
 
 In the same year, 1584-5, was passed another act 
 which distinctly names the abilities of the inhabitants 
 as the criterion for the apportionment of a rate. This 
 act, "for the Hue and Cry" (27 Eliz., c. 13), after 
 reciting how individual inhabitants of a hundred had 
 hitherto had no means of reimbursing themselves 
 when their goods had been taken to pay damages to a 
 person robbed on the highway, 1 enacts " that after exe- 
 cution of damages by the party or parties so robbed 
 had, it shall and may be lawful (upon complaint made 
 
 1 " And although the whole hundred where such robberies and 
 felonies are committed, with the liberties within the precinct 
 thereof, are by the said two former statutes charged with the 
 answering to the party robbed his damages ; yet nevertheless the 
 recovery and execution by and for the party or parties robbed is 
 had against one or a very few persons of the said inhabitants, and 
 he and they so charged have not heretofore by law had any mean 
 or way to have any contribution of or from the residue of the said 
 hundred ... to the great impoverishment of them against whom 
 such recovery or execution is had." This must not be taken to 
 prove that rates were never levied to reimburse persons whose 
 goods had been taken in execution, but only that such persons 
 could not compel the inhabitants to levy a rate to reimburse them. 
 
46 History of Local Rates 
 
 by the party or parties so charged) to and for two 
 justices of the peace ... of the same county, inhabit- 
 ing within the said hundred or near unto the same 
 where any such execution shall be had, to assess and 
 tax ratably and proportionably according to their dis- 
 cretions all and every the towns, parishes, villages, and 
 hamlets, as well of the said hundred where any such 
 robbery shall be committed as of the liberties within 
 the said hundred, to and towards an equal contribution 
 to be had and made for the relief of the said inhabi- 
 tant or inhabitants against whom the party or parties 
 robbed before that time had his or their execution ; 
 and that after such taxation made, the constables, con- 
 stable, head-boroughs or head-borough of every such 
 town, parish, village, and hamlet shall, by virtue of 
 this present act, have full power and authority within 
 their several limits ratably and proportionably to tax 
 and assess according to their abilities every inhabitant 
 and dweller in every such town, parish, village, and 
 hamlet for and towards the payment of such taxation 
 and assessment as shall be so made on every such 
 town, parish, village, and hamlet as aforesaid by the 
 said justices." 
 
 This was the last rating act of importance passed 
 before the poor-laws of 1597 and 1601 ; but as some 
 most vital questions under the statute of 1601 re- 
 mained unanswered till 1633, and the influence of the 
 poor-rate is not apparent in other rating legislation 
 before the era of the Long Parliament, the few rating 
 acts of James L's reign may be regarded as a sort of 
 appendix to the earlier period. 
 
 Here we find in 1603-4 an act (i Jac. I., c. 31) for 
 the relief and ordering of persons affected with the 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 47 
 
 plague. The mayor, bailiffs, head-officers, and justices 
 of every city, borough, corporate town, or privileged 
 place were given power " to assess all and every in- 
 habitant and all houses of habitation, lands, tenements, 
 and hereditaments " within their jurisdiction at " such, 
 reasonable taxes and payments as they shall think 
 fit." In this there seems a slight hesitation between 
 the idea of a rate on persons and one on things. The 
 inclusion of the things as well as the " inhabitants " is 
 probably only due to a desire to make quite sure that 
 non-resident occupiers should not escape. 
 
 Next we have several acts of 1605-6, the third year 
 of James I. Chapter 10, for conveying malefactors to 
 jail, authorises "an indifferent tax or assessment" to 
 be made by " the constables and churchwardens and 
 two or three other the honest inhabitants of the 
 parish, township, or tithing " where the malefactor 
 was apprehended. 
 
 Chapter 19, for repairing the highway from Non- 
 such to Taleworth, after reciting that the parishes 
 through which the road passes are not able to do 
 the work, charges the expense upon the "owners, 
 tenants, farmers, inhabitants, and occupiers of the 
 lands, tenements, and hereditaments" lying in half- 
 a-dozen hundreds. The apportionment was to be 
 made "having good and indifferent respect to the 
 several abilities, nearness, and remoteness" of the 
 persons and property. A special provision secured 
 the chargeability of non-residents. 
 
 Chapter 20 is "for clearing the passage by water 
 from London to and beyond the city of Oxford," and 
 is interesting, as it contains a more general assertion 
 of the principle of a betterment charge than any 
 
48 History of Local Rates 
 
 other act. It says, "For that it is reasonable, just, 
 and equal that those who partake in the benefit of 
 any good work should in fit proportion contribute to 
 the costs and charges thereof: be it further enacted 
 . . . that the . . . commissioners, or the more part 
 of them, shall and may have full power and lawful 
 authority to tax and assess such of the inhabitants of 
 the said several counties " i.e., Oxford, Berks, Wilts, 
 and Gloucester " as shall in their opinion be likely to 
 receive ease or benefit by the said passage, and as well 
 those in the said university as in the city of Oxford, 
 at such reasonable sums of money and payments as 
 they in their discretions shall think fit and con- 
 venient." Eighteen years afterwards this Act was 
 repealed and its place taken by one (21 Jac. L, c. 32) 
 which puts the burden of improving the passage by 
 water entirely upon the inhabitants of Oxford, on the 
 ground that " the principal benefit thereof will redound 
 immediately to the university and city of Oxford." The 
 commissioners are given full power to tax and assess the 
 inhabitants of the university and city, and also bodies 
 politic and corporate there, as they in their discretions 
 shall think meet. Chapter 22 of the third year of 
 James I. is for paving Drury Lane and the town of 
 St. Giles. It charges both the owners and occupiers 
 of property adjoining the lane, and the inhabitants 
 and occupiers of certain parishes. Chapter 23 autho- 
 rises rating of the inhabitants of Monmouthshire and 
 Gloucestershire for Chepstow Bridge. Chapter 24 
 recites that 700 at least had been "levied of the 
 inhabitants of divers parts " of Worcestershire, under 
 the Statute of Bridges, "and employed in the re-edifying 
 of the bridge at Upton-on-Severn, so as the same, with 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 49 
 
 some small further charge, might have been perfectly 
 finished ; notwithstanding all which, by the wilfulness 
 of some particular persons, being unwilling to contri- 
 bute anything towards so charitable a work, and 
 drawing others daily to like obstinacy, whereby the 
 inhabitants of some parts of the said county would 
 not yield or consent to the making or levying of any 
 taxations or assessments towards the building of the 
 said bridge, the said good and charitable work hath 
 been given over, so as some part of the said bridge, 
 for that it was left unfinished, is again fallen down, 
 and the rest greatly decayed, and like in short time 
 to fall down unless some speedy course be taken 
 the finishing thereof." The inhabitants of the c 
 " other than the citizens of the city of Worcester 
 habiting in the said city, and that only concerning 
 the lands, goods, and chattels within the said city," 
 are to finish the bridge within three years, on pain of 
 a fine of 100 per annum for every year in default. 
 The justices are empowered to " rate, tax, and assess 
 the said county of Worcester, and the several hundreds, 
 towns, parishes, villages, and hamlets within the same, 
 and every inhabitant or dweller " in them, except the 
 citizens of Worcester as provided above, and to appoint 
 collectors. The justices had evidently been powerless 
 to cope with a refusal on the part of the inhabitants 
 of particular localities to assess and levy the sum 
 rated on their district. The exemption of the citizens 
 of Worcester only in respect of lands and goods in 
 the city, shows the purely technical sense in which 
 the word inhabitant was used; the situation of the 
 property, and not that of the person, is the important 
 thing. 
 
50 History of Local Rates 
 
 Just as in the earlier or customary rates, so in these 
 statutory rates two principles of assessment are to be 
 seen. The rates for sea defence, the destruction of 
 crows and vermin, the rebuilding of Scarborough 
 Pier, re-edification in the northern counties, the im- 
 provement of the Lea and the Thames, are obviously 
 intended to be assessed according to the proportion 
 of benefit resulting from the expenditure to the rate- 
 payers. The rates for building jails, paying members 
 of Parliament, reimbursing persons robbed on the 
 highway, relieving persons suffering from the plague, 
 and conveying malefactors to jail, are equally clearly 
 intended to be assessed according to the ability of the 
 ratepayer. The bridges rate, too, probably belongs to 
 the last class. Between the two classes there are 
 some doubtful cases, such as that of the Nonsuch 
 and Taleworth highway rate, in which the Legislature 
 appears to halt between the two principles. In assess- 
 ing the benefit rates, the customary method evidently 
 was to assume that all fixed property is raised in value 
 in equal proportion, so that it was just and expedient 
 to levy a pound rate in respect of it upon the owner, 
 or, in the case of recurrent expenditure, upon the 
 occupier. In assessing the other statutory rates, the 
 customary method must have been the same as in 
 assessing the innumerable non- statutory rates. It 
 was assumed that a man's ability to pay towards the 
 local taxation of a particular place was measured by 
 the value of the land or house he occupied. That 
 this assumption, however, was not unquestioned in 
 1634 may be learnt from "the instructions and direc- 
 tions from the Lords of the Council for the assessing 
 and levying of the ship-money " in that year. These 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1 640 51 
 
 show us exactly where the king's advisers thought the 
 assessment ought to differ from that of an ordinary 
 rate, if the tax was to be as little unpopular as its 
 unconstitutional character permitted. In the example 
 in Rushworth, the high sheriffs of Middlesex and Hert- 
 fordshire, and the head -officers of corporate towns 
 therein, are commanded to provide one ship, the cost 
 of which will be 3300, and it is suggested that 
 Hertfordshire should pay 1500, Westminster 350, 
 and the rest of Middlesex 1450, to make up the 
 amount. The instructions then proceed, "Secondly, 
 when you have settled the general assessments, we 
 think fit that you subdivide the same, and make 
 particular assessments in such sort as other common 
 payments upon the county and corporate towns afore- 
 said are most usually subdivided and assessed ; and, 
 namely, that you, the sheriff, divide the whole charge 
 laid upon the county into hundreds, lathes, and other 
 divisions, and those into parishes and towns ; and the 
 towns and parishes must be rated by the houses 
 and lands lying within each parish and town, as is 
 accustomed in other common payments which fall 
 out to be payable by the county, hundreds, lathes, 
 divisions, parishes, and towns. And whereas his 
 Majesty takes notice that in former assessments, not- 
 withstanding the express orders given in our letters 
 to ease the poor that [there ?] have been assessed to- 
 wards this service, poor cottages [cottagers ?] and others 
 who having nothing to live on but their daily work ; 
 which is not only a very charitable [uncharitable ?] act 
 in itself and grievous to such people, but can admit 
 no better instructions [construction ?] than that it was 
 done out of an adverse humour of purpose to raise 
 
52 History of Local Rates 
 
 clamour and prejudice the service. Wherefore his 
 Majesty's express command is that you take effectual 
 care and order, by such precepts and warrants as you 
 issue for this service, that no persons be assessed unto 
 the same unless they be known to have estates in 
 money or goods, or other means to live by over and 
 above their daily labour; and where you find such 
 persons to be taxed, you are to take off what shall be 
 set upon them, and lay it upon those that are better 
 able to bear it. And that you may the better spare 
 such poor people, it is his Majesty's pleasure that where 
 there shall happen to be any man [men ?] of ability, by 
 reason of gainful trades, great stocks of money, or other 
 usual estates, who perchance have or occupy little or no 
 land, and consequently in an ordinary land-scot would 
 pay nothing or very little, such men be rated and 
 assessed according to their worth and ability; and 
 that the monies which shall be levied upon such may 
 be applied not only to the sparing and freeing of the 
 such poor people as aforesaid, but also to the easing of 
 such as, being either weak of estate, or charged with 
 many children or great debts, or unable to bear such 
 great charge as their lands in their occupation might 
 require, in an usual and ordinary proportion ; and the 
 like cause [course?] to be held by the head-officers in 
 the corporate towns, that a poor man be not set in 
 respect of the usual tax of his house or the like at a 
 greater sum than others of much more wealth and 
 ability ; and herein you are to have a more than ordi- 
 nary care and regard, whereby to prevent complaints of 
 inequality in the assessments, whereby we were much 
 troubled the last year. 
 
 " Thirdly, to the end that this may be effected with 
 
Miscellaneous Statutory Rates to 1640 53 
 
 more equality and expedition, you, the sheriff, are to 
 govern yourself in the assessment for his service by 
 such public payments as are most equal and agreeable 
 to the inhabitants of that county ; and for your more 
 ease and better proceeding herein, after you have 
 accordingly rated the several hundreds, lathes, and 
 divisions of that county, you may set forth your 
 warrants to the constables, requiring them to call 
 unto them some of the most discreet and sufficient 
 men of every parish, town, or tithing, and to consider 
 with them how the sum charged upon each hundred 
 may be distributed and divided as aforesaid, and with 
 most equality and indifterency ; and to return the 
 same in writing, under their hands, with all possible 
 expedition; which being done, you are to sign the 
 assessment set on the several persons of every par- 
 ticular parish, town, or tithing, if you approve thereof ; 
 and if, for inequality, you find cause to alter the same 
 in any part, yet after it is so altered you are to sign 
 the same, and, keeping the true copy thereof, you 
 may thereupon give order for the speedy collection 
 and levying of such sums accordingly by constables 
 of hundreds, petty constables, and others usually 
 applied for collection of other common charges and 
 payments." 1 It is clear from this that in 1634 it was 
 already recognised that the ordinary method of rating 
 was not in accordance with distribution of the burden 
 according to ability. 
 
 1 Rush worth, Historical Collections, 1680, vol. ii. pp. 259-61. 
 
Ill 
 
 POOR-LAW RATES TO l6oi 
 
 WHILE the "ability" rates created by Tudor and 
 Jacobean parliaments, in practice generally followed 
 the model of the earlier or customary rates, and were 
 consequently assessed in accordance with a measure- 
 ment of ability which was no longer regarded as sound, 
 the poor-rate, owing to its peculiar origin, started afresh 
 direct from the principle of contribution according to 
 ability, and was not at first encumbered with the 
 misleading standard of the older rates. 
 
 The first legislative step towards the establishment 
 of a local rate for the relief of the poor was taken 
 when it was enacted that certain persons dependent 
 on charity should be confined to particular places. 
 The act 12 Ric. II., c. 7 (1388) provided that 
 "beggars impotent to serve shall abide in the cities 
 and towns where they be dwelling at the time of the 
 proclamation of this statute; and if the people of 
 cities or other towns will not or may not suffice to find 
 them, that then the said beggars shall draw them to 
 other towns within the hundred, rape, or wapentake, 
 or to the towns where they were born, within forty 
 days after the proclamation made, and shall there con- 
 tinually abide during their lives." A century later, in 
 1495, the act ii Hen. VII., c. 2, ordained "that all 
 manner of beggars not able to work, within six weeks 
 
 54 
 
Poor -Law Rates to 1601 55 
 
 next after proclamation made of this act go rest and 
 abide in his hundred where he last dwelled, or there 
 where he is best known or born, there to remain or 
 abide, without begging out of the said hundred." The 
 act 19 Hen. VII., c. 12 (1503-4) is rather less vague. 
 It ordains "that all manner of beggars not able to 
 work within six weeks next after proclamation made 
 by this act go rest and abide in his city, town, or 
 hundred where they were born, or else to the place 
 where they last made their abode the space of three 
 years, there to remain or abide, without begging out 
 of the said city, town, hundred, or place." It also 
 enacts that valiant vagabonds, after being punished, 
 are to go "into such city, town, place, or hundred 
 where they were born, or else to the place where they 
 last made their abode by the space of three years, and 
 that as hastily as they conveniently may, and there 
 to remain and abide." Lastly, in 1530-1 the act 
 22 Hen. VIII., c. 12, provided that every impotent 
 beggar should have a license given him by the 
 justices, and should not go outside the limits they 
 assigned to him, and that every able-bodied vagrant 
 should be sent back " to the place where he was born 
 or where he last dwelt ... by the space of three 
 years, and there put himself to labour like as a true 
 man ought to do." 
 
 Provisions like these necessarily led to further 
 provisions for securing that the impotent should be 
 maintained, and the able-bodied set to work, in the 
 places assigned to them; and so in 1535-6 we find 
 Parliament awaking to a recognition of the fact that 
 it was not explained " how and in what wise the said 
 poor people and sturdy vagabonds should be ordered 
 
56 History of Local Rates 
 
 at their repair and at their coming into their countries, 
 nor how the inhabitants of every hundred should be 
 charged for the relief of the same poor people, nor yet 
 for the setting and keeping in work of the aforesaid 
 valiant vagabonds at their said repair into every 
 hundred of this realm." 1 Difficulties had evidently 
 arisen from the unwillingness of the "countries" or 
 hundreds to extend charity to every impotent beggar 
 with whom the justices saddled them, and to provide 
 work of a kind which would satisfy the valiant vaga- 
 bond who had been returned, like a bad shilling, to 
 the place of his birth. A certain measure of com- 
 pulsion was accordingly applied. It was enacted 
 (27 Hen. VIII., c. 25) that "all the governors and 
 ministers of every of the same cities, shires, towns, 
 hundreds, wapentakes, lathes, rapes, ridings, tithings, 
 hamlets, and parishes" a fine confusion of local 
 government areas " as well within liberties as with- 
 out, shall not only succour, find, and keep all and every 
 of the same poor people by way of voluntary and chari- 
 table alms, . . . but also . . . cause and compel all and 
 every the said sturdy vagabonds and valiant beggars to 
 be set and kept to continual labour in such wise as by 
 their said labours they and every of them may get 
 their own living with the continual labour of their 
 
 1 Preamble of 27 Hen. VIII., c. 25. It is curious that this act 
 appears to assume, without any apparent justification, that the act 
 of 1530-1 required not only able-bodied beggars and vagabonds, 
 but also impotent poor persons, to be sent back to the place where 
 they were born or last dwelt for three years. See the provision of 
 5, that leprous and bedrid persons may remain where they be, and 
 " shall not be compelled to repair into their countries according to 
 the tenor and purport of the aforesaid former act." There seems 
 to have been some confusion between the act of 1530-1 and the 
 earlier acts quoted above. 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 57 
 
 own hands." Every parish in default none of the 
 other areas are mentioned here might be fined 1 a 
 month by quarter-sessions. In order to defray the ex- 
 pense of succouring the impotent persons and keeping 
 the sturdy vagabonds at work, the mayors and head- 
 officers of corporate towns, and the churchwardens or 
 two others of every parish, were to collect alms of 
 the good Christian people within the same with boxes 
 every Sunday, or otherwise, " upon pain that all and 
 every the mayors, governors, aldermen, head-officers, 
 and others the king's officers and ministers of every 
 of the said cities, boroughs, towns corporate, hundreds, 
 parishes, and hamlets, shall lose and forfeit for every 
 month that it is omitted and undone, the sum of 20 
 shillings." This list of authorities seems to show that 
 the authors of the statute had still somewhat vague 
 notions as to the question by whom it should be put 
 in execution. The officers of each hundred and 
 corporate town were apparently intended to exercise 
 a general supervision, and to distribute the " overplus " 
 of the collections in the wealthy parishes among the 
 poor parishes ; but the parish was the primary unit, 
 and the provisions as to accounts all relate to it. The 
 churchwardens, with six or four honest neighbours, 
 could demand accounts quarterly or oftener from the 
 collectors. The parson, or some other honest man, 
 was to keep accounts showing receipts and expendi- 
 ture, but the book containing them was always to 
 remain in the custody of two or three of the con- 
 stables and churchwardens, or some other indifferent 
 man, by their consents, and not in that of the parson, 
 vicar, or parish priest. The book was to be bought 
 and paid for by the constables and churchwardens 
 
58 History of Local Rates 
 
 for the time being at the common collections, which 
 probably means "out of the common collections." 
 Bailiffs, constables, churchwardens, or others the 
 collectors of alms might be paid wages out of the 
 money collected if they forbore their own business 
 and labour. No penalties could be exacted merely 
 because the "voluntary and unconstrained alms and 
 charity of the parishioners or people " who were made 
 "contributory to such alms" turned out to be in- 
 sufficient for the purposes of the act, and no one 
 was to be "constrained to any such certain con- 
 tribution but as their free wills and charities shall 
 extend." 
 
 Both these acts were repealed by the act of 1547 
 (i Ed. VI., c. 3), which attempts to get over the 
 difficulty of dealing with sturdy vagabonds by making 
 them slaves for two years, and in certain cases for 
 life, to any man claiming them. If unclaimed by 
 any private person, they were to be sent to the place 
 of their birth, and there treated as public slaves. 
 The mayors and other head -officers of every city, 
 town, or hundred, were to see all lamed, sore, aged, 
 and impotent persons who were born therein, or 
 had been there most conversant or abiding by the 
 space of three years, and who could not be treated 
 as vagabonds, " bestowed and provided for of the 
 tenantries, cottages, or other convenient houses to 
 be lodged in, at the costs and charges of the said 
 cities, boroughs, and villages, there to be relieved 
 and cured by the devotion of the good people of the 
 said city, borough, town, or village." Impotent poor 
 persons found in cities and corporate towns where 
 they were not born or had not dwelt three years, 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 59 
 
 were to be sent on horseback or in carts or chariots, 
 from constable to constable, to their place of settle- 
 ment. 1 The meaning of the act might well have 
 been less obscurely expressed, but it seems plain that 
 the intention is to put the cost of housing the im- 
 potent poor upon the public funds of the localities, 
 which would eventually have to replenish their coffers 
 by rates raised in the old way. The cost of main- 
 taining the impotent poor when once housed, on the 
 other hand, is to be defrayed by voluntary gifts. To 
 stimulate the devotion of his flock in this respect, 
 every parson is ordered to exhort his congregation 
 to charity every Sunday, but there is no re-enactment 
 of the elaborate provisions of the act of 1535-6 for 
 enforcing and regulating the weekly collections. 
 
 As any one but the legislators of the reign of Edward 
 VI. would have expected, this slavery statute did not 
 long remain in force. *It was repealed two years after 
 it was passed (by 3 & 4 Ed. VI., c. 16). Its provisions 
 for the removing, housing, and maintaining the im- 
 potent poor, however, were re-enacted, with the ex- 
 ception of the clause ordering the parson to exhort 
 his congregation to charity; and the act of 1530-1 
 was revived, with an additional provision, which had 
 the effect of throwing the cost of deporting destitute 
 alien immigrants upon the ports. After two years 
 more the provisions with regard to the collection of 
 alms contained in the act of 1535-6 were in sub- 
 stance restored and enlarged in 1551 (by 5 & 6 
 Ed. VI, c. 2): 
 
 "Yearly one holiday in Whitsun week in every 
 
 1 There is no provision for removing impotent poor persons from 
 country districts to their place of settlement. 
 
60 History of Local Rates 
 
 city, borough, and town corporate, the mayor, bailiffs, 
 or other head-officers for the time being, and in every 
 other parish of the country, the parson, vicar, or curate, 
 and the churchwardens, having in a register or book 
 as well all the names of the inhabitants and house- 
 holders, as also the names of all such impotent aged 
 and needy persons as ... are not able to live of 
 themselves nor with their own labour, shall openly in 
 the church and quietly after divine service call the 
 said householders and inhabitants together, among 
 whom the mayor and two of his brethren in every 
 city, the bailiffs or other head-officers in boroughs 
 and towns corporate, the parson, vicar, or curate, 
 and churchwardens in every other parish, shall elect, 
 nominate, and appoint yearly two able persons or 
 more to be gatherers or collectors of the charitable 
 alms of all the residue of the people for the relief 
 of the poor, which collectors, fche Sunday next after 
 their election (or the Sunday following if need re- 
 quire), when the people is at the church and hath 
 heard God's holy word, shall gently ask and demand 
 of every man and woman what they of their charity 
 will be contented to give weekly towards the relief 
 of the poor ; and the same to be written in the said 
 register or book." 
 
 This public and regular contribution of definite 
 sums promised and recorded beforehand is in itself 
 more like a rate than the collection with boxes 
 authorised by the act of 1535-6. It was, too, of a 
 less voluntary character ; a person who refused to 
 subscribe might bring down on his head ecclesiastical 
 punishments (which were more dreaded then than 
 now), for it was enacted that if any one " able to further 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1 60 1 6 1 
 
 this charitable work " obstinately or frowardly refused 
 to assist, he might be sent to the bishop, who would, 
 "according to his discretion, take order for the re- 
 formation thereof." 
 
 These provisions remained in force till 1555, and 
 then they were simply re-enacted almost in the same 
 words, and stood till 1572. But important additioi 
 were made in 1555 and 1562-3. By the act of if>5<i 
 (2 & 3 P. & M., c. 5) the rate-in-aid system was 
 troduced, in a semi-voluntary form, in consequence oi 
 the same circumstances which long afterwards led to 
 the creation of the unions, and later still to the crea- 
 tion of the metropolitan common poor fund. In cities 
 and corporate towns not conterminous with a single 
 parish, the mayors and other head -officers were to 
 " consider the estate and ability " of every parish, and 
 if they found that the parishioners of any one parish 
 were " of such wealth and havour that they have 
 no poverty amongst them, or be able sufficiently to 
 relieve the poverty of the parish where they inhabit 
 and dwell, and also to help and succour poverty 
 elsewhere further," they might then, " with the assent 
 of two of the most honest and substantial inhabitants 
 of every such wealthy parish," consider the needs of 
 all the inhabitants of the town, " and move, induce, or 
 persuade the parishioners of the wealthy parish chari- 
 tably to contribute somewhat according to their ability 
 towards the weekly relief" of the poor" in the other 
 parishes. By the act of 1562-3 (5 Eliz., c. 3) com- 
 pulsion by the civil magistrate was introduced. When 
 the bishop found himself unable to overcome the 
 obstinacy or frowardncss of a person able but un- 
 willing to contribute, he was authorised to send the 
 
62 History of Local Rates 
 
 refractory individual to the county justices or town 
 magistrates, and these were empowered to " sess, tax, 
 and limit upon every such obstinate person, accord- 
 ing to their good discretions, what sum the said 
 obstinate person shall pay weekly towards the relief 
 of the poor." If he still declined to pay he was to 
 be committed to prison. 
 
 In 1572 (by 14 Eliz., c. 5) a clean sweep was made. 
 All these provisions were repealed. In place of them 
 it was enacted that the county justices and town 
 magistrates should divide themselves, and make 
 diligent inquiry within their several divisions as to 
 the aged, decayed, and impotent poor who were born 
 or had for three years resided in these divisions. 
 They were then to " devise and appoint, within every 
 their said several divisions, meet and convenient places 
 by their discretions to settle the same poor people for 
 their habitations and abidings, if the parish within the 
 which they shall be found shall not or will not pro- 
 vide for them." The justices and magistrates shall 
 also, says the act, "number all the said poor people 
 within their said several limits, and thereupon (having 
 regard to the number) set down what portion the 
 weekly charge towards the relief and sustentation of 
 the said poor people will amount to within every of 
 their said several divisions and limits ; and that done 
 they . . . shall by their good discretions tax and 
 assess all and every the inhabitants dwelling in all 
 and every city, borough, town, village, hamlet, and 
 place known within the said limits and divisions to 
 such weekly charge as they and every of them shall 
 weekly contribute towards the relief of the said poor 
 people, and the names of all such "inhabitants taxed 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 63 
 
 shall also enter into the said register book, together 
 with their taxation ; and also shall by their discre- 
 tions, within every their said divisions and limits, 
 appoint or see collectors for one whole year to be 
 appointed of the said weekly portion, . . . and also 
 shall appoint the overseers of the said poor people." 
 
 The fact that this act does not say that the in- 
 habitants are to be taxed primarily, at all events, for 
 the poor of their own parish, led the commissioners 
 of 1834 to think that it deviated from the practice 
 followed both before and after it, of making the relief 
 of the poor a parochial charge. "As it vested the 
 power of assessment in the justices," they say, "it 
 threw the burden, not on each parish, but upon all 
 the inhabitants of the divisions within the jurisdiction 
 of the assessing justices." l This does not seem, how- 
 ever, to have been either the intention or the result 
 of the act. The separate existence of each parish 
 was too well recognised to need express mention. 
 In the earlier acts language is constantly used about 
 the mayors and head-officers of towns which might 
 be taken to imply that parochial chargeability did not 
 exist within towns containing more than one parish ; 
 but this would be a totally erroneous conclusion, as 
 we learn from the act of 1555.2 If it had been 
 intended to destroy parish chargeability in 1572 we 
 may be sure that the intention would have been 
 plainly expressed, whereas there is nothing in the act 
 to prevent the justices from keeping the accounts of 
 each parish separate. That they were intended to do 
 so is suggested by the 2 7th clause, which expressly 
 authorises the justices in session, in the case of poor 
 
 1 Report, 8vo ed., p. 13. 2 See above, p. 61. 
 
64 History of Local Rates 
 
 towns and parishes, to allow collections to be made 
 for the poor in other towns or parishes. If divisions 
 had been the unit, this clause could scarcely have 
 failed to make the fact clear, and it certainly does not. 
 That parish chargeability was not destroyed as a 
 matter of fact is shown by the act of 1575-6 (18 
 Eliz., c. 3), which complains that bastards "are now 
 left to be kept at the charges of the parish where 
 they be born, to the great burden of the same parish, 
 and in defrauding of the relief of the impotent and 
 aged true poor of the same parish," and therefore 
 empowers the justices to take measures not only for 
 the punishment of the parents, but also "for the 
 better relief of every such parish, in part or in all." 
 
 It is curious that, though systematic taxation is 
 apparently introduced by the act of 1572, and an 
 appeal to the general sessions of the peace against the 
 amount is provided for, the idea of voluntary alms is 
 not altogether abandoned. Instead of simply saying 
 that if the taxpayer will not pay the amount at which 
 he is assessed, distress will be levied on his goods, it 
 says, " If any person or persons being able to further 
 this charitable work, will obstinately refuse to give 
 towards the help and relief of the said poor people, 
 or do wilfully discourage others from so charitable a 
 deed, the said obstinate person or wilful discourager 
 shall presently be brought before two justices of the 
 peace (whereof one to be of the quorum) of the same 
 county, to shew the cause of his obstinate refusal or 
 wilful discouragement, and to abide such order there 
 as the said justices shall appoint : if he refuse so to 
 do, then to be committed to the next gaol, . . . there 
 to remain until he be contented with their said order, 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 65 
 
 and do perform the same." Moreover, the existence 
 of a surplus is contemplated. The surplusages of 
 the collections and forfeitures are to be expended 
 in setting to work the rogues and vagabonds. Now 
 with a well-ordered system of taxation there would of 
 course be no surplus. 
 
 The act of 1572, like its predecessors, imposes 
 charges for the conveyance of the vagabond and im- 
 potent poor upon the parishes or their officers without 
 making any special provision for it, but it also imposes 
 a definite rate for the relief of vagabonds in prison. 
 It says that in most shires the jails are in towns 
 " where there be a great number of poor people, more 
 than they are well able to sustain with their relief, 
 and in some shires the assizes are kept far distant 
 from the place where the common jails are; by 
 reason whereof the said prisoners are like to famish 
 for want of sustenance if they be not therefore pro- 
 vided." It therefore enacts that quarter - sessions 
 shall rate and tax every parish in the shire " at such 
 reasonable sums of money for and towards the relief 
 of the said prisoners as they shall think convenient 
 by their discretions, so that the said taxation and rate 
 doth not exceed above 6d. or 8d. by the week out of 
 every parish; and that the churchwardens of every 
 parish within this realm for the time being shall every 
 Sunday levy the same." 
 
 The next act, a portion of which we have already 
 had occasion to quote, is that of 1575-6 (18 Eliz., 
 c. 3), " for the setting of the poor on work and for the 
 avoiding of idleness." The surpluses ot the collections 
 had apparently turned out insufficient to provide for 
 giving work to the unemployed, and so the new act 
 
 E 
 
66 History of Local Rates 
 
 was passed " to the intent youth may be accustomed 
 and brought up in labour and work, and then not 
 like to grow to be idle rogues ; and to the intent also 
 that such as be already grown up in idleness, and so 
 rogues at this present, may not have any just excuse 
 in saying that they cannot get any service or work, 
 and then without any favour or toleration worthy to 
 be executed ; and that other poor and needy persons 
 being willing to work may be set on work." It was 
 provided that in every city and corporate town, and in 
 market towns or other convenient places, the magis- 
 trates or justices should get together a " competent 
 store and stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron, or other 
 stuff as the country is most meet for," in order that 
 the poor and needy in want of work might be em- 
 ployed. They were to appoint collectors and governors 
 of the poor, who were to deliver to the applicant for 
 relief a competent portion of the stock to be wrought 
 into yarn, and to pay him according to the desert of 
 his work, and then sell the product and buy more 
 stuff, " in such wise as the stock or store shall not be 
 decayed in value." If this scheme had worked as it 
 seems to have been intended to do, it would have 
 been self-supporting after the first outlay. To meet 
 that outlay the justices and magistrates were autho- 
 rised to " tax, levy, and gather " a stock from them- 
 selves and all other inhabitants within their several 
 jurisdictions. The act also empowered the justices 
 of each county in general sessions to tax, levy, and 
 gather from the inhabitants the means necessary for 
 building houses of correction and providing them 
 with stock and implements for setting on work the 
 more refractory rogues and vagabonds. Persons re- 
 
Poor-Laiv Rates to 1601 67 
 
 fusing to pay the taxation are not threatened with 
 imprisonment, but with a double rate and distress. 
 
 The act of 1592-3 (35 Eliz., c. 4), "for the relief 
 of soldiers," authorises the justices of each county in 
 sessions to charge every parish with a weekly pay- 
 ment not exceeding 6d. nor less than id., "which 
 sums so taxed shall be yearly assessed by the agree- 
 ment of the parishioners within themselves, or in 
 default thereof by the churchwardens and constables 
 of the same parish or the more part of them, or in 
 default of their agreement, by the order of such justices 
 of peace as shall dwell in the same parish, or (if none 
 be there dwelling) in the parts next adjoining." 
 
 This series of acts imposes a number of new charges, 
 such as the cost of the conveyance of vagabonds, the 
 relief of prisoners and soldiers, and the building of 
 houses of correction, which were clearly meant to be 
 borne just as other local charges were commonly 
 borne. But all these are kept quite separate from the 
 charge for the relief of the poor. They are looked on 
 as taxes pure and simple from the beginning, while 
 the charge for the relief of the poor is regarded at 
 first as purely voluntary alms, and afterwards as alms 
 which no one is allowed to refuse. 
 
 Now the canon of almsgiving, if we may speak of 
 the canon of almsgiving on the analogy of the canons 
 of taxation, is that each man should contribute ac- 
 cording to his ability, and there can scarcely be any 
 reasonable doubt that down to the act of 1572 the 
 poor-rate was intended to be assessed upon the in- 
 habitants in proportion to their real ability to contri- 
 bute, and not according to their ability as measured 
 by the standards in use for the other rates. When 
 
68 History of Local Rates 
 
 the contribution was voluntary and unconstrained, as 
 prescribed by the act of 1535, it is obvious that public 
 opinion would regard it as fair that every man should 
 contribute according to his real ability. The parson 
 in the exhortation ordered by the act of 1 547 would 
 naturally tell his flock to give according to their 
 means. The churchwardens in their gentle demands, 
 and the bishop in taking order for the reformation 
 of obstinacy under the act of 1551-2, must perforce 
 have been guided by the ability of the contributor. 
 In making orders that one parish should contribute 
 towards the relief of another, under the act of 1555, 
 the town magistrates are expressly directed to consider 
 the estate and ability of the parishes. In assessing, 
 taxing, and limiting upon the obstinate person who 
 had refused to obey the bishop, under the act of 
 1562-3, the justices could adopt no other criterion, 
 and it is entirely contrary to all we know of the 
 ordinary course of English legislation to suppose that 
 when in 1572 the justices were directed "by their 
 good discretions to tax and assess all and every the 
 inhabitants ... to such weekly charge as they and 
 every of them shall weekly contribute towards the 
 relief of the . . . poor people," they were expected 
 to follow a different principle of assessment from that 
 which they were expected to follow in 15623, when 
 they assessed, taxed, and limited upon the obstinate 
 person according to their good discretions what sum 
 he should pay weekly towards the relief of the poor. 
 If the intention of the early poor-rate was understood 
 anywhere, it was probably understood in the city of 
 London, and in 1587 the orders of the Common 
 Council, already quoted, directed that "the lord 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 69 
 
 mayor and such as be thereunto authorised by the 
 statutes will sit again and peruse the books of taxa- 
 tion for the poor, that by the assessing of such as be 
 come in place since the last assessment and were not 
 assessed before, and by avancing such as God hath 
 further blessed with ability, and with reasonable con- 
 sideration of such as be less able, the book may be 
 renewed and made as beneficial as reasonably may be 
 for the poor." l 
 
 In modern phrase, the poor-rate was intended to be 
 a local income-tax upon the inhabitants of the parishes. 
 If every one always lived in the same place, and had 
 all the sources of his income there, the assessors of 
 the poor-rate might perhaps have kept clear of the 
 old inaccurate methods of measuring ability for rating 
 purposes, and the poor-rate would now be a tax upon 
 all kinds of income. But even in the sixteenth century 
 it was common enough for a man to move from one 
 parish to another, and to have sources of income in a 
 parish in which he did not dwell. 
 
 Now when we reckon the number of inhabitants in 
 a parish by the methods of our modern censuses, we 
 count only those persons who happen to be present 
 there at a particular moment of time, say midnight 
 on a particular Sunday night. Even this plan cannot 
 be completely carried out, and arbitrary rules have to 
 be made for dealing with persons who at that hour 
 are in the streets or in railway trains. But in ordinary 
 language the word " inhabitant " is much more inde- 
 finite. A man cannot be in two places at once, but 
 he can quite easily be an " inhabitant " of two places 
 at once in the ordinary sense of the word. If he has 
 1 59 ; see above, p. 20, note. 
 
70 History of Local Rates 
 
 one house in London and another in Gloucestershire, 
 and lives six months of the year in one and six 
 months in the other, he is clearly an inhabitant both 
 of London and Gloucestershire. If he has a house in 
 Peckham where he spends the night, and an office in 
 the City where he spends the day, he is an inhabitant 
 both of Peckham and the City. Admit this, which is 
 incontestable, and you are soon driven to admit the 
 paradox that a man may inhabit a place which he 
 has never been in. You cannot say that the squire is 
 not an inhabitant merely because you know that he 
 has not visited his country house or the home farm 
 for seven days, 365 days, or ten years. If the house 
 and farm are in the hands of his servants, he is merely 
 absent for the moment, and for all we know he may 
 return to-morrow. 
 
 In Jeffrey's case, which was heard in 1589, the 
 judges, as we have seen, 1 took this view of the word 
 "parishioner," which conveys exactly the same idea 
 as " inhabitant " of a parish. They decided that 
 Jeffrey, as an occupier of land there, was a par- 
 ishioner of Hailsham, and therefore liable to be rated 
 for the church, although he dwelt at Chiddingley. 
 They grounded themselves upon the reflection that 
 if a non-resident occupier was to escape rating for the 
 church, great inconvenience would ensue, since a man 
 who occupied the greater part of one parish might 
 live in another, and so churches in those days would 
 come to ruin. Four years earlier, as we have also 
 seen, 2 Parliament was called upon to remedy great 
 inconveniences which had actually ensued in conse- 
 quence of the act 18 Eliz., c. 10 having authorised 
 
 1 Above, pp. 25, 26. 2 Above, pp. 44, 45. 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 71 
 
 a rate upon "land occupiers dwelling within four 
 miles" distance from a particular point; to get rid 
 of the inconveniences, it was enacted that the rate 
 should be upon the lands and grounds within four 
 miles, wherever the occupier might happen to 
 dwell. 
 
 It was inevitable that the poor-rate should follow 
 one or other of these precedents. Either the words 
 used by the Legislature would be judicially interpreted 
 so as to cover non-resident persons who had visible 
 sources of income in the parish, or the Legislature itself 
 would make it clear that such persons were to be rated. 
 Just as it was argued that if non-resident occupiers 
 did not pay church-rates, churches in those days 
 would come to ruin, so it would be argued that 
 if non-resident occupiers did not pay poor-rates, 
 the poor in those days would go in danger of 
 starvation. 
 
 As it happened, the change was made by Parlia- 
 ment. The act of 1597 (39 Eliz., c. 3), which consoli- 
 dates and amends the earlier acts, makes occupiers 
 as well as inhabitants liable to rating. It says : " The 
 churchwardens of every parish and four substantial 
 householders there, being subsidy men, or, for want of 
 subsidy men, four other substantial householders of the 
 said parish, who shall be nominated yearly in Easter 
 week, under the hand and seal of two or more justices 
 of the peace in the same county, whereof one to be 
 of the quorum, dwelling in or near the same parish, 
 shall be called overseers of the poor of the. same 
 parish ; and they or the greater part of them shall 
 take order from time to time, by and with the consent 
 of two or more such justices of peace, for setting to 
 
7 2 History of Local Rates 
 
 work of the children of all such whose parents shall 
 not by the said persons be thought able to keep and 
 maintain their children, and also all such persons, 
 married or unmarried, as. having no means to main- 
 tain them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to 
 get their living by, and also to raise, weekly or other- 
 wise (by taxation of every inhabitant and every occu- 
 pier of lands in the said parish in such competent 
 sum and sums of money as they shall think fit), a 
 convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, 
 and other necessary ware and stuff to set the poor 
 on work, and also competent sums of money for and 
 towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, 
 old, blind, and such other among them being poor 
 and not able to work, and also for the putting out of 
 such children to be apprentices, to be gathered out of 
 the same parish according to the ability of the same 
 parish." 
 
 Ability is again and again mentioned as the standard 
 of contribution. " If the said justices of peace do 
 perceive that the inhabitants of any parish are not 
 able to levy among themselves sufficient money for 
 the purposes aforesaid," they " shall and may tax, rate, 
 and assess as aforesaid any other of other parishes, or 
 out of any parish 1 within the hundred where the said 
 parish is, to pay such sum and sums of money to the 
 churchwardens and overseers of the said poor parish 
 for the said purposes as the said justices shall think 
 
 1 I.e., any inhabitant of another parish or extra-parochial place. 
 A rate in aid might be laid either on a whole parish or on individuals 
 in it. See a ruling of the King's Bench in 1694, and other cases 
 in Bott, Poor Laws, 3rd ed., vol. i. pp. 303-8. For an example of a 
 rate in aid on individuals in 1628, see Thos. Gardner, Historical 
 Account of Dunwich, rf-c., pp. 169, 170. 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 73 
 
 fit, according to the intent of this law ; and if the said 
 hundred shall not be thought to the said justices able 
 and fit to relieve the said several parishes not able to 
 provide for themselves as aforesaid, then the justices of 
 peace at their general quarter-sessions, or the greater 
 number of them, shall rate and assess as aforesaid any 
 other of other parishes or out of any parish within the 
 said county for the purposes aforesaid, as in their dis- 
 cretion shall seem fit." So, too, " the parents or chil- 
 dren of every poor, old, blind, lame, and impotent 
 person or other person not able to work, being of 
 sufficient ability, shall at their own charges relieve 
 and maintain every such poor person in that manne 
 and according to that rate as by the justices of pea 
 of that count}^ where such sufficient persons dwell, o 
 the greater number of them, at their general quarter- 
 sessions shall be assessed." 
 
 Distress might be levied on any one refusing to 
 " contribute as he shall be assessed," and imprison- 
 ment was only to be inflicted in default of distress, 
 which shows that the idea of alms was being lost. 
 But even now the poor-rate was kept quite separate 
 from other rates imposed by the same act with much 
 the same purpose. The act provides that for the 
 relief of prisoners in the King's Bench and Marshal- 
 sea, and also of the poor in hospitals and almshouses, 
 the justices hi session are to rate every parish " to 
 such weekly sum of money as they shall think con- 
 venient, so as no parish be rated above the sum of 
 6d. nor under the sum of a halfpenny weekly to be 
 paid, and so as the total sum of such taxation of the 
 parishes in every county amount not above the rate 
 of 2d. for every parish in the said county," and these 
 
74 History of Local Rates 
 
 sums were to be yearly assessed by the agreement of 
 the parishioners within themselves, or by the church- 
 wardens and constables, or by the justices, just like 
 the sums raised for the relief of soldiers under 35 Eliz. ; 
 c. 4. 1 So, too, Chapter 4 of the same session, "for 
 punishment of rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars," 
 which provides for the building of houses of correc- 
 tion, does not place the charge on the poor-rate. 
 It says nothing about the method of raising the 
 necessary funds, but merely enacts that " from time 
 to time it shall and may be lawful for the justices 
 of peace of any county or city in this realm or the 
 dominions of Wales, assembled at any quarter- 
 sessions of the peace within the same county, city, 
 borough, or town corporate, or the more part of them, 
 to set down order to erect, and to cause to be erected, 
 one or more houses of correction within their several 
 counties or cities ; for the doing and performing 
 whereof, and for the providing of stocks of money and 
 all other things necessary for the same, and for raising 
 and governing of the same, and for correction and 
 punishment of offenders thither to be committed, 
 such orders as the same justices or the more part of 
 them shall from time to time take, reform, or set 
 down in any their said quarter-sessions in that behalf 
 shall be of force and be duly performed and put in 
 execution." 
 
 Manx, Scotch, and Irish vagabonds, rogues, and 
 beggars were to be deported " at the common charge 
 of the country where they were set on land." 
 
 The judges appear to have held a conference upon 
 these two statutes shortly after they were passed, and 
 
 1 Above, p. 67. 
 
Poor- Law Rates to 1601 75 
 
 to have arrived at certain resolutions as to their inter- 
 pretation, which were widely circulated in manuscript, 1 
 and were printed by Lambard in the 1599 edition of 
 his Eirenarcha. " I trust," he says, " that I may, 
 without offence to any, make public use of those grave 
 resolutions and advices that, being in the hands of 
 sundry men abroad, are commonly ascribed to her 
 Majesty's justices at Westminster, and do tend much 
 to the right execution of this and the other statute 
 (39 Eliz. Reg.) concerning rogues and the poor, which 
 only (of all our laws) have most Christianly and civilly 
 given order in that behalf, and are therefore with so 
 much the more care and diligence to be put in use 
 amongst us, as they will not only deliver us of the 
 present burden, but also destroy the very brood of 
 this unruly people." 2 There were twenty resolutions 
 in all, and the eighteenth and nineteenth were : 
 
 " Parsons or vicars, &c., be bound (as inhabitants) 
 to the relief of the poor, as well as others that inhabit 
 within the parish. 
 
 " Every one that hath tithes impropriate, coal-rnines, 
 or lands in manual occupation, &c., is chargeable, and 
 so for such as have saleable woods, proportioning the 
 same to an annual benefit." 
 
 The act of 1601 for the relief of the poor (43 Eliz., 
 c. 2) is merely a repetition of that of 1597, with a 
 few alterations, of which the most important is the 
 incorporation of these two resolutions of the judges, 
 so that the overseers are directed to raise the money 
 required, not "by taxation of every inhabitant and 
 
 1 See, for an example, Bodleian MSS., Tanner, 91, f. 163. 
 
 2 Eircnarcha, or of the Office of the Justices of Peace, Book ii. ch. 7, 
 on unnumbered pages between pp. 206 and 207. 
 
76 History of Local Rates 
 
 every occupier of lands," but "by taxation of every 
 inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of every 
 occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate or pro- 
 priations of tithes, coal-mines, or saleable under- 
 woods." 1 
 
 The statute of 1597 was only passed after much 
 discussion in Parliament, but it is probable that no 
 one then noticed the hopeless contradiction involved 
 in the coupling together of the inhabitant and the 
 non-resident occupier in a system of taxation accord- 
 ing to ability. If a man is to be taxed in one parish 
 let us say if Jeffrey is to be taxed in Hailsham in 
 respect of the ability which he is presumed to derive 
 from the occupation of 130 acres there, it is evident 
 that he must not be taxed at his residence at Chid- 
 dingley in respect of his whole ability or income, but 
 only in respect of what is left of it after deducting the 
 portion in respect of which he has already been taxed 
 in Hailsham. Now in a small place like Chiddingley 
 the overseers will very probably have quite definite 
 opinions as to ' the relative ability of the inhabitants 
 without making any elaborate computations. They 
 will say at once that Jeffrey ought to pay double what 
 Jones pays, and half what Smith pays, and so on. But 
 as soon as Jeffrey is divided in two, and part of him 
 made taxable in Hailsham, this rough-and-ready 
 method breaks down. He is only to pay at Chidding- 
 ley in respect of his whole ability, minus that part of 
 it in respect of which he is taxed in other parishes. 
 
 1 The sixteenth resolution of the judges, "By this word parents 
 is understood a father or a grandfather, mother or grandmother, 
 being persons able," was also incorporated in substance ; but the 
 seventeenth, "Within the word children is included any child or 
 grandchild being able," was not. 
 
Poor-Law Rates to 1601 77 
 
 The Chiddingley overseers cannot get at this amount 
 by the way of subtraction, and are consequently driven 
 to assess him according to the means or sources of 
 ability which he possesses in Chiddingley. There will 
 be a natural tendency to apply the same criterion of 
 ability in the case of inhabitants as in that of non- 
 resident occupiers, so that Jeffrey and all other inhabi- 
 tants will be assessed simply according to the value 
 of the lands, houses, tithes, coal-mines, or saleable 
 underwoods occupied by them. 
 
 To make this transition complete all over the 
 country, however, took almost two centuries and a 
 hah , and to trace the successive steps of the process 
 must be our next object. 
 
IV 
 
 THE POOR-RATE SINCE l6oi 
 
 IN the 1635 edition of Dal ton's Country Justice, a 
 work of considerable authority in its day, we find the 
 following commentary on the rating provisions of the 
 act of 1 60 1 : 
 
 "In these taxations there must consideration be 
 had, first to equality, and then to estates. 
 
 "Equality, that men be equally rated with their 
 neighbours, and according to an equal proportion. 
 
 "Estates, that men be rated according to their 
 estates of goods known, or according to their [the ?] 
 known yearly value of their lands, farms, or occupy- 
 ings, and not by estimation, supposition, or report. 
 Also herein the charge of family, retinue, and counte- 
 nance is in some measure to be regarded ; for if one 
 valued at 500 in goods hath but himself and his 
 wife, and another estimated at ;iooo hath wife and 
 many children, &c., the first man by reason is to be 
 rated as much as the other ; and so of lands. Tamen 
 qucere what the law is in such cases." 1 
 
 This opinion that expenses as well as income should 
 be taken into account, received some support from 
 the Court of King's Bench as late as 1698, when, 
 in the course of hearing a case concerning a rate 
 levied in Norwich Cathedral precinct, the judges 
 
 1 P. 94- 
 
 78 
 
The Poor- Rate since 1601 79 
 
 remarked that "the rent is no standing rule, for 
 circumstances may differ, and there ought to be 
 regard ad statum et facultates" 1 
 
 The old practice of forming a general estimate of 
 ability probably lingered long in a great many out-of- 
 the-way places ; and in one parish at least, quite close 
 to the centre of government, as late as 1823, the poor- 
 rate was not assessed, and never had been assessed, 
 upon all the inhabitants uniformly, according to an 
 equal pound rate, but was made, according to an 
 ancient custom, by the vestry, "without respect to 
 value, but according to the ability of the party charged, 
 such ability being estimated with reference to pro- 
 perty, whether in the parish or out of it." In some 
 instances the property was stated, but in a great 
 majority of cases it was not stated, and where it was 
 stated the rate was not in proportion to the rent of 
 the property ; for example, L. Turner, for two cooper- 
 ages rented at 40, paid 5 us.; Alexander Mann, 
 for a house rented at 40, paid ;io 158.; and Mr. 
 Lucas, for a house rented at ,50, paid 9 ics. This 
 was in no remote rural neighbourhood, but in the 
 parish of St. Mary, Whitechapel. 2 
 
 How firmly that parish still clung to the old prin- 
 ciple is shown by the fact that no less than seven- 
 teen years earlier, in 1806, a local act had expressly 
 authorised the vestry to order that the poor-rate 
 and church-rate should be equal pound rates if it 
 thought fit, " the ancient custom " of the parish not- 
 withstanding. The act provided for an equal pound 
 rate for cleansing, lighting, and watching, but did not 
 
 1 Comberbach, Reports, p. 478. 
 
 2 Barnewall and Cresswell, Reports, vol. ii. p. 313. 
 
80 History of Local Rates 
 
 interfere with the poor-rate or church-rate, except by 
 giving the vestry this option, of which, in regard to 
 the poor-rate, it had never taken advantage. 1 Cases 
 like this, however, are exceptional, and in general the 
 change from rating according to ability to rating ac- 
 cording to property occupied began far earlier. 
 
 When a system of taxation according to ability 
 estimated by persons acquainted with the circum- 
 stances of the taxpayers has been displaced by a 
 system of taxation according to the annual value of 
 lands and tenements occupied, two changes must have 
 occurred. In the first place, farmers and others who 
 derive business profits from the lands or tenements 
 they occupy have come to be rated by the value of 
 the lands or tenements they occupy, instead of by 
 the profits they actually derive from them; and, 
 secondly, no one is rated in respect of the receipt of 
 rent, salary, or profits derived from the ownership of 
 movable property. 
 
 The first of these changes can scarcely be said to 
 have any history. In small rural communities carry- 
 ing on agriculture by nearly uniform methods, the 
 rental value of the farms affords as good a criterion 
 of the farmers' means as anything that was likely to be 
 found three centuries ago. Even at the present day 
 a farmer's income, for purposes of the income-tax, is 
 assumed to be a fixed proportion of the rent he pays. 
 Similarly, the rental value of shops or factories is not 
 a bad criterion of the means of occupiers engaged in 
 the same trade, and not an extremely bad one of the 
 means of occupiers engaged in different trades. Rental 
 
 1 Enactments as to London Rating, 1895 (L.C.C. No. 243), Part i. 
 Hating clauses division, p. 272. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1601 81 
 
 value of the property occupied was thus generally 
 adopted as a basis for estimating the relative ability 
 of the ratepayers, and the convenience of having 
 something arithmetical to go upon outweighed the 
 injustice of not always having regard ad statum et 
 facultates. 
 
 The omission to consider salaries, fees, and wages 
 was likewise a matter which caused little dispute, 
 and requires little explanation. In most parishes 
 in the seventeenth century there would not be a 
 single person who had sufficient earnings from mere 
 labour to make him be regarded as one who ought to 
 contribute to the support of the poor ; and even where 
 there was such a person, he would in all probability 
 occupy a house the annual value of which would 
 make him contributory in about the proper degree. 
 Persons with high salaries were generally engaged in 
 the service of the government, and difficult to deal 
 with as inhabitants of a parish. We can imagine 
 the overseers' difficulty in extracting anything from 
 naval and military officers or his Majesty's judges. 
 Lawyers and many great persons, moreover, had a 
 way of residing in extra-parochial places. So it came 
 about that it never became the general custom to 
 definitely assess people in respect of earnings from 
 labour. Here and there it was done. In Poole, so 
 late as 1792, clerks and masters of ships and others 
 were assessed in respect of their salaries, 1 but the 
 judges always promptly suppressed any such cases 
 that came before them. 2 In fact, they considered it 
 
 1 Durnford and East, Term Reports, vol. iv. p. 771. 
 
 2 See the cases in the Digest s.v. " Salaries " in Bott's Poor Lairs, 
 3rd ed., by F. Const. 
 
 F 
 
82 History of Local Rates 
 
 a reductio ad absurdum to suggest that, if such and 
 such an argument were good, lawyers might be taxed 
 for their fees. 1 
 
 The practice of omitting rents from consideration 
 was a much more serious matter. Doubts on the 
 subject were felt within thirty years of the death of 
 Queen Elizabeth. In 1633 certain propositions were 
 laid down, which became known as the Judges' Reso- 
 lutions of 1633, though, according to the editor of the 
 1 742 edition of Dalton's Justice, they were really only 
 answers drawn up by Sir Robert Heath, the Chief 
 Justice, to questions put to him by country gentlemen 
 when he was on circuit. Of these, the eighteenth 
 proposition or resolution is an answer to the question, 
 " Whether the tax for the relief of the poor upon the 
 statute of 43 Eliz., c. 2, shall be made by ability or 
 occupation of lands, or both ; and whether the visible 
 ability in the parish where he lives, or general ability 
 wheresoever; and whether his rent received within 
 the parish where he lives shall be accounted visible 
 ability, and whether he shall be taxed for them only 
 and for any rent received from other parishioners ; 
 and what shall be said visible ability ? " The answer 
 is: "The land within each parish is to be taxed to 
 the charges in the first place equally and indifferently, 
 but there may be an addition for the personal visible 
 ability of the parishioners within that parish according 
 to good discretion, wherein if there be any mistaking, 
 the sessions, &c., or the justices must judge between 
 them." 2 This answers only a small portion of the 
 question, and that in somewhat obscure terms; but 
 
 1 See below, p. 95. 
 
 2 Dalton, Country Justice, ed. of 1742, pp. 170, 171. 
 
The Poor-Mate since 1601 83 
 
 Sir Anthony Earby's case, which was tried at Lincoln 
 the same year, is clear enough, and, like Jeffrey's, is 
 " a good case to many purposes." It settled that in- 
 habitants of a parish could not be assessed in respect 
 of property occupied by them elsewhere, and also that 
 a landlord could not be assessed for his rent. Sir 
 Anthony and other inhabitants of Boston complained 
 of an undue assessment made upon them by the o 
 seers of Boston, contrary to the statute of 43 E 
 c. 2, and contrary to former directions given by 
 judges of assize. The offence of the overseers is not 
 stated, but it is obvious that they had taxed Sir 
 Anthony for property not within Boston; for, says 
 the reporter : 
 
 " Hereupon it was held and so delivered for law by 
 Hutton and Croke, justices of assize, that such assess- 
 ments ought to be made according to the visible 
 estates of the inhabitants there, both real and personal, 
 and that no inhabitant there is to be taxed by them 
 to contribute to the relief of the poor in regard of any 
 estate he hath elsewhere in any other town or place, 
 but only in regard of the visible estate he hath in the 
 town where he doth dwell, and not for any other land 
 which he hath in any other place or town. 
 
 "And also by Hutton and Croke, justices of assize: 
 This hath been so resolved by all the judges of 
 England upon a reference made to them, and upon 
 conference by them had together, where they all did 
 resolve that the assessments for relief of the poor 
 ought to be made in such manner as before, accord- 
 ing to their visible estates, real and personal, which 
 they had or enjoyed in the town or place where 
 they inhabited, and not having any regard to any 
 
84 History of Local Rates 
 
 other estate which they had in any other place or 
 town.-" 
 
 " Sir Anthony Earby complained also that, he having 
 divers tenements there which paid rent unto him, 
 they there did charge his tenants by their assessments, 
 and did charge himself also. Upon this, Mr. Leving, 
 being of counsel for the town of Boston, did inform 
 the judges that they did tax Sir Anthony Earby for 
 his estate, he having the rents ; and that such an 
 assessment was made in the county of Leicester upon 
 the lessor, and that by the order and direction of the 
 judges of assize upon a complaint made unto them, and 
 that they were not to tax the tenants who paid the rents. 
 
 " Hutton and Croke, justices, made answer, that 
 they did not remember any such case; but they said 
 that by the words and meaning of the statute of 43 
 Eliz., c. 2, they arc to assess the occupiers of the 
 land, and not the lessor who received the rents, the 
 occupiers of the land being by law only to pay the 
 assessment, unless it be specially provided for as to 
 this payment between him and his lessor." 
 
 This they also declared to have been " thus resolved 
 by all the judges of England." l 
 
 Mr. Leving seems scarcely to have made the best of 
 his case. He ought to have relied on the word " in- 
 habitant" in the statute rather than on a doubtful 
 Leicestershire precedent. Contrary as it appears to 
 the plain intention of the Parliament of 1601, the 
 decision of the judges met with general acceptance, 
 and was never disturbed either by subsequent judicial 
 deliverances or by legislation. This was probably due 
 in large measure to the natural confusion of mind 
 
 1 Bulstrode, Reports, Pt. ii. p. 354. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1601 85 
 
 which constantly leads us to talk and think of things 
 being taxed when in reality persons are taxed in pro- 
 portions determined by the amount of those things 
 they possess. As soon as the plan of estimating 
 ability by the rental value of the house or farm 
 occupied led to the amount to be paid being expressed 
 in the form of so much for every pound of rent, it 
 was inevitable that people would regard the rate as a 
 tax on the rent, and think it unfair to tax it twice, or, 
 as it would be better to say, to tax both tenant and 
 landlord in respect of it. Jeffrey, as we have seen, 1 
 thought it would be "against law and reason, and 
 against the common experience of all England," that 
 he should be taxed to the church-rate for land which 
 he had let. Economic ideas are not so clear now that 
 we can fairly expect that ratepayers of the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century would see that there were 
 really two things in respect of which persons might 
 have been rated: (i) the incomes of the landlords, 
 identical with the rents ; and (2) the incomes of the 
 tenants, not identical with, but merely assumed to be 
 equal to or in proportion to, the rents. 
 
 The history of the omission of profits derived from 
 movables or personal property is much more tedious 
 and obscure than the omission of rents. It extends 
 from 1 60 1 to 1840. To rate people in respect of 
 goods held merely for personal use, such as household 
 furniture, was never usual, though, like almost every 
 conceivable thing in rating, it was occasionally 
 done, as in Poole. 2 Such articles would be regarded 
 
 1 See above, p. 26. 
 
 2 Durnford and East, Term Reports, iv. 771 ff. ; Rex v. S. White 
 and others. 
 
86 History of Local Rates 
 
 as a source of expense rather than of income, and 
 as therefore making the owner less rather than more 
 able to contribute. The cattle and other stock of the 
 fanner were not taken into account in rating him, 
 simply because his rent was supposed to furnish suffi- 
 cient evidence of his ability to pay. But there is no 
 reason whatever to suppose that what we call manu- 
 facturers and tradesmen were not rated in proportion 
 to their supposed profits so long as the rate was 
 assessed by a vague estimate of ability. As soon, 
 however, as occupiers of lands and houses and tithes 
 are assessed by a pound rate, difficulties arise about 
 these profits. The simplest solution is to trust that 
 the assessment of the houses and other tenements will 
 do justice among the receivers of such profits. There 
 seems little doubt that this was the course generally 
 followed. But it is easy to see that in some parishes 
 where different kinds of trades were carried on, the 
 value of the tenement alone would not be a very 
 satisfactory basis of assessment. It was natural to 
 look for some other concrete thing on which to im- 
 pose a pound rate, and to find this concrete thing in 
 stock-in-trade, assuming, of course, that 100 worth 
 of stock-in-trade brought in an income of five or some 
 other number of pounds, and treating this 5 for 
 purposes of rating as equal to 5 of rental value. 
 Accordingly it happened that, while in most parishes 
 no notice was taken of anything except lands, houses, 
 tithes, coal-mines, and underwoods, in a few places a 
 system of rating in respect of stock-in-trade existed 
 from the earliest establishment of pound rates down 
 to the present century. 
 
 The resolutions of Sir Robert Heath or the judges 
 
The Poor- Rate since 1601 87 
 
 in 1633, which have already been quoted, 1 after saying 
 that the land is to be rated in the first place, only 
 say there 'may be an addition for the personal visible 
 ability of the parishioners, which certainly suggests 
 that a parish might please itself about taxing par- 
 ishioners in respect of their movables. A general 
 highway act of the Commonwealth (anno 1654, c. 3) 
 creates a "pound rate upon all the several occu- 
 piers of houses, lands, tithes, coal-mines, fellable 2 
 woods, tenements, or hereditaments within the parish, 
 according to the true yearly value of the same, and 
 also upon the dead goods, commodities, or stock-in- 
 trade of every particular parishioner charged to pay to 
 the poor, rating every 20 value of such goods equal 
 to every 2os. land by the year." The words rather 
 suggest that the system of pound rates was not in 
 general use, and that parishioners were charged to pay 
 to the poor according to a general estimate of ability. 
 This inference is confirmed by the wording of a sub- 
 sequent clause, which empowers every urban parish to 
 make "by-laws and orders for the rating and taxing 
 the several inhabitants of the said parish being occu- 
 piers of any houses, lands, tenements, or heredita- 
 ments, or having any stock or (sic) trade, or otherwise 
 being of sufficient ability," for reforming the defects 
 in paving and cleansing the streets. In 1662 another 
 general highway act (14 Car. II., c. 6) authorised 
 the surveyors to lay assessments " upon every inhabi- 
 tant rated to the poor, and upon every occupier of 
 lands, houses, tithes, impropriate or appropriate por- 
 
 1 See above, p. 82. 
 
 2 It is tempting to conjecture that " fellable" is a misreading for 
 "faleable." 
 
88 History of Local Rates 
 
 tions of tithes, coal-mines and other mines, saleable 
 underwoods, stock, goods, or other personal estate not 
 being household stuff;" and "an additional act for 
 the better repairing of highways and bridges " passed 
 in 1670 (22 Car. II., c. 12) speaks of assessments upon 
 " all and every the inhabitants, owners, and occupiers 
 of houses, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, or any 
 personal estate usually ratable to the poor." The 
 same words are used in the act of 1690 for paving 
 and cleansing London (2 W. & M., sess. 2, c. 8), 
 which assumes the return on the personal estate to 
 be 10 per cent., and in the highways act of 1691 
 (3 W. & M., c. 12). In his posthumous Discourse, 
 Lord Chief Justice Hale, who died in 1676, gives as one 
 of the reasons why no sufficient provision is made for 
 the poor " Because those places where there are most 
 poor consist for the most part of tradesmen, whose 
 estates lie principally in their stocks, which they will 
 not endure to be searched into to make them contri- 
 butory to raise any considerable stock for the poor, 
 nor indeed so much as to the ordinary contributions. 
 But they lay all the rates to the poor upon the rents 
 of lands and houses, which alone, without the help of 
 the stocks, are not able to raise a stock for the poor, 
 although it is very plain that stocks are as well by 
 law ratable as lands, both to the relief and raising a 
 stock for the poor." 1 The local acts at the end of 
 the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury show the drift of local and parliamentary opinion 
 to be in favour of greater taxation of personal property. 
 Thus the act for erecting hospitals and workhouses in 
 Bristol passed in 1695-6 provides for the "taxation 
 
 1 A Discourse touching Provision for the Poor, 1683, p. 7. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1 60 1 89 
 
 of every inhabitant, and of all lands, houses, tithes 
 impropriate, appropriations of tithes, and all stocks 
 and estates, ... in equal proportion according to 
 their respective worth and values." 1 In 1703 the act 
 2 & 3 Ann., c. 8, authorised the guardians of the poor 
 in Worcester to assess sums of money upon "the 
 respective inhabitants or occupiers of lands, houses, 
 tenements, tithes impropriate, appropriations of tithes, 
 and on all persons having and using stocks and per- 
 sonal estates in the said city, ... in equal proportion 
 according to their several and respective values." 
 This doubtless incorporated Worcester opinion as to 
 what ought to be taxed, and also was not found re- 
 pugnant to ordinary principles by the Parliament 
 which passed it. In 1711 we have another act (10 
 Ann., c. 15) in which a most strenuous effort is made 
 to subject every kind of property to rating. It is 
 for the establishment of a workhouse for the Nor- 
 wich parishes, and empowers the churchwardens and 
 overseers to lay a rate " on the respective inhabitants, 
 and on every parson and vicar, and on all and every 
 the occupiers of lands, houses, tenements, tithes im- 
 propriate, and appropriations of tithes, and on all 
 persons having and using stocks and personal estates 
 in the said respective parishes, ... or having money 
 out at interest, in equal proportion as near as may 
 be according to their several and respective values 
 and estates." 
 
 There does not appear to have been much litigation 
 on the subject at this time. Disputes were carried as 
 far as the sessions, but not further. In 1698 several 
 
 1 7 & 8 W. III., private acts cxxxii. ; not printed in its place in 
 Statutes of the Itcalm, but recited in 13 Ann., c. 32. 
 
90 History of Local Rates 
 
 inhabitants of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, appealed to 
 the sessions against a rate in which personal estates 
 were not assessed. The magistrates quashed the rate, 
 and ordered the overseers to make another. This 
 they did, but they taxed real estate ten times more in 
 proportion than personal, and the magistrates quashed 
 this rate also. Their right to set aside a whole rate 
 was questioned before the King's Bench, but the court 
 did not enter on the merits of the question. 1 Eight 
 years later, in 1706, the question was put to Chief 
 Justice Holt whether a farmer was chargeable in 
 respect of his stock as well as a tradesman in respect 
 of his stock-in-trade. Holt answered the question in 
 the affirmative, but three of his brethren disagreed 
 with him, and decided that a farmer was not liable 
 and that a tradesman was. The farmer in question 
 seems to have been rated in respect of certain stock 
 which he possessed over and above his ordinary neces- 
 sary stock for carrying on his business as a farmer. 
 It was noted in this case that farmers had never been 
 so taxed before, nor tradesmen till within recent years, 
 and it was said to be usual to tax clothiers, &c. 2 
 
 In the next fifty years nothing very definite seems 
 to have been decided on the subject by the courts, and 
 the usage of not taxing men in respect of movables, or 
 of taxing them at an absurdly low rate, became so con- 
 firmed in many parishes that the judges hesitated to 
 upset it by a clear declaration of the law. A great 
 many cases came before them, but they were always 
 decided on rather technical grounds, which left matters 
 
 1 Salkeld, Reports, vol. ii. p. 483. 
 
 ' Lord Raymond, Reports, p. 1280 ; Viner, Abridgment, s.v. "Poor," 
 p. 426. 
 
The Poor -Rate since 1601 91 
 
 much as they were. In 1769 a motion was made for 
 a mandamus to compel the justices of Canterbury to 
 rate persons who had stock-in-trade and carried on 
 considerable business there. It was refused. Mr. 
 Justice Yates said that the general question aimed at 
 in the argument did not seem to have been decisively 
 determined. Mr. Justice Aston thought there was 
 great difficulty and guesswork in taxing personal pro- 
 perty and stock-in-trade, and that it was scarcely 
 possible to ascertain the true quantum of either. No 
 case decided that it was ratable, and probably the 
 43 Eliz., c. 2, did not intend that it should be. He 
 declared, however, that he gave no direct opinion on 
 this point. " Mr. Justice Willes also declared that he 
 should give no obiter opinion about personal property 
 or stock-in-trade being liable to be rated. Yet he in- 
 timated that long contrary usage ought to go a great 
 way towards overturning any old dictum, and that, 
 if they were liable, they ought at least to be visible, 
 liquidated, and ascertained, not loose, fluctuating, 
 and uncertain." 1 Lord Mansfield was absent on this 
 occasion. He seems to have had a strong bias against 
 the assessment of personal property, and several of 
 the subsequent cases seem to be rather affected by 
 this. In 1770 a rate came up from Witney in which 
 manufacturers of blankets and other traders were 
 not assessed for their stock-in-trade. The sessions 
 quashed the rate, subject to the opinion of the 
 Court of King's Bench on the following facts. "It 
 appeared, and was admitted, that there have long been 
 many such manufacturers and traders within the said 
 parish who have been constantly assessed to the land- 
 
 1 Burrow, fteports, vol. iv. p. 2290 ff. 
 
92 History of Local Rates 
 
 tax for their respective stocks-in-trade, but none of 
 whom have been ever charged with the payment of 
 any rate for the relief of the poor on account of such 
 stock ; that as well the said manufacturers and traders 
 as all other occupiers of lands and houses within the 
 said parish have been and are constantly assessed in 
 this and all former rates for the relief of the poor, as 
 well as to the land-tax, for the lands and houses in 
 their respective occupations; and" here the cat is 
 out of the bag " that the churchwardens, &c., of the 
 said parish have been generally, though not always, 
 traders." Lord Mansfield objected to the generality of 
 the question. " The matter," he said, " does not come 
 before the court in a proper manner. It ought to 
 come on by a complaint of some one who is rated for 
 somewhat which he thinks not ratable. The court 
 will not give an opinion on every general question 
 which the sessions may think fit to bring before it. If 
 this court should determine so vague and general a 
 question as whether stock-in-trade be ratable with- 
 out any distinctions or enumeration of particulars, it 
 would sow the seeds of dissension all over the king- 
 dom." The other judges agreed, and quashed the 
 order of the sessions, on the ground that the rate, if 
 wrong, ought to have been amended, not set aside. 1 
 
 In 1775 a very similar case occurred in Ringwood, 
 the sessions having quashed a rate because certain 
 brewers inhabiting the parish were omitted from the 
 rate in respect of their stock-in-trade, valued at 
 .4000. Here all the old precedents were brought 
 forward and considered, and the only result was that 
 the judges were less favourable than before to taxa- 
 
 1 Bott, Poor Laics, 3rd ed., vol. i. pp. 114-15, 232-3. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1601 93 
 
 tion in respect of movable or personal property. 
 Lord Mansfield said : " In general I believe neither 
 here nor in any other part of the kingdom is personal 
 property taxed to the poor. ... I think the justices 
 would not have done very wrong if they had ac- 
 quiesced in the practice which has obtained ever since 
 the stat. 43 Eliz., of not rating this species of pro- 
 perty. . . . The justices at sessions should have 
 amended the rate if they thought this property rat- 
 able ; and then on attempting to do it they would 
 have discovered the wisdom of conforming to the 
 practice which they expressly state in the case, of not 
 rating it. If they had tried to have amended it, how 
 would they have rated this stock ? Are the hops and 
 the malt and the boiler to be rated at so much for 
 each ? Or is the trader to be rated for the gross sum 
 which his whole stock would sell for ? If the justices 
 had considered, they would have found out the sense 
 of not rating it at all, especially when it appears that 
 mankind has, as it were, with one universal consent 
 refrained from rating it ; the difficulties attending it 
 are too great, and so the justices would have found 
 them. As to the authorities which have been cited, 
 they are very loose indeed ; and even if they were less 
 so, one would not pay them very much deference, 
 especially as they differ ; and the rules they lay down 
 have not been carried into execution for upwards of a 
 hundred years. They talk of visible property. What 
 is visible property ? I confess I do not know what is 
 meant by visible property. If every visible thing 
 should be determined to come under that description, 
 in that case a lease for years, a watch in a man's pocket, 
 would be ratable. Visible property is something local 
 
94 History of Local Rates 
 
 in the place where a man inhabits. But that does not 
 decide what a man's personal property is. Consider 
 how many tradesmen depend upon ostensible property 
 only." The decision of the judges in 1706, that a 
 tradesman was liable for his stock, was, Lord Mansfield 
 /added, extra-judicial. "But supposing it were not, 
 f what do they mean by the visible stock of an artificer ? 
 Some artificers have a considerable stock-in-trade ; 
 some have only a little; others none at all. Shall 
 the tools of a carpenter be called his stock-in-trade, 
 and as such be rated ? A tailor has no stock-in-trade ; 
 a butcher has none; a shoemaker has a great deal. 
 Shall the tailor, whose profit is considerably greater 
 than that of the shoemaker, be untaxed, and the shoe- 
 maker taxed ? " Mr. Justice Aston said : " There has 
 been no decision that personal property is ratable. All 
 the opinions upon the subject are only dicta of judges." 
 Mr. Justice Willes and Mr. Justice Ashurst agreeing, 
 the order of sessions was quashed on the same ground 
 as in the Witney case, namely, that the rate should 
 have been amended. 1 After two such plain decisions 
 as these as to the proper course to be pursued by the 
 sessions in dealing with a rate which omitted stock- 
 in-trade, it was natural that the sessions somewhere 
 would follow the course indicated, and amend a rate 
 by inserting in it owners of such property. Accord- 
 ingly a rate made in Andover in 1776 was amended 
 by the insertion of amounts to be paid by various 
 shopkeepers and others in respect of their profits, 
 which were assumed to be 5 per cent, on the value of 
 their stock. But whatever they did, the sessions were 
 unable to please Lord Mansfield and his colleagues. 
 
 1 Cowper, Reports, p. 326 if. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1601 95 
 
 The order was quashed because it did not appear that 
 the persons whose names were added had notice. 
 Before this conclusion was arrived at, Mr. Burrough 
 had gone through all the authorities in an exhaustive 
 manner, and shown conclusively that the old standard 
 of contribution was ability, from whatever source 
 arising ; and this seems to have slightly shaken Lord 
 Mansfield's opinion as to rating in respect of stock-in- 
 trade. He said: " It is a very different question, whether 
 personal estate is to be rated to the extent in which i 
 has been argued to-day, or not to be rated at all in an 
 shape or under any circumstances. It would m 
 the poor-laws very oppressive if a man is to be taxed 
 to the extent of his whole personal estate and income. 
 In that case every man who has money in the funds 
 would be liable; lawyers for their fees, soldiers for 
 their pay, &c. But where men are occupiers of houses 
 and have stock-in-trade, whether such stock-in-trade 
 may be taken into consideration is a very different 
 question. Some personal estate may be ratable ; but 
 it must be local visible property within the parish. 
 The general question is too extravagant. It would be 
 material to state what has been the custom of rating. 
 If the usage should be to take in stock-in-trade, there 
 would be very good right to support it." Mr. Justice 
 Aston did not think usage of so much importance. 
 He said that/' notwithstanding the usage, if upon the 
 general question, which is what they are now aiming 
 at, it should turn out to be the law that personal pro- 
 perty is ratable, if that is the law, it must be rated 
 then, though it never was so before." Mr. Burrough 
 had said that personal property had been rated for a 
 long time both in Andovcr and in many other parts 
 
96 History of Local Rates 
 
 of the kingdom, as at Alton, King's Lynn, many 
 parishes in the city of London, Bradford -on -Avon, 
 Trowbridge, Warminster, Frome, and other towns in 
 Wiltshire, and, he was told, probably incorrectly, in 
 many of the large towns of the North. 1 
 
 A few months after this the court was fairly run 
 to earth by a carefully raised case from Bradford-on- 
 Avon. One Francis Hill was charged the important 
 sum of " a penny, as his share or contribution towards 
 the relief of the poor" of the parish for a year in 
 respect of his stock in the clothing trade, and this 
 was proved and admitted to be no more than his just 
 proportion if he was legally bound to contribute any- 
 thing in respect of his stock-in-trade. He appealed 
 to the sessions, which confirmed the rate, and then to 
 the King's Bench. Lord Mansfield asked what the 
 usage had been in the parish. Counsel replied that 
 both sides had agreed to waive the question of usage. 
 Lord Mansfield then said they had no right to do 
 that, and, with the concurrence of Mr. Justice Aston, 
 referred the case back to the sessions for a statement 
 on the point. 2 It came back in January 1778, with a 
 statement that it had been usual in Bradford to rate 
 persons there for their stock-in-trade, and thereupon 
 the court confirmed the order of sessions, and the rate 
 stood good. 3 Though this case in reality only estab- 
 lished that stock-in-trade was ratable in those places 
 where it was the usage to rate it, the next generation 
 of judges seem to have regarded it as establishing the 
 ratability of stock-in-trade everywhere. When the 
 case of Po.ole came up in 1792, they decided that 
 
 1 Cowper, Reports, p. 550. 2 Ibid., p. 613 ff. 
 
 3 find., p. 619. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1601 97 
 
 salaries, money in coin and on real securities, and 
 household furniture were not ratable, but that ships 
 and stock-in-trade were ratable, without troubling 
 themselves about the usage, which was to rate all 
 these things. 1 In a case from Dursley, in Gloucester- 
 shire, in 1 794, the Chief Justice, Lord Kenyon, inciden- 
 tally remarked that there was no doubt that personal 
 property was liable, although in the case before him it 
 had never been rated except for six years, between 
 1769 and 1775, as was shown by the parish books, 
 which went back to 1 566. 2 Finally, in 1 795, the King's 
 Bench confirmed an order of sessions which quashed 
 a rate in Darlington because certain inhabitants were 
 not rated for their stock-in-trade, although the prac- 
 tice of rating it had only been shown to have prevailed 
 from 1746 to 1752 and from 1788 to I794- 3 
 
 From this time there could be no doubt that the 
 law required stock-in-trade to be rated, but it does not 
 appear to have been rated any more than before. The 
 Report of the Poor-Laws Commissioners of 1834 con- 
 tains a page of condemnation of the uncertainty and 
 capriciousness of the existing mode of rating, in which 
 there is not a word which shows that they had ever 
 heard of such a thing as rating stock-in-trade. 4 In 
 1836 Mr. Poulet Scrope's Parochial Assessments Act 
 prescribed elaborate forms for the assessment of lands 
 and tenements, and preserved absolute silence as to 
 stock-in-trade. No one in either House of Parliament 
 called attention to the omission. 5 
 
 1 Durnf ord and East, Term Reports, iv. p. 77 1 ff. 
 
 2 Ibid., vi. pp. 53 ff. 
 
 3 Ibid., vi. p. 468. 
 
 4 P. 359 in the 8vo ed. 
 
 5 See Hansard, 1836, passim, especially vol. xxxv. p. 371 ff. 
 
 G 
 
98 History of Local Rates 
 
 At last, however, the new Poor-Law Commissioners 
 brought the matter to a head. Receiving inquiries 
 about it from the country, they issued a minute in 
 September 1838, which is decidedly unfavourable to 
 the rating of stock-in-trade. They say they hesitate 
 to express an opinion favourable to the adoption, or 
 even the continuance, of the custom, and they point 
 out both that " the practice has, with very few excep- 
 tions, hitherto prevailed only in the old manufacturing 
 districts of the south and west of England," and that 
 the Parochial Assessments Act appears to contem- 
 plate the assessment only of hereditaments, and there- 
 fore in some measure discountenances the opinion 
 that stock-in-trade is liable. 1 Six months after the 
 issue of this minute, the Court of Queen's Bench 
 decided, what any one might have expected, that 
 the silence of the Parochial Assessments Act did not 
 amount to a repeal of the law that stock-in-trade 
 should be rated. 
 
 Consequently, early in 1 840, the Poor-Law Commis- 
 sioners were driven to recant their previous opinion. 
 They issued a circular letter to churchwardens and 
 overseers which says: "Since the recent decision in 
 the Court of Queen's Bench in the case of Regina v. 
 Lumsdaine, in last Easter term, it can no longer be 
 doubted that inhabitants of parishes remain liable 
 to the poor-rate in respect of stock-in-trade, in like 
 manner as they were before the passing of the act to 
 regulate parochial assessments, and that every rate 
 may be successfully appealed against if any inhabitant 
 having productive stock-in-trade be omitted there- 
 
 1 House of Commons Paper, 1840, No. 215 ; in vol. xxix. pp. 
 576-7. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1 60 1 99 
 
 from." In order to guide the overseers in carrying 
 out the law, it proceeds to point out that (i) non- 
 residents cannot be rated in respect of stock-in-trade 
 in the parish 5(2) the stock must be local, visible, and 
 productive ; (3) it must consist only of the surplus left 
 after deducting debts ; (4) it must be rated according 
 to the profit produced; and (5) its nature must be 
 specified distinctly. 1 
 
 At this action of an unpopular government depart- 
 ment, Parliament, which had for more than sixty 
 years treated the decisions of the law courts with in- 
 difference, was seized with alarm. Sir Kobert Peel 
 in the Commons, and Lord Portman in the Lords, 
 demanded a statement of the Government's inten- 
 tions, and the Government promised a bill for ex- 
 empting stock-in-trade. 2 This was soon introduced, 
 and passed first and second readings without discus- 
 sion. 3 On its going into committee, Mr. Goulburn 
 uttered a feeble and somewhat obscure protest in the 
 interest of tithe-owners. The Attorney-General asked 
 if he really thought " that it would be better to let the 
 law remain as it was. If the right honourable gentle- 
 man thought so, he was the only man in the House or 
 in the country who held that opinion. ... It had been 
 found utterly impossible that a rate on stock-in-trade 
 could be so modelled as to be free from legal objec- 
 tions. ... In fact, the law had become quite odious, 
 and except in a very few instances, no attempt had 
 been made to enforce it. Then the bill made that 
 law which was at present usage." 4 It passed its third 
 
 1 House of Commons Paper, 1840, No. 215 ; in vol. xxix. pp. 575-6. 
 
 2 Hansard, liii. 1367, liv. 499. 3 Ibid., 1261 and 1381. 
 4 Ibid., Iv. p. 933. 
 
ioo History of Local Rates 
 
 reading in the Commons, and its first and second 
 readings in the Lords, without debate, 1 and was then 
 dropped, because it was discovered that the last clause 
 might be interpreted so as to create other exemptions 
 besides what was intended. In place of it Bill No. 2, 
 !' to exempt stock-in-trade from being rated for the 
 relief of the poor," was promptly introduced in the 
 Commons. This provides that " it shall not be lawful 
 for the overseers of any parish, township, or village 
 to tax any inhabitant thereof, as such inhabitant, in 
 respect of his ability derived from the profits of stock- 
 in-trade or any other property, for or towards the relief 
 of the poor ; provided always that nothing in this act 
 contained shall in any wise affect the liability of any 
 parson or vicar, or of any occupier of lands, houses, 
 tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal-mines, 
 or saleable underwoods, to be taxed under the pro- 
 visions " of the acts mentioned in the preamble 
 (43 Eliz., c. 2, and 13 & 14 Car. II., c. 2), "for and 
 towards the relief of the poor." This bill passed all 
 its stages in the House of Commons on August 5, 
 1 840, and passed through the Lords without discus- 
 sion. 2 It was a temporary measure, and has been 
 renewed from year to year ever since. It practically 
 amounts to a repeal of the statute of Elizabeth so 
 far as the word " inhabitant " is concerned, and thus 
 at last, after 243 years of struggle between two con- 
 tradictory ideas, the desire of the Elizabethan Par- 
 liament of 1597 to include the non-resident occupier 
 led to the disappearance of the inhabitant as such 
 from the list of ratepayers. 
 
 1 Hansard, Iv. pp. 1023, 1067, and 1163. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 1279-81, 1344, 1395, and 1398. It is 3 & 4 Viet., c. 89. 
 
The Poor-Rate since 1601 101 
 
 The express inclusion of a particular kind of mines, 
 viz., coal-mines, and of a particular kind of woods, 
 viz., saleable underwoods, was always held to exclude 
 other mines and woods from rating, although other- 
 wise the word lands would have been large enough to 
 cover them. It has sometimes been supposed that 
 Elizabeth's Parliament really meant to exclude these 
 things, but it is much more probable that coal-mines 
 and saleable underwoods were inserted in the act 
 merely because the judges' resolutions of 1597 or 
 1598 mention "coal-mines and saleable woods, pro- 
 portioning the same to an annual benefit " ; and it 
 is, of course, impossible that the judges could have 
 mentioned coal-mines with a view of excluding other 
 mines, while " saleable woods proportioned to an 
 annual benefit" might easily be interpreted to mean 
 saleable underwoods as opposed to forest not looked 
 upon as a continuous source of profit. It took the 
 Legislature 273 years to nerve itself to the task of 
 getting rid of the illogical exemption. This was done, 
 though not quite thoroughly, by the Rating Act, 1874 
 (37 & 38 Viet., c. 54), which makes all woods and 
 mines ratable. 
 
 And so at last the poor-rate came to apply to all 
 immovable and to no movable property. 
 
ASSIMILATION OF OTHER BATES TO THE POOR-KATE 
 
 HAVING traced the development of the poor-rate 
 down to the present time, we must now go back to 
 the seventeenth century, and endeavour to follow the 
 steps by which the practice of local authorities, the 
 decisions of courts of law, and the enactments of 
 Parliament have caused the whole of local rates, 
 with trifling exceptions, to be little but additions to 
 the poor-rate. 
 
 The old rates levied by common assent of the rate- 
 payers, or by the authority of the governing body of 
 a corporation without statutory sanction, gradually 
 died out or were replaced by modern statutory 
 creations. The relics of them which still existed in 
 the towns just before the Municipal Corporations 
 Reform Act of 1835 will be found described in the 
 Appendix to the report of the Municipal Corpora- 
 tions Commission. There was, for example, at Folke- 
 stone a " chamberlain's rate " on property and an 
 "ability tax" of is. 6cl. per head on persons, which 
 certainly suggests that the Folkestone measurement 
 of ability was decidedly rough. 1 At Pevensey, we 
 are told, " a rate called the town scot is almost every 
 year imposed by the magistrates upon the property 
 within the liberty occupied by persons residing within 
 
 1 House of Commons Papers, 1835, No. 116 (in vol. xxiv.), p. 983. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 103 
 
 the liberty. Property owned by non-residents is not 
 rated. The scot is sometimes id. in the pound, some- 
 times 2d. on the poor-rate assessment." 1 Probably 
 there is not now any town or other locality which 
 even claims the power to levy a non-statutory rate, 
 unless the rate of the nature of a county rate, which 
 the City of London believes it could raise, belongs 
 to this class. 2 In any case, we may be sure that if 
 the City were reduced to levying such a rate, it would 
 levy it like a modern statutory rate, and not accord- 
 ing to ancient custom. 
 
 One alone of the old rates can be said to have died 
 hard the church-rate ; and before it ceased, except in 
 name, to be a rate at all, the differences which existed 
 between its assessment and that of the poor-rate had 
 become very small. After the decision in Jeffrey's 
 case the judges seem sometimes to have held that 
 non - resident occupiers were not liable to pay a 
 rate for what were called the "ornaments" of the 
 church, such as bells, seats, bread and wine, clerk's 
 wages, visitation charges, and the like, on the ground 
 that the personal estates of the inhabitants were 
 chargeable with expenses not relating to the fabric of 
 the church or the fences of the churchyard. Some 
 parishes certainly followed this rule, or something like 
 it ; for example, Leverton, near Boston, which levied 
 a church-rate of id. per acre in 1.611, is reported to 
 have levied a poll-tax of id. per head for bread 
 and wine in i6i5. 3 But in the first of these years, 
 
 1 House of Commons Papers, 1835, No. 116 (in vol. xxiv.), p. 1019. 
 
 2 Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of 
 London, 1894, Minutes of Evidence, Questions 7048-52. 
 
 3 P. Thompson, Antiquities of Boston, 1856, p. 570. 
 
104 History of Local Rates 
 
 when Mr. Justice Yelverton remarked that a man 
 was chargeable for reparations by reason of his land, 
 and for ornaments by reason of his coming to church, 
 Chief Justice Fleming and Mr. Justice Williams said, 
 " If the party have land there, he is chargeable for 
 both, whether he come to church or not, for that he 
 may come to church if he please." * The distinction 
 was soon almost entirely forgotten. 
 
 The Long Parliament, which was often far in 
 advance of its time, passed an ordinance in 1647 
 practically consolidating the church-rate with the 
 poor-rate. It provides that the churchwardens, or 
 the collectors of monies for church duties, where any 
 such have been formerly used to be chosen, together 
 with the overseers of the poor, shall, after public notice 
 has been given in the church, " from time to time make 
 rates or assessments by taxation of every inhabitant 
 dwelling or residing " within the parish, " and of every 
 occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate or im- 
 propriations of tithes, coal-mines, or saleable under- 
 woods, or other hereditaments within the said parish 
 or chapelry, in such competent sums of money as they 
 shall think fit, for and towards the reparation and main- 
 tenance of every such parish church or chapel respec- 
 tively, and providing of books, . . . bread and wine, 
 . . . repairing the walls and enclosures of the church- 
 yards." 2 But the action of the Long Parliament in 
 
 1 Bulstrode, Reports, Pt. i. p. 20. Brownlowe (Reports, Pt. ii. p. 10) 
 gives a different account. In the case of Woodward v. Makepeace 
 in 1688 the court held that a non-resident occupier was chargeable 
 for bells, because bells are not ornaments, being as necessary as the 
 steeple (Salkeld, Reports, vol. i. p. 164). See Degge, Parson's Coun- 
 sellor, Pt. i. ch. 12 (later editions). 
 
 2 In Scobell, Acts and Ordinances, Pt. i. p. 140. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 105 
 
 this matter was not ratified by statute after the 
 Restoration, and the civilians seem to have retained 
 rather antiquated ideas as to the liability to church- 
 rates, if we are to judge by a series of propositions 
 given in a bookseller's appendix to the second edition 
 of Godolphin's Repertorium Canonicum in 1680, and 
 attributed to the joint wisdom of thirteen doctors of 
 civil law sitting at Doctors' Commons to consider a 
 question as to the church-rate of Wrotham, in Kent. 
 According to these propositions, every inhabitant 
 dwelling within the parish is to be charged according 
 to his ability, and his ability may be estimated either 
 by his goods or by the value of the holding he occu- 
 pies. No exemption is accorded to resident landlords : 
 "Every owner of lands, tenements, copyholds, and 
 other hereditaments inhabiting within the parish is 
 to be taxed according to his wealth in regard of a 
 parishioner, although he occupy none of them him- 
 self, and his farmer or farmers also are to be taxed for 
 occupying only." However, Prideaux, Dean of Nor- 
 wich, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 after quoting these propositions and Lyndwood, 1 says, 
 " But the general usage now is to make a rate accord- 
 ing to the value of the lands." It is, he then adds, a 
 personal, not a real charge not on the lands, but on 
 persons in respect of the lands, " and for this reason 
 the farmer or occupier, not the landlord, is to pay the 
 same." 2 We may take his evidence as to the usage 
 without accepting as sufficient his explanation of 
 its origin. It is difficult to suppose, however, that 
 
 1 See above, p. 15. 
 
 2 Directions to Churchwardens for the Faithful Discharge of their 
 Office, 3rd ed., 1713, p. 51. 
 
io6 History of Local Rates 
 
 resident landlords escaped rating in respect of their 
 rents in those parishes where, in spite of the general 
 usage, the church-rates were assessed according to 
 real estimates of ability. In the case of Miller v. 
 Bloomfield, tried in 1823, counsel quoted from the 
 registry of the Court of Delegates a number of places 
 where all sources of ability were taken into account 
 about the time of the Revolution. In Boston in 
 1706 it was alleged that most of the inhabitants 
 were "tradesmen that live by their trades, and are 
 chiefly assessed to the church assessments according 
 to their way of trading; whereas were they to be 
 assessed according to the rents they sit on or by 
 any other way than by will and doom, which is the 
 constant way of making and levying such assess- 
 ments in the said parish, their contributions thereto 
 would not advance so much money as they do, and 
 that, moreover, the greatest burden of such assessments 
 would then fall upon such as are not well able to bear 
 the same." Assessing by will and doom was explained 
 as " having due regard to every one's estate, quality, 
 ability, way and circumstances of living." 1 But 
 these exceptional cases are exactly analogous to the 
 exceptional cases in which the poor-rate was assessed 
 in the same way. In some cases (though probably 
 not in that of Boston, considering that Sir A. Earby's 
 case was decided there) they are coincident. For 
 example, it seems that at the beginning of the 
 present century both church-rate and poor-rate were 
 assessed according to a general estimate of ability 
 in Whitechapel, though before 1823 the church-rate 
 became an ordinary pound rate on property under 
 
 1 Addams, Ecclesiastical Reports, vol. i. p. 527 ff. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 107 
 
 the powers given in the act of I8O6. 1 Poole, which, 
 as we have seen, 2 taxed rather freely for the poor-rate, 
 was equally erratic with regard to the church-rate. 
 From 1751 to 1773 it rated stock-in-trade and ships, 
 but not money or securities. From 1773 to 1792 it 
 rated stock-in-trade and ships, and money and sequ- 
 rities. Then came the decision of the judges that 
 the poor-rate on money, securities, furniture, and 
 salaries was bad, and it is doubtless owing to that 
 decision that from 1792 to 1800 stock-in-trade and 
 ships, but not money nor securities, were rated to the 
 church-rate. After 1800 ships were omitted, but in a 
 case brought before it in 1823 the Court of Delegates 
 decided that this was wrong. 3 
 
 During the eighteenth century and at the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth it was by no means uncommon 
 for the legislature to charge a portion of a rate for 
 building or rebuilding a church upon the landlords, 
 whether resident or not. In the case of St. Leonard's, 
 Shoreditch, in 1735,* St. Olave's in I737, 5 St. Botolph's 
 in 1740, St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green, in 17427 and 
 St. Mary's, Islington, in I75O, 8 the local act charges 
 two-thirds of the rate upon the owners. After this 
 the proportion falls to a half in the case of St. John's, 
 Wapping, in I755, 9 Lewisham parish church in I774, 10 
 
 1 Compare 54 of the local act 46 Geo. III., c. 89 (in the L.C.C. 
 Enactments relating to London, Pt. i., Eating clauses, p. 272) with the 
 extracts from the rate-books in Barnewall and Cress well, Reports, 
 vol. ii. p. 315 ; and see above, pp. 79, 80. 
 
 2 See above, pp. 81, 96, 97. 
 
 3 Addams, Ecclesiastical Reports, vol. ii. p. 30 ff. 
 
 4 L.C.C., Enactments relating to London, Pt. i., Rating clauses, 
 p. 42. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 202. G Ibid., p. 277. 7 Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 298. 9 Ibid. p. 226. 10 Ibid., p. 186. 
 
io8 History of Local Rates 
 
 St. John's, Hackney, in I79O, 1 and Shad well parish 
 church in i8i/. 2 In several other local acts for 
 building or rebuilding London churches, however, 
 from 1774 onwards, there is no provision for a con- 
 tribution from the owners of property. 3 
 
 In 1837 the parishioners of Braintree refused to 
 make a church-rate when it was obviously required. 
 The churchwardens thereupon attempted to raise one 
 on their own authority, without the common assent 
 of the inhabitants. The ecclesiastical court upheld 
 their action, but the Queen's Bench and Exchequer 
 Chamber both decided against it. The latter court, 
 however, suggested that a rate laid by the church- 
 wardens and a minority of the parishioners might hold 
 good. 4 The suggestion was acted upon, but eventually 
 a rate laid in the manner proposed was defeated on 
 appeal to the House of Lords. 5 The church-rate con- 
 tinued to struggle on for some time in spite of this 
 decision, which placed beyond doubt the fact that the 
 Nonconformist opposition to such taxation could pre- 
 vent a rate being laid wherever it could secure a 
 majority of votes; but in 1868 all legal remedy 
 against persons refusing to pay church - rates was 
 abolished by statute, 6 so that the church-rate now 
 lacks one of the essential features of all taxation a 
 compulsory character. 
 
 A tendency towards the consolidation of the minor 
 
 1 L.C.C., Enactments relating to London, Ft. i., Rating clauses, 
 
 P. 159. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 224. 3 Ibid., pp. 244, 36, 176, 239, 220. 
 
 4 Phillimore, Burn's Ecclesiastical Law, ed. of 1842, vol. i. p. 388Aff. 
 
 5 W. W. Attree, The Braintree Church-Hate Case (House of Lords), 
 
 1853- 
 
 6 31 & 32 Viet., c. 109. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 109 
 
 Tudor statutory rates with each other and the poor- 
 rate seems to have made itself felt very early. The 
 country gentlemen who interrogated the Chief Justice 
 in 1633 asked "Avhether the tax for the county stock, 
 jail, and house of correction, is to be made by the 
 statute of 14 Eliz., 5, 43 Eliz., 2, by ability, and 
 upon the inhabitants of the parish only, or upon 
 them or [and?] the occupiers of lands dwelling in 
 that parish, or whether such as occupy lands in that 
 parish and dwell in another parish shall be taxed ? " l 
 If they are well reported, their style is far from lucid ; 
 but it is plain that, besides wanting to know whether 
 the non-resident occupier was to be rated, they wished 
 to know whether the same standard that of ability 
 was to be adopted in assessing these miscellaneous 
 rates as in assessing the poor-rate. The answer of 
 the Chief Justice was : " If the statute in particular 
 cases give no special direction, it is good discretion to 
 go according to the rate of taxation for the poor ; but 
 when the statutes themselves give direction, follow 
 that." The rates mentioned by the country gentle- 
 men, together with the other county rates then in 
 existence, 2 were consolidated and, so far as assessment 
 
 1 Dalton, Country Justice, ed. of 1742, p. 173. 
 
 2 For bridges, under 22 Hen. VIII., c. 5, and i Ann., c. 18 ; for 
 jails, under n & 12 W. III., c. 19, which authorised quarter-sessions 
 "by equal proportions to distribute and charge the . . . sums of 
 money . . . upon the several hundreds, lathes, wapentakes, rapes, 
 wards, or other division " of the county ; for houses of correction, 
 under 7 Jac. I., c. 4 ; for prisoners in the King's Bench and Mar- 
 shalsea, under 43 Eliz., c. 2 ; for prisoners in county jails, under 
 14 Eliz., c. 5 ; for setting prisoners on work, under 18 & 19 Car. II., 
 c. 9 (vulgo, 19 Car. II., c. 4), which empowered quarter-sessions to 
 raise money to provide a stock of materials for the purpose "in 
 
1 1 o History of Local Rates 
 
 is concerned, amalgamated with the poor-rate in 1739 
 by the act 12 Geo. II., c. 29, which says that some 
 of the rates were so small that they did not amount 
 to more than a fractional part of a farthing in the 
 pound, and, "if possible to have been rated, the 
 expense of assessing and collecting the same would 
 have amounted to more than the sum rated." To 
 obviate the difficulties and doubts which resulted 
 from this, it provides that quarter-sessions shall make 
 one assessment, to cover all these expenses, upon 
 towns, parishes, and places "in such proportion as 
 any of the rates heretofore made . . . have been 
 usually assessed." The lump sums thus assessed on 
 the parishes were to be paid in ordinary cases by 
 the churchwardens and overseers " out of the money 
 collected or to be collected for the relief of the poor 
 of such parish or place." Where no poor-rate was 
 levied, the petty constables were to raise the money 
 " in such manner as money for the relief of the poor 
 is by law to be rated or levied," by means of a con- 
 stable's * or any other rate, as the justices might 
 order. In 1815 (by 55 Geo. III., c. 51) Parliament 
 directed the abandonment of the old practice of 
 
 such manner and by such ways as other county charges are levied 
 and raised;" and for paying the cost of conveying vagabonds, 
 under 13 Ann. c. 26 (vulgo, 12 Ann., stat. 2, c. 23), which authorised 
 the raising of money " by such ways and means as monies for county 
 jails or bridges may be raised." 
 
 1 By 14 Car. II., c. 12, constables who had incurred expenses in 
 relieving or conveying vagabonds to houses of correction and work- 
 houses were empowered "to make an indifferent rate, and to tax 
 all the occupiers of lands and inhabitants, and all other persons 
 chargeable by the statute of the 43rd of Elizabeth concerning the 
 office and duty of overseers for the poor." 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 1 1 
 
 assessing the amounts required in traditional and 
 stereotyped proportions on the various parts of the 
 county. 1 Quarter-sessions were ordered to assess and 
 tax every parish and place according to a certain 
 pound rate of the full and fair annual value of the 
 messuages, lands, tenements, and hereditaments ratable 
 to the relief of the poor therein. The true annual 
 value of the property liable to the poor-rate thus 
 became the basis for distributing the charge between 
 parish and parish, as well as between individual and 
 individual within the parish. 
 
 The hue-and-cry rate, which under the act of 1585 
 was to be assessed according to the ability of the 
 inhabitants, 2 was assimilated to the poor-rate by 
 practice and legal decisions without aid from the 
 legislature. A non-resident occupier in 1674 tried 
 to escape from the rate on the ground that as he was 
 not a resident he could not keep watch and ward, and 
 was therefore in no way responsible for the robbery. 
 In spite of the plausibility of this contention, and of 
 some precedents in his favour, he lost his case. 3 In 
 the 1736 edition of Nelson's Justice there is a blank 
 form of warrant in which the constables and head- 
 boroughs in a hundred are directed to raise the 
 money required from each parish by assessing it on 
 
 1 For an example of these traditional apportionments see A General 
 Rate for the County of Norfolk, 1743 and 1768, which gives the 
 amount to be paid by every parish in case of (i) "a three hundred 
 pound levy," (2) a " four hundred and fifty pound levy," and (3) a 
 "six hundred pound levy." Quarter-sessions order a copy to be 
 kept by the overseers of every town, parish, and place in the 
 county. 
 
 2 See above, p. 46. 
 
 a Viner, General Abridgment of Law and Equity, s.v. "Bobbery," 
 p. 269. 
 
1 1 2 History of Local Rates 
 
 the several inhabitants, "according to their method 
 of rating for the poor." x 
 
 The sewers-rate alone of the rates which came into 
 existence before the Commonwealth period has main- 
 tained a really separate existence. It has never been 
 possible for even the densest mind to overlook the 
 fact that the defence of land against inundation is 
 for the benefit of those who have interests in the 
 land liable to be flooded, and consequently in the 
 apportionment of expenses the amount of benefit ex- 
 pected to accrue has always remained the recognised 
 principle. There has thus been no scope for the con- 
 fusion between rating a person because the fact that 
 he occupies land of a certain annual value shows 
 approximately that he has a certain ability to pay, 
 and rating him because the value of his land is 
 increased. When benefit received, and not ability 
 to pay, is clearly recognised as the principle of assess- 
 ment, it is evident that persons interested in the lands 
 which, in the phrase of the Bedford Level Act of 
 1 649, are " bettered " 2 by the expenditure should pay 
 according to the extent of their interests in the im- 
 provement. So in the case of rural marshes and 
 low-lying grounds the old law has remained practi- 
 cally unaltered, and the sewers-rate has never become 
 mixed up with the poor-rate. 
 
 But at the beginning of the present century the 
 sewers-rate was widely applied to the purposes of 
 house and street drainage. In London there were 
 seven commissions of sewers, five being subject to 
 
 1 Vol. i. p. 478. The act of 1585 was repealed in 1827 by 7 & 8 
 Geo. IV., c. 27. 
 
 2 In Scobell, Acts atid Ordinances, Pt. ii. p. 37. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 1 3 
 
 local acts and two to the great statute of Henry 
 VIII. As the law created liability in respect of all 
 property which received benefit or avoided damage 
 by means of the sewers, all houses were supposed to 
 be included in its provisions, whether drained or not, 
 unless they were on "high lands" such as Hamp- 
 stead, on the ground that they all received benefit 
 from the surface-drainage of the streets. The rate 
 was collected from the occupiers, but was deductible 
 from the rent in the absence of agreement to the 
 contrary. 1 The commissions were non-representative 
 and absurdly large bodies ; that for Westminster had 
 about 200 members. 2 All the London commissions, 
 except that for the City, which has now practically 
 become a board of works appointed by the Corpora- 
 tion, were consolidated into one in 1 848 (by 1 1 & 1 2 
 Viet., c. 112), and the new body made way to the 
 Metropolitan Board of Works under the Metropolis 
 Management Act, 1855 (i 8 & 19 Viet., c. 120). This 
 act was careful to provide that the rearrangement 
 which it effected should not prejudice the right of 
 the occupier to deduct the sewers-rate from his rent. 
 But similar care was not taken when the Local 
 Government Act of 1888 was passed. Under that 
 act the sewers-rate levied by the central authority 
 lost its separate existence, and the right to deduct 
 it from rent consequently disappeared. 3 This was 
 not the result of any deep design, but of a mere 
 
 1 Report from Select Committee on Metropolitan Scivers, Parliamen- 
 tary Papers, 1834, vol. xv. pp. i.-vi. 
 
 2 Report from Select Committee on Sewers in the Metropolis (Parlia- 
 mentary Papers, 1823, vol. v.), Minutes of Evidence, p. 28. 
 
 3 Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of 
 London, 1894; Minutes of Evidence, Questions 1236-42. 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 History of Local Rates 
 
 oversight. There was no effective opposition, in con- 
 sequence of the prevalence of agreements on the part 
 of the occupier to pay all rates. The fact that, as was 
 alleged in 1823, ninety-nine tenants out of a hundred 
 agreed not to deduct the rate, 1 of course did not 
 diminish the injustice of refusing to allow the hun- 
 dredth to deduct it when he had made no agreement 
 not to do so. That such an injustice could be per- 
 petrated in 1888 is strong testimony to the strength 
 of the tendency towards consolidation on the basis of 
 the poor-rate. In the case of sewers-rates raised by 
 London vestries and boards of works the right of 
 deduction from rent still exists, but is almost univer- 
 sally ignored, the occupier almost always undertaking 
 to bear this as well as all other rates. 
 
 Of the later local rates, the first in chronological 
 order is the land-tax. Simply because it happens to 
 retain the term " tax " in its title, and because its 
 proceeds go to the national exchequer, the land-tax is 
 not usually reckoned as a local rate. But as it is a sum 
 determined beforehand, and levied at different rates 
 in different localities, it has the essential features of a 
 rate and a local rate, and no comparison of the rates 
 of two parishes is complete which omits it from con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Though it is usually said to have been established 
 after the Revolution, the true origin of the land-tax 
 is to be found in the somewhat rough-and-ready 
 method of raising money adopted by the Long Par- 
 liament. Requisitions for particular sums of money 
 were at first laid upon those counties which were sub- 
 ject to the power of the Parliament. The requisitions 
 
 1 Report on Sewers, 1823 (see above, p. 113, note 2), p. 39. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 1 5 
 
 were gradually extended all over the country, and 
 when reduced to a comparatively orderly system the 
 procedure was as follows : The county commissioners 
 named in the act imposing the assessment appointed 
 two assessors in each parish or place usually rated by 
 itself. These assessors estimated the annual value of 
 all kinds of real and personal estate whatsoever, the 
 income from personal estate being assumed to amount 
 to 5 per cent, on its capital value. The commissioners 
 then added up the returns from all the assessors within 
 their county, and calculated what number of pence in 
 the pound would be necessary to raise the amount 
 required from them by Parliament. The rate thus 
 arrived at was collected, in the case of rents, from the 
 occupiers of the lands and tenements, who were, of 
 course, allowed to deduct it when paying their rent to 
 their landlords. 
 
 These "monthly assessments," as they were called, 
 were very like ship-money. They were naturally un- 
 popular, and the Restoration Parliament only resorted 
 to them because it could discover no other efficient 
 means of raising money. It made the king a grant of 
 70,000 a month for eighteen months (by 1 3 Car. II., 
 st. 2, c. 3), apportioning the amount among the counties 
 in exactly the same way as the last assessment under 
 the Commonwealth had been apportioned in 1659. 
 The commissioners named for each county were 
 to distribute the sum assessed upon it among the 
 parishes, and for the assessment of the tax on each 
 parish among the individual taxpayers they were to 
 appoint two assessors, who, says the act, " are hereby 
 required with all care and diligence to assess the 
 same equally by a pound rate, as formerly, upon all 
 
1 1 6 History of Local Rates 
 
 lands, tenements, hereditaments, annuities, parks, 
 warrens, goods and chattels, stock, merchandise, 
 offices usually rated, tolls, profits, and all other 
 estates, both real and personal, within the limits, 
 circuits, and bounds of their respective parishes and 
 places." A curious provision shows how rough the 
 method of assessment still remained after twenty years 
 continuous use. It was provided that if the assess- 
 ment by a pound rate should anywhere prove ob- 
 structive or prejudicial to the collection of the whole 
 sum required, the commissioners might cause the 
 assessment to be made by the " most just and usual 
 way of rates held and practised " there. The act of 
 1664-5 ( l6 & 17 Car. II., c. i), granting 2477,500 
 in three years, is identical in its provisions, but does 
 not distribute the total among the counties in the 
 same proportions. The rest of the acts of Charles II. 
 follow the new scale. Five of them are almost identi- 
 cal in their main provisions with the act of 1664-5 ; 
 but the sixth and last, that of 1679 (31 Car. II., c. i), 
 shows a tendency towards a further stereotyping of 
 the assessment. It says : " For the avoiding of all 
 obstructions and delays in collecting the sums by 
 this act to be rated and assessed, all places, offices, 
 constablewicks, divisions, and allotments shall pay 
 and be assessed in such county, hundred, place, rape, 
 division, or wapentake, according to the like propor- 
 tions and distributions in respect to this assessment as 
 they were assessed and taxed " by the act 29 Car. II., 
 c. i. The first assessment act of William and Mary 
 (i W. & M., c. 3), that for granting 68,820 igs. id. 
 per mensem for six months in 1688, makes no change 
 whatever, and the next two assessment acts, which 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 17 
 
 were passed in 1690 (2 W. & M., sess. 2, c. i) and 1691 
 (3 W. & M., c. 5), follow in its footsteps. In 1688, 
 however, there were also " aids," or what we should 
 call income-taxes, of is. and 2s. in the pound; and in 
 1692 and each of the three following years there were 
 aids of 45. in the pound. In 1696-7 an act (8 & 9 
 Will. III., c. 6) was passed "for granting an aid to 
 his Majesty, as well by a land-tax as by several sub- 
 sidies and other duties." This combines a kind of 
 poll-tax on wage-earners with a tax of 258. for every 
 ,100 of personal estate (traders paying double, and 
 farmers only I2s. on their stock), and 38. in the 
 pound on the rental value of land. The enormously 
 high rate of these income-taxes is by itself sufficient 
 proof of the fact that they were never strictly assessed. 
 Apparently because the yield from them was dimin- 
 ishing, Parliament reverted again in 1697-8 (by 9 
 Will. III., c. 10) to the plan of voting a fixed sum 
 in definite amounts leviable from each county. The 
 total was 1,484,015 is. iifd., and it was assessed 
 on the several counties and corporate towns in pro- 
 portions determined by the yield of the first of the 
 four-shilling aids in 1692. But instead of leaving the 
 sum required from each county to be raised by an 
 equal pound rate on all kinds of income, Parliament 
 provides that offices and personalty shall be taxed 
 33. in the pound, and then, " to the end that the full 
 and entire sums charged upon the several counties, 
 cities," and so on, " may be fully and completely raised 
 and paid to his Majesty's use," it enacts that all 
 manors, messuages, lands, tenements, quarries, mines, 
 woods, fishing, tithes, tolls, and all annuities, rent 
 charges and other profits out of land, "shall be 
 
1 1 8 History of Local Rates 
 
 charged with as much equality and indifferency as 
 possible by a pound rate for or towards the several 
 and respective sums of money, ... so that by the 
 said rates " upon the personal estate, and so on, " and 
 upon the said manors, messuages," and so forth, " the 
 full and entire sums hereby appointed to be raised as 
 aforesaid shall be completely and effectually taxed, 
 assessed, levied, and collected." The land-tax con- 
 tinued to be voted annually in this form for a whole 
 century, with the exception that 4.8. was substituted 
 for 38., and the sums required from the counties and 
 towns accordingly increased by one-third. 
 
 If the provisions of these annual acts had been 
 faithfully carried out, it is plain that in many places 
 land would either at once or very soon have been 
 exempted from the " land-tax," since 48. in the pound 
 on incomes from other sources would have been suf- 
 ficient to raise the specific sums demanded. What 
 actually happened, however, was that the 48. in the 
 pound was not levied from personalty, and almost the 
 whole burden was placed upon landowners. In 1797 
 this practice was legalised and perpetuated by the act 
 which created the system of redempt : on of land-tax 
 (38 Geo. III., c. 60), the unredeemed portion of the tax 
 being made a perpetual charge on the unemancipated 
 part of each parish or place. At that time only 
 15 0,000 was levied from property other than land; 
 and in 1833, when all taxation of personalty was 
 abolished by statute (3 Will. IV., c. 12), the amount 
 was only 5214 8s. 4d. 1 The tenant's right to de- 
 
 1 See Bourdin, Exposition of the Land-Tax, 3rd ed., by S. Bunbury, 
 1885, pp. 10, u, where a table showing the amounts paid for per- 
 sonal property in each county is given. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 19 
 
 duct the land-tax from his rent has remained intact 
 throughout. 
 
 The history of the highway-rate, like that of the 
 land-tax, begins during the Commonwealth period. 
 The ordinance or act of 1654 (c. 3) 1 provides that two 
 or more householders with lands worth 20 a year, or 
 with 100 worth of personal estate, shall be chosen sur- 
 veyors yearly in each parish. They shall view all the 
 common highways and roads where carts and carriages 
 usually pass, all common bridges belonging to the 
 parish, and all watercourses, streets, and pavements. 
 Within six days afterwards they are to give public 
 notice in the church " to the parishioners to meet to 
 make an assessment for repairing the said highways 
 and streets, for making and repairing of pavements, 
 and for cleansing the said streets and pavements from 
 time to time, and for what else shall be requisite for 
 the purposes aforesaid, and thereupon a rate or tax in 
 writing . . . shall be laid by the said inhabitants present 
 at such meeting, or the greater number of them, by a 
 pound rate, upon all the several occupiers of houses, 
 lands, tithes, coal-mines, fellable woods, tenements, or 
 hereditaments within the parish, according to the true 
 yearly value of the same; and also upon the dead 
 goods, commodities, or stock-in-trade of every parti- 
 cular parishioner charged to pay to the poor, rating 
 every 20 value of such goods equal to every 2OS. land 
 by the year ; and such further rate to be afterward and 
 oftener made as occasion shall require, so as all the 
 rates together do not exceed I2d. in the pound for 
 
 1 Several of the highway acts here dealt with have been already 
 mentioned (pp. 91, 92) as illustrating the practice with regard to, 
 the poor-rate.. 
 
120 History of Local Rates 
 
 any one parish in any one year." If the inhabitants 
 can not or will not agree to lay a rate within 
 two days, the surveyors may make one of their own 
 authority. In any case where the common highways 
 or streets "extend in so great length in any one 
 parish as that the parish is overburthened therewith, 
 and the rate of i2d. in the pound before mentioned 
 will not suffice to amend and repair the same," the 
 justices in session are empowered to rate other 
 parishes in their jurisdiction, up to the I2d. limit, in 
 aid of the overburdened parish. Streets and pave- 
 ments in cities, corporate towns, and their suburbs, 
 were expressly declared to be common highways, and 
 " scavengers " to be surveyors, and all streets and pave- 
 ments were to be paved and kept in repair, "and 
 cleansed for the conveniency and health of the in- 
 habitants." If existing provisions and laws were 
 insufficient for this, the parishioners "rated to the 
 poor" might meet and "set down and make such 
 reasonable by-laws and orders for the rating and 
 taxing the several inhabitants of the said parishes, 
 being occupiers of any houses, lands, tenements, or 
 hereditaments, or having any stock or trade, or other- 
 wise being of sufficient ability." 1 The rate thus to 
 be levied seems to have been in addition to, not in 
 substitution for, the statute labour required by the 
 act of Philip and Mary. 
 
 Like some other parts of the Commonwealth legis- 
 lation, this act was re-enacted without much alteration 
 early in the reign of Charles II. The act of 1662 
 (14 Car. II., c. 6) provides that the surveyors are to 
 consider " what sum or sums of money will be requisite 
 
 1 III Scobejl's Acts and Ordinances, Ft. ii. pp. 283-6. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 
 
 I 21 
 
 to be raised . . . over and above what will be done by 
 the other laws " made for the amending of highways, 
 and thereupon shall, together with two or more sub- 
 stantial householders, " lay one or more assessment or 
 assessments upon every inhabitant rated to the poor, 
 and upon every occupier of lands, houses, tithes im- 
 propriate or appropriate portions of tithes, coal-mine 
 and other mines, saleable underwoods, stock, goods 
 or other personal estate not being household stuff," 
 within the parish, town, village, or hamlet, as they 
 shall think fit, " which said assessment or assessments 
 shall not exceed in the whole above the sum of 6d. 
 in the pound in any one year." Twenty pounds in 
 money, goods, stock, or other personal estate, is to 
 be reckoned equal to 2os. a year in lands. The agree- 
 ment of the parishioners generally is no longer sought 
 after, and the provisions about streets are dropped. 
 It is carefully provided that the tenant and occupier, 
 not the landlord, is " to bear all charges for the mend- 
 ing of the highways," and that no occupier of lands is 
 to be assessed both for land and stock. The rates 
 were not to continue beyond 25th March 1665, how- 
 ever, and the next act that of 1670 (22 Car. II., c. 12) 
 does not re-establish them, but simply provides that 
 where the justices at quarter -sessions are satisfied 
 that the other laws in force are insufficient for the 
 repair of the highways of a parish, they may cause to 
 be laid " one or more assessment or assessments upon 
 all and every the inhabitants, owners, and occupiers 
 of houses, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, or 
 any personal estate usually ratable to the poor, within 
 any such parish, township, or hamlet." These assess- 
 ments were not to exceed 6d. in the pound per annum 
 
1 2 2 History of Local Rates 
 
 on the yearly value of any lands, houses, tenements, 
 and hereditaments so assessed, nor the rate of 6d. for 
 20 in personal estate, and they were to cease after 
 25th March 1673. 
 
 By the act of 1691 (3 W. & M., c. 12) a rate for re- 
 imbursing the surveyors for buying road material 
 might be assessed by the justices upon all the inhabi- 
 tants of the parish, according to the 43rd of Elizabeth 
 for the relief of the poor. For general expenses, if 
 satisfied that the other provisions of the law are 
 insufficient, the justices might cause a rate to be laid 
 upon the persons mentioned in the act of 1670. 
 The limit of 6d. in the pound was still maintained. 
 In spite of the introduction of the word "owner" 
 before "occupier" in the act of 1670, and its repeti- 
 tion in 1691, it is clear enough that all these three 
 acts follow the ordinance of 1654 in intending the 
 rates to be laid on the same persons in the same 
 proportions as the poor-rate. 
 
 The extension of the turnpike system hindered the 
 development of the highway-rate, and we have a long 
 interval before we come to the consolidatory act of 
 1767 (7 Geo. III., c. 42). According to this, money for 
 the purchase of land required for widening a highway 
 is to be raised by an equal rate "upon all the occupiers 
 of lands, tenements, and hereditaments within such 
 parish, township, or place, according to the rules and 
 methods prescribed in an act of Parliament made 
 in the 43rd year of the reign of the late Queen 
 Elizabeth, entitled an act for the relief of the poor ; " 
 but the rate for general purposes, levied when the 
 other laws prove insufficient, is to be "upon all and 
 every the occupiers of lands, tenements, and heredita- 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 123 
 
 ments," without any such exact reference to the act 
 of the late Queen Elizabeth. This act was repealed 
 in 1773 by 13 Geo. III., c. 78, which provides for 
 several rates, each with a limit of so much in the 
 pound, and places them all on the occupiers of 
 " lands, tenements, woods, tithes, and hereditaments." 
 These words can scarcely have been intended to in- 
 dicate exactly the same things as were subject to the 
 poor-rate. "Woods" and "hereditaments" include 
 certain woods and mines which are not saleable 
 underwoods nor coal-mines, and were therefore sup- 
 posed to be excluded from the scope of the poor-rate 
 by the express inclusion of saleable underwoods and 
 coal-mines. The difference between the two rates 
 was fully recognised in the great act of 1835 (5 & 6 
 Will. IV., c. 50). This provided that "a rate shall 
 be made, assessed, and levied by the surveyor upon 
 all property now liable to be rated and assessed to 
 the relief of the poor, provided that the same rate 
 shall also extend to such woods, mines, and quarries 
 of stone, or other hereditaments, as have heretofore 
 been usually rated to the highways." It has been 
 said * that these words rendered stock-in-trade ratable 
 to the highways, but it is quite certain that this was not 
 intended and did not happen. Custom paid so little 
 attention to the law of the matter that it seems to 
 have been most common not to rate the mines, woods, 
 and quarries not ratable to the poor-rate ; and in 1862 
 (by 25 & 26 Viet., c. 61) this practice was legalised 
 wherever it existed on the formation of a highway 
 district. It was provided that the highway boards' 
 expenses were to be raised by precept to the overseers 
 
 1 Danby P. Fry, Local Taxes, p. 48. 
 
1 24 History of Local Rates 
 
 of the poor, except in cases where for a period of not 
 less than seven years it had been the custom of the 
 surveyor to levy a highway-rate in respect of property 
 not subject to be assessed to the poor-rate. In these 
 cases the waywarden of the parish was to levy a high- 
 way-rate as if the act had not passed. But this partial 
 discrepancy between the highway-rate and the poor- 
 rate disappeared when the poor-rate was extended to 
 all woods and mines by the Rating Act of 1874. 
 
 Until the present century legislation with respect 
 to streets in towns was almost entirely local, and it is 
 consequently buried in many hundreds of acts of Par- 
 liament which are not easily obtained, and from their 
 enormous bulk are very difficult to deal with when 
 they are obtained. 
 
 A comprehensive act (14 Car. II., c. 2) was passed in 
 1662 "for repairing the highways and sewers, and for 
 paving and keeping clean of the streets in and about 
 the cities of London and Westminster, and for reform- 
 ing of annoyances and disorders in the streets of and 
 places adjacent to the said cities, and for the regu- 
 lating and licensing of hackney coaches, and for the 
 enlarging of several strait and inconvenient streets and 
 passages." It provides that rates, taxes, and assess- 
 ments for scavengers, rakers, and such-like officers' 
 wages for cleansing the streets, shall be paid by the 
 parishioners and inhabitants of every parish and pre- 
 cinct in the city of London, " according to the ancient 
 custom and usage of the said city." In Westminster 
 likewise rates are to be made according to custom. 
 In the other parishes within the weekly bills of mor- 
 tality, the constables, churchwardens, and overseers 
 of the poor and of the highways, calling together 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 2 5 
 
 such of the inhabitants as have formerly borne the 
 like office, are to "make and settle a tax, rate, or 
 assessment, according to a pound rate, to be imposed 
 or set upon the inhabitants," which rate is to be con- 
 firmed by two justices. Nothing, except the reference 
 to custom in the case of the City and Westminster, 
 is laid down as to the principles on which the 
 parishioners or inhabitants are to be rated, but there 
 is a provision in the case of the City that all new 
 messuages, tenements, and houses shall be likewise 
 rated, taxed, and assessed, and shall pay proportionably 
 with others, which is sufficiently suggestive. As to 
 the strait and inconvenient streets and passages, 
 the act contains a betterment clause. After giving 
 certain commissioners power to pull down one side of 
 the street, it says, " And whereas the houses that shall 
 remain standing on the other side of the said street 
 or streets, or behind the said houses that shall be 
 so pulled down as aforesaid, will receive much advan- 
 tage in the value of their rents by the liberty of air 
 and free recourse for trade and other conveniences by 
 such enlargement, it is also enacted . . . that in case 
 of refusal or incapacity ... of the owners and 
 occupiers of the said houses to agree and compound 
 with the commissioners for the same, thereupon a 
 jury shall and may be empannelled ... to judge 
 and assess upon the owners and occupiers of such 
 houses such competent sum or sums of money or 
 annual rent, in consideration of such improvement 
 and renovation, as in reason and good conscience they 
 shall judge and think fit." The same clause appears 
 in the act of 1666 (18 & 19 Car. II., c. 8) for rebuilding 
 London, and is there applicable to all streets which 
 
126 History of Local Rates 
 
 may be enlarged, instead of only to certain streets 
 mentioned by name. This act also authorises a 
 " reasonable tax upon all houses within the said city 
 and liberties thereof, in proportion to the benefit they 
 shall receive " from the new drains and paving. 
 
 The act of 1662 was allowed to expire in 1679, and 
 except in the City, where " ancient usage and custom " 
 seems to have been still strong enough to stand with- 
 out statutory support, great inconveniences ensued. 1 
 These were tolerated for eleven years, and then, in 
 1690, a new act (2 W. & M., sess. 2, c. 8) for paving 
 and cleansing the streets was passed. This provides 
 that all public streets already paved shall from time 
 to time be repaired at the costs and charges of the 
 " householders inhabitants " in such streets, and in the 
 case of unoccupied houses, at the cost of the owners, 
 each householder or owner being required to repair 
 the part of the street in front of his house as far as 
 
 1 The preamble of the act 2 W. & M., sess. 2, c. 8, gives a graphic 
 description of these inconveniences: "Many persons in the out- 
 parishes in Middlesex and other parishes . . . which have been 
 chosen to serve the office of scavenger refuse to take the execution 
 of the said office upon them, and others who have been rated and 
 assessed towards the cleansing and carrying away the dirt and soil 
 out of the streets have refused to pay the rates assessed upon them, 
 there being no law in force to compel them thereunto, so that no 
 person can be employed to be raker to carry the dirt out of the 
 said streets, for want of some provision for payment for doing that 
 service, and the poorer sort of people daily throw into the said 
 streets all the dirt, filth, and coal-ashes made in their houses, by 
 reason whereof the said streets are become extremely dirty and 
 filthy, so that their Majesties' subjects cannot conveniently pass 
 through the same about their lawful occasions, and many other 
 inconveniences daily arise for want of the like provisions in other 
 cases relating to the street pavements and common ways." The 
 ancient custom and usage of the City were expressly preserved by 
 the act. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 127 
 
 the middle of the channel. In the case of new streets, 
 quarter-sessions might require the paving to be done 
 by the " owners and inhabitants of all and every the 
 houses new built or hereafter to be built, or adjoining 
 to any new streets or ways, . . . according to their 
 several and respective interests therein." In the two 
 Westminster parishes the cost of cleansing the streets 
 and removing house refuse is to be " rated, taxed and 
 assessed, raised, and paid by the parishioners of those 
 respective parishes, according to the custom and 
 usage " of the city of Westminster. In the parishes 
 outside the cities of London and Westminster it is to 
 be raised by a " pound rate to be imposed or set upon 
 the inhabitants" by a meeting summoned by the 
 constables, churchwardens, overseers, and surveyors, 
 who are to call together " such other ancient inhabi- 
 tants of their respective parishes as, according to the 
 custom of the said parishes or places, are usually 
 present at the election of parish officers." 
 
 It is easy to see that, as soon as, by a natural tran- 
 sition, the expenses of paving came to be borne by 
 public authorities levying rates, instead of by the 
 adjoining owners of property, each dealing with the 
 patch in front of his own property, the old idea that 
 the construction and maintenance of paving was an 
 obligation of the owner and not the occupier would 
 be in danger. The maintenance of the surface of a 
 street is not always practically distinguishable from 
 keeping it clean, and lighting and watching it is work 
 of much the same character ; while to distinguish 
 between the cost of creating an improved surface and 
 the maintenance of an old one is a matter of some 
 nicety, and requires a conception of capital and current 
 
128 History of Local Rates 
 
 expenditure which is scarcely present to the minds of 
 government authorities, local and imperial, even at 
 the close of the nineteenth century. It is not very 
 surprising, therefore, to find that by the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century the ancient liability of the 
 owners was no longer recognised. An act of 1698-9 
 (i i Will. III., c. 23) for cleansing, paving, and lighting 
 Bristol, which alloAvs the tenants (in the absence of 
 agreement to the contrary) to deduct the paving- 
 rate from their rents, expressly attributes the per- 
 mission to the consideration that the landlords 
 were liable for paving expenses "by the custom of 
 the city," as if this was a local peculiarity. In the 
 scores of acts for paving parts of London which were 
 passed in the eighteenth century there are several 
 which charge the whole cost on the landlords, 1 and 
 a great many which charge them with propor- 
 tions such as two-thirds, a half, one-third, and three- 
 tenths ; 2 but it is quite plain that this was regarded as 
 
 1 See L.C.C. Enactments relating to London, Part i., Eating clauses 
 division, pp. 117, 118 (8 Geo. II., c. viii. 18), for paving with pebble 
 stone the unpaved parts of Oxford Street, a frontage rate ; p. 47 
 (17 Geo. III., c. Ix. 7, 10, u), for enclosing, fencing, and embel- 
 lishing the middle of Hoxton Square, a pound rate on the houses in 
 the square ; p. 215 (26 Geo. III., c. cxx., 63) and p. 217 (52 Geo. III., 
 local series, c. xiv. 96), for paving the Clink ; p. 192 (28 Geo. III., 
 c. Ixviii. 32), for improvements in Bermondsey ; p. 207 (33 Geo. III., 
 c. xc. 32), for a new street in the parish of Christ Church, a rate 
 on the land abutting on the new street; p. 26 (43 Geo. III., local 
 series, c. x. 14), for paving Kensington Square, Young Street, and 
 James Street, a rate on the houses in the square and streets. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 162 (10 Geo. II., c. xv. 3), for enclosing, watching, 
 paving, adorning, and cleaning Ked Lion Square, a rate on the 
 houses in the square, three-tenths ; p. 167 (16 Geo. II., c. vi. 3), 
 the same in the case of Charter House Square ; p. 253 (24 Geo. II., 
 c. xxvii. 4), for enclosing, paving, lighting, and adorning Golden 
 Square, a rate on the houses in the square, one-half ; p. 232 (29 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 129 
 
 exceptional legislation, departing avowedly from the 
 general rule. 
 
 In general, the rates for street expenditure, such as 
 paving, cleansing, watering, lighting, and watching, 
 
 Geo. II., c. xc. 4), for repairing the terrace walk and water gate, 
 a rate on York Buildings, one-half ; p. 24 (7 Geo. III., c. ci. 72), 
 for paving and repairing certain footways in Kensington, a rate on 
 contiguous property, one-half ; p. 279 (9 Geo. III., c. xxii. 4), for 
 paving, cleansing, and lighting certain streets in Aldgate, a rate 
 on contiguous property, apparently ninepence in three shillings and 
 sixpence; p. 227 (n Geo. III., c. xxi. 37), for paving certain 
 streets in Wapping, a rate on contiguous property, one-third ; 
 p. 266 (11 Geo. III., c. xv. 34), for paving Whitechapel High Street, 
 a rate on contiguous property, one-third, "any agreement or con- 
 tract between landlord or tenant, or any usage, custom, or law to 
 the contrary notwithstanding ;" p. 280 (n Geo. III., c. xxiii. 37), 
 for paving certain streets in Aldgate, a rate on contiguous property, 
 one-third; pp. 290, 291 (12 Geo. III., c. xxxviii. 92), for paving in 
 the parish of Christ Church, one-half; pp. 126, 127 (14 Geo. III., 
 c. Hi. 16), for cleansing, paving, lighting, watching, and embel- 
 lishing Grosvenor Square, a rate on the houses in the square, one- 
 half ; p. 228 (17 Geo. III., c. xxii. 52), for improvements in Wapping, 
 a rate on contiguous property, one-third; p. 267 (18 Geo. III., c. 
 xxxvii. 29), for paving the footways of Whitechapel Eoad, a rate 
 on contiguous property, one-third ; p. 261 (20 Geo. III., c. Ixvi. 
 81), for paving in Mile End New Town, one-half; p. 229 (22 
 Geo. III., c. xxxv. 40), for improvements in Wapping, a rate on 
 property improved, one-third ; p. 204 (23 Geo. III., c. xxxi. 39), for 
 paving, cleansing, lighting, and watching in Rotherhithe, "where 
 the term of any agreement or lease of any premises shall not exceed 
 the term of seven years," one-third ; p. 268 (23 Geo. III., c. xci. 22), 
 for paving and regulating certain lanes in Whitechapel, a rate on 
 contiguous property, one-third ; p. 7 (33 Geo. III., c. Ixxxviii. 65), 
 for certain paving in Bethnal Green, a rate on contiguous property, 
 one-half ; p. 26 (43 Geo. III., local series, c. x. 14), for maintaining 
 the fence in Kensington Square, a rate on the houses in the square, 
 one-half. Only in one or two cases do these provisions override 
 agreements on the part of tenants to pay all rates, but possibly the 
 ordinary agreement of those times was not strong enough to oblige 
 the tenant to pay a rate or proportion of a rate expressly charged 
 on the landlord. 
 
 I 
 
130 History of Local Rates 
 
 created by local acts, seem to have conformed closely 
 to the poor-rate, though there were many differences 
 on points of detail. The only general difference of 
 principle was that the benefit to be received from the 
 expenditure was constantly taken into account in the 
 case of the street-rates. Special areas were formed 
 for the purpose, and even within those areas houses 
 in courts were often charged at a lower rate for paving 
 than houses in carriage-roads, and places not actually 
 lighted or watered were frequently exempted from 
 the lighting and watering rates, and so on. 
 
 In all the towns except London the Public Health 
 Act, 1848 (n & 12 Viet., c. 63), placed the cost of 
 paving and other street expenditure upon the general 
 district rate, which is levied on the poor-rate assess- 
 ment. Seven years later the same thing was done 
 for London by the Metropolis Local Management 
 Act, 1855 (18 & 19 Viet., c. 120), which swept away 
 the 1 50 authorities for paving which then existed in 
 London, and transferred their powers to the vestries, 
 and boards of works, whose rates were directly based 
 on the poor-rate assessment. 1 
 
 Both these acts admitted certain abatements for 
 which the Lighting and Watching Act, 1833 (3 & 4 
 Will. IV., c. 90), afforded a precedent. That act pro- 
 vided that houses and buildings should always pay a, 
 
 1 It is inconceivable that a public authority should undertake to- 
 lay out a building-estate for the benefit of the owners at the expense 
 of the rest of the area, and so modern legislation has preserved, and 
 even extended, the obligation of the owner to provide a properly 
 furnished street in the first place, though all the subsequent ex,- 
 penses of improvements and maintenance have been laid upon the 
 general body of ratepayers. See 18 & 19 Viet., c. 120 105 ; 25 & 
 26 Viet., c. 102 77 ; and 38 & 39 Viet., c. 55 150. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 1 3 r 
 
 rate three times as high as agricultural land. Under 
 the Public Health Act every "occupier of any land 
 used as arable, meadow, or pasture ground only, or as 
 woodlands, market-garden, or nursery grounds, and the 
 occupier of any land covered with water, or used only 
 as a canal or towing-path for the same, or a railway 
 constructed under the provisions of any act of Par- 
 liament for public conveyance," is rated only in the 
 proportion of one quarter of the full net annual value. 
 The Metropolis Management Act continued the abate- 
 ment allowed by the Lighting and Watching Act 
 wherever that act had been adopted. 
 
 The purely modern rates, such as the borough-rate 
 and the police-rate, all based from the first upon the 
 poor-rate, are of no great interest from our present 
 point of view. 1 We may therefore proceed to sum up 
 the results at which we have arrived. 
 
 It is clear that two great principles or canons of 
 taxation swayed the minds both of the people who 
 respected custom in the assessment of the old rates 
 and of the politicians and parliamentary draughtsmen 
 who created new statutory rates. These principles or 
 canons are : 
 
 (i.) That every inhabitant of a district should be 
 made to contribute according to his ability ; and 
 
 1 For a detailed account of the rates as they existed at the zenith 
 of their complication, see the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners 
 on Local Taxation, 1843 (Parliamentary Papers, Nos. 486, 487, and 
 488 : in vol. xx.). For their state outside London in 1884 and 1894 
 the best authorities are the two editions of An Outline of Local 
 Government and Local Taxation in England and Wales (excluding 
 London), by K. S. Wright, H. Hobhouse, and (2nd edition) E. L. 
 Fanshawe. The Annual Local Taxation Returns published by the 
 Local Government Board, with all their defects, present an un- 
 rivalled picture of local taxation at work. 
 
132 History of Local Rates 
 
 (2.) That every one who receives benefit from the 
 local expenditure should be made to contribute in 
 proportion to the benefit he receives. 
 
 Applied to the same rate, the two principles are 
 obviously incompatible. It is difficult to think of any 
 kind of government expenditure which confers bene- 
 fits upon people approximately in proportion to their 
 ability to contribute. But it happens that in practice 
 the nearest possible approximation to local rating 
 according to ability and the nearest possible approxi- 
 mation to local rating according to benefit are one 
 and the same thing, namely, the rating of persons in 
 respect of fixed property in the district. 
 
 Local taxation according to ability is impossible 
 except where the localities are very large, and divided 
 from each other by strong prejudices. With migration 
 between one place and another as easy as it has long 
 been in England, it is merely ridiculous to expect it to 
 be possible to rate a millionaire, in the parish in which 
 he resides, on his whole income. The effect of an honest 
 attempt to carry out such a policy would obviously 
 be to make the wealthy select for their residence the 
 lowest-rated places, which, of course, would be rated 
 lower than ever when the incomes of the millionaires 
 were added to their valuation lists. This wild attempt 
 was never made in England. What was attempted 
 was to rate the sources of income visible in the 
 parish. By this plan, if effectually carried out, a 
 man's income would often be cut up between several 
 parishes, and naturally a great deal would be lost in 
 the process. It is not very easy for assessors to 
 discover the amount of movable property in their 
 district, and they are not likely to be very anxious to 
 
Assimilation of other Rates i 3 3 
 
 discover it and rate it at its true value. The desire 
 of the majority of ratepayers is to attract such pro- 
 perty to the district, not to repel it. 1 Consequently 
 rates intended to be assessed according to the ability 
 of the inhabitants ended, as local income-taxes always 
 do end, in becoming rates on fixed property only. 
 Rates intended to be assessed according to benefit 
 received, on the other hand, were naturally levied in 
 respect of fixed property alone from the very begin- 
 ning. When a district is " improved " in any way 
 made more eligible either as a place of residence or of 
 business the benefit received by the owners of fixed 
 property in the district is generally much more im- 
 
 1 See for an example of the feeling on this subject which pre- 
 vailed at the beginning of the eighteenth century, An Attempt to 
 explain the true Meaning of an Act for erecting a Workhouse in . . . 
 Norwich, <&c., and to point out the exact Proportion assessable on each 
 Property mentioned in the said Act, namely, Houses, Lands, and 
 Personal Property or Stock-in- Trade, <frc. By a Guardian. Norwich ; 
 n. d. On pp. 1 1- 1 2 the author points out that, if persons are charged 
 2s. 6d. in the pound on their income from the funds, "they will be 
 obliged either to quit the town, and bid adieu to their nearest and 
 dearest relations and friends, or probably be considerably distressed 
 in their circumstances. As every one will readily see, one-eighth 
 part of their revenue is an object of vast importance, and therefore 
 might occasion many such leaving the city, and for ever prevent 
 any more such coming into it. And as such kind of people bring 
 so much ready money, inhabit the houses, pay all common taxes, 
 and lay out all their revenue among the tradespeople, shopkeepers, 
 and artificers, and as all such ready-money people are the life and 
 support of all the lower tradespeople, all wise governments, whether 
 in states or private communities, ever have given, and ever will give, 
 all imaginable encouragement to such respectable and desirable 
 inhabitants ; and therefore it would be the highest imprudence to 
 exclude and, as it were, excommunicate them." From stock-in-trade 
 within the city, which was certainly ratable under the act, he 
 thought a trader should be assumed to receive an income of only 
 3 per cent., since his ability, knowledge, and industry in managing 
 his fortune, and his courage in venturing it, are not assessable. 
 
134 History of Local Rates 
 
 portant and permanent than that received by other 
 persons. The improvement raises the value of the 
 fixed property, but cannot much affect the value of 
 the movables in the district, since movables in one 
 place are always subject to the competition of mov- 
 ables imported from some other place. 
 
 Both the popular canons of local taxation thus led 
 to the same unpopular practical conclusion, the rating 
 of fixed property only. 
 
 The fact that the rates, with one or two small 
 exceptions, are laid upon the occupiers and not on 
 the owners of the fixed property, has been largely the 
 result of an intelligible indifference on the part of 
 the occupiers, which led them to abandon old rights 
 and not to use the political power which they have 
 possessed for sixty years, to enforce the creation of 
 similar rights in the case of new rates. In a rural 
 community the densest person with the least ac- 
 quaintance with economics can see that taxes are 
 paid out of the produce of the labour of the culti- 
 vators of the land. It needs no great acuteness to 
 see that the same thing is true mutatis mutandis of 
 an urban community, though it may be a little more 
 difficult to identify the persons who use the property 
 and to define their produce. The occupier has the 
 first handling of the produce, and it is therefore 
 usually simpler to collect the rate from him than 
 to take it, so to speak, at second hand from the 
 landlord. 1 Of course it could be put upon the 
 landlord without any inconvenience by the simple 
 
 1 Where, however, the occupiers are unsubstantial or migratory 
 it is more convenient to collect rates from their landlord, and 
 modern legislation enables this to be done. See Wright and 
 Hobhouse, Local Taxation, 2nd edition, pp. 38, 39. 
 
Assimilation of other Rates 135 
 
 process of allowing the tenant to deduct it from his 
 rent, and, as we have seen, this course was often 
 followed. But so long as rates remain stationary 
 and, after all, changes are the exception rather than 
 the rule it can make no difference whether they are 
 deductible from rent or not. There may be here and 
 there persons who will pay as much for a rate-free 
 house or farm as for the same house or farm subject 
 to a rate of 53. in the pound, but such persons are 
 fortunately of somewhat exceptional mental constitu- 
 tion. We are not really "mostly fools." Who will 
 
 stand up and confess that he took 76 Street at 
 
 100 a year, and subject to 20 of rates, when an 
 exactly similar house next door, but in another parish, 
 was to let at i oo a year, and only 12 of rates ? As 
 for changes in rates, it was natural that the land- 
 lords should have a greater desire to be secure from 
 them than the tenant, since the more important 
 increases in current expenditure are generally made in 
 order to produce increased advantages, which accrue 
 to the tenant during the term. If a distinction had 
 been made between rates for current expenditure or 
 on income account and capital expenditure, the 
 tenants might well have insisted on the landlords 
 bearing the rates for capital expenditure in proportion 
 to their interests; but no such distinction was made, 
 or could have been made, considering the imperfec- 
 tions of all government account-keeping. 
 
 On the whole, it may be said that the system is 
 much more in accordance with the second principle, 
 that of taxation according to benefit, than with the 
 first, that of taxation according to ability. This is 
 the secret of the strength which has hitherto enabled 
 it to resist all attacks, for that portion of local taxa- 
 
1 3 6 History of Local Rates 
 
 tion which is raised for purposes to which the principle 
 of benefit is applicable has long been rapidly increas- 
 ing in proportion to that to which the principle of 
 ability is applicable. This is not only due to the 
 growth of local public works, such as sewers, but also 
 to thp fact that, as government organisation has be- 
 come more efficient, expenses which ought to be borne 
 in proportion to ability have been wholly or partially 
 removed from the sphere of local taxation. They 
 have been spread over wider areas, such as the union 
 instead of the parishes, the county instead of the 
 unions, and even at last over the kingdom in general, 
 within which area alone taxation according to ability 
 is still approximately possible. The movement in the 
 direction of enlarging the area of chargeability in the 
 case of the benefit rates has been of much less magni- 
 tude, and is merely the result of the fact that modern 
 towns and modern public works cover wider areas, 
 and have consequently enlarged the districts within 
 which benefit from local expenditure is obtained. It 
 is easy to say that what is required is to divide the 
 expenditure into that which is incurred in order to 
 benefit the locality on the one hand, and that which 
 is incurred for the good of the nation or mankind on 
 the other, and to remove the latter altogether from 
 the sphere of local taxation. In practice the ex- 
 penditure does not fall into two clearly defined classes, 
 and even if it did, the most consummate statesman- 
 ship would find it difficult always to reconcile ex- 
 tension of the area of chargeability with economy in 
 administration. Still, immediate progress is possible, 
 though the complete solution of the problem must 
 not be expected till a short time before the com- 
 mencement of the millennium. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACRE rates, 11,21,27-28,35,41,43 
 Agricultural land, partial exemp- 
 tion of, 130-131 
 Aliens deported, 59, 74 
 Alms, 56-62, 64-65, 67-69 
 Almshouse-rate, 73 
 Alton poor-rate on personalty, 96 
 Andover poor-rate on stock-in- 
 trade, 94-95 
 Assent, rates by common, 16, 49, 
 
 67, 73-74, 108 
 Assessments, monthly, 114-117 
 
 BEDFORD Level, 112 
 
 "Bettered," 112 
 
 Betterment charge, 125-126 
 
 Borough-rate, 17, 131 
 
 Boston, poor-rate, 83-84 ; church- 
 rate, 1 06 
 
 Bradford -on- Avon poor-rate on 
 personalty, 96 
 
 Braintree church-rate, 108 
 
 Bridges, 9-10, 30-32, 50 
 
 Bristol, paving-rate on owners, 
 128; workhouse-rate on stocks 
 and estates, 88-89 ; highway 
 to Gloucester, 7, 40-41 
 
 Burgesses in Parliament, wages 
 of, 21, 34-35 
 
 CALAIS burgesses in Parliament, 
 
 34 
 
 Canals, three-fourths exemption 
 of, 130-131 
 
 Canterbury poor-rate on stock-in- 
 trade, 91 
 
 Cardiff Bridge, 32-33 
 
 Cattle, rating of, 15, 16, 23, 
 86 
 
 Causeway, 16. See Highway 
 
 Centimes additionels, 20 
 
 Chepstow Bridge, 48 
 
 Chester Bridge, 12 
 
 Chichester walls, 17, 22 n. 
 
 Choughs and crows, 34, 50 
 
 Church-rate, 14-16, 24-26, 79-80, 
 103-108 
 
 Constable's-rate, no 
 
 Contracts set aside, 36, 129 n. 
 
 Conveyance of poor and vaga- 
 bonds, 58-59, 65, 67, 109 n., 
 no w. ; of malefactors, 47, 50, 
 no n. 
 
 Correction, houses of, 66-67, 74, 
 109 n. 
 
 County rate, 109-111, 136; stock, 
 109 
 
 Crown land rated for sewers, 29 ; 
 for re-edification, 41 
 
 137 
 
138 
 
 Index 
 
 DARLINGTON poor-rate on stock- 
 in-trade, 97 
 Deduction of rate from rent, 36, 
 
 41, 113-114, US, 134-135 
 Dursley poor-rate on personalty, 
 
 97 
 Drury Lane paving, 48 
 
 EARBY'S case, 83-84, 106 
 Expenses of family, &c., 78 
 
 Facilitates, 22 n., 79 
 
 Farmer's stock, 86, 90, 117 
 
 Feudal obligations, 7-10 
 
 Fifteenths and tenths, 13-14, 18- 
 20, 22 #., 23 n. 
 
 Fitz-Osbert's riot, 17-18 
 
 Folkestone, ability and chamber- 
 lain's rates, 102 
 
 Fortifications, 16-17 
 
 Frome poor-rate on personalty, 
 96 
 
 GENERAL district rate, 130 
 Gloucester and Bristol highway, 
 
 7, 40-41 
 
 Grain, preservation of, 41-42 
 Greenwich marshes, 35 
 Grumbling, ratepayer fined for, 
 
 21 
 Guildford tenth, 14 
 
 JlAiLSHAM .church-rate on non- 
 resident, 24-26 
 
 Highway, 6-9, 42-43 ; rate, 119- 
 124 
 
 Holborn paving, 38-39 
 
 Hospital-rate, .73 
 
 Household goods, rating of. 85-86 
 Hue -and -cry rate, 45-46, 50, 
 ill 
 
 IPSWICH, miscellaneous expenses, 
 1 8-2 1 ; paving, 39 
 
 JAIL-RATE, 33, 50, 109. See also 
 
 Prisoners 
 
 Jeffrey's case, 24-26, 31, 70, 103 
 Judges' resolutions in 1597, 74- 
 
 75, 101 ; in 1633, 82, 86-87 
 
 KING'S Bench prisoners, 73-74, 
 109 
 
 Kingsferry, rate for maintenance 
 of, 43-44 ; highway from, to 
 Middleton, 44-45, 70-71 
 
 King's Lynn poor-rate on per- 
 sonalty, 96 
 
 LAND-SCOT, 52 
 
 Land-tax, 114-119 
 
 Lea, dredging the, 42, 50 
 
 Leicestershire, landlords rated in, 
 84 
 
 Leverton church-rate, 103 
 
 Lighting, 129-131 
 
 Local taxation distinguished from 
 general, 4 
 
 London, City Commission of 
 Sewers, 113; county rate in 
 City, 103 ; church-rates, 107- 
 108 ; poor-rates on personalty, 
 96, and see Shoreditch and 
 Whitechapel ; sewers, 112-114; 
 streets, 124-131 
 
 Lump sums, 31-32, in 
 
Index 
 
 139 
 
 MALEFACTORS' conveyance to jail, 
 
 47 
 
 Marshalsea prisoners, 73~74> l9 
 Metropolitan Board of Works, 
 
 H3 
 
 Metropolitan common poor fund, 
 61 
 
 Middleton. See Kingsferry 
 
 Mines, poor-rate on, 101 ; land-tax 
 on, 117 ; highway-rate on, 123- 
 124 
 
 Minority, attempt to lay church- 
 rate by, 1 08 
 
 Money, poor-rate on, 96-97 ; 
 church-rate on, 107 
 
 NONSUCH to Taleworth highway, 
 
 47, 50 
 
 Norwich Cathedral poor-rate, 78- 
 79 ; workhouse-rate on person- 
 alty, 89, 133 n. 
 
 OXFORD rate for improving the 
 Thames, 47-48 
 
 PAVING. See Streets 
 
 Pevensey town-scot, 102-103 
 
 Plague, rate for sufferers from, 
 46-47, 50 
 
 Police-rate, 131 
 
 Poll-tax, 17-18 
 
 Poole, poor-rate on salaries, money, 
 household goods, ships, and 
 stock-in-trade, 81, 85, 96-97 ; 
 church-rate, 107 
 
 Poor-rate, origin, 54-62 ; history 
 to 1 60 1, 62-77 J history since 
 1 60 1, 78-101 ; assimilation of 
 other rates to, 102-130 
 
 Prisoners, rate for relief of, 
 
 73-74, 109 n. 
 Profits, 85 
 
 QUALITY of land considered, 1 1, 24 
 Quinzieme. See Fifteenths 
 
 RAILWAYS, three-fourths exemp- 
 tion of, 130-131 
 
 Rate-in-aid, 61, 72-73 
 
 Re-edification,. 41, 50 
 
 Rent paid, as criterion of ability, 
 80 ; received, not ratable, 82- 
 85. See Deduction 
 
 Resolutions. See Judges' resolu 7 
 tions 
 
 Ringwood poor-rate on stock-in; 
 trade, 92-94 
 
 Roads. See Highway 
 
 Rochester Bridge, 10 n. 
 
 Romney Marsh, 10-12, 21-22, 28 
 
 ST. GILES paving, 48 
 
 Salaries, 24, 80-82 
 
 Scarborough pier, 35-37, 50 
 
 Scot and lot, 21 
 
 Sea-wall, 1 6. See Romney Marsh 
 and Sewers 
 
 Sewers-rate, 10-12, 21-22, 27-30, 
 42, 112-114 
 
 Shaftesbury and Sherborne cause- 
 way, 39-40 
 
 Sheep, rating of, 1 6, 23 
 
 Sherborne. See Shaftesbury 
 
 Ship-money, 50-53, 115 
 
 Ships, rating of, 97, 107 
 
 Shoreditch poor-rate on person- 
 alty, 90 
 
 Soldiers, rate for relief of, 67, 74 
 
 Southampton fortifications, 17 n. 
 
140 
 
 Index 
 
 Southwark paving, 39 
 Status to be regarded, 79 
 Stock-in-trade, poor-rate on, 86- 
 
 100; church-rate on, 106-107; 
 
 highway-rate on, 119-123 
 Strand paving, 37-38 
 Streets, 37, 120-121, 124-131 
 Subsidy, 20 n. 
 Substance, 18, 22 
 Surplus from poor-rate, 65 
 
 TALEWORTH. See Nonsuch 
 Tamworth fifteenth, 22 n. 
 Tax distinguished from rate, 3-5 
 Tenths. See Fifteenths 
 Thames, 47-48, 50 
 Town expenses, 17-21 
 Trowbridge poor-rate on per- 
 sonalty, 96 
 Turnpikes, 122 
 
 UNIONS, 61, 136 
 Upton-on-Severn Bridge, 48-49 
 
 VAGABONDS, 55-59, 65-69, 74, 
 
 109 n., non. 
 Visible property, 93-94, 99 
 
 WAGES. See Salaries 
 
 Wales, wages of representatives 
 in Parliament, 34-35, 50 
 
 Warminster poor-rate on person- 
 alty, 96 
 
 Watching, 129-131 
 
 Westminster, sewers commission, 
 113; streets, 124-127 
 
 Whitechapel, poor-rate, 79-80 ; 
 church-rate, 79-80, 106-107 
 
 " Will and doom," 106 
 
 Witney poor-rate on stock-in- 
 trade, 91-92 
 
 Woods, poor-rate on, 101 ; land- 
 tax on, 117; highway-rate on, 
 123-124 
 
 Worcester, not ratable for Upton 
 Bridge, 49 ; poor-rate on per- 
 sonalty, 89 
 
 Wrotham church-rate, 105 
 
 THE END. 
 
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