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The History of Clerical Taxation in England and Wales, 1173–1663: The Findings of the E 179 Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2015

MAUREEN JURKOWSKI
MAUREEN JURKOWSKI*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article marks the completion of an online database catalogue of the records of taxation of the medieval and early modern clergy of England and Wales in the ‘E 179’ clerical series at The National Archives. It has two parts: an overview of the history of clerical taxation based upon the database's register of tax grants and an analytical guide to the contents of the series, with references to all key documents. The intention is to stimulate research in this important area of study by providing a blueprint for the future exploitation of this rich seam of neglected records.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 53 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 The document series is Exchequer, Pipe Office, accounts rolls of subsidies and aids, E 359.

2 For their archival history see David Crook, ‘Records of lay taxation in the Public Record Office, London, c. 1200–1700’, in W. M. Ormrod, Margaret Bonney and Richard Bonney (eds), Crises, revolutions and self-sustained growth: essays in European fiscal history, 1130–1830, Stamford 1999, 432–4.

3 This is especially true of historians of early modern clerical taxation. Medieval historians of clerical taxation – notably W. E. Lunt, Alison McHardy and Jeff Denton – have been less reluctant to delve into these records.

4 Namely, Helen Watt and Maureen Jurkowski, under the direction of the principal applicant, W. J. Sheils: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179. For a detailed account of the larger E 179 project, which began at Chancery Lane in 1995, see H. Watt, ‘Taxation of the clergy in England and Wales, c. 1180–1664: an introduction to the E 179 project and database’, in R. C. E. Hayes and W. J. Sheils (eds), Clergy, Church and society in England and Wales, c. 1200–1800 (Borthwick Texts and Studies xli, 2013), 1–10.

5 See, for example, R. C. E. Hayes, ‘“For the state and necessity of the realm”: clerical taxation in the reign of Henry vi’, in Hayes and Sheils, Clergy, Church and society, 105–7.

6 W. E. Lunt, Financial relations of the papacy with England: studies in Anglo-papal relations during the Middle Ages (1939), Cambridge, Ma 1962, i. 175–7, 187–93, 197–227; ‘The text of the ordinance of 1184 concerning an aid for the Holy Land’, EHR xxxvii (1922), 235–42Google Scholar; and ‘Early assessments for papal taxation of English clerical incomes’, Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1917), Washington, DC 1920, 267–90; Cheney, C. R., ‘Master Philip the notary and the fortieth of 1199’, EHR lxiii (1948), 342–50Google Scholar.

7 W. E. Lunt, The valuation of Norwich, Oxford 1926, 52–95. See also pp. 56, 61 below.

8 Idem, Financial relations, i. 358–81, 676, and ‘The account of the papal collector in England in 1304’, EHR xxviii (1913), 313–21Google Scholar.

9 Idem, ‘Clerical tenths levied in England by papal authority during the reign of Edward ii’, in Anniversary essays in mediaeval history by students of Charles Homer Haskins, Boston–New York 1929, 157–78, and Financial relations, i. 382–412; ii. 75–94.

10 Idem, ‘Early assessments’, 268–79, and Valuation of Norwich, 1–52.

11 The few surviving assessments made in 1267–9 and 1276 are printed (from monastic archives) in idem, Valuation of Norwich, 540–59.

12 Denton, J. H., ‘The valuation of the ecclesiastical benefices of England and Wales in 1291–3’, Historical Research lxvi (1993), 231–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 For the comparable freezing of the 1332 assessment of lay wealth from 1334 onwards see The lay subsidy of 1334, ed. R. E. Glasscock, London 1975, and M. Jurkowski, C. L. Smith and D. Crook, Lay taxes in England and Wales, 1188–1688, Kew 1998, pp. xxxi–xxxiv, 37–8.

14 Lunt, Financial relations, i. 404–7; TNA, E 179/67/9; E 359/3, rots 11, 17d.

15 The total sum expected to be raised was £100,000; half was to come from laity and half (rather unfairly) from the clergy: Ormrod, W. M., ‘An experiment in taxation: the English parish subsidy of 1371’, Speculum lxiii (1988), 64–8Google Scholar.

16 Records of convocation, ed. Gerald Bray, Woodbridge 2005, III: Canterbury 1313–1377, 346–50; IV: Canterbury 1377–1414, 22–33, 40–3; XIII: York, 1313–1461, 185–8, 193–208.

17 Michael Hicks, ‘The rising price of piety in the later Middle Ages’, in Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (eds), Monasteries and society in the British Isles in the later Middle Ages, Woodbridge 2008, 97–8.

18 Records of convocation, iv. 261–4, 296–9; Rogers, A., ‘Clerical taxation under Henry iv, 1399–1413’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xlvi (1973), 129–34Google Scholar, 139–40, 143.

19 Records of convocation, xiii. 291–7, 361–4. The net yield of the 1418 tenth paid by the unassessed was only £7 8s.1d.: E 359/21, rot. 5.

20 Records of convocation, V: Canterbury, 1414–1443, 83–7, 273–7, 349–55; VI: Canterbury, 1444–1509, 47–51.

21 Under taxes granted in 1449, 1450, 1453, 1472 and 1484: Records of convocation, vi. 47–51, 55–60, 80–6, 214–18, 291–5.

22 Records of convocation, v. 172–4. The threshold in the north was ten marks from 1408: ibid. xiii. 311–13. See also p. 71 below.

23 Jurkowski, Smith and Crook, Lay taxes, pp. xxxvii–xxxix, 91–2, 102–4.

24 For Edward iv's experimental lay taxes see Jurkowski, M., ‘Parliamentary and prerogative taxation in the reign of Edward iv’, Parliamentary History xviii (1999), 271–90Google Scholar.

25 Records of convocation, vi. 350–5, 400–4, 431–8; XIV: York, 1461–1625, 109–12.

26 Ibid. VII: Canterbury, 1509–1603, 20–32.

27 Ibid. vii. 85–100; xiv. 187–8; M. Kelly, ‘Canterbury jurisdiction and influence during the episcopate of William Warham, 1503–1532’, unpubl. PhD diss. Cambridge 1963, 161–75.

28 Records of convocation, vii. 143–7; xiv. 196–204; Guy, J. A., ‘Henry viii and the praemunire manoeuvres of 1530–1531’, EHR xcvii (1982), 481–503Google Scholar. Attesting to its extreme unpopularity are the riots among the unbeneficed clergy of London provoked by the bishop's attempt to assess them: TNA, C 85/126/35A–B, 36–8, 40, 40A–B.

29 SR iii. 493–9; Valor ecclesiasticus, ed. J. Caley, London 1810–34.

30 Carter, P., ‘Mary Tudor, parliament and the renunciation of first fruits, 1555’, Historical Research  lxix (1996), 340–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Royal taxation of the English parish clergy, 1535–58’, unpubl. PhD diss. Cambridge 1994, 125–8.

31 SR iii. 776–8. The clerical subsidies were initially administered together with the annual tenths: Carter, P., ‘The records of the Court of First Fruits and Tenths: 1540–54’, Archives xxi (1994), 57–66Google Scholar, and ‘The records of the Court of First Fruits and Tenths: a revised list’, Archives xxii (1995), 77–9Google Scholar.

32 SR iv. 74–8, 190–3, 500–5, 678–83.

33 SR iv. 297–300. For a schedule of sums apportioned among twenty-nine benefices to make up the shortfall in Canterbury diocese in 1556 see Lambeth Palace Library, London, CM I/60/1.

34 SR iv. 562–7.

35 SR iv. 297–300, 500–5, 861–6.

36 SR iii. 1016–18; iv. 632–7, 738–43, 1101–8.

37 Under grants made in 1597, 1601, 1606, 1610, 1621, 1624, 1625 and 1628, and, in addition, clerical ‘benevolences’ in 1587 and 1640: SR iv. 930–7, 984–91, 1101–8, 1181–7, 1263–9; v. 3–9, 33–9; Records of convocation, xiv. 471–3 (grant of 1621); E 179/67/63 (original grant of the benevolence, 1587); Carter, P., ‘Parliament, convocation and the granting of clerical supply in early modern England’, Parliamentary History xix (2000), 16–23Google Scholar; Cope, E. S., ‘The Short Parliament of 1640 and convocation’, this Journal xxv (1974), 167–84. For taxation during the Interregnum see Jurkowski, Smith and Crook, Lay taxes, pp. li–lvi, 194–254Google Scholar.

38 SR v. 481–8; I. M. Green, The re-establishment of the Church of England, 1660–1663, Oxford 1978.

39 SR v. 307. See also p. 77 below.

40 Similarly, E 179/363/47 is a bundle of twelve receipts for papal and clerical tenths paid by the nuns of Aconbury Priory from 1330 to 1380, once in their archive. For a list of the houses whose archives survive, in significant part, in The National Archives see Jurkowski, M., ‘Monastic archives in The National Archives’, Archives xxxii (2007), 16Google Scholar.

41 E 179/62/1. This was collated with a second (differing) copy of the assessment, in the archive of the dean and chapter of Durham, and printed by Lunt in Valuation of Norwich, 197–209. Lunt dates the copy (pp. 170–1) to c. 1267. Most of the other surviving assessments made for this tax – all printed by Lunt – are from monastic archives.

42 E 179/58/1. For this tax see Lunt, W. E., ‘A papal tenth levied in the British Isles from 1274 to 1280’, EHR xxxii (1917), 49–89Google Scholar.

43 For the scope and scale of his project see Denton, J. H., ‘Towards a new edition of the Taxatio ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate P. Nicholai IV circa A. D. 1291’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library lxxix (1997), 67–79Google Scholar. Fortunately, Denton's work on the southern province was complete and has recently been published on the Taxatio website at the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) at Sheffield University: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/taxatio. Work on the northern province remains outstanding.

44 www.ucl.ac.uk/history/englishmonasticarchives. See also English monastic estates, 1066–1540, ed. M. Jurkowski and N. Ramsay, with S. Renton (List and Index Society, s.s. xl–xlii, 2007).

45 Most of these are in box 68: Lunt, Financial relations, i. 666–7.

46 These books, now E 164/13 (northern province) and E 164/14 (southern province), supplied the base text for the edition of the Taxatio published by the Record Commission in 1802: Taxatio ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate P. Nicholai IV circa A. D. 1291, London 1802.

47 E 179/42/211.

48 E 179/4/3; E 179/30/1; E 179/35/1–3; E 179/45/1; E 179/52/1; E 179/55/2–3; E 179/58/2–2A; E 179/67/8; E 179/68/9. Another file of writs to collectors is at E 179/67/2.

49 E 179/68/4, 8, 9, 11, 45; E 179/363/37.

50 Lunt, Financial relations, i. 366–81, 676.

51 E 179/67/3A.

52 Many, but not all, are in E 179/376/1–51.

53 A slightly later fair copy of the reassessment of Durham diocese in 1317 is at E 179/62/129, very close to the text printed from E 164/13 in Taxatio P. Nicholai IV, 329–31, and a fair copy, made in 1335, of the York reassessment of 1327–9, is now E 179/63/3. See also E 179/363/46.

54 E 179/45/1B.

55 Namely, from Bath and Wells (E 179/4/1, 2), Coventry and Lichfield (E 179/15/2, 3, 16A; E 179/45/16; E 179/363/73, 74), Exeter (E 179/24/10B), Lincoln (E 179/35/5, 7; E 179/238/77), St Asaph (E 179/1/3), St David's (E 179/21/1) and York (E 179/63/6, 10, 11, 28; E 179/241/327, pt i).

56 For the tariff see CFR ix.158–9.

57 E 179/60/1 (Carlisle), E 179/62/4 (Durham). The southern returns are Bangor (E 179/3/2, 3), Coventry and Lichfield (E 179/15/6A; E 179/271/4; E 179/20/595), Ely (E 179/23/1), Exeter (E 179/24/9, 10A), Hereford (E 179/30/7), Lincoln (E 179/8/1B; E 179/35/24, 26; E 179/52/7), London (E 179/42/4A), Norwich (E 179/45/7C, 18), St Asaph (E 179/1/4), St David's (E 179/21/3, 16), Salisbury (E 179/52/5, 14) and Worcester (E 179/15/16; E 179/58/5, 11, 54).

58 CFR ix. 190–1.

59 E 179/60/2A (Carlisle); E 179/62/5 (Durham). Returns survive from the southern dioceses of Bangor (E 179/3/4, 5), Bath and Wells (E 179/4/4), Chichester (E 179/11/3, 4, 7A), Coventry and Lichfield (E 179/15/5; E 179/363/92, arrears), Exeter (E 179/24/4), Lincoln (E 179/35/12), London (E 179/42/9), Norwich (E 179/45/8), Rochester (E 179/50/27), St Albans (35/201B), St Asaph (E 179/1/5), St David's (E 179/21/4, 5, 6) and Worcester (E 179/58/8).

60 E 179/63/12, 31 (York); E 179/62/6 (Durham).

61 Canterbury: E 179/8/2B; E 179/363/91; Lincoln: E 179/35/11, 16, 22D, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 144; E 179/42/12; E 179/271/10, 22; E 179/277/64; E 179/362/15; E 179/376/52; London, including the deanery of Arches and the jurisdiction of St Paul's Cathedral: E 179/42/10, 10A, 11, 16, 17, 20; E 179/44/347; Rochester: E 179/50/4; E 179/271/24; Salisbury: E 179/52/12, 15A, 224; E 179/277/8. For Norwich see pp. 66–7 below.

62 Chichester: E 179/11/9, 12; Coventry and Lichfield: E 179/15/8A, 8B; E 179/277/42; Exeter: E 179/24/5 (Cornwall archdeaconry, mostly complete); Hereford: E 179/30/10B; Rochester: E 179/271/24; E 179/50/4;  Salisbury: E 179/52/12, 15A, 224; E 179/277/8; St Asaph: E 179/1/6; E 179/2/107; St David's: E 179/21/8, 9; Winchester: E 179/55/6.

63 Clerical poll-taxes of the diocese of Lincoln, 1377–1381, ed. A. K. McHardy (Lincoln Record Society lxxxi, 1992); The Church in London, 1375–1392, ed. A. K. McHardy (London Record Society xiii, 1977). See also J. L. Kirby, ‘Clerical poll taxes in the diocese of Salisbury’, in N. J. Williams (ed.), Collectanea (Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Records Branch xii, 1956), 161–7, and ‘Two tax accounts of the diocese of Carlisle, 1379–80’, Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society lii (1952), 74–84Google Scholar. A transcription (without modern place-name identification) of all the returns from the northern dioceses is in F. P. Mackie, ‘The clerical population of the Province of York: an edition of the clerical poll tax enrolments, 1377–1381’, unpubl. DPhil diss. York 1998.

64 Both documents are legible only under ultraviolet light: E 179/362/15; E 179/376/52.

65 E 179/42/20 (printed in A. K. McHardy, ‘God and Caesar: “Taxpayer pain, historians’ gain”’, in Hayes and Sheils, Clergy, Church and Society, 99–100).

66 Malling Abbey (abbess and fourteen nuns) and the priories of Higham (prioress and fourteen nuns) and Dartford (prioress and nineteen nuns). Not all of the names, unfortunately, are legible: E 179/271/24. This document was once joined to another remaining fragment of the assessment, now E 179/50/4.

67 Although in excellent condition, the document's heading states that it relates to the subsidy granted in the third year of an unnamed king's reign, and the nineteenth-century cataloguers mistakenly plumped for Henry v: E 179/50/27.

68 They were assessed to pay £89 10s. and £24 13s. 8d., respectively: E 179/241/327, pt iii.

69 The eight membranes, placed in their original order, are now as follows: E 179/45/5B, mm 1–3; E 179/45/17; E 179/47/291; E 179/45/5B, mm 4–6.

70 Rot. 1: E 179/45/5A, m. 1; E 179/45/11; E 179/45/12; E 179/45/15; E 179/46/201. Rot. 2: E 179/45/5A, m. 2 (blank); E 179/45/9; E 179/45/14. Rot. 3: E 179/45/5A; E 179/47/290; E 179/45/10. Only one membrane (from rot. 3) appears to be lacking.

71 The schedule names eleven canons, twelve chaplains, a deacon and subdeacon at Windsor, and a dean, three chaplains, four clerks, a deacon and an acolyte at Wallingford:  E 179/52/4.

72 E 179/55/157.

73 E 179/4/14 (Bath and Wells); E 179/11/25 (Chichester); E 179/15/51, E 179/20/591 (Coventry and Lichfield); E 179/42/34 (London Arches); E 179/50/13 (Rochester).

74 For example, from the dioceses of Norwich in 1417 (E 179/45/65, m. 2) and York in 1418 (E 179/63/141, m. 1).

75 See the table of surviving returns in the appendix at pp. 80–1 below.

76 E 179/50/14 (1406); E 179/50/34, 35 (1419, two copies, including also a list of defaulters); E 179/50/41 (1429); E 179/50/48 (1435, summary account); E 179/50/89 (1449). For the enrolled accounts of all five poll taxes, where total numbers are also listed, see E 359/20.

77 E 179/15/15 (Chester); E 179/12/106C (Lewes).

78 For these returns see M. Jurkowski, ‘Were friars paid salaries? Evidence from clerical taxation records’, in L. Clark (ed.), The Fifteenth Century, XIII,  Woodbridge 2014, 131–52.

79 E 179/12/106C. Privately-employed chaplains also figure in the 1406 returns from Bath and Wells (E 179/4/20) and the archdeaconries of Huntingdon (E 179/35/84), Suffolk (E 179/45/6B) and Worcester (E 179/58/35), and in the 1449 return from Oxford archdeaconry (E 179/38/557).

80 E 179/42/49; E 179/55/34.

81 E 179/58/35, rot. 1d. See also the ten priests assessed at the hospital of St John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell: E 179/42/49.

82 For example, the chaplains taxed in 1406 at the nunneries of Romsey and Wherwell:  E 179/55/34.

83 Included here is William Dalby, schoolmaster (of the almonry school?): E 179/23/14.

84 This is evident from an extant bundle of seventy-two original accounts rendered by the collectors in all dioceses of the tenth granted in 1404. The cataloguers probably left them unsorted because of extensive damage to the left side of the bundle, and they are only identifiable by reference to each other: E 179/67/25.

85 For collectors’ attorneys see Jurkowski, M., ‘Monastic history in clerical taxation records’, Monastic Research Bulletin xv (2009), 12–13Google Scholar, and Hayes, ‘“For the state and necessity of the realm”’,  117–19.

86 E 179/278/3 (three tenths levied from 1344); E 179/67/11–13, 15–18, 20–1, 23; E 179/277/52 (tenths levied from 1370 to 1395). The only two later files are E 179/279/118 (tenth of 1425) and E 179/67/52 (subsidy of £25,000 levied in 1489).

87 E 179/12/100, 101. For other examples see Jurkowski, ‘Monastic history’, 13–14. For Moleyns see Bill Smith, ‘Adam Moleyns (d. 1450)’, ODNB, online version.

88 See, for example, the lengthy schedule issued by Bishop Reginald Pecok in 1453: E 179/12/108.

89 E 179/45/101.

90 An inquest headed by the abbot of Furness subsequently found, on the oath of jurors, that this return was fraudulent and that all of the incumbents were in fact resident: E 179/63/186.

91 For the details see Jurkowski, ‘Monastic history’, 10.

92 R. L. Storey, ‘Malicious indictments of clergy in the fifteenth century’, in M. J. Franklin and C. Harper-Bill (eds), Medieval ecclesiastical studies in honour of Dorothy M. Owen, Woodbridge 1995, 221–40. I plan to deal with this issue more fully elsewhere.

93 The threshold was raised to 10 marks in the grant of 1408, and thereafter fluctuated between £5, 8 marks and 10 marks until 1523.

94 Of course, southern collectors also submitted petitions for allowance, but gave more varied reasons for non-collection.

95 E 179/64/295A.

96 Many of these also bear the parties’ signatures: E 179/64/295A, 299, 299A–C; E 179/363/341, 342, 344. One (at E 179/64/299) was cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as early evidence of the use of the term ‘letters of placarde’.

97 By contrast with the southern clergy, many of whom resisted attempts to collect the loan, annotations made to the list indicate that the amounts assessed were paid in virtually every instance. The document is not noticed in Richard Hoyle's list of extant assessments: Tudor taxation records: a guide for users, London 1994, 51–3. The two extant assessments from the southern dioceses are now BL, ms Add. 21946 (Canterbury) and ms Harleian 133 (London).

98 A few have survived, however, in episcopal archives. The assessment of Lincoln diocese for the third year (1526), now in the archives of Lincoln Cathedral Library, has been edited by H. E. Salter in A subsidy collected in the diocese of Lincoln in 1526 (Oxford Historical Society lxiii, 1913). An assessment of Rochester diocese for the first year (1524) is now Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, DRb/A/z. A list of the total amounts assessed in each diocese of the province in 1524 is Lambeth Palace Library, CM I/76.

99 York diocese, by archdeaconry: E 179/64/300, pt i (York, 1524); E 36/149 (Richmond, 1524); E 36/61 (Richmond, 1525); SP 1/37, fos 174–85 (East Riding, 1526, printed in Fallow, T. M., ‘The East Riding clergy in 1525–6’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal xxiv [1917], 62–80)Google Scholar; E 315/412 (Nottingham, 1527); E 179/64/302, 304 (Nottingham, 1528); E 179/64/303 (Cleveland, 1528, printed in Fallow, T. M., ‘The Fallow papers’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal xxi [1911], 243–52Google Scholar). There are also fragments of assessments in York and Richmond, dating from 1526, 1527 or 1528: E 179/64/331; E 179/64/300, pt ii (York); E 179/64/328, 333 (Richmond). Durham diocese: E 179/62/58 (incomplete), and a few fragments from another return, E 179/64/300, pt ii.

100 Such documents include, for example, a book of accounts rendered at St Alban's Abbey during his abbacy in commendam (E 315/272), and documents from the archives of the monasteries that he dissolved in order to endow Ipswich College, now spread among several series at The National Archives.

101 E 179/64/300, pt i. Another assessment of York archdeaconry, made in 1525, is now Sheffield Archives, BFM 65. See C. C. Webb, ‘A census of York clergy? The clerical subsidy of 1523–1528’, in Diana Wood (ed.), Life and thought in the northern Church, c. 1100–c. 1700: essays in honour of Claire Cross (Studies in Church History, subsidia xii, 1999), 257–93.

102 E 179/64/299, mm. 1, 15–26; E 179/64/301.

103 Somerset Record Office, Taunton, D/D/Vc20 (Bath and Wells, 1533); Staffordshire Record Office, Lichfield,  B/A/17/1 (Stafford archdeaconry, 1531); BL, ms Harleian 594, fos 116r–154v (Coventry and Lichfield, 1533).

104 Moreover, a cache of seventy-two documents mis-catalogued in E 179 was transferred in the course of the project to TNA, E 331/BATH & WELLS/1. For the records of first fruits and tenths see Carter, ‘Records of first fruits’, 65–6, and ‘Revised list’,  77–9.

105 For a list of the surviving subsidy records there see Carter, ‘Revised list’, 78–9. A handful of documents relating to each of the subsidies granted in 1540, 1543, 1545, 1547 and 1550 have ended up, none the less, in the E 179 series.

106 These included flood waters in the East Riding and the depredations of Scots and men from Tynedale: E 179/278/44. See also C. Kitching, ‘Broken angels: the response of English parishes to the Turkish threat to Christendom, 1543–4’, in W. J. Sheils and D. Wood (eds), The Church and wealth (Studies in Church History xxiv, 1987), 209–17.

107 See, for example, the three books covering subsidy payments in the diocese of Durham for the period 1606 to 1635: E 179/62/100A; E 179/62/108A, pts i, ii.

108 See p. 60 above for these graduated rates.

109 E 179/62/96; E 179/62/72; E 179/62/76 (Durham); E 179/60/24, 26 (Carlisle). In Durham, similarly, lists of stipendiary priests end after 1585.

110 There were 158 curates in 1565 (E 179/40/819) and still 101 in 1581 (E 179/40/835), but these had fallen to fifty-three by 1586 (E 179/40/838) and to thirty-seven by 1589 (E 179/40/844). Only twenty-one curates were taxed in 1593 (E 179/41/849) and twelve in 1603 (E 179/41/866).

111 See M. L. Zell, ‘Economic problems of the parochial clergy in the sixteenth century’, in R. O'Day and F. Heal (eds), Princes and paupers in the English Church, 1500–1800, Leicester 1981, 19–43, and F. Heal, ‘Economic problems of the clergy’, in F. Heal and R. O'Day (eds), Church and society in England: Henry VIII to James I,London 1977, 113.

112 E 179/6/5, 14, 15 (Bristol, including Dorset archdeaconry); E 179/60/19–22 (Carlisle); E 179/61/2–4 (Chester); E 179/13/156 (Chichester); E 179/62/59–62, 66 (Durham); E 179/23/96, 99 (Ely); E 179/28/2 (Gloucester); E 179/49/10 (Peterborough).

113 E 179/67/61. Draft declared accounts for pensioners’ subsidies in Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Lancashire, Westmorland and Cumberland, 1576–8, are now E 179/277/35 and E 179/363/358.

114 Subscription lists in the E 179 series: E 179/278/64 (Bangor); E 179/7/87 (Bristol); E 179/277/46 (Canterbury and Rochester); E 179/307/27A (Carlisle); E 179/61/85 (Chester); E 179/20/586A (Coventry and Lichfield); E 179/32/223 (Hereford); E 179/34/86 (Llandaff); E 179/48/75A (Oxford); E 179/49/74 (Peterborough); E 179/22/175A (St David's); E 179/59/278B (Worcester). Subscription lists in the E 178 series: E 178/6665 (Chichester); E 178/6664 (London); E 178/6666 (St Asaph); E 178/6447 (Winchester).

115 Schedules of arrears or defaulters not included with the subscription lists cited in n. 114 above:  E 179/61/86 (Chester); E 179/278/56 (Durham); E 179/363/395 (St David's); E 179/277/3 (York). The state of account is E 179/278/60.

116 They are mostly fifteenth century, but include two from James i's reign: E 179/67/31–2, 34, 51, 55, 67, 69.

117 E 179/67/32; E 179/277/53. For this problem see Watt, ‘Taxation of the clergy’, 15–19.

118 E 179/67/59.

119 E 179/57/259; E 179/67/77; E 179/277/21. On the debts of bishops and their subcollectors see further Heal, ‘Clerical tax collection under the Tudors’, 104–22.

120 E 179/67/62. See also the papers of the auditor John Phillips, c. 1663, at E 179/277/16, and the various auditors’ bundles in the TNA series LR 9.

121 See M. Jurkowski, ‘“I believe in miracles”: Hugh Sexey's thing: the taxation of ecclesiastical benefices in the reign of Elizabeth’, in Hayes and Sheils, Clergy, Church and society, 142–5.

122 E 179/3/1A (Bangor, 1377–8); E 179/8/1BB (Canterbury, 1378); E 179/11/1A (Chichester, 1377–8); E 179/15/3A (Coventry and Lichfield, 1377–8); E 179/62/3 (Durham, 1378); E 179/363/76 (Ely, 1378); E 179/33/1 (Llandaff, 1370); E 179/35/4 (Lincoln, 1370); E 179/35/6B, pt i (Lincoln, 1377–8); E 179/42/3B; E 179/363/62 (London, 1370–2); E 179/45/1A (Norwich, 1377–8); E 179/50/1 (Rochester, 1377–8); E 179/1/2; E 179/363/61 (St Asaph, 1370); E 179/55/5C (Winchester, 1377–8); E 179/58/3A (Worcester, 1378); E 179/63/5 (York, 1370); E 179/63/9A (York, 1377–8). For the context of these inquests see A. K. McHardy, ‘The effects of war on the Church: the case of the alien priories in the fourteenth century’, in M. Jones and M. Vale (eds), England and her neighbours, 1066–1453: essays in honour of Pierre Chaplais, London 1989, 277–95. For a list of the alien inquests in E 106 see Jurkowski, ‘Monastic history’, 14 n. 39.