How to Trace your Family Tree with the Hearth Tax

by Stephen Taylor

Tax records have always proved to be a useful source of information for family historians and genealogists, and the Hearth Tax records are no exception. They date from the late 17^th century and were in operation between 1662 when they were brought in by Charles II and 1689 when they were repealed by William and Mary.   They are not to be confused with the Poll Taxes that were exacted in the years 1641, 1660 and 1697, despite the social uproar that occurred after the first Poll Tax was introduced in 1377, leading to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

Those Hearth Tax returns that are still in existence provide a unique snapshot of domestic occupancy during the Restoration period.    If your ancestors occupied a substantial property there is every chance that their names will be recorded provided they lived in one of those counties where records are extant and reasonably complete, such as Kent or Yorkshire.

The Hearth Tax was an emergency measure, and was introduced at a time of severe fiscal shortfall. Times of recession are not new! King Charles II had to find a quick way to boost the coffers of the Exchequer, so he introduced a tax on households to be paid every six months in the autumn at Michaelmas and in the spring on Lady Day.   The amount due was based on the number of hearths in a house, the value of the house and the income of the occupiers.

As the tax was levied on people as well as on property, the administration was complex and confusing. At one period government officials administered the tax directly from the centre.   At other times the collection was farmed out to private tax collectors.   Under this latter arrangement a fixed sum was paid for the privilege of extracting the taxes from those who were deemed to be eligible. Strangely enough these ‘farmers’ were not required to send in regular returns to the Exchequer!

Who had to pay the tax? Everyone had to pay the Hearth Tax unless they were exempted. You paid if your house was worth more than 20 shillings a year and you contributed to the local church and poor rates.     However, bearing in mind the two disparate methods of collection mentioned above it is not surprising if there was a degree of uncertainty amongst local officials about the criteria to be applied in all circumstances. The very poorest members of society were consistently exempted, but there may have been borderline cases that could have gone either way.

Where do you find the records?   At the National Archives in Kew the E179 database is the main portal for medieval and early modern taxation demands on the population. The majority of Hearth Tax documents can now be found there. However the picture is still far from complete. To remedy this gap in the data the Centre for Hearth Tax Research was established in 1995 under the direction of Professor Margaret Spufford, FBA, and supported by Roehampton University.

Two major projects are now under way. One concerns a freshanalysis of the situation in London during the Great Fire (1666) and the other is concerned with the publication of records county by county. This project is now making good, steady progress.

What can you gain from the records?   When conducting your research you do need to remember that the administrative units were very different in the late 17^th Century. There were counties, hundreds, boroughs and parishes, and of course in any instances place names will have changed as well.    Officially everyone should have been listed, either as having to pay the tax or as having been exempted. In some cases the list of the exempted became a simple number and no lists of names of the poorer inhabitants survive.

However, once you have negotiated these potential pitfalls and found the right list of householders it can be very rewarding to be able to confirm who belonged to the family tree at that time. Sometimes comments made by the officials who were compiling the returns added interesting points of detail serving to fill out the story of your family chronicle.

This article may be reprinted free of charge provided that the article remains unchanged, and the author's resource box is included in the reprint.

Stephen Taylor is an ardent genealogy enthusiast who would love to inspire others to take up this fascinating hobby.

For more great information visit: http://www.familyhistorysecrets.com/building-a-family-tree/

Article submitted Thursday, September 01, 2011 & read 18 times.

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