The Records of Central Government Taxation in England and Wales: Clerical Taxes 1173 - 1664

The records of clerical taxation held at The National Archives at Kew (accessible online at TNA, E 179) contain over 7500 individual items, bundles or files surviving from the late twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. They comprise a wealth of detail on the institutional, economic and social history of the medieval and early modern Church in England and Wales and on the prosopographical history of the clergy, and as such are important sources both for researchers interested in the history of the Church and its relations with the State and for historians working on governmental policy in regard to revenue raising and the varying regional and local responses to this aspect of state building. The availability of a comprehensive, on-line catalogue of the documentation in E 179 will provide the opportunity for comparative studies of different dioceses and for longitudinal studies of the Church at both local and national level to supplement the ‘snapshot’ views provided in studies of major surveys of clerical wealth and/or population such as the Taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV of 1291, the clerical poll taxes of 1377-81 and the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535. Further details are at http://www.york.ac.uk/history/research/major-projects/#Clerical%20Taxes ....