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- Title
The Medieval Lay Subsidies and Economic History.
- Authors
Hadwin, J. F.
- Abstract
The article evaluates records of the medieval lay subsidy, the national direct tax to the monarchy of Great Britain. The medieval lay subsidy was the first national direct tax voted by English parliaments to the crown. Like the contemporary development of customs duties it was a huge financial success, vastly enhancing the resources of the monarchs while also perhaps tempting them to entertain ambitions that were beyond the capacity of their novel affluence to fulfil. For the political and administrative historian subsidy records have an obvious importance, but they have fascinated economic historians, too, since they provide the most comprehensive evidence one has of personal and national wealth in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The lay subsidy rolls have thus been used for a host of purposes, the most ambitious being to measure secular trends in the geographical distribution of wealth between 1334 and the early sixteenth century. Unfortunately, the more one traces these levies back to their local assessments the less realistic they often appear, and scholars have long accepted the existence of serious undervaluation.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; SUBSIDIES; DIRECT taxation; TARIFF; INCOME inequality; VALUATION
- Publication
Economic History Review, 1983, Vol 36, Issue 2, p200
- ISSN
0013-0117
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2595920