Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T14:14:12.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Cromwellian Decimation Tax of 1655 The Assessment Lists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2009

J. T. Cliffe
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Decimation Lists

The royalist uprising of March 1655 led the Protector to adopt a number of measures aimed at improving internal security, in particular the appointment of major generals, each with responsibility for a particular region; the establishment of a new county militia; and the introduction of an extraordinary or decimation tax which was intended to provide the necessary funding for the militia troops. Unlike the monthly assessment for the support of the regular army the decimation tax was a discriminatory tax in the sense that it was specifically designed as a levy on royalists or suspected royalists. In the event, however, it proved to be one of the most short-lived of taxes. On Christmas day 1656 Major General John Desborough introduced a parliamentary bill for its continuation and in a first reading debate on 7 January declared that

I believe no man has come under a decimation but such as have either acted or spoken bitterly against the Government, and for their young king, and drank his health. Many have escaped that have done such things. I hope they shall come under decimation I think it is too light a tax, a decimation; I would have it higher.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Historical Society Camden Fifth Series , Volume 7: Seventeenth-Century Political and Financial Papers, Camden Miscellany XXXIII , July 1996 , pp. 403 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For a full list of the major generals and their divisions or associations see the Appendix, below pp. 425–8.

2 Burton, Thomas, Dairy of Thomas Burton (ed. J.T.Rutt) (1828), i, 230–43, 310–21, 369Google Scholar. The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England (1762–1763), xxi, 48–55.Google Scholar

3 S.P.28/153, 159, 181, 197, part 2, 219, 226, 334, 342, unbound documents. E.179/176/554.

4 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 239, 240, 427–8, 434–6, 511–13, 561–3.Google Scholar

5 PRO, State Papers Domestic, Commonwealth, S.P.18/c/136.

6 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 225, 285, 363, 427Google Scholar. S.P.28/227, letter from the Essex commissioners, 30 January 1656/7 (unbound). CSPDom, 1655–6, 8.Google Scholar

7 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 179, 212, 241, 251, 364–5, 411.Google Scholar

8 Ibid, iv, 241. CSPDom, 1655–6, 34.Google Scholar

9 Acts of 16 July 1651, 4 August 1652 and 18 November 1652 (Sir Charles Firth and R.S.Rait (eds.), The Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (1911), ii, 520–45, 591–8, 623–52).Google Scholar

10 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 340, 541.Google Scholar

11 Firth, and Rait, , op.cit., 521, 541, 591, 624, 635.Google Scholar

12 See pp. 429–30, 432, 433, 442 and 452.

13 PRO, State Papers Supplementary, S.P.46/xcvii/fo.158.

14 Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (1965), 136.Google Scholar

15 CSPDom, 1655–6, 78, 122Google Scholar. Thurloe State Papers, iv, 434.Google Scholar

16 CSPDom, 1655–6. 111–12, 122, 124, 160, 234, 242, 247Google Scholar. In 1647 the Buckinghamshire property was said to be worth £400 p.a. (CCC, 66).

17 CSPDom, 1656–7, 44, 46, 89, 104Google Scholar. Haynes had responsibility for Suffolk and Boteler for Huntingdonshire.

18 CSPDom, 1655–6, 393Google Scholar. C.33/260/fo.381.

19 CCAM, 799–800Google Scholar. CSPDom, 1656–7, 128, 134, 156.Google Scholar

20 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 156, 185, 211, 212.Google Scholar

21 Ibid, iv, 247.

22 S.P.23/ccliv/241. Everitt, A. M., The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion 1640–60 (1966), 294.Google Scholar

23 CSPDom, 1655–6, 210Google Scholar. Smyth had been taxed at the rate of £110 a year.

24 The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England.… by Edward, Earl of Clarendon (ed. W.D.Murray) (1888), v, 394.Google Scholar

25 PRO, State Papers Supplementary, S.P.46/xcvii/fols.156–7. The lists supplied by the major generals were collated in three books: BL, Additional MSS 34, 011, 34, 012 and 34, 013.

26 CSPDom, 1655, 367–8Google Scholar. Those arrested who were subsequently required to pay the decimation tax include Sir John Tyrrell, Sir Henry Appleton, Sir Benjamin Aylofle and Sir William Hicks of Essex, Sir Sackville Glemham and Edward Rookwood of Suffolk, and Samuel Thornton and Thomas Story of Cambridgeshire.

27 Thurlae State Papers, iv, 218, 406Google Scholar. Napier's estate in Bedfordshire had been valued at £1796 a year by the sequestrators (BL, Additional MSS 5494, fols.13–14). In 1648 he had been secluded from the Long Parliament as a consequence of Pride's Purge. The Earl of Bedford's brothers Lord John and Lord Edward Russell were both taxed: see pp. 429, 431 below.

28 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 171, 208, 227, 229, 274, 333, 340, 511.Google Scholar

29 Ibid, iv, 218, 224–5, 235. 257, 321, 333. 341, 344–5. 742.

30 Some men figure in more than one of these totals.

31 Only two of these individuals were actually seated in the county.

32 These included Sir John Strangways, Sir Gerrard Napier and Sir Hugh Wyndham of Dorset and Sir James Thynne of Wiltshire (Thurloe Stale Papers, iv, 324–5, 336–7).Google Scholar

33 Ibid, iv 189.

34 Ibid, iv 234.

35 Ibid, iv 208.

36 Ibid, iv 335.

37 Ibid, iv 293. In fact all three men were taxed: see p. 443 below.

38 BL, Additional MSS 6689, fo.320. Thurloe State Papers, iv, 765Google Scholar. CSPDom, 1656–7, 10.Google Scholar

39 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 344.Google Scholar

40 Ibid, iv, 179, 247.

41 Ibid, iv, 216.

42 Ibid, iv, 239, 434.

43 Ibid, iv, 189, 218, 274, 315, 324–5, 333, 337, 340, 434, 639.

44 Ibid, iv, 240, 427–8, 434–6, 511–13, 561–3. Some major landowners in Northamptonshire, including the Earl of Westmorland and Sir William Farmer, had apparently secured exemption since the receipt of Major General Boteler's provisional estimate of £2000 (ibid, iv, 511). The Sussex list was largely restricted to persons residing in the western part of the county.

45 In the main these figures are drawn from the decimation lists (see below). The Huntingdonshire figures appear in a report forwarded in June 1656 (CSPDom, 1655–6, 396).Google Scholar

46 See p. 409 above.

47 See the Hertfordshire and Kent lists below.

48 CSPDom, 1655–6, 201.Google Scholar

49 Thurloe State Papers, iv, 497, 511Google Scholar. Boteler estimated that the receipts within his association would amount to some £2984 a year (ibid, iv, 512–13).

50 S.P.28/153 and 159, unbound decimation papers. (See also S.P.28/110, part 2, fols.248–9, 263 for some documents relating to the pay of the Essex militia). The disbursement figures include the pay of the county treasurers. It has been suggested that in Kent the yield of the tax proved sufficient, with a small margin, to cover the pay of the militia (Everitt, , The Community of Kent, 294).Google Scholar

51 S.P.25/lxxvii/554.

52 S.P.25/lxxvii/902–4.

53 PRO, Exchequer, Pipe Office, Declared Accounts (rolls), E.371/305, 306, 307. (The references to the Earl of Devonshire's contribution are in E.371/306). S.P.28/153, 159, 197, part 2, 226, 342, unbound decimation papers.

54 CSPDom, 1656–7, 304Google Scholar. CSPDom, 1658–9, 169, 239, 244.Google Scholar

55 CSPDom, 1655–6, 89, 92, 172, 210, 234, 396Google Scholar. CSPDom, 1656–7, 249Google Scholar. CCC, 1069–70, 1433Google Scholar. For Sir Thomas Wiseman see note 56.

56 CSPDom, 1656–7, 225, 241, 249Google Scholar. S.P.28/227, letter from the Essex commissioners dated 30 January 1656/7 (unbound).

57 Firth, and Rait, (eds.), The Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (1911), ii, 564–5.Google Scholar

58 See pp. 431 and 435 below. It is interesting to note, however, that Halton appears as a plain esquire in the Essex list printed in the Thurloe State Papers (iv, 435).Google Scholar