Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain by Stephen Halliday
Authors: Stephen Halliday
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ensure safe conduct for the Jews to London from where they were sent to the continent. It had the convenient effect, for the king, of cancelling the debts he already owed to them.
They were invited back by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s and their financial acumen was of importance in promoting British trade from that time onwards. In the meantime other means had to be found of raising money for the royal exchequer. One of these was the Poll Tax.
The Poll Tax
Ignore history at your peril
T he ‘Poll Tax Riots’ of 1990 which precipitated Margaret Thatcher’s fall from power had a precedent in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Jack Straw, Wat Tyler and the priest John Ball. Our medieval ancestors were much more patient over this burdensome taxation that the rioters of 1990 since they only rebelled against the
third
attempt to tax them. The first poll tax was levied in 1377 by the government of Richard II who was then only ten years old, having succeeded his grandfather, Edward III, the same year. Richard’s father, the Black Prince, had died the previous year after campaigning in France and the tax was necessary because of the cost of waging the war in pursuit of Edward III’s claim to the French throne. This was the conflict that was to become the Hundred Years’ War. This first poll tax was a flat rate tax of 4d (about 1.6p) on every person aged 14 or over except clergy who paid a shilling (5p). Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, whose London home was the Savoy Palace in the Strand, then launched a futile attack on the French port of St Malo which incurred further expense and necessitated a second poll tax in 1379. For this second poll tax the rate varied from 4d for the poorer citizens to two shillings (10p) for the more prosperous and as much as £4 for the nobility, though the clergy were exempt from this second tax. The amount raised still proved inadequate to pay off the English troops in France before they deserted so a third poll tax was levied in 1381.
WHY ‘GAUNT’?
John of Gaunt, founder of the House of Lancaster which eventually triumphed in the Wars of the Roses, owes his name to the fact that he was born in the town of Ghent, now in Belgium, and which was anglicized to Gaunt .
It was this third poll tax of 1381, again levied at a flat rate for everyone of three groats (one shilling, or 5p), that provoked the uprising which began in Essex and Kent. The king’s tax collectors were attacked, the Archbishop of Canterbury was beheaded and the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, whose failed raid on St Malo in Brittany had created the need for the tax, was sacked. Richard II, now 14, agreed to meet the rebels at Smithfield where the Mayor of London, William Walworth, stabbed Wat Tyler and the revolt fizzled out. Richard II did not live up to his early promise. He became increasingly unpopular throughout his reign and was eventually deposed by his cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, who became Henry IV in 1399. In 1641 Charles I, a monarch even more unpopular than Richard II, tried to introduce a poll tax. This was one of the events that sharpened his conflict with Parliament and helped to precipitate the Civil Wars which resulted in his death. So poll taxes do not have a good record and Mrs Thatcher, if she had known her history, might have thought better of her poll tax or ‘community charge’ as she preferred to call it. But then she was a chemist by training, not a historian.
Father of English Literature Swaps Quill for Shears
Chaucer’s woolly stock-in-trade
I n 1374 Geoffrey Chaucer, poet, philosopher, courtier and author of
The Canterbury Tales
, was appointed by Edward III as Controller of the Customs for hides, skins and wool in the port of London. During the latter part of the 14th century exports of woollen cloth from England increased almost tenfold. Earlier in the century the crown had agreed that Parliament should have the right to be consulted on measures of taxation. In return Parliament had
They were invited back by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s and their financial acumen was of importance in promoting British trade from that time onwards. In the meantime other means had to be found of raising money for the royal exchequer. One of these was the Poll Tax.
The Poll Tax
Ignore history at your peril
T he ‘Poll Tax Riots’ of 1990 which precipitated Margaret Thatcher’s fall from power had a precedent in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Jack Straw, Wat Tyler and the priest John Ball. Our medieval ancestors were much more patient over this burdensome taxation that the rioters of 1990 since they only rebelled against the
third
attempt to tax them. The first poll tax was levied in 1377 by the government of Richard II who was then only ten years old, having succeeded his grandfather, Edward III, the same year. Richard’s father, the Black Prince, had died the previous year after campaigning in France and the tax was necessary because of the cost of waging the war in pursuit of Edward III’s claim to the French throne. This was the conflict that was to become the Hundred Years’ War. This first poll tax was a flat rate tax of 4d (about 1.6p) on every person aged 14 or over except clergy who paid a shilling (5p). Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, whose London home was the Savoy Palace in the Strand, then launched a futile attack on the French port of St Malo which incurred further expense and necessitated a second poll tax in 1379. For this second poll tax the rate varied from 4d for the poorer citizens to two shillings (10p) for the more prosperous and as much as £4 for the nobility, though the clergy were exempt from this second tax. The amount raised still proved inadequate to pay off the English troops in France before they deserted so a third poll tax was levied in 1381.
WHY ‘GAUNT’?
John of Gaunt, founder of the House of Lancaster which eventually triumphed in the Wars of the Roses, owes his name to the fact that he was born in the town of Ghent, now in Belgium, and which was anglicized to Gaunt .
It was this third poll tax of 1381, again levied at a flat rate for everyone of three groats (one shilling, or 5p), that provoked the uprising which began in Essex and Kent. The king’s tax collectors were attacked, the Archbishop of Canterbury was beheaded and the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, whose failed raid on St Malo in Brittany had created the need for the tax, was sacked. Richard II, now 14, agreed to meet the rebels at Smithfield where the Mayor of London, William Walworth, stabbed Wat Tyler and the revolt fizzled out. Richard II did not live up to his early promise. He became increasingly unpopular throughout his reign and was eventually deposed by his cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, who became Henry IV in 1399. In 1641 Charles I, a monarch even more unpopular than Richard II, tried to introduce a poll tax. This was one of the events that sharpened his conflict with Parliament and helped to precipitate the Civil Wars which resulted in his death. So poll taxes do not have a good record and Mrs Thatcher, if she had known her history, might have thought better of her poll tax or ‘community charge’ as she preferred to call it. But then she was a chemist by training, not a historian.
Father of English Literature Swaps Quill for Shears
Chaucer’s woolly stock-in-trade
I n 1374 Geoffrey Chaucer, poet, philosopher, courtier and author of
The Canterbury Tales
, was appointed by Edward III as Controller of the Customs for hides, skins and wool in the port of London. During the latter part of the 14th century exports of woollen cloth from England increased almost tenfold. Earlier in the century the crown had agreed that Parliament should have the right to be consulted on measures of taxation. In return Parliament had
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