Sowton Contents & Search

This document, a set of loose sheets in a folder, is in extremely bad condition. Even with the help of ultra-violet lighting useful information could be retrieved from only a few of the sheets, sections of many of which are very illegible or missing. The photographs obtained from the DRO showed two pages on each of five A3 sheets - just two of these photographs carried a reference number.

Sometimes referred to as a census, the document in fact arises from the 1695 Act for Granting to His Majesty certain Rates and Duties upon Marriages, Births and Burials, and upon Batchelors and Widowers, for the Term of Five Years, for Carrying on the War against France with Vigour. The opening sentence of this Act is: "We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects the Commons in Parliament assembled, from a deep sense of the many great occasions which engage your Majesty in many extraordinary expenses for the necessary defence of your realms and the prosecution of a war against France with vigour, have cheerfully and unanimously given and granted unto your Majesty as an additional supply and aid, the rates, duties, impositions and sums of money hereinafter mentioned." [English Historical Documents 1660-1714, by Andrew Browning]

"The Marriage Duty Act of 1695 imposed a tax from 1 May 1695 (to pay for a war with France), payable on a sliding scale, on the occasion of births (rather than baptisms), marriages and burials. An annual tax was also payable by bachelors (over 25 years old) and by childless widowers. Those people receiving poor relief were exempt from the tax. . . the tax failed to raise sufficient revenue for the government and was repealed in 1706." [Ancestral Trails, by Mark Herber]

Brian Randell, 6 Aug 2009