E 372/444, membrane 'Res. London'
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Document-specific information
Date: October 6, 1599
Repository: The National Archives, Kew, UK
Call number and opening: E 372/444, membr. 'Res. London'
View online bibliographic record
Images reproduced by permission of The National Archives, London, England.
Terms of use
The National Archives give no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for the purpose of the information provided.
Images may be used only for purposes of research, private study or education. Applications for any other use should be made to The National Archives Image Library, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU, Tel: 020 8392 5225 Fax: 020 8392 5266.
Document-specific information
Date: October 6, 1599
Repository: The National Archives, Kew, UK
Call number and opening: E 372/444, membr. 'Res. London'
View online bibliographic record
Alan H. Nelson, "Exchequer, Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer, Pipe Rolls, naming William Shakespeare as a tax defaulter in 1599," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/545.
The National Archives, E 372/444, membrane 'Res. London'. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/545.
Lay subsidies were a type of tax based on personal wealth. In London, the collection of subsidies was managed at the local level of ward and parish. For a full explanation, and references to associated documents, see “William Shakespeare as taxpayer and tax defaulter.”
William Shakespeare is one of hundreds of defaulters listed in Remembrancer Rolls for 1598, 1599 (shown here), and 1600, legal instruments dedicated to the recovery of crown debts. The relevant entry confirms Shakespeare’s former connection to the parish of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, and, judging from the tax of 13s 4d, relates to the collection of 1598:
Willelmus Shakspeare in parochia sancte Helene in Warda predicta debet xiijs iiijd de eodem subsidio ibidem.
Accompanying the entry is a note that the debt had been transferred to the county of Sussex:
Respondebit in rotulo sequente in Residuum Sussex.
A marginal note, “Surr’ Rotulo,” identifies the county not as Sussex but instead as Surrey. This was a clarification rather than a correction, since Surrey was traditionally amalgamated with Sussex in records for London suburbs.
The same debt is carried over to the “Residuum Sussex” accounts dated October 6, 1600.
Written by Alan H. Nelson
Sources
B. Rowland Lewis, Shakespeare Documents, (Stanford University, California: Stanford University Press, 1940), 1: 262-71.
Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 161-4.
David Thomas, Shakespeare in the Public Records, (London: H.M.S.O., 1985), 6-8.
M. Jurkowski, C.L. Smith, and D. Crook, Lay Taxes in England and Wales 1188-1688 (Richmond Surrey: PRO Publications), 1998.
Last updated February 1, 2020
