TAXATION AND THE MID-TUDOR CRISIS

This article aims to show that taxation in the early and mid-sixteenth century had a deleterious effect on the English economy, in particula r through the taxation of mercantile wealth. While tax rates were mode st by modem standards, the article shows how they were levied on capit al and not on income, that their effect was cumulative ('compound taxa tion'), and that they impacted on the small part of the merchant's wea lth held in realizable form (as opposed to stock or trade credits). Ev idence is produced from Coventry and from Babergh hundred (Suffolk) to show that individuals' assessments could be halved between 1522 and 1 525 in line with predictions of the effects of 'compound taxation', bu t that the impact of taxation was not even across the community.