The Suffolk Record Office (SRO) holds tax assessments made in 1642 for the whole of
Blything Hundred, including twenty-four of the eighty parishes missing from Vincent B. Redstone's 1904 publication,
The Ship-Money Returns for the County of Suffolk, 1639-40.
An Act of Parliament passed in March 1641/42 (
16 Car. I, c. 32) demanded £20,609 17s. from Suffolk towards a military grant of £400,000. The first moiety (half) was to be assessed by 20 May 1642. Blything's share of that moiety was £1,030 10s. Taxpayers were rated according to the value of their lands and goods, among other indicators of wealth or status. The threshold was quite low, reaching many more people than the earlier subsidies (often even more than the ship money, which had become so reviled and resisted that it was eventually declared illegal).
The names of those in the village of
Thorington who were taxed in 1642 are given for comparison on page xiii of V. B. Redstone's above-mentioned book, after an incorrect reference to another Act. Redstone made a neat but not entirely accurate transcript (in a foolscap notebook now held by the SRO in Ipswich, ref.
HD11/1 : 4921/10.14) of Blything Hundred's original parchment roll dated May 1642 (formerly at Moyse's Hall Museum; now at the SRO in Bury St Edmunds, ref.
E1/25). There are numerous discrepancies, principally the omission of
Frostenden and
Wrentham. I have therefore transcribed and indexed the assessments from these two parishes in the accompanying documents. Also attached are an index of the places in Blything Hundred (for both the original roll and Redstone's notebook, as well as his printed ship-money returns) and a list showing how I renamed the files of the overlapping images supplied by the SRO, which could be useful to anyone looking at the roll or ordering copies.
The National Archives (TNA) has similar rolls from a few other parts of Suffolk:
Aldeburgh (E 179/183/523 & 524),
Ipswich (E 179/183/525) and the hundreds of
Blackbourn (E 179/183/526 & 535),
Samford (E 179/183/588),
Thedwastre (E 179/183/528) and
Wangford (E 179/183/522). They are described in a booklet compiled by Jeremy Gibson and Alan Dell,
The Protestation Returns 1641-1642 and other contemporary listings (Federation of Family History Societies, 1995 / 2004), and can be located in the
E 179 database by selecting the county of Suffolk and specifying a year range from 1642 to 1643.
TNA's notes explain several details, such as the exemption of low-paid servants and the complexities of apportionment between landlords and tenants.
David Gobbitt
