Eras

The Lay Subsidy of 1524-5 (1) see also (2)

This national taxation measure was approved by Parliament in 1523, to raise money for war to be waged with France and Scotland (who else!), and with a hoped for total of £800,000 as its aim. As with previous countrywide levies, it was based on the value of lands held and rented out (where this was the major source of income), on movable goods (where these served the same purpose) and on wages for men of labouring or servant status.

Comparisons of Lowestoft with other Suffolk communities

Suffolk’s Top 25 Townships (1524-5 Lay Subsidy) (2)  see also (1)

Order by wealth

The national tax levied in 1327 to raise revenue for the Crown came at a troubled time for the country, for this was the year in which Edward II was deposed by his wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March – ostensibly, in favour of the future Edward III, who was a fourteen-year-old minor. It was also a time of conflict with Scotland, with an army from north of the border making an incursion into England and engaging with English forces near Stanhope, in County Durham.

When Henry III died in November 1272, his son and successor Edward (thirty-three years old) was in Sicily, on the way home from fighting in the Seventh – and last – Crusade. A hardened warrior of many years experience, it wasn’t until the year 1274 that he finally reached England to take up his throne, with the coronation being held in Westminster Abbey on 19 August. He went on to subjugate Wales, invade Scotland (becoming known as “the Hammer of the Scots”) and generally impose his presence on all around him – his impressive height of 6’ 2” gaining him the nickname of “Longshanks”.

• A large, filled-in trench is visible on the North Denes, a little to the east of the net-drying spars. Its presence is indicated by a slight depression in the ground and by the vegetation growing along its length. The latter is much lusher and of a different type from what is to be found on The Denes generally, showing that the trench’s infill is of a different type from the soil around it.
• The dimensions of this feature were originally eighty to ninety paces in length, on a north-south alignment, and c.

Lowestoft Rental (1545) – Suffolk Archives, Ipswich 194/A10/71

(Formerly North Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft) 

A Lowestoft rental renewed there on the first day of June, in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of our Lord King Henry VIII, by the grace of God King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith in the said land(s) and Supreme Head of the Church of England and Ireland – relating to the annual rents of the town of Lowestoft, Shadingfield, Ellough and Willingham. [Translated from Latin]

CREDIT: Ivan Bunn and David Butcher

Origins

This article is in its original form, with minor alterations. It was published (with editorial adjustments and changes) in English Ceramic Circle Transactions, vol. 21 (2010), forming pp. 49-74 of that journal.

The Town of Lowestoft c. 1720

This map was created by Ivan Bunn (former archival assistant at the North Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft) and the writer, working in collaboration and using manorial documentation as the primary source. See end of text for numbered locations, which are also referred to in the narrative.  

(14 March 1684)

 An Inventory Indented of all and singular the goods and Chattels of James Wilde late of Lowestoft in the County of Suff[olk], merchant, valued and appraised the Fourteenth day of March in the year of our Lord One Thousand six hundred eighty three by Joshua Smithson, Nicholas Utting, Robert [? ] and John Aldred of Lowestoft aforesaid, Merchants, as Followeth

Roger Hill was a Lowestoft merchant of the second half of the sixteenth century, whose burial was recorded in the parish registers on 13 September 1588. He had made his will (Norfolk Record Office, 296 Homes) on 20 August and the inventory of his possessions (NRO INV 4/45) was taken on 16 September. He lived in what is now 31-32 High Street (not at No. 30, as I wrote in error in the LA&LHS Annual Report No.