The following comes from a sort of local history column in the Cheltenham Chronicle:
The Revolt Against the Poll Tax
A Government can always cause a revolution or an attempt at one by increasing taxation to the point where the taxpayers prefer the trouble and expense of revolting to the worry of being bled to death.
For it is worry to a man who has been toiling for years to support his wife and family and himself to find that a large proportion of his earnings have to go to support a lot of people whom he has never seen and who ought to be able to support themselves without his help.
We remember how an attempt to levy a poll tax of one shilling per head caused the men of Essex to assemble in their thousands, armed with clubs, rusty swords, and bows and arrows, and to march on London like the men of Kent and the men fo Hertfordshire, with this result amongst others, that the treasurer and chief commissioner for the levy of the poll-tax were beheaded.
That was a foolishly and wickedly drastic proceeding, which defeated its own object.
If they had stopped short of murder we should have more sympathy with the tax-resister of Wat Tyler’s time.
But did the men of Gloucestershire take down their bows and arrows from the wall and pick up their chibs and swords and start out to murder the poll-tax collectors?
It seems they did not, for “The names of certain malefactors who lately in divers parts of the kingdom of England, against their fealty and allegiance due to our lord the King of England and the peace of the same Lord the King, rose with other malefactors and perpetrated very many treasons felonies, and other misdeeds,” do not include those of any Gloucestershire folk, but only people living in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Herts., Middlesex, London, Winchester, Kent, Somerset, and Canterbury.…
Gloucestershire Patriots Refuse To Pay Illegal Taxes in Few Words.
It is well to recall sometimes the names of those to whom we owe the fact that to live in England is by no means the same thing as to live within sight of a Russian prison.
The following are the names of “such as refused to subscribe and pay the loan unto his Majesty within the county of Gloucester” about : Sir Robert Poynts, Sir Morris Berkley, Sir William Master, Sir John Prettyman, Richard Berkley, Esq., Henry Poole, Esq., John Dutton Esq., Thomas Nicholas, Esq., Nathaniel Coxwell, Esq., Nathaniel Stephens, Esq., Walter Bourcher, Esq., John Croker, Esq. Others did not positively refuse, but simply stopped away — Sir Edmund Cary, knight.
Sir Baptist Hickes.
Bart., Sir Walter Pye, Sir Thomas Thynne, Sir Giles Fettyplace, Sir Nicholas Overbury.
Sir Henry Rainsford, Samuel Burton.
Archdeacon of Gloucester, Anthony Abbington, Esq., Richard Delabere Esq., Thomas Chester, Esq. William, Earl of Northampton, and John Brydgeman wrote from Gloucester on , to the Privy Council:— “May it please your Lordships, … I met with the Commissioners for this County Gloucester, being in number 25, of which 12 denied both payment and subscription, as by the bends sent up to your lordships will more plainly appear.
Pardon me to advertise your lordships that these knights and gentlemen that thus refused, did so in the fewest words and arguments that could be imagined, and when they were moved to enter into bond, they did it as willingly, and did submit themselves as dutifully to his Majesty and your lordships’ pleasure (the premisses excepted) as can be expressed.
The City and County of the City of Gloucester have consented, and four other hundreds, so that we are in good hope of the rest.
The next hundred I am to go to (for I intend out of the duty and affection I have to perfect the service to visit whole shire), are such as the chiefest of those gentlemen which refused to subscribe do dwell in, we urging them that their denial might be a great hindrance to the service in respect of their neighbours; they answered that they would by no means hinder it, either by persuasions or other ways, and pressing them to assist the Commission (the neglect whereof I thought would be very ill taken by his Majesty and your Lordships), their answers were that it was not fit for them to persuade others to do that which they in conscience had refused to do.”
