Bristol Hearth Tax 1662-1673

"This edition publishes three transcripts of hearth tax material for Bristol: the 1670 Michaelmas hearth tax return from The National Archives in London (TNA) and the 1662 and 1668 listings from the Bristol Chimney Book housed in the Bristol Archives (BA). Alongside these are appendices contain supporting hearth tax transcripts covering outparishes within Gloucestershire in 1672 (TNA) and a Bristol Archives exemption certificate. This is the eleventh volume in the Hearth Tax Series produced on a county basis, published by the British Record Society in partnership with the British Academy Hearth Tax Project based at the Centre for Hearth Tax Research at the University of Roehampton. This edition is a co-publication with the Bristol Record Society. The survival of several hearth tax listings for Bristol between 1662 and 1673 offers a detailed insight into the people and places of one of England's leading provincial cities as it began a renewed period of growth and prosperity as an Atlantic trading port and manufacturing centre. With a wealth of names and topographical information about Bristolians, supplemented by several appendices with further documentary evidence and biographical data, this is an essential text for the local and early modern historian. The introductory essays also bring out the importance of these documents for understanding the workings of the hearth tax and government policy in Restoration England and draw valuable comparisons between Bristol and London and other towns and cities. The distribution of population and wealth across the city, and in particular its varied types of housing stock, can be closely analysed, revealing a city with a large and prosperous middling sort, but also substantial problems of poverty in some of its suburbs and back streets."--Publisher's description