"By the records of the Church of Elie, it appears that in the year
1154, every person who kept a fire in the several parishes within that
diocese was obliged to pay one farthing yearly to the altar of S.
Peter, in the same cathedral."--MSS. Bowtell, Downing Coll. Library.
This tax was paid in 1516, but how much later I cannot say.
The readers of Macaulay will be familiar with the term "heart-money"
(_History_, vol. i. p. 283.), and the amusing illustrations he produces,
from the ballads of the day, of the extreme unpopularity of the tax on
chimneys, and the hatred in which the "chimney man" was held (i. 287.) but
this was a different impost frown that spoken of above, and paid to the
king, not to the cathedral. It was collected for the last time in 1690,
having been first levied in 1653, when, Hume tells us, the king's debts had
become so--
"Intolerable, that the Commons were constrained to vote him an
extraordinary supply of 1,200,000l., to be levied by eighteen months'
assessment, and finding upon enquiry that the several branches of the
revenue fell much short of the sums they expected, they at last, after
much delay, voted _a new imposition of 2s. on each hearth_, and this
tax they settled on the king during his life."
The Rev. Giles Moore, Rector of Horstead Keynes, Sussex, notes in his
_Diary_ (published by the Sussex Archæological Society),--
August 18, 1663.--I payed fore 1 half yeares earth-money 3s.
Other notices of this payment may be supplied by other correspondents.