County or diocese: Coventry and Lichfield. Grant: Clerical tenth. Document type:...

County or diocese: Coventry and Lichfield.

Grant: Clerical tenth.

Document type: Petition for allowance.

Folios or pages: 1.

This document is apparently a petition of the collectors of half a clerical tenth, perhaps one instalment of a grant of clerical taxation made in an unknown year in the early fifteenth century, for the archdeaconry of Stafford in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield.

It has previously been dated to the fifteenth year of the reign of Henry IV, but this date is clearly in error, as Henry IV died during the fourteenth year of his reign.

The document has suffered damage and part of the head is missing; this has resulted in the loss of details of the names of the collectors, the tax grant to which the document relates and the relevant collection.

Although it has previously been catalogued with documents for the reign of Henry IV, the document clearly refers to entries among Exchequer memoranda for the reign of Henry V, the latest of which relates to Trinity term 1416.

Therefore, the document must have been created in or after the summer of that year, and may relate to a grant of clerical taxation made to Henry V.

However, most of the grants made to him in the early part of his reign were payable in instalments of one tenth and it is not until grants of 1419 and 1421 that instalments of half a tenth are found.

The document either relates to one of those instalments, or otherwise demonstrates late accounting or payment for the grant of half a clerical tenth made to Henry IV in 1411, but a firmer identification is not possible without further evidence.

Topics

Taxation

Religions