CLAYHANGER

A series of Easter Books survives for this parish which is located on the county border with Somerset, ten miles north-east of Tiverton and five miles east of Bampton. A comparison between the individuals listed in these accounts and with the subsidy list of 1581 shows a nearly exact match but with additional individuals paying their tithes. In the early 1600s Tristram Risdon noted the parish ‘bordereth upon the bounds of Somersetshire, where at the conquest, William Mohun was seized of three rods and three farthings of land, by the conqueror's gift’. Robert Chollacombe was appointed vicar in August 1582. It appears that one scribe was responsible for writing the ten accounts.

13–22. CLAYHANGER, Easter Books, c.1573–82

PA, 3338/1

Note: In 1535 the Valor Ecclesiasticus recorded the rector received for the tithes of grain £6 6s 8d, for lambs 48s, for calves 8s, for wool 23s and for Easter Offerings 43s 11d ½. This amounted to £12 9s 7½d whereas in the 1570s his successor received more than £3 in mixed and personal tithes. Predial tithes, such as that for grain, appear to have been excluded. The Elizabethan vicar made two personal notes in his Easter Books. He wrote of one parishioner's account ‘I must have a tithing calf’ and of another he noted he had received the tithe. It can be deduced from the Easter Books that the rates were two pence for the ownership of a cow, a penny for all ewes and a penny for a garden. However, the system was more complex. A terrier of 1634 recorded that the milk of every heiffer at her first calving was assessed at ¾ pence, the milk of every cow in the summer was 2d, and the milk of every cow during the winter was only a penny. The milk of ten ewes required the payment of a penny but if there were nine ewes or less than no tithe was paid. Perhaps the most complicated arrangement concerned the tithe of lambs.