¹ Weekly Account, British Library (hereafter B.L.), Thomason Tracts, E.377 (3).

² Moderate Intelligencer, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E.377 (5)

³ Commons Journal (hereafter C.J.), v, 89.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E.377 (I).

⁶ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E.377 (3).

⁷ Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S. (eds.), Acts and ordinances of the Civil War and Interregnum (3 vols., London, 1911), III, liiGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Beloff, M., Public order and popular disturbances1660–1714 (London, 1938), p. 93Google Scholar. Beloff slightly misrepresents the account given in Kennedy, W.. English taxation 1640–1799 (London, 1913), PP. 53–4Google Scholar.

⁹ The excise was part of the ordinary revenue following the restoration. For accounts of the attractions of the excise see Chandaman, C. D., The English public revenue1660–1688 (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; and Kennedy, English taxation. For the importance and attractiveness of the excise in the Hanoverian period and after see Beckett, J. V., ‘Land tax or excise: the levying of taxation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England’, English Historical Review, C (1985), 285–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and O'Brien, P. K., ‘The political economy of British taxation, 1660–1815’, Economic History Review, second ser., XLI (1988), 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 28. For the threat to order posed by the excise in its early years see Davies, C. S. L., ‘Peasant revolt in France and England: a comparison’, Agricultural History Review, XXI (1973), 122–34Google Scholar. For the use made of the unpopularity of the excise in standard political accounts, and for the conflation of reactions ranging from evasion to obstruction, resistance and riot see, among others, the index entries relating to the excise in: Underdown, D., Pride's purge: politics in the Puritan revolution (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, and Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum (Newton Abbot, 1973)Google Scholar; Woolrych, A., Commonwealth to protectorate (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar, and Worden, B., The rump parliament 1648–1653 (Cambridge, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Rudé, G., The crowd in the French revolution (Oxford, 1972 edn)Google Scholar; Rudé, G., The crowd in history: a study of popular disturbances in France and England 1730–1848 (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Rudé, G., Ideology and popular protest (London, 1980)Google Scholar. In the English context most of these have been located in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there are a number of very important studies of the generally less well-documented early modern period, for example see Walter, J. D., ‘Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law: Malden and the crisis of 1629’, in Brewer, J. and Styles, J. (eds.), An ungovernable people: the English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuies (London, 1980), pp. 47–84Google Scholar; Charlesworth, A. (ed.), An atlas of rural protest in Britain, 1548–1900 (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Clark, P., ‘Popular protest and disturbance in Kent, 1558–1640’, Economic History Review, second ser., XXIX (1976), 365–82Google Scholar; MacCulloch, D., ‘Kett's rebellion in context’, Past and Present, no. 84 (1979), 36–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Thompson, E. P., ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, no. 50 (1971), 76–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This concept has come under revisionist scrutiny recently: Stevenson, J., ‘The “moral economy” of the English crowd: myth and reality’, in Fletcher, A. J. and Stevenson, J. (eds.), Order and disorder in early modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 218–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, D., ‘Morals, markets and the English crowd in 1766’, Past and Present, no. 104 (1984),56–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The concept bears some relation to that of an ‘inherent ideology’ outlined by Rudé, , Ideology and popular protest, ch. II, pp. 27–38Google Scholar. John Walter has discerned something similar in the actions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rioters in England, who appeared to have acted according to the ‘politics of subsistence’, ‘Reconstructing popular political culture’ (unpublished paper). I am grateful to John Walter for permission to refer to this paper. Tim Harris has recovered something of popular political culture in restoration London in this way: Harris, T., London crowds in the reign of Charles II: propaganda and politics from the restoration until the exclusion crisis (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

¹² See Harrison, M., ‘“To raise and dare resentment”: the Bristol Bridge riot of 1793 re-examined’, Historical Journal, XXVI (1983), 557–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the distinction between the politics of riot and of the crowd see Harris, , London crowds, pp. 1–35Google Scholar. ‘Popular’ is of course an imprecise expression: it is used here in the sense in which Rudé used the expression ‘lower orders’ – those of relatively low social and economic status who by dint of their position played little part in the formal political processes of their society, The crowd in history, ch. XIII, pp. 195–213. For a discussion of the problems associated with the use of this term, see Harris, , London crowds, pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

¹³ ‘Moral Economy’, p. 76.

¹⁴ For grain riots and public policy see Walter, J. D. and Wrightson, K., ‘Dearth and the social order in early modern England’, Past and Present, no. 71 (1976), 22–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, R. B., ‘Eighteenth-century price riots and public policy in England’, International Review of Social History, VI (1961), 277–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shelton, W. J., ‘The role of the local authorities in the provincial hunger riots of 1766’, Albion, V (1973), 50–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the withdrawal from paternal intervention by central government see Outhwaite, R. B., ‘Dearth and government intervention in English grain markets1590–1700’, Economic History Review, second ser., XXXIV (1981), 389–406Google Scholar. For a more general view of the relationship between popular political activity and elite perceptions see Walter, J. D., ‘A “rising of the people”? The Oxfordshire rising of 1596’, Past and Present, no. 107 (1985), 90–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive rebels: studies in archaic forms of social movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Manchester, 1971 edn), pp. III, 116Google Scholar.

¹⁶ More work has been done on the impact of the crowd during the English revolution by, for example, Pearl, V., London and the outbreak of the Puritan revolution: city government and national politics 1625–1643 (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar; and Manning, B. S., The English people and the English revolution (London, 1976)Google Scholar. For other references see below, n. 150.

¹⁷ This argument has been elaborated by Thompson, E. P., ‘Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class?’, Social History, III (1978), 133–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is no equivalent analysis for the earlier period.

¹⁸ Braddick, M. J., ‘Parliamentary lay taxation c1590–1670: local problems of enforcement and collection with special reference to Norfolk and Norwich’ (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1988), ch. v.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Holmes, C., Seventeenth-century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), p. 47Google Scholar.

²⁰ F. G. Bailey, ‘The peasant view of the bad life’, reprinted in T. Shanin, Peasants and peasant societies (London, 1984 edn), pp. 299–321.

²¹ See Braddick, ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’ for a full elaboration of this argument. On the origins of excise men see Ibid. pp. 190–4.

²² Aylmer, G. E., The state's servants: the civil service of the English republic 1649–1660 (London, 1973), p. 29Google Scholar. Collectors of subsidies, fifteenths and assessments were paid a proportion of the amount that they collected for expenses.

²³ O'Brien argues that eighteenth-century fiscal policy, of which the excise was a crucial component, ‘might be depicted as a holding operation against the introduction of an income tax – or… a reform of the land tax’, ‘Political economy of British taxation’, p. 18.

²⁴ Russell, C., Parliaments and English politics 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 198, 338, 381–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ This case is argued at fuller length in Braddick, ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, esp. pp. 144–8.

²⁶ This is an explanation employed by Davies, , ‘Peasant revolt’, pp. 125–6Google Scholar, and by many others subsequently. Davies's argument is based on evidence for the burden of taxation from the Elizabethan period, but it is not clear that the English taxpayer was particularly lightly dealt with in the later period; in Norfolk, as elsewhere, the tax burden was massively increased as a result of the Civil War (see Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, ch.VII, especially pp. 170–1, 181–2Google Scholar, for a discussion of this) and estimates show that in the later half of the seventeenth century England may have been at least equally heavily taxed. Charles Wilson estimated that in the late seventeenth century it was the ‘Dutchman-in-the-street’ who paid the heaviest taxes in Europe, the English paying much the same as the French: ‘Taxation and the decline of empires’, in Wilson, C., Economic history and the historian: collected essays (London, 1969), pp. 114–27, esp. pp. 116–20Google Scholar. In the eighteenth century the burdens of the English were greater than those of the French: O'Brien, , ‘Political economy of British taxation’, p. 4Google Scholar. The wars of the 1690s were no doubt responsible for much of the increase, but the position might not have been so different in the 1640s: Hughes found that in Warwickshire at least the taxpaying population expanded to ‘the point where it included most of those holding any property’. When other exactions (free-quarter Tor seizures for example) are considered it seems likely that ‘civil war losses were suffered by farmers who in ”normal” times were barely at subsistence level’, Hughes, A., ‘Parliamentary tyranny? Indemnity proceedings and the impact of the Civil War: a case study from Warwickshire’, Midland History, XI (1986), 49–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; p. 50. Of course only further research can show the social profile of the burden although the materials may not exist for the early period (see Braddick, ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, ch. VII, for an attempt to address this question using the inadequate materials available for the period up to 1670). Research into living standards and regional price series may eventually provide a firmer basis for estimates of the social profile of the impact of the burden however.

²⁷ ‘Reconstructing popular political culture’.

²⁸ Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, esp. pp. 144–8, 206Google Scholar.

²⁹ Because of the gap between contemporary perception and what we can recover of the historical reality of excise riots it would be unwise to offer any chronology or geography of riot. The definition of riot was so elastic as to cover a large number of phenomena, and whether an event has entered the historical record as a ‘riot’ depends as much on contemporary perception as on historical ‘reality’. In periods of perceived insecurity, or in areas of the country where political arrangements were less than stable, events may have been reported which would in other circumstances have remained a matter of local concern. Thus if a geography and chronology of riot revealed that riots were reported in clusters in areas of the country prone to other kinds of instability or in periods of political sensitivity, this might equally suggest that local elites were feeling insecure or that local people were increasingly hostile to the excise. More intriguing still is the possibility that local people were trying to exploit elite fears for their own purposes, or that groups within the elite were doing this. At any rate the geography of riot is a subject that cannot be adequately addressed here. What is clear is that reported excise rioting was sporadic and dispersed around a number of regions. For an account of the way in which the significance of hostility could be magnified see the account of the treatment of resistance to the excise in the last days of the rump in Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, pp. 118–19Google Scholar.

³⁰ See Braddick, ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, ch v, for a fuller account of the variety of responses to the excise between 1650 and 1670.

³¹ Public Record Office, Chancery Lane (hereafter P.R.O. ), S.P. 24/70 Petition of Daniel Prescott.

³² Perhaps the saltworkers sought symbolic compensation for loss of trade. The fact that riot and legal obstruction were not necessarily mutually exclusive strategies might suggest that the aim of rioters was to limit, modify or mediate the tax rather than to overthrow it. This might also explain the contrast with the much more violent confrontations on the continent. See below for evidence that some saw riot as an adjunct to peaceful petitioning.

³³ The riot at Stourbridge was probably the one in which Denne and the Levellers were said to have been instrumental, see below, p. 623. The riot at Nantwich reported by the Man in the Moon was also aimed against Prescott, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 575 (16).

³⁴ See Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, pp. 86, 96Google Scholar.

³⁵ The phrase is Rudé's, The crowd in history, ch. XIII.

³⁶ , B. E. and Howells, K. A. (eds.), Pembrokeshire life 1572–1843 (Haverfordwest, 1972), p. 15Google Scholar, reprinted in J. S. Morrill, Revolt of the provinces: conservatives and radicals in the English Civil War 1630–1650 (London, 1980 edn), pp. 182–3. Kingdoms Weekly Intelligencer, B. L., Thomason Tracts, E. 428 (12).

³⁷ Walter, , ‘Grain riots and popular attitudes to the law’, p. 62Google Scholar.

³⁸ For further discussion of this point see Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, pp. 82–101, 129–30Google Scholar. For further discussion of the nature and extent of excise disorders see Ibid. pp. 89–101. For an account of the riot in Norwich see Evans, J. T., Seventeenth-century Norwich: politics, religion and government 1620–1690 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 170–1Google Scholar. There is a fairly full description of a riot at Hereford in P.R.O., S.P. 24/75, Petition of Giles Siddall et al., which illustrates the fact that the use of violence and litigation were not necessarily mutually exclusive strategies (cf. also Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, pp. 82–9Google Scholar, and Holmes, C., ‘Drainers and fenmen: the problem of popular political consciousness in the seventeenth century’, in Fletcher, and Stevenson, , Order and disorder, pp. 166–95)Google Scholar.

³⁹ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 575 (16).

⁴⁰ Moderate Intelligencer, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (5).

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⁴⁴ Kennedy, , English taxation, chs. IV–V, esp. pp. 52, 54, 55, 76–80Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Zagorin, , Rebels and rulers, p. 127Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ See Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, pp. 82–9Google Scholar, for a fuller discussion of these points. This is not to suggest that there was elite complicity in the riot at Smithfield. It is possible, but there is no evidence to support the hypothesis.

⁴⁷ For a fuller discussion of this point see Morrill, J. S. and Walter, J. D., ‘Order and disorder in the English revolution’, in Fletcher, and Stevenson, , Order and disorder, pp. 137–65Google Scholar.

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⁵⁰ According to Hoskins, W. G., ‘Harvest fluctuations and English economic history 1620–1759’, Agricultural History Review, XVI (1968), 15–31Google Scholar, the years 1647–9 apparently saw the worst conjunction of bad harvests in the whole period; Lindley, K. J., ‘Riot prevention and control in early Stuart London’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth ser., XXXIII (1983), 109–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵³ These were in place of traditional festivals which had previously been abolished, and so the measure still represented an attempt at social regulation. I am grateful to Dr Keith Lindley for pointing this out to me.

⁵⁴ Ibid. p. 116.

⁵⁵ Gardiner, , History, III, 192Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 373 (3).

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⁵⁹ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 375 (15).

⁶⁰ Guildhall Record Office, Common Council Journal (hereafter C.C.J.), Jo. 40, fo. 204b.

⁶¹ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (21)

⁶² Guildhall Record Office, C.C.J., Jo. 40, fo. 205.

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⁶⁸ Mercurius Candidas, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 372 (18).

⁶⁹ C.J., v, 58. The report called for arrears of all locally collected excise to be collected by 25 March. An ordinance of March 19 laid down that after that date all monies were to be paid into the office in London. Clearly the concern was for an honest and efficient administration rather than any alleviation of the burden, C.J., v, 118.

⁷⁰ C.J., v, 64. Thursday's proceedings were taken up with Irish affairs. Discussion of the excise was neglected until the presentation of the commissioners’ petition on the 6 February.

⁷¹ C.J., v, 73.

⁷² C.J., v, 76.

⁷³ C.J., v, 79.

⁷⁴ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (3).

⁷⁵ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (3).

⁷⁶ C.J., v, 89.

⁷⁷ Kingdoms Weekly Intelligencer, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (1).

⁷⁸ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (11).

⁷⁹ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 372 (18).

⁸⁰ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 377 (5).

⁸¹ Significantly no pamphleteering group exploited the issue at this point.

⁸² Cobbett, W., The parliamentary history of England, III (London, 1808), p. 550Google Scholar.

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⁸⁴ Ibid. p. 918.

⁸⁵ Ibid. p. 916.

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⁸⁷ Dr Williams’ Library, MS 24.50, ‘A contemporary chronicle… Thomas Juxon’, fo. 102b. I am grateful to Dr Keith Lindley for this reference.

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⁹³ Perfect Diurnall, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 515 (8), p. 1554.

⁹⁴ Perfect Occurrences, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 375 (17).

⁹⁵ Perfect Diumall, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 515 (9).

⁹⁶ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 385 (1), 20 April.

⁹⁷ Gardiner, , History, III, 324–5, 324Google Scholar.

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¹⁰⁰ Moderate Intelligencer, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 390 (25).

¹⁰¹ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 515 (17).

¹⁰² Perfect Diurnall, B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 515 (23).

¹⁰³ Guildhall Record Office, C.C.J., Jo. 40, fos. 207–7

¹⁰⁴ Gentles, , ‘The struggle for London in the Second Civil War’, p. 283Google Scholar n., claims that the Presbyterian crowd controlled the streets.

¹⁰⁵ Parliamentary history, p. 594.

¹⁰⁶ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 401 (34). There was no edition printed during the upheavals.

¹⁰⁷ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 518 (16).

¹⁰⁸ Sharpe, , London and the kingdom, II, 261Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Pearl, , ‘London's counter revolution’, p. 52Google Scholar,is in no doubt of the role of Holies and others in the incitement of the crowd.

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¹¹⁶ B.L., Tanner MS, 59, fo. 446, fo. 442. I am grateful to Dr Bill Cliftlands for these references.

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¹²⁴ Frank, , The Levellers, pp. 132–4Google Scholar. He calls it a ‘mélange’ of military grievances and Leveller principles (p. 133) and notes that the whole was informed by the unpopularity of the army (pp. 132–4).

¹²⁵ Brailsford, , The Levellers, p. 263Google Scholar.

¹²⁶ Morrill, J. S., ‘Activists in the army’, Times Literary Supplement, 8–14 01 1988, p. 45Google Scholar. Cf. Woolrych, A., Soldiers and statesmen: the general council of the army and its debates, 1647–8 (Oxford, 1987), esp. ch. v and p. 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar and n., for the perhaps ‘sensationalised’ anti-excise proposals of the agitators.

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¹³³ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 615 (2), 669 f 15 (62). Two of the signatories of the petition – Alderman Hayes and Colonel Hardwick – also subscribed to the petition to end the monopoly of the Greenland Company, 669 f 15 (71). This awareness of the links between fiscal and economic policies bears witness to a sophistication of attitudes towards taxation. Kennedy, found, with reference to the customs, now that ‘trade policy, as well as revenue, was a purpose of the duties in force prior to 1640. That purpose became steadily more important’, English taxation, p. 33Google Scholar. Petitions from traders pepper the records from the 1650s onwards, for example the effect on the tobacco trade was complained of in 1644, Calendar of State Papers Domestic (hereafter C.S.P.D.), p. 57; and the alum and copperas makers petitioned in 1655, C.S.P.D., 1655, p. 57. On a number of occasions traders petitioned for protection from the Dutch, citing lost tax revenue as a reason in addition to the loss of trade, e.g. C.S.P.D., 1653–4, PP. 81, 101, 126. It had also become, or was becoming, a means of regulating consumption: Kennedy, , English taxation, p. 129Google Scholar; Clark, P., The English alehouse: a social history 1200–1830 (London, 1983), p. 185Google Scholar; C.S.P.D., 1665–6, pp. 360–I.

¹³⁴ , Aylmer (ed.), Levellers in the English revolution, p. 61Google Scholar.

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¹³⁶ Ibid. p. 135.

¹³⁷ Ibid. p. 13.

¹³⁸ Wolfe, , Leveller manifestoes, pp. 169–70Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ Brailsford, , The Levellers, pp. 513–19Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid. p. 519.

¹⁴¹ B.L., Thomason Tracts, E. 575 (8); E. 575 (3). According to the Mercurius Pragmaticus, this was a violent encounter and it is difficult to see why this account would be deliberately exaggerated. The writer apparently had little sympathy for Prescott, but neither did he for the rioters. Prescott gives no details in his deposition to the indemnity committee, P.R.O., S. P. 24/70 Petition of Daniel Prescott. For other problems experienced by Prescott see above, pp. 605–6.

¹⁴² See, for example, C.S.P.D., 1649–50, p. 150; C.S.P.D., 1655, p. 69.

¹⁴³ Dowell, S., A history of taxation and taxes in England (4 vols., London, 1965 edn), II, 11Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁴ Braddick, , ‘Parliamentary lay taxation’, p. 86Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁵ For the development of the excise in the 1650s see Ibid. pp. 113–20.

¹⁴⁶ Public order and popular disturbances, p. 93.

¹⁴⁷ English public revenue, p. 40.

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¹⁴⁹ For accounts of the effect of fear of the crowd see Hill, C., ‘The many-headed monster in late Tudor and early Stuart political thinking’, in Carter, C. H. (ed.), From the renaissance to the counter reformation: essays in honour of Garret Matlingley (London, 1966), pp. 296–324Google Scholar; Walter, , ‘A rising of the people?’, esp. p. 143Google Scholar; and for the eighteenth century Thompson, ‘Class struggle without class?’.

¹⁵⁰ For the impact of the crowd on national politics see Pearl, London and the outbreak of the Puritan revolution; Manning, English people and the English revolution; Underdown, D., Revel, riot and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar, Hill, C., ‘Parliament and people in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present, no. 92 (1981), 100–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the debate with Fletcher, in Past and Present, no. 98 (1983), 151–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The over-sensitivity of elites during the revolution is examined by Morrill and Walter, ‘Order and disorder in the English revolution’. Harris, using a detailed appreciation of the composition and organization of crowds, has developed a more sophisticated participatory model of political activity than can be offered here, London crowds, pp. 14–22.

¹⁵¹ ‘Class struggle without class?’.

¹⁵² For a discussion of the nature of political power see Lukes, S., Power: a radical view (London, 1987 edn)Google Scholar.

¹⁵³ Walter, ‘Reconstructing popular political culture’; Thompson, ‘Moral economy of the English crowd’ Rudé, Ideology of popular protest, ch. II.