Taxation on personal property, or taxation of movables as it was then called, first appeared in England in the late 12th century. It was effectively used for the first time in the collection of the Saladin tithe for the crusade of 1188. Its basis was the levy of a fixed fraction of the total value of each taxpayer’s stock, crops and household and trade goods. Certain possessions were exempted, either by specific instructions issued to the assessors, or by usage. During the 13th century such taxes were levied at irregular intervals, but they were always regarded as an extraordinary source of revenue for the crown, requiring more or less general consent. At first they were collected by specially appointed receivers, largely outside exchequer control, but in 1290 the exchequer secured control of all stages in their assessment and collection. Subsequent taxes are therefore much better documented than those before 1290. The basis of assessment remained unchanged until 1334. For each tax the goods of each tax payer were separately assessed, and on this he paid a fixed proportion, a ninth, a fifteenth, a thirtieth or some other fraction. But progressive loss of revenue through concealment and the corrupt practices of the assessors led the government in 1334 to abandon this system. In that year, quotas to be collected from each township and borough were arrived at by collective bargaining. These quotas were collected unchanged when the next tax on movables was levied in 1336, and until 1623 they remained the basis for collecting standardised tenths and fifteenths. The township, not the individual taxpayer, became the unit of taxation as far as the government was concerned, so that after 1334 central records of taxation on movables no longer provide the names of the taxpayers.

Until 1334, two types of record were produced in the assessment of taxes on movables. The first was a preliminary assessment, here called the local roll. This might take two forms : (a) a summary statement of the total value of the taxpayer’s goods, followed by the fraction of this which represented the tax-charge, and (b) a full valuation of the stock, crops and other goods, followed by their total value and the tax-charge.