Smoke Money (Vol. ii., pp. 120. 174.).—Sir Roger Twisden (Historical Vindication of the Church of England, chap. iv. p. 77.) observes—
"King Henry, 153¾, took them (Peter's pence) so absolutely away, as though Queen Mary repealed that Act, and Paulus Quartus dealt earnestly with her agents in Rome for restoring the use of them, yet I cannot find that they were ever gathered and sent thither during her time but where some monasteries did answer them to the Pope, and did therefore collect the tax, that in process of time became, as by custom, paid to that house which being after derived to the crown, and from thence, by grant, to others, with as ample profits as the religious persons did possess them, I conceive they are to this day paid as an appendant to the said manors, by the name of Smoke Money.
J.B.
Smoke Money (Vol. ii., pp. 120, 269.).—I do not know whether any additional information on smoke money is required but the following extracts may be interesting to your Querist:—
"At this daie the Bp. of Elie hath out of everie parish in Cambridgeshire a certeine tribute called Elie Farthings, or Smoke Farthings, which the church-wardens do levie, according to the number of houses or else of chimneys that be in a parish."—MSS, Baker, xxix. 326.
The date of this impost is given in the next extract:—
"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."