Home > Local History > English Town Rankings - 1334 (Based on Tax Quota)

Note:

According to Hoskins, “The major difficulty here is the inclusion of suburbs which were an integral part of a town at this date.  I have included suburbs of Bishop’s Lynn (King’s Lynn), Exeter, and Stamford in the respective totals, but the other towns may also need adjustment in this way.  Only the local historian , familiar with the topographical history of his town, can settle this question for himself [or herself].  In some cases the assessment includes the outlying ‘members’ of a borough, and the ranking of the town itself is inflated accordingly. Ely and Peterborough are probably much over-rated here.  The large and wealthy parishes of the Marshland around the Wash constitute a special difficulty.  Some, like Pinchbeck (Lincs) and Terrington (Norfolk), were more highly assessed than half the towns in the list.  But I have excluded all these cases, including more doubtful ones like Wisbech, on the ground that they were not towns or that the urban area was small in relation to the surrounding parish.  It should be noted that Chester and Durham are not taxed in this list.  Chester certainly would have ranked high had it been included.”

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL