medieval-atlas/economic-development/298

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Taxation in medieval Scotland The Old Extent of benefices (parish revenues, also known as spiritualities) is preserved in a diocesan list presented to the Scottish parliament in 1366. It is also to be found in four ecclesiastical registers, which record both summary totals for all the mainland Scottish dioceses and valuations of individual parishes in the dioceses of St Andrews, Brechin and Aberdeen. All are copies of lost originals that had been drawn up for a tax of 4d in the merk (a fortieth) and subsequently used to calculate taxes of 5d and 6d in the merk. The only recorded tax of a fortieth -of all revenues and saleable goods -was ordered by Pope Innocent III in 1199 for the relief of the Holy Land. It was the flfSt ecclesiastical income tax and was levied in England and France in 120 I, the same year that a papal legate is known to have visited Scotland. Taxes of both 5d and 6d in the merk were agreed by the Scottish Church in 1267; over the intervening period papal taxes known to have been col- lected in Scotland were twentieths. Internal evidence therefore suggests that the Old Extent of benefices may date from 1201 and is certainly earlier than 1267. As teinds -in theory the tenth part of the produce of land or labour -constituted the main element of benefices, this map provides an invaluable indication of the geographical distribution of £s per mile of dioceses 1.00 and over 0.75 -0.99 0.50 -0 .74 0.25 -0 .49 Under 0.25 wealth and population throughout Scotland. Regrettably, the only detail to have survived is from the wealthy eastern dioceses. The overall value per square mile of Aberdeen (£0.71) was greatly diminished by the poor Highland deanery of Mar. Similar variations would have occurred in most dioceses, particularly Glasgow and Moray. The distortion is reversed in the case of Dunkeld, where the value per square mile of its Highland core is unduly enhanced by a large number of wealthy and distant Lowland parishes (diocesan 'peculiars' in church law). No comparable data survive for the Western or Northern Isles, then in the ecclesiastical province of Nidaros (Norway). The Old Extent of benefices remained the basis for papal taxation of spiritualities until the 1270s, when a new collector -Baiamondo di Vezza -was instructed to draw up fresh assessments of both spiritualities and temporalities (ecclesiastical estates). Although some accounts and assessments from 'Bagimond's Roll' survive, they are incomplete and cannot readily be mapped. This and the following assessment (see below, Nicholas IV tithe) were intensely unpopUlar. In the fourteenth century the Old Extent was reintroduced for the taxation of benefices. Old Extent of church benefices, before 1267, by square miles ASt 298

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