Hearth tax significant proportion of householders were not liable to pay at all. The hearth tax was much resented because it often entailed inspection of the interior of dwellings by the sub-collectors and petty constables, who had legal authority to enter every property to check on the number of hearths. Some people stopped up their chimneys so that the tax was not due on them, but where this was discovered by the assessors the tax was doubled. On 31 July 1684, a fire in Churchill, Oxfordshire, destroyed 20 houses and many other buildings, and killed four people. It was apparently caused by
17th-century French literature French theatre during this period). Comedy until the end of the 17th century would continue on the path traced by Molière; the satire of contemporary morals and manners and the "regular" comedy would predominate, and the last great "comedy" of Louis XIV's reign (Alain-René Lesage's "Turcaret") is a dark play in which almost no character exhibits redeeming traits. Below is a select list of French theater after 1659: The 17th century was dominated by a profound moral and religious fervor unleashed by the Counter-Reformation. Of all literary works, devotional books were the century's best sellers. New religious organisations swept the