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
Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩ standard English without any vowels in the or area by the late 17th century. However, this putative gap was filled by the following special developments: The of the late 17th century has generally backed to in several varieties of contemporary English, for example in Received Pronunciation. The following table shows some developments of Middle English in Received Pronunciation. The word "gate", which derived from Middle English , has also been included for comparison. The table below shows the results of these developments in some contemporary varieties of English: <nowiki>*</nowiki> May undergo -tensing. Old English (OE) had an open back vowel