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
Coton, Northamptonshire (lost settlement) Coton, Northamptonshire (lost settlement) The lost village of Coton is located around the environs of the hamlet of Coton and Coton Manor House in the English county of Northamptonshire. The lost village of Coton has an entry as an independent manor in the Domesday Book of 1086. Then the population was recorded as nine residents. Not much else is known after that survey about Coton until the 17th century when it was recorded that there were eight households paying the 1673 Hearth Tax. In 1791 there were 17 houses in the village. By 1839 this number had reduced to 15.