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
Hearth tax implies that it was already then old and established and perhaps it should be taken back to the 7th century AD. Kapnikon was a tax levied on households without exceptions for the poor. In the 1340s especially, the King of France's personal expenditure on dowries, gratuities, the upkeep of the palace, his travels and his wardrobe, consumed the entirety of the royal income. The fouage (Latin: "focagium") was assessed on the basis of households and was usually paid by towns in a pre-arranged lump sum raised in any manner the locality chose to employ. It existed in certain French provinces,