Hearth less than 20 shillings a year and those who paid neither church nor poor rates. Also exempt were charitable institutions such as schools and almshouses, and industrial hearths with the exception of smiths' forges and bakers' ovens. The returns were lodged with the Clerk of the Peace between 1662 and 1688. A revision of the Act in 1664 made the tax payable by all who had more than two chimneys. The tax was abolished by William III in 1689 and the last collection was for Lady Day of that year. It was abolished in Scotland in 1690. Hearth tax records
17th century period also that European colonization of the Americas began in earnest, including the exploitation of the silver deposits, which resulted in bouts of inflation as wealth was drawn into Europe. In the Islamic world, the Ottoman, Safavid Persian and Mughal empires grew in strength. In India The Marathas dominated the political scene from the middle of the 17th century to the early 19th century as the Maratha Empire founded by Chatrapati Shivajiraje Bhosale. In Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the century, beginning the Edo period; the isolationist Sakoku policy began in the 1630s and