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⟩ hardly ever subject to broadening. Learned words, neologisms (such as "gas", first found in the late 17th century), and Latinate or Greek borrowings were rarely broadened. A particularly interesting case is that of the word "father". In late Middle English this was generally pronounced , thus rhyming with "gather" . Broadening of "father" is notable both in two respects: The Oxford English Dictionary describes the broadening of "father" as "anomalous". Dobson, however, sees broadening in "father" as due to the influence of the adjacent and combined. "Rather" and "lather" appear to have been subject to broadening later, and in fewer