[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.ÿþthe amount of the parish minister s annual salary and directed parishes toprovide glebe land and a parsonage for the minister, sufficient buildings forreasonable access to public worship, and assistance to the poor and disadvan-taged.Not prescribed by Crown, Parliament, or the bishop of London, thislegislation was made by representatives from Virginia s counties.And whilelaw and practice owed something to the transfer of institutions, values, andbeliefs from the Mother Country, they owed still more to local initiative anddecision.The extent of latitude becomes evident when one examines those parishesand counties for which there are concurrent levy rates.Particularly strikingare rate fluctuations over time and the variation in tax levels from one parish-county to the next.The overall averages of eighteenth-century parish andcounty taxes described earlier convey an impression of uniformity and even-ness in tax levels, but observation of the rates from the perspective of thosepaying taxes suggests a far more varied and complicated experience.For Wicomico Parish and Northumberland County, for example, eigh-teenth-century parish and county levies overall closely approximated the aver-ages for the whole colony.Wicomico s mean levy was thirty-three pounds oftobacco per tithable and Northumberland s mean levy was fourteen pounds.But this did not assure the planter or farmer that he could count on settingaside forty-seven pounds of tobacco per tithable every year.Between 1704 and1715, for example, ratepayers faced combined annual tax bills of 130, 85, 54, 32,48, 46, 79, 57, 68, 74, 32, and 62 pounds.During the next ten years combined an-nual levies both moderated and evened out with a range from 21 to 42 pounds.But that state of affairs was not permanent, and from the late 1720s throughthe mid-1730s the tax bills again fluctuated dramatically (49 pounds in 1727followed by 61, 44, 52, 68, 96, 42, 32, 43, and 61 pounds respectively in the yearsthrough1736).There followed a slightly longer period into the early1750s, whenthe annual rate averaged 34 pounds and never rose above 40.Then once againfrom the mid-1750s through the mid-1760s, taxpayers faced both greater fluc-tuation and a general elevation of the levies although not as dramatic as in theearlier periods.Between 1752 and 1756, for example, rates bounced from 39 to77 to 29 to 53 to 41 pounds.9Other parish-county situations demonstrate this remarkable variability inrates.It would be hard to imagine more emphatic evidence of this than thefigures for St.George s Parish in Spotsylvania County.For two years running,combined levies amounted to more than 100 pounds of tobacco per tithable(142 lbs.in 1732, 122 lbs.in 1733).In the four years previous to 1732, the rate.Levies 45 [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]