Edinburgh local taxation papers

Transcripts relating to local taxation in Edinburgh from 1745 to 1760, including:
1. 'Memorandum offered by the members of the College of Justice appointed by the Faculty of Advocates and Society of Writers to the Signet to the preses and other remanent stent-masters of the city of Edinburgh in relation to the imposing the stent on the inhabitants of the town for the year 1749'. The memorandum, dated 18 July 1749, contains eight questions put to the stent-masters, and these are answered in the following eight pages of the manuscript, written for the most part in another hand, and dated 19 July 1749.
2. A 'Report to the Faculty of Advocates of the stent-masters appointed by them to meet with the stent-masters of the town of Edinburgh for imposing the stent or cess for the year 1749', written in the second hand. A note in the original hand says that the reports were 'drop'd'.
3. Comments on the collusion between the Faculty of Advocates and the Town Council regarding the stent-masters, with a copy of a letter to George Chalmers, writer to the Signet, from Robert Thomson of Aberdeen, dated 13 Feb 1745, concerning stents at Aberdeen.
4. The final leaf, dated 14 Jul 1760, contains in a third hand an 'Estimate of the land cess and trade stent to be imposed by the...Magistrats & Town Council of Edinburgh for the service of the year, viz. from 25 March 1759 to 25 March 1760'.

A 'stent' was the rate levied on property owners in order to pay for local expenses, such as poor relief.

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Bought from G.W. Walford in 1965.

Collection level description.

9" x 7¼"

Compiled by Sarah Aitchison as part of the RSLP AIM25 Project.

Copies may be made, subject to the condition of the original. Copying must be undertaken by the Palaeography Room staff, who will need a minimum of 24 hours to process requests.

University of London Library MS 629 also relates to local taxation in Edinburgh.