In the Byzantine Empire a tax on hearths, known as kapnikon, was first explicitly mentioned for the reign of Nicephorus I (802–811), although its context implies that it was already then old and established and perhaps it should be taken back to the 7th century AD.

[1] 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.

[2] 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.

[3] It existed in certain French provinces, and became widespread in the 14th century when the royal finances were unable to bear the rising costs of war and state agents.

[citation needed] One shilling was liable to be paid for every fire hearth or stove, in all dwellings, houses, edifices or lodgings,[5] and was payable at Michaelmas, 29 September and on Lady Day, 25 March.

The original bill contained a practical shortcoming in that it did not distinguish between owners and occupiers and was potentially a major burden on the poor as there were no exemptions.

After the Glorious Revolution, the hearth tax was repealed by the newly empowered English Parliament and agreed to by the newly installed William III and Mary II in 1689, as[5] not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man’s house to be entered into, and searched at pleasure, by persons unknown to him.At the end of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, William III and Mary II also agreed to and signed the English Bill of Rights 1689 marking a new level of co-operation and power sharing between Parliament and the English monarchs.

led to a greater measure of legal protection for life, liberty, and property in England that encouraged and empowered the middle class at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The new King William III and his wife Mary II were Protestant leaders from the Dutch Republic who were invited by Parliament to rule England.

It was levied half yearly by the sheriff of each county on the basis of lists of the names of householders compiled by local justices of the peace.

The measure was apparently a consequence of parliamentary pressure in the previous session; the modification of the window tax in Britain giving total relief to poorer householders had led to calls in the Irish Parliament for similar "liberality" in the light of Ireland's healthy finances.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (William Pitt) had refused, but a parliamentary committee was established under the de facto chairmanship of Mr G. P. Bushe who successfully proposed that one-hearth householders should be divided into two groups: those above and those below £5 in annual valuation.

[20] This work provides assistance with deciphering the technical details of hearth tax documents, which otherwise might appear to be little more than lists of names and numbers.

A principal focus of interest in the hearth tax lies in its application for understanding the distribution of wealth among social ranks within geographical areas.

[21] The method of connecting bands of hearth numbers to social categories was pioneered by William George Hoskins, looking at the city of Exeter.

[21] Tom Arkell responded in The Local Historian, putting forward an alternative approach which drew upon an array of published and unpublished data.

[28] First, he argued for the aggregation of data from different returns in the mid-1660s and the early 1670s to produce more reliable statistics, thereby overcoming the problems of damaged or incomplete records.

Hearth Tax Digital provides free access to personal name data as well as analysis of the distribution of both population and wealth in urban and rural communities in England.

The great advantage of the website developed by Professor Vogeler and Dr Wareham is that it goes beyond the traditional database functions to provide historical information rooted in the documents in terms of the original order in which they were written.

The same approach is also used in the Records page, which means as readers scan their eyes down the returns they are able to follow in the footsteps of the collectors and consider local geographies of population distribution and the divide between rich and poor on a street-by-street basis.

In 2000, the award of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund paid for the microfilming of all of the taxation returns stored in The National Archives and a publishing partnership was established between the centre and the British Record Society which has led to the publication of a number of county volumes, including recent volumes on Essex (2012), London and Middlesex (2014), Yorkshire East Riding (2016) and the city of Bristol (2018).

[35] In 2004, the British Academy adopted the Hearth Tax Project and, in 2007 and 2009, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) made awards to fund a London and Middlesex Hearth Tax Project and a research and outreach programme which assisted with the organization of an exhibition on landscapes of poverty at the Essex Record Office which was visited by c. 1,875 people.