This essay has two purposes: first to investigate how English villages and towns organised their direct taxes after 1334, when the government gave them the task of assessing their own contributions; and secondly, of using that information to explore medieval attitudes towards hierarchy and social responsibility.

The concept of community presents historians with many dilemmas and uncertainties. On the one hand it has a solid, institutional significance which need not cause much difficulty. When the community of the vill was charged with some rent payment or public function (repairing a bridge, for example) we can be sure that we are observing practical self-government. Likewise in a town the communitas was sometimes assigned a specific constitutional role, such as the election of officials, even though there were doubts about methods of representation. The word ‘community’ also carries with it a whole range of imprecise meanings: it implies a sharing of values among its members, and a collective sense of purpose; or it might refer to the interactions between people which made them mutually dependent, and led them to co-operate. Such issues of mentality or everyday social contact are difficult to define and analyse historically. Nonetheless, it has been assumed that in the case of villages, and to a lesser extent towns, at some early period communities were strong and cohesive, and that they were threatened by economic and social change.