Seventeenth-Century Customs Service Surveyed
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A01=William B. Stephens
Author_William B. Stephens
boats
Bristol Merchants
Brownsea Island
Budleigh Salterton
Category=KCZ
Category=N
Category=NHB
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=NHW
Category=NHWF
Category=QDTS
Corfe Castle
cornish
Cornish Ports
culliford
Customs Boats
Customs Commissioners
Customs Premises
customs revenue analysis
customs service fraud investigation
Deputy Searcher
Dishonest Merchants
Dorset Ports
economic history research
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
maritime trade regulation
ocers
officer
patent
Patent Officers
Plymouth Establishment
port administration history
ports
Provincial Ports
riding
Riding Surveyor
Scottish Customs
seventeenth century Britain
Smuggled Goods
smuggling and corruption
St Mawes
Studland Bay
surveyor
Tide Surveyor
Welsh Ports
West Country Ports
Western Ports
william
William Culliford
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781138110342
- Weight: 470g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 24 May 2017
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In January 1682, William Culliford, a loyal and experienced officer in the King's customs service, began an extraordinary journey under Treasury orders to investigate the integrity and efficiency of the customs establishments of southwest England and south Wales as part of a drive to maximize the Crown's income from customs duties (on which it relied for much of its revenue). Starting at Bristol, Culliford eventually completed this daunting task in Cornwall over two years later in the spring of 1684. His report on each of the ports he inspected (the primary source for this book) revealed widespread smuggling and fraud in the context of a customs service both lacking in efficiency and riddled with corruption. The book documents the varied frauds and wide-ranging abuses uncovered and their facilitation by customs officers only too ready to collude with smugglers, dishonest merchants and seamen and to accept bribes to ignore tax evasion. It describes, too, Culliford's assessment of the administrative practices of each port inspected and his judgment on the levels of probity and efficiency of individual officers, detailing his recommendations for procedural improvements and the treatment of the corrupt and incompetent and, incidentally, of those suspected of political and religious dissent. Additionally, the book presents a body of statistical data on the customs revenue actually collected at individual ports in the 1670s and 1680s and surveys the extent and nature of the maritime trade of the ports Culliford examined. It thus not only throws light on the history of the customs service, but provides a rare insight into the interactions of economic, social and political issues in the later seventeenth century, and makes a valuable contribution to the particular histories of the ports and maritime districts visited by this energetic and tenacious investigator.
Over a career as Deputy General Editor of the Victoria County Histories, as Reader in the University of Leeds and as Hon. Research Fellow at University College London, Dr Stephens has published widely in the fields of economic and social history and in English and US local history.
