The hearth tax was a graduated house tax based on the number of fireplaces within each household. Introduced in 1662, few of its surviving returns list nearly all the householders with their hearths, including the exempt. But Warwickshire has the fullest set of extant hearth tax records of all counties. A transcript of the best of its eight returns, that for 1670, provides the core of this volume together with Coventry’s return for 1666.