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. Subsequently, in 1795, freedom from hearth tax was extended to all one-hearth householders, as the opposition had earlier demanded; at the same time, the tax on multiple-hearth houses was raised. The number of persons exempted from the hearth tax was estimated at between a million and a half to two million. The original Hearth Money Rolls are not extant. The records were housed in the Four Courts in Dublin, the repository for the Public Records Office, but during the Irish Civil War in 1922 the building was destroyed by fire, which also destroyed the Rolls (along with the Ireland census records for 1821, 1831, 1841, and 1851), but copies of some of the Rolls have survived. Hearth tax research The comprehensiveness and near-national coverage of hearth tax returns differentiates this historical evidence from other pre-modern surveys and tax records. Unlike other taxation surveys, the hearth tax recorded the names of those who were not liable to pay the tax, and hence provides a means of looking at a full range of social groups. The work of C.A.F. Meekings during the mid-twentieth century is an important resource for hearth tax research. It provides useful commentaries on hearth tax manuscripts in The National Archives (TNA), and arranges the hearth tax files in order according to the different systems of administration. Meekings' compilation of hearth tax accounts, which was published posthumously, is a useful resource for economic historians. Further information on hearth taxes, as well as other Stuart taxes and loyalty lists, is provided by Jeremy Gibson, which offers a comprehensive summary of hearth tax returns and assessments, whether in TNA, county record offices, or other libraries and archives. Each digest includes a brief commentary on the date, geographical coverage, state of the manuscript, approximate number of names included, and details of complete or partially published editions. An additional resource for hearth tax research