106 History of Local Rates 
resident landlords escaped rating in respect of their 
rents in those parishes where, in spite of the general 
usage, the church-rates were assessed according to 
real estimates of ability. In the case of Miller w. 
Bloomfield, tried in 1823, counsel quoted from the 
registry of the Court of Delegates a number of places 
where all sources of ability were taken into account 
about the time of the Revolution. In Boston in 
1706 it was alleged that most of the inhabitants 
were “tradesmen that live by their trades, and are 
chiefly assessed to the church assessments according 
to their way of trading; whereas were they to be 
assessed according ‘to the rents they sit on or by 
any other way than by will and doom, which is the 
constant way of making and levying such assess- 
ments in the said parish, their contributions thereto 
would not advance so much money as they do, and 
that, moreover, the greatest burden of such assessments 
would then fall upon such as are not well able to bear 
the same.” Assessing by will and doom was explained 
as “having due regard to every one’s estate, quality, 
ability, way and circurastances of living.” But 
these exceptional cases are exactly analogous to the 
exceptional cases in which the poor-rate was assessed 
in the same way. In some cases (though probably 
not in that of Boston, considering that Sir A. Earby’s 
case was decided there) they are coincident. For 
example, it seems that at the beginning of the 
present century both church-rate and poor-rate were 
assessed according to a general estimate of ability 
in Whitechapel, though before 1823 the churcb-rate 
became an ordinary pound rate on property under 
1 Addams, Ecclesiastical Reports, vol. i. p. 527 &.