25 NOVEMBER 2000, Page 36

Poll tax blunder

From Mr Jonathan Oates Sir: Edward Pearce (Letters, 18 November) is wrong about the poll tax when he writes of the 1990 community charge that it was a tax 'not seen since 1381'.

The poll tax was revived reasonably suc- cessfully by the Stuarts, under Charles I in 1641, and was levied under several monar- chs on eight occasions from 1660 to 1697.

Jonathan Oates

Greenford, Middlesex