With the disappearance of direct taxation as a source of federal revenue, the motive mentioned for understating the population disappeared.
The peasantry defended themselves by the simple device of understating the numbers of their families; the returns made it appear that the adult population of England had gone down from 1,355,000 to 896,000 since the poll-tax of 1379.
If the AP is understating their income they are probably also defrauding the government.
