1) A rate or tax.
The spelling ‘gaud’ was noted by Wright, who said that it was a Lancashire word, obsolete at the time he was writing: Angus Winchester records it in Farleton in that county in 1587, as a payment for turf dug in the township by men from Hornby. However, the word must have been current over a much wider area, for I find it regularly in different parts of Yorkshire from Elizabeth’s reign. In 1597 it is found in the typical context galdes, taxes and layes’, but sometimes the tax is specified, as in the king’s gaudes in 1638 and constable gauldes and bridge galds in 1674. In 1695, Richard Wigglesworth of Conistone recorded payment For a bridge gawld ... at Skipton. The word is of uncertain etymology but may be connected to ‘gale’, which was a royalty on a plot of land, paid by free miners in the Forest of Dean.