1. HOW SIGNIFICANT WAS ROYAL INCOME FOR THE SUCCESSFUL EXPRESSION OF POLITICAL POWER IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND? Flashcards
Routine expenditure
Maintenance of the king, his family and the royal household, Regular defence costs, Administration, including costs of employing staff in key government departments like the Exchequer, funds for calling parliament etc
King’s royal household
a large organisation including retainers, servants
and advisers.
Exceptional expenditure
Finance for key ceremonial costs, including coronations, royal
baptisms, weddings, etc.
• Exceptional defence costs, which might include money for an
invasion or to repel attacks on English territories in France
Income- when and why did the traditional income fall for kings
During the period 1399-1509, there was a decline in the traditional incomes enjoyed by the king, mostly because of a fall in tax revenue from the wool trade.
Income- who did fall in incomes cause problems for
Under the Lancastrian
kings, this became a serious problem because of very high
defence costs
Income-what showed Henry V was in debt when died 1422
his jewellery and ships
had to be sold to pay back money to creditors of the crown.
Income- what was the most catastrophic reign in terms of finance and why
Henry VI, owing to the king’s personal ineptitude and the costly and unsuccessful war with France.
According to historian Charles
Ross, by 1433, the accumulated debts of Henry V and Henry VI
meant that
the crown was in debt to the tune of £225,000
1450, when the English suffered some of their heaviest defeats
in the Hundred Years War, the figure of debt had risen to
£372,000
Christine Carpenter has argued that in
the 1430s the entire cost of regular defence to the crown was
c£25,000 each year
Henry’s financial crisis provoked strong public
criticism, most forcefully from
Cade’s rebels in 1450, who
succinctly pointed out that ‘he owes more than ever any King of
England ought’.
Henry’s financial crisis consequently made what a priority for his successor, Edward IV?
regaining financial solvency
During his first reign
(1461-70), Edward took a range of measures to
increase the
efficiency of crown lands and to improve relations with key
creditors, such as London merchants, who were more prepared
to lend money at reasonable rates to Edward than they had
been to the weak Henry VI.
Edward also engaged in a range of
unpopular measures for raising money, such as
forced loans and gifts, particularly to pay for a proposed invasion of France during
his second reign in 1474.
Did the king’s gamble pay off?
in financial terms at least,
