Finance under James I Flashcards
James’ Extravagance:
- Elizabeth spent less than £300,000 in peacetime-> James rose immediately to £400,000.
- Spending £522,000 in 1614.
- 12 night feast–> French ambassador, cost over £4000. Paying Lord Hay’s debts.
- Gave presents totalling to £400,000.
£185,000 spent on jewels from 1612.
What financial debt did Elizabeth I leave?
£420,000
Was Elizabeth I’s financial debt as serious as it seemed?
No, £300,000 of grant made by Parliament in 1601 still needed to come in.
Who was a lot of Elizabeth I’s debt owed to?
£100,000 of debt owed to landowners who had paid a forced loan in 1590s, who had given up any expectation that it would be repaid.
What were the structural weaknesses?
- Main Parliamentary tax was subsidy.
- Grants given in fifteenths and tenths, not masses of money at one time.
- Only collected for emergencies, such as war. Rest of the time, James was meant to ‘live on his own’.
How did war impact finances?
- Despite peace being made with Spain, 1604, military expenditure didn’t stop.
- Ireland 1603-1608, £600,000 spent on army.
How much did the subsidies decrease from Elizabeth to James?
1558, Elizabeth received £137,000 from each subsidy.
1621, fell to £72,500.
Had been inflation under Elizabeth I’s reign, James could fund a fifth of what Elizabeth could from a subsidy.
What is ordinary revenue?
Income a monarch made a year.
Not from Parliament, from other sources, such as Crown lands, Customs revenue, wardships and purveyance.
What were the crown lands?
- The most important source of revenue was crown lands.
- Elizabeth had sold over £800,000 worth of estates, but now unpopular due to extracting economic rents.
- Diminished in importance under James’ reign, times of financial crisis, lord treasurers saw selling of land as quickest method to remake the money.
What was customs revenue?
- Otherwise known as tonnage and poundage.
- Taxes on imports and exports, mainly on wine and dry goods.
- Rates wrote down in the Book of Rates.
- 1621, customs revenue brought in three times as much revenue as crownlands.
- Lord Treasurer, Earl of Dorset and Robert Cecil then decided to farm out, instead of collect customs duties.
- Merchants would give an annual rent in return for collecting the revenues.
What were the advantages to farming out the customs duties?
- King received a fixed and regular income, with additional patronage.
- Close group to crown created, probably willing to make loans when crown in time of financial difficulty.
- For merchant, effective because crown never demanded a price that matched what they were collecting.
Why was farming out customs duties disliked in Parliament?
New indirect tax had been created, causing great unease in Parliament, saw control on taxation as being undermined.
What is an example of the unease in Parliament about customs revenue?
- Fear for Parliament increased in 1606 when merchant, John Bate refused to pay a duty on currants, said it hadn’t been sanctioned by Parliament.
- Robert Cecil pursued Bate’s case and Judge Fleming went in King’s favour, saying it was the King’s prerogative to impose impositions on selected goods.
What were the consequences of Bate’s case?
Salisbury drew up a list of 1400 items, new duties known as impositions but into new Book of Rates, published 1608.
An extra £70,000 a year raised.
What were Wardships?
- Also known as feudal tenures, dated from the Middle Ages. Lost justification, but not usefulness to the crown.
- Feudal tenures- major landowners owed a military duty to the King, so the king was entitled to take their property if they died and heir was a minor or woman.
- Could bring ruin to families, land would get neglected.
- Brought in £65,000 in 1610.
