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.
What was purveyance?
- Another medieval relic.
- Court could buy provisions at fixed prices, well below market rates.
- System open to abuse, would buy excess provisions and sell them at a profit.
- Worth £40,000.
How did Robert Cecil try to solve James’ extravagance?
- Earl of Salisbury.
- Imposed ‘Book of Bounty’, 1608.
- Prohibited Crown giving away land or major assets.
Was the Book of Bounty effective?
- James gave away in cash instead, last four months of 1610, gave away £36,000.
Official self interest of Salisbury:
- ‘bent the rules’ for James, to earn his approval. Suggested given Sir Walter Raleigh’s manor (who had his estates confiscated due to a treason allegation 1604) to new favourite Robert Carr.
- 1609, salisbury gained £1400 from a wardship that earned the crown £370.
- 1610, negotiated the renewal of silk duties, gained him £7000 a year.
What was the impact of Parliamentary taxation?
- Those liable to pay subsidy, excluding poor, had to declare their worth and would often lie.
- Lionel Cranfield (lord treasurer 1621-4) only taxed £150 when worth £90,000.
- Buckingham, £400,000 taxed £400.
Why couldn’t the King rely on Parliamentary taxation?
- 1624 Subsidy Act granted James £300,000, totally inadequate.
First Parliamentary session:
- James’ first Parliament (1604-10), wary about making grants. Would give no supply because of large grant made at end of Elizabeth’s reign still being collected.
Second Parliamentary session:
- 1606, aftermath of the Gunpowder plot, made unusually large grant of £400,000.
- Mislead James into believing that Parliament would always pay his debts.
- Grant passed with slimmest majority (one vote).
- 1606-1621, James only received one grant of £100,000.
- New financial system needed, Great Contract.
What was the Great Contract?
- 1610, suggested by Salisbury.
- In return for annual grant of £200,000 from Parliament and a one-off payment of £600,000 to clear Crown’s debts in return for the abolition of purveyance and wardships.
How did Parliament initially respond to the Great Contract?
- Agreed to annual rent, but would only give £100,000 from a subsidy.
- Doubts surfaced on both sides, MPs didn’t like idea of funding James’ extravagance.
- Also realised getting rid of wardships would be getting rid of a useful form of patronage.
- Described James as a ‘leaky cistern’.
- James then claimed that he would accept £500,000, which was refused.
What have historians said about the failure of the Great Contract?
- Said it would have been a ‘lifeline’ for the Stuart dynasty.
- Parliament had impeded chances of future tranquillity.
- Would have reduced conflict between Parliament and Crown and Parliament could have had more responsibility in financing the government.
When were the years of drift?
1612-18
What happened in the years of drift?
- James’ eldest son Henry, and his treasurer, Salisbury, died in 1612.
- James did not initially replace treasurer.
- Government drifted with no sense of purpose.
- Parliament of 1614 failed to grant any money, so James sold titles.
- Created title of ‘baronet, just for it to be sold.
- Price of barony fell from £1095 to £220 by 1622.
- Selling earldoms at £10,000 more successful. Earls increased from 28 in 1615 to 65 by 1628.
- Cockayne’s scheme.
What happened in Cockayne’s scheme?
- William Cockayne wanted to break into the monopoly of merchant adventurers for sale of unfinished cloth to the Netherlands, England’s biggest export market.
- 1614, persuaded the King to prohibit the export of unfinished cloth on the grounds that this would generate employment in the finishing cloth and increase customs revenue.
Why did Cockayne’s scheme fail?
- Dutch reacted to attempted attack on their industry by finding new sources of unfinished cloth.
- Unemployment instead soared.
- In two years, exports sent through London went down by a third and customs revenue fell accordingly.
- Cloth trade eventually recovered, but didn’t reach high point of 1614.
Who was the new treasurer after Salisbury?
- 1614, the Earl of Suffolk became lord treasurer.
- Corruption surpassed anything, crown’s debt doubled (nearly), £500,000 to £900,000.
- Suffolk dismissed 1618.
Who was Cranfield?
Appointed master of the wardrobe, 1618.
What was Cranfield’s impact?
- If costs fell from existing £42,000 to £20,000, Cranfield could keep any additional savings. Soon made a profit of £7000 a year.
- Ordinance (supply of weapons), costs fell from £34,000 to £14,000. Achieved this by attacking waste, saying candles were to be used more than once eg.
- Saved over £100,000 a year.
When was Cranfield created Lord treasurer?
1621
Why did Cranfield fall?
Cranfield opposed Buckingham and his desire for war, tried to undermine him by attempting to make his nephew Arthur Brett the new favourite.
April 1624, accused of defrauding the crown.
