English Government finance, 1485-1558

Front matter

IN THE

SOCIAL SCIENCES

V^OL. IX Maech-June, 1920 Nos. 1 and 2

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Fifteenth Century Background . . . . 11

Eoyal revenues derived from feudal dues, lands and customs in the Middle Ages — Their decline in the Fifteenth Century — More frequent use of direct taxation by the Lancastrians — The fifteenth and tjenth — Unsuccessful experiments with other direct taxes — Direct taxes not favored either by the crown or the people — ' ' The King must live of his own ' ' is the view of the gentry class which was most affected by direct taxation;

Preface

The publication of the Pipe Rolls, of Expenditure and Receipt Rolls, of Taxation and Subsidy Rolls, of Household and Wardrobe Accounts and many other accounts of official nature has made available in printed form a large body of material for the student of English government finance, especially in the later Middle Ages. Much research has already been done on special topics. Beside Madox's History and Antiquities of the Exchequer, and its continuation beyond 1327 in F. S. Thomas's little book. The Ancient Exchequer of England, there is the highly scholarly work on the Exchequer by Hall, Poole and Vinogradoff. The history of the customs has been rather fully and carefully written by Hubert Hall, whose theory of the origin of the customs has been corrected by Gras. The taxation of the thirteenth century is elaborately examined by S. K. Mitchell, in his Studies m Taxation under John and Henry III, and by J. A. C. Vincent^ in his Lancashire Lay Subsidies.

But no satisfactory general account of the finances of the English government, showing their nature and extent, and the theories on the basis of which various kinds of revenues were used, bringing out at the same time the close interrelation and interaction between finance and the more general political problems and policies, has yet been written. The nearest approach to such a general account is Stephen Dowell's History of Taxation and Taxes in England. His implied assumption that taxation was always the chief resource of English governments for their revenues, is incorrect, and has led to a too large disregard of the vastly more important revenues under the king's own control, in the earlier period. Dowell's account of the earlier period of English history moreover, is too meagre, and at best he is chiefly interested in the ''how" of things, and pays little attention to the "why." Dowell's book may be supplemented by S. A. Morgan's History of Parliamentary

Taxation in England, a short, ably written sketch, and bychapters in Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce. For the period down to 1485 J. H. Kamsay in his Foundations of England, The Angevin Empire, The Dawn of the Constitution, The Gensis of Lancaster, and Lancaster and York, devotes much attention to the actual revenue receipts and expenditures, without, however giving any very extensive interpretive account of them.

For the Tudor age less has been done than for times earlier. There is little besides Schantz's Englische Handelspolitik, and some short articles, like Gras's Tudor Books of Bates, Mrs. Eric George's Note on the Origin of the Declared Account, Professor Oman's The Tudors and the Currency, and Mr. A. P. Newton's The King's Chamber under the early Tudors. Of the actual amount of the English revenues, and the comparatively small part played by direct taxation of Parliamentary origin, and of the great changes in the organization of the whole financial system between 1485 and 1554, very little is known, or indeed suspected by writers of English history.

In the preparation of this essay, the attempt has been made to collect, and to study carefully all the existing revenue accounts of the English government from 1485 to 1558, together with all other documents which would serve to make clear the government's policy and purposes. Many classes of documents in the Public Record Office hitherto entirely unused were investigated. It is hoped that by this research something may have been done to make a beginning of a history of Tudor Finances, and some small contribution made to the larger work of a general history of the finances of the English State.

This study was undertaken at the suggestion of Professor Edwin F. Gay when he was still at Harvard University, and to his stimulus and friendly counsel whatever merit it may have, is due.

Frederick C. Dietz

CHAPTER I The Fifteenth Century Background

In the middle ages, the revenues of the English kings were derived from the firma cmnitatus, or farm of the ancient domains of the crown and of the king's share of the fines in the popular courts; the fee-farms of incorporated boroughs and cities; the fines and amercements in the king's courts; the farm of the ulnage and the profits of escheat and other feudal incidents. To these Edward I had added the great and small customs, the magna and the parva custuma, and Edward III the customs subsidies of tonnage- and poundage, and of wool, wool fells and leather. The customs subsidies of tonnage and poundage and of wool, wool fells and leather were of parliamentary origin, and in the fifteenth century either were granted for periods of two or three years and renewed, or were voted for life. Though they were given theoretically for the safeguarding of the seas, and the defense of the realm, and though parliament endeavored to control their use, in actual fact, once they were granted by Parliament, the king used them as he pleased, and for all practical purposes they formed part of the annual regularly recurring revenues of the crown.^ Besides the feudal

1 Henry V received the grant of these subsidies for life after the battle of Agincourt {Bot. Pari, IV, 641) ; Henry VI in 1453 (Bot. Pari., V, 229) ; Edward IV in 1472 after Hexham (Bot. Pari, VI, 154) ; and Eichard III in 1485 (Bot. Pari., VI, 238). A grant for life was never to be a precedent, (Bot. Pari, IV, 64a). In 1404 the Commons in their grant declared that the sums received from these subsidies should be spent ''in especial expense in dtefence of the realm, according to the form and intent of the grant . . and for no other purpose. ' ' Anyone who received any sums out of the said grants "for wars or for any debt due by King Henry before the day of this present Parliament except only for the defence of the realm to be made in time to come'* was declared guilty of treason. The disbursement was placed in charge of treasurers of war, to dues and the customs, the king enjoyed the income from estates which had come more recently into the hands of the crown, especially in the course of the fifteenth century, either by inheritence like the lands of the Duchy of Lancaster, or by forfeiture like the estates of the Duke of Clarence.

The crown revenues from feudal sources and from customs diminished greatly in value in the course of the fifteenth century. In the reign of Henry VI the firma comitatus, and the fee farms of the chartered towns, and other feudal dues had yielded £17,000 yearly to the crown.^ In the reign of Edward IV they returned only £2,500.^ The customs revenues of all kinds had averaged £47,000 a year in Henry IV 's reign. In the middle of the century they fell to £32,000 a year, and in the first half of Edward IV 's reign to £25,000 a year. They rose to an average of £35,000 a year in the latter half of this reign, only to decline to £20,800 a year for the three years of the reigns of Edward V and Richard III.* The more recently acquired crown lands were in a similar case. During the fifteenth century the land which came to the crown by forfeiture was very great in extent. Fortescue estimated that during the reign of Edward IV alone, the king held possession of one fifth of the land of England, at one time and another.^ Because faithful followers demanded rewards, and perhaps because a system of centralized control of crown lands had as yet not been sufficiently developed, the land passed out

report at the next Parliament (Bot. Pari., Ill, 546b). Even as late as 1473-1476 Sir John Fortescue, in his De Dominio Begali et Politico, declared that the subsidy of the tonnage and poundage ought to be applied only to the keeping of the sea, and was not to be considered part of the king's ordinary revenues (Fortescue, Works, I, 456). But as early as 1406 Henry IV was permitted to use £6,000 of the revenues from customs subsidies as he pleased {Bot. Pari., Ill, 568b); in Henry VI 's reign it was made possible to use some of their returns to meet household expenses (Bot. Pari., V, 246-247), and in Edward IV 's reign assignments for the household were definitely made upon these subsidies (Bot. Pari., VI, 198- 199).

2 Eamsay, Lancaster and YorTc, I, 145-146.

^Ilid., I, 151, 313; II, 254-257; 461-462; 559. These tables are based on the Lord Treasurer's Bememhrancer's Enrolled Customs Accounts. 5 Fortescue, Works, I, 463.

309] THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BACKGROUND 13

of the king's possession almost immediately.® The hereditary estates of the crown, the Duchy of Cornwall, the Earldom of Chester, the Principality of Wales, and the Duchy of Lancaster were alienated only in part; but they were so burdened with charges that during the reign of Edward IV that they returned to the crown only five-eighths of their rental.*^ From all the more recently acquired crown lands Edward IV received per year on the average, during the last years of his reign,® £6,471 and during the reign of Richard III, the sums seem to have been less.^

The growing deficiency of the ordinary revenues gives a clue to the rising importance of direct taxes of parliamentary origin in the fifteenth century. The difficulties of the Lancastrian kings were not due to extravagance and mismanagement. Their shrinking revenues scarcely sufficed for their ordinary expenses, and their constant wars compelled them to find further resources in frequent parliamentary grants.

The usual parliamentary tax was the fifteenth and tenth. The fifteenth and tenth was a grant of the fifteenth part of the value of movable property belonging to persons outside the royal demesne; and the tenth part of such value in case of persons living on the royal demesne and in cities and boroughs. Though this tax was originally assessed anew at every grant, it was fixed in 1334 on the basis of a composition between the royal commissioners and the men who paid it.^** The sum agreed upon was ''entered on the rolls as the assessment of the particular township. And the tax-payers in the townships were required to assess and collect the amount upon and from the various contributors. ' ' ^^ The fifteenth and tenth thus passed out of the control of the royal assessors and commissioners, since the tax-payers in each township assessed and collected the required sum, and it became a fossilized tax yielding at

6 Eamsay, Lancaster and YorTc, I, 147 ; II, 459. 1 Ibid., II, 459-461.

^ExcJi. of Beceipt, Eeceipt Bolls, nos. 941, 942, 943, 946, 947, 949; Michaelmas 1480-Michaelmas 1483.

9 Exch. of Beceipt, Beceipt Bolls, nos. 950, 951; Easter, 1484-Easter, 1485.

10 Stephen Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England; I, 87. iij&id., I, 86.

first between £38,000 and £39,000." But since no new groups could be added to those which paid the tax, nor the amount paid by any existing group increased because of the fixing of the assessment in 1334, as the old groups became unable to pay their full quotas, the value of the tax to the crown decreased. Allowances were made from time to time for decayed towns. In 1443 the specific sum of £4000 was allowed,^^ and this was increased in 1449 to £6000, when, in addition, the city of Lincoln and the town of Great Yarmouth were completely exempted from payment. From that time forward these allowances and exemptions were always made. The yield of the tax was thus reduced to between £32,000 and £33,000, and continued to fall. It is to be noted also that the fifteenth and tenth, originally a tax on movable goods became after 1334 a fixed tax on land. It did not however touch the demesne lands of peers, and it passed over the landless population entirely,^*

For these reasons, the Lancastrian and Yorkist kings, and even their predecessors made every effort to replace the fifteenth and tenth by more productive taxes with a broader incidence, collected under royal control. In 1404 Henry IV declaring to Parliament that the grant of 1402 was insufficient, received a new tax, a grant of five per cent of the yearly value of lands and rents in England, or of one shilling for every £20 of personal property in the case of men without land. With this were combined two fifteenths and tenths.^^ During the next reigns various experiments were tried; a tax on householders combined with a tax on knights' fees,^^ a tax on land,^^ a graduated tax on land,^^, and in 1440 a graduated income tax combined with an act for the resumption of all grants from the royal demesne since the accession of Henry VI.^^ The remark-

13 Bot. Pari, IV, 425a.

^* Nottingham Becords, II, 286; Vickers, England in the Later Middle AgeSj 335.

'^^ Ibid., V, 172-174. A description of these taxes is given in Dowell, I, 104-126.

311] THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BACKGROUND 15

able thing is, that of all these experiments made during the first half of the fifteenth century, not one was successful enough to be repeated. The new taxes were perhaps sometimes too elaborate to be successfully managed with the existing governmental machinery; but- the proviso added to nearly all the new taxes that they were not to be taken as precedents, lends some support to Dowell's statements that the fifteenth and tenth ''came to be regarded by the people almost as of constitutional right" and that all the attempts to introduce other forms of taxation ended in failure for that reason.^** Even in conjunction with some of the new taxes the fifteenth and tenth was used, as in 1404, 1431 and 1435; and it was always returned to in the intervals between experiments.

Edward IV made two great efforts to change the character of the parliamentary grants, in 1463 and 1472. In 1463 the £6,000 allowed in the fifteenth and tenth for decayed towns was to be levied upon the shires proportionately to the sum allowed for the decayed towns within each shire. This sum so apportioned to the shire, was to be levied upon the inhabitants having twenty shillings in yearly value of lands or ten marks in goods, by royal commissioners, and the money was to be collected by royal collectors. This plan was an attempt to recoup the crown in the collection of fifteenths and tenths to the amount of the allowances made to the shires for decayed towns ; to alter the incidence of taxation by a new limit of exemption and the inclusion of the landless classes; to introduce the principle of a progressive charge ; and to replace local by royal assessment and collection; — in short, ''to revise the settlement of 1534, ' * 2^ The king was compelled to abandon the attempt. He remitted the £6,000 and agreed to collect the fifteenth and tenth under the old forms.^^

In 1472 Edward IV made another attempt to change the old order. To pay for the support of 13,000 archers against France for one year, estimated to cost £118,625, he received from Parliament the grant of ten per cent of all issues and profits of lands and tenements, rents, fees, annuities, offices and

20Dowell, I, 88.

22 iJot Pari, V, 498.

other income from the Commons and Lords in Parliament.^^ The first collection of the tax yielded £31,140. To provide the balance, Parliament before its prorogation granted a fifteenth and tenth, and saddled £5,383 arbitrarily upon those counties whose certificates of assessment had not been returned in time for the first collection. There was still lacking £51,147, however, after this second grant had been collected. This sum was now assessed upon the shires in specific amounts, and royal commissioners were sent to subdivide the sum assesed on a county, among the inhabitants, levying on the value of goods and chattels, which were to be taxed before any land or landed posses, sions. The new tax was not successful. The House of Commons, stating that ''the most easy, ready and prone payment of any charge to be borne within this realm by the commons of the same, is by grants of fifteenths and tenths, the levy whereof amongst your people is so usual although it be to them full chargeable, that none other form of levy resembleth thereunto, ^ ' prayed the king to remit the said £51,147. and take in its place one entire fifteenth and tenth and ''three parts" of a fifteenth and tenth.2* The next grant of taxes in 1482 was a fifteenth and tenth in the old form.^^

The fifteenth century experiment of using direct parliamentary taxation to increase the governmental income was not regarded as successful by either the king or his people. For the crown it was accompanied by an unwelcome surrender of power to Parliament, which made opportunities of the king 's necessities to endeavor to increase its own control of the state, and to interfere with the policies of the king. The "constitutionalism" of the century follows directly upon the financial difficulties of the Lancastrian sovereigns. Among the "people" taxation as a method of government finance was unpopular. As the ' ' people ' ' expressed themselves in Parliament and through the writers on political theory, like Sir John Fortescue, they show themselves to have an ingrained notion that the king should live of his own. Henry IV was petitioned by his Parliament of 1404 that he should live of his own,^^ Sir John Fortescue

26 Oman, The Political History of England, 1377-1485, 191.

313] THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY BACKGROUND 17

held that in general the king should live of his own '*livelood" which was his in right of his crown,^^ and Edward IV, bidding for the support of the nation at large, announced in 1467 that he intended to **lyve upon my nowne, and not to charge my sub jgettes but in grete and urgent causes. ' ' ^® Only when there fell *'a case overmuch exorbitant,'* for the suppression of rebellion, the defence of the realm to repel invasion and the safeguarding of the seas, was it thought right and necessary that the people should be taxed.^^ The formulated reason for this attitude was that taxes, regularly levied for the support of the ordinary charges of the government impoverished the people. France where the aides and tallies together with the gabelle and certain excises were the important revenues of the king, was the horrible example. "There the same commons be so impoverished and destroy d that they may unneth (scarcely) lyve. Thay drynke Water. Thay eate Apples, with Bred right brown made of Rye. They eaten no flesche. . . Their Wifs and Children gone bare fote. . . Thay gone crokyd and ar f eble not able to fyght nor to defend the Realme nor they have wepon nor monye to buy them wepon withal. ' ' ^° In England with the commons poverty-stricken by taxation, the archers would decrease, and the nation's military power be weakened. The people, being men of greater courage than the French might rise against the king. In time of special need they would not be able to help his necessities as they now did with subsidies and fifteenths and tenths.^^

Behind such arguments. Lord Acton would have us seek the baser motives, the special self-interest. The articulate classes, who ever arrogate to themselves the designation of the people, who voiced these protests against taxation in the persons of such writers as Sir John Fortescue, or through the House of Commons, were the richer freeholders and gentry of the country ; and the burgesses of the towns. The persons who paid the fifteenths and tenths and subsidies were precisely these same ones. Had they been given to deeper introspection, they would

27 Fortescue, WorTcs, I, 458-459.

28 Vickers, England in the Later Middle Ages, 467.

29 Fortescue, Works, I, 457. so/fetd., I, 451-452.

probably have acknowledged that their real objection to taxation as a method of financing the state was that it took their property and the property of their peculiar classes alone, for the support of the state and government. The continuance of the earlier developments of the country might have reconciled them to taxational finance; for in return they had acquired in their institution, Parliament, especially in Henry IV 's reign, a large degree of control in the state. This control seems to have been asserted rather to limit expenditure and to keep down taxes, rather than for any desire to shape high policy. For the proper use of this control, in their own interests however, the gentry and burgesses had neither experience nor aptitude. When in the middle of the century they found Parliament and its power the tool of fiimbitious restless nobles like the Beauforts, York, Warwick, and later, Gloucester, for the disturbance of the peace of the land, they must have felt that government should be chiefly the concern of the king. Kather than power in the state, which they did not yet know how to use, they preferred for themselves relief from the necessity of supporting the state. Thus the ancient idea that the king should live of his own was reinforced, and became anew a vital article of their creed.

CHAPTER II The Establishment of the Tudor Dynasty

Henry Tudor 's chief advisers and supporters in 1485 fall into two classes; on the one hand the Earl of Oxford and the Courtenays of Devon, and on the other, John Morton, Richard Fox, Reginald Bray, Richard Guildford, Edward Poynings, Richard Edgecombe, and Thomas Lovell.^ Oxford and the Courtenays are representatives of the remnants of the old Lancastrian nobility. They had been exiled for their loyalty to the cause of Lancaster, and their property and wealth confiscated. To them the triumph of Henry Tudor meant the victory of the true Lancastrian claimant over the usurper of York, together with, their own personal rehabilitation in title, estates and position.

Morton, Fox, Bray, Guilford, Poynings, Lovell and Edgecombe were all of them sons of yeomen or lesser gentry; men with university or legal training, or skilled in accounting — in a word — the professional men of the middle classes. The best trained and most experienced men of their classes, they may be taken as the best representatives of the attitude and interests of their classes, and their support of Henry Tudor was more than mere personal service. To them Henry Tudor was not a Lancastrian as opposed to the Yorkist Richard III, but the strong prince, the legitimate king, the enemy of the feudal nobility who for the last thirty years had made sport of the king and the crown. The revolution of 1485 was a revolution of the , middle class in alliance with Henry Tudor, with such help as they could get from the Lancastrian cause against the old nobility. The Tudor commonwealth which followed was an alliance of the same middle class with the crown for mutual self interest.^

1 There were of course also those Yorkists who resented Eichard Hi 's usurpation, like the Woodvilles.

2 Cf. J. W. Burgess, Political Science and (Comparative Constitutional

One of the chief interests of the crown was to secure a sufficient revenue, at least, large enough to make impossible a repetition of the humiliation and chaos of the fifteenth century. It might be increased so much even as to enable the crown to be freer in its choice of policies, or as it termed, to become more absolute. The middle class desire among other things was to shift from its'^lf the burden of financing the state, or of contributing to its support, to be as free as possible from taxation.

The trend of the working of the alliance of the king and the middle class is clearly indicated in the. first Parliament of Henry VII 's reign. The question of an adequate revenue was taken up early in the session. The first grant made to the king was that of the subsidies of tonnage and poundage and of wool, wool fells and leather for life, for the defence of the realm and the safe-guard and keeping of the sea.^ With a view to increasing the yield of these and other customs revenues, or at any rate to stop the decrease caused by merchants alien becoming denizens — since denizens paid at a lower rate than aliens — all merchants alien who became denizens were required to continue to pay at the higher rate.*

Further, since the present revenues did not suffice ^'to kepe and sustayne" the king's honorable household, and his other ordinary charges ''which must be kept and borne worshipfully

Law, I, 93. *^By the middle of the fifteenth century the actual power of the state had passed from the aristocracy to the people. It remained now for the people to organize themselves and seize the sovereignty. Nominally they were organized in the House of Commons, but really they were not. The House of Commons was then but a kind of overflow-meeting of the House of Lords. The people were not yet far enough advanced in the development of their political consciousness to create an entirely independent organization. An existing institution must furnish them the nucleus. They were deeply conscious of their hostility to the aristocracy. There remained, then, only the King. He, too, was hostile to the aristocracy. Through their common enemy, the King and the people were referred to each other. In the organization which followed, called in political history the absolute monarchy of the Tudors, the people were in reality, the sovereign, the state, but apparently, the King was the state. England under the Tudors was a democratic political society under monarchic government."

s Bot. Pari., VI, 268.

* Statutes of the Mealm, 1 Henry VII, c.2.

317] THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TUDOR DYNASTY 21

and Honorably as it accordeth to the Honor of your Estate and your said Realme by the which your adversaries and enemyes shall fall into the drede wherein heretofore they have byne," the crown estates were increased by the resumptions of the alienated portions.^ The Duchy of Cornwall, the Earldom of Richmond and other lands were assured to the crown.^ Finally, acts of attainder were passed against Richard, Duke of Gloucester, John, Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, Francis Lovell, Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers, John Lord Zouche, Richard Ratcliffe, William Catesby and others, and their lands were confiscated/ Even though important and numerous exceptions were made to the resumptions, and lands were restored to persons attainted under Richard III,® the crown estates were greatly increased by these acts. Whereas the income from lands had been £6,471 a year during the last year of Edward IV *s reign, it was £13,633 during the first year of Henry VII.»

These revenue acts, and especially the statutes of resumption, confiscation and forfeiture satisfied the desires and interests of both the king and the commons. They were the beginnings of a revenue system which would become adequate for the needs of the state and relieve the middle class, at the expense first, of the merchants, especially foreigners, in whose control most of the foreign trade lay ; and secondly, of the common enemy, the feudal nobility. The customs revenues and rents of

6 The first resumption comprehended all the lands of the Duchy of Lancaster in the possession of Edward IV on March 4, in the first year of his reign or at any time thereafter, or in the hands of Richard III at any time in his reign, with the revocation of all their grants and alienations from the Duchy {Bot. Pari., VI, 271-272). Later in the same session tho great resumption of all such castles, lordships, honors, manors as Henry VI had on October 21, 1455, aa parcel and in right and title of the crown of England and of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the Principality of Wales, and the Earldom of Chester was made. All gifts, grants and leases made by Richard III, and the gifts and grants of offices made by Edward IV before August 21, 1485, were annulled {Ihid., VI, 272, 336).

6 IhicL, VI, 272.

9 Exch. of Receipt, Receipt Rolls, nos. 955, 958. This figure does not include the firma comitatus, or the fee farms of the cities.

landed estates in the possession or control of the crown were the bases of the new Tudor revenue system. In the later Tudor period the customs became more important, though they were never neglected from the beginning. During the earlier time the chief reliance was upon the crown lands and the special concern was to increase their extent and value.

The use of landed estates as a chief basis of the new revenue system, which political exegencies demanded, was made possible by the advancing economic development of the country. In the last analysis governmental revenue systems are efforts to turn the chief forms of wealth of the country most efficiently to the support of the state with due regard for the prevailing political idea or theory. Their nature varies with, and corresponds, sometimes tardily to the changing economic development and organization of the country. In the Middle Ages, when communication was poor, the country economically disunited and the state in general weak, feudal aids and incidents, the profits of jurisdictions and the farms of the demesne lands of the king by the sheriffs were the most effective means of diverting the wealth of the country, in its form of land to the support of the government. But towards the close of the fifteenth century, communication improved, money economy had developed rapidly, book keeping of a more modern form made possible exact supervision from a distance, England became more conomically unified, and London became the economic as well as the political capital of most of England. The extension of the domestic system in the fifteenth century, and its national regulation by the truck act of 1465, the regulation of the corn trade by the government, the parliamentary recognition of craft guilds, the protection of native artisans, and the complete adoption by the Tudors of the mercantilist policy foreshadowed in the legislation of Richard II, are special phases of the expansion of the economic unit and the more perfect nationalization of the economic life of the country.