Edward I by Michael Prestwich

Author:Michael Prestwich [Prestwich, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

VIII. The Crown Revenue

The financial history of Edward I’s reign has been described as ‘a highly complicated and rather repellent subject’.[625] But complex subjects have their fascination, and it is necessary to probe beneath the stories of campaigns and sieges to the sordid realities of finance in order to discover how Edward I found the means to put his armies into the field. The case for financial and administrative history was put very clearly by Henry II’s Treasurer, Richard FitzNeal:[626]

‘We know indeed that chiefly by prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice and other virtues are kingdoms ruled and laws maintained; wherefore the rulers of the world must stand firm in these with all their strength. But it happens now and then that what is conceived with sound counsel and excellent intent may be the more expeditiously undertaken if funds are available, and what seemed difficult is easily carried out by adopting a particular routine of business.’

Edward I made it very clear to his exchequer officials that in his opinion his plans in 1301 were going awry for want of funds when he wrote to them in the following terms:[627]

‘Be certain that if it had not been for a lack of cash we would have completed the bridge which was begun in order to cross the Firth of Forth, and understand clearly that if we had crossed this season, we would have dealt our enemies such a blow that our affairs in these parts would have been brought to a good and honourable end in a short time.’

While it was essential for success in war to have adequate supplies of money, the inevitable unpopularity of taxation and other methods of raising money was likely to provoke opposition and prove a threat to the political stability of the kingdom.

By this period what might be termed the traditional regular sources of revenue were hardly adequate to meet the crown’s needs. The total revenue collected in their counties by the sheriffs, largely deriving from royal lands, perhaps reached £13,000 or £14,000.[628] There was little chance of increasing the royal revenue from land on the scale that was required for the financing of the wars, and Edward I’s policy of land acquisition was not undertaken for financial reasons, but in order to provide an adequate endowment for his family.[629] It has been rightly pointed out by Wolffe that the real importance of the crown lands lay less in the income they provided than in the power of patronage they gave the crown.[630]

On occasion, large profits were made from justice, though the normal revenue from this source was estimated by the Exchequer in 1284 to be only approaching £1,200 a year. The same estimate of revenue calculated wardships to be worth a mere 500 marks, and escheats only 200 marks. The Chancery was thought to be worth 1,000 marks a year. From the Jewry £200 was expected, and from the mints and exchanges £500. Ecclesiastical vacancies were put at an annual value of 1,000 marks; again a surprisingly low figure.

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