Edward I

by Michael Prestwich

  In the period of the Welsh wars Edward I achieved great success at relatively low cost. There was no continual drain on resources, as the campaigns were fairly infrequent. From 1294 the situation changed completely. The government had expected heavy expenditure on the war with France, but the Welsh revolt and the need for a campaign in Scotland in 1296 had not been anticipated. The combined cost of these wars was unprecedented, and imposed exceptional burdens on the administration and on the country. After conclusion of the Flanders campaign early in 1298 Edward was still left with the problem of Scotland. Only in 1299, 1302 and 1305 was there no campaign, so there was a continuous demand for funds in a way that there had never been in Wales. Even though the crown did not engage in a lavish castle-building programme in Scotland as it had done in Wales, the burden of financing a substantial number of garrisons was considerable, while a campaign in the field cost at least £40,000. The problem of how to pay for the wars was immense.

  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.[631] The crown in fact received roughly £60,000 from episcopal vacancies in the course of the reign, or on average about £1,700 a year, though naturally far more came in some years than in others from this source.[632] The total estimated revenue in 1284 was £26,828 3s. 9¼d., and of this £8,000 was made up by the customs duties, which were not part of the traditional resources of the crown.[633]

  Such an income was insufficient for Edward I’s needs. What could be done? The king could revive his feudal rights to aids for such occasions as the marriage of his eldest daughter, and could levy tallage on his demesnes. English trade could be exploited by means of heavier customs duties. If necessary, loans could be negotiated. The French example of debasement of the coinage might be followed. But the most effective and most obvious method was to negotiate the grant of taxes from the laity and the clergy.

  The collection of taxes on an assessment of the value of moveable property was not an innovation of Edward I’s reign. This method of taxation had its origins in the twelfth century, and had been used by King John and Henry III. Nine such taxes were negotiated in Edward I’s reign. In some cases the taxes were assessed at a double rate, the higher being paid by the towns and the ancient demesne.[634]

  There were startling variations in the tax assessments. The levy made at the highest rate, the ninth of 1297, raised less than the lowest tax, the thirtieth and twentieth of 1306. The difficulty was that there was no permanent assessment: a new one had to be made each time, and the methods were not identical for each tax. In 1297 and 1301, for instance, the chief assessors of each county, appointed by the Exchequer, were ordered to have either four or two men elected in each vill or township to calculate the value of everyone’s moveable goods, whereas in other years the task was done by a jury of twelve from each hundred, with the assistance of the reeve and four men from each vill.[635] In 1297 the sheriff and his officials were far more closely involved than usual in the process of assessment and collection.[636] Not all moveables were taxed, but the list of exempt goods was not always the same. It was not until 1296 that treasure in the form of coins was included as a taxable item.[637] In the last two taxes of the reign the clergy were treated more harshly than before, and were forced to pay on all their temporalities.[638]

  But the differences in methods of assessment and in liability to tax are not sufficient to explain the wide variations between the totals of the various taxes. Nor does it seem probable that the wealth of the populace changed as startlingly as the figures suggest. A more plausible explanation is suggested by the records of the Oxfordshire village of Cuxham. The highest assessment of this village during the period 1290-1307 was that of 1294, amounting to £60 11s. 8d. The next year the villagers took care to have the valuation lowered. They spent lavishly on entertaining the assessors, with the result that the figure dropped to £12 18s. From 1297 direct bribery by the reeve in addition to entertainment became the rule, and in 1301 payment to the chief assessor was authorized by the sub-warden of Merton.[639] Cuxham provides a striking example of what must have been common in the whole country.

  The government made some attempts to deal with the problem of under-assessment. Investigations were made into the failure of the sub-collectors of the 1290 fifteenth in Surrey, and it was found that under-valuation and other improprieties had occurred in fifteen places. The fines levied totalled £67 16s. 8d.[640] The enquiry into administrative malpractices in 1298 revealed much corruption,[641] and the memory of it may have spurred the taxers of 1301 and 1306 to greater rectitude. A more positive incentive was that in 1301 the collectors were given a much more lavish allowance for expenses than in former years: those for Berkshire obtained £30 as against £5 in 1297, those for Oxfordshire £27 as against £5. Such rises can be only partially explained in terms of the greater cost of the journey to York, where the Exchequer had moved in 1298, and of the increase in the number of collectors from two to three.[642]

  The evidence shows that the yield of the taxes did not fall far short of the assessments, with the administration gaining in efficiency as it became more experienced. Arrears of the thirtieth collected between July 1284 and May 1289 totalled almost 8,500.[643] The first of the series of taxes in the years of war with France, the tenth and sixth, shoul
d have been fully paid by late May 1295, but by that date only about £45,000 had been received. Ten months later the total paid in to the Exchequer stood at £72,820.[644] One receipt roll survives for the twelfth and eighth negotiated in 1296, covering the period from late April until mid-September 1297. In this time £17,070 was paid to the Exchequer, all but £2,444 of it before 7 June. It had been decreed that half the tax was to be paid by 2 June, totalling some £19,000, and it is remarkable that the collectors should have come so close to achieving their target in a period of political turmoil.[645] What was happening in these years from 1294 to 1298 was that the arrears on the earlier taxes in the series were left uncollected, while the attention of the officials was directed to the more recent levies. Thus by 1300 there were arrears of £100 due from Somerset on the tenth and sixth, £30 on the eleventh and seventh, but none on the twelfth and eighth, or the ninth.[646] The most efficiently collected tax of all was the last one of the reign. This was due to be paid in three instalments, of which the first yielded £10,364, almost exactly a third of the total assessment.[647]

  The methods of collection were not identical for the various taxes. The first two saw separate assessors and collectors appointed. For the fifteenth of 1275 the Italian banking firm of the Riccardi were appointed along with the constable of the Tower of London to act as receivers of the tax, and for the thirtieth of 1283 the constables of the Tower, Nottingham and Bristol, acted as receivers, as did a royal clerk, William de Perton, at Chester. In addition, over £16,500 was raised by John Kirkby and various royal agents by direct negotiations with towns and religious houses in the summer of 1282, and the sums collected were accounted as a part of the subsidy.[648] The later taxes were controlled more directly by the Exchequer, and no separate receivers were appointed. In 1301 the crown was in considerable financial difficulties and a technique similar to that of 1282 was tried out. Officials equipped with details of the assessment of the last fifteenth approached fifty-seven towns to persuade them to compound for the tax by making a prompt payment of a lump sum.[649] At least fifteen agreed to this, though four were subsequently amerced for failing to pay in time.[650] In addition the Cinque Ports promised 2,000 marks, and the Templars and Hospitallers each compounded for the tax with 700 marks.[651]

  On occasion the proceeds of taxation were assigned away in advance, so that the tax collectors made payment directly to royal creditors. The Riccardi received a sum approaching £60,000 from the fifteenth of 1275,[652] and it seems likely that the government had made them promises of payment before the tax was collected. Other Italian merchants had smaller debts repaid out of the proceeds of the tax.[653] But no large-scale assignments seem to have been made out of the thirtieth, and when, in 1290, the Exchequer took over full responsibility for the taxes on moveables the practice was temporarily abandoned.[654] The 1290s saw few instances of assignment, and these were on a small scale, as in 1295 when the cost of the royal galleys being built in Dartmouth, Lynn, Grimsby, Dunwich, Southampton and Lyme was partly met out of the receipts of the tenth and sixth.[655] But in 1301 the Exchequer was forced by an acute shortage of cash to make large-scale assignments. In October of that year the king wrote to the Exchequer stressing his need for money, and suggesting that with the receipts of the fifteenth, combined with those of the clerical taxes and the normal revenues brought in by the sheriffs at Michaelmas, there should be no lack of funds. In their reply the officials pointed out that the Treasurer had promised £6,000 out of the fifteenth to the Fresco-baldi in repayment of loans, £2,000 to be paid from each instalment of the tax. £1,789 16s. 5d. was to be paid to certain Gascon merchants whose funds had been improperly seized by wardrobe officials in London that summer. Of the first instalment of the tax £4,000 was to be paid to the Welsh troops serving in Scotland, and out of the first two instalments a similar sum was assigned to some Gascons for wine taken from them. It was estimated that £1,789 16s. 5d. of the first instalment of the tax had been promised to these various creditors.[656] Nor were these the only assignments, for in March and April Edward had ordered payment for the victuals needed for the campaign to be made out of the fifteenths.[657] This system of assignment did not prove satisfactory. The Gascons, for example, received little if any of what they were due, and the king had to order the Exchequer ‘to cause issues to be assigned anew to the merchants in places where the Treasurer and Barons shall see fit’.[658] Orders that all the receipts from certain counties should be paid to the Welsh contradicted the earlier instructions for the payments for purveyance.[659] It was not surprising that for the final tax of the reign the practice was abandoned.

  Despite the inconvenience of a form of taxation that required a new assessment for each grant, the taxes on moveables were the most efficient and profitable method of direct taxation available to the crown. The main drawback, however, was less administrative than political. Such taxes could only be levied with the consent of the community of the realm, and in the parliaments of 1300 and 1301 it became apparent that the granting of taxes might be used as a political weapon, a means of obtaining concessions from the crown. Accordingly, in the last years of the reign two prerogative taxes were imposed. The first of these was the feudal aid for the marriage of the king’s eldest daughter. Collection of this at the rate of 40s. on each knight’s fee was authorized in parliament as early as 1290, but as the fifteenth was granted shortly afterwards, Edward did not trouble to collect this antiquated tax. But in 1303, in a very different financial and political situation, this aid was remembered, and the machinery set in motion. Receipts were disappointing, however; £3,762 came in during 1303, £1,948 in the next year, and £1,122 in the rest of the reign.[660] Clearly, further sources of revenue were needed, and the Exchequer came up with the idea of reviving tallage. In July 1303 John Droxford reported to the council that the king was favourable to the scheme.[661] This royal right to tax crown demesnes and towns at will had been exercised fourteen times by Henry III, but never by Edward I, although the higher rate of taxation that was often applied to the towns and demesnes was a reflection of the right that the king had to tallage. But this tax proved even less valuable than the feudal aid, yielding £2,862.[662] In 1305 another archaic method of raising money was revived. While fines from tenants-in-chief paid on the basis of the new quotas of military service yielded useful sums, though never worthy of comparison with the taxes on moveables, scutage assessed on the old knights’ fees had at no time in Edward’s reign produced any appreciable yield. Yet such a levy was now once again authorized in respect of the army summoned in 1300. So great was hostility to it that receipts came to less than £400.[663]

  Far more important than these minor taxes, and second only to the lay subsidies in the amount they yielded, were the taxes paid by the clergy. There were two main ways in which the crown could tap the substantial wealth of the church. One was to take over part or all of the proceeds of the taxes imposed by Rome and intended for religious purposes, notably the crusades, while the other was to negotiate directly with the clergy in England for an aid.

  These taxes on the clergy were assessed on a totally different basis from the lay taxes on moveables. They were income taxes, calculated on the rental value of estates rather than on actual revenues. For the first part of the reign the taxes granted by the clergy were collected on the basis of the assessment made under the direction of the bishop of Norwich in 1254, although the papal taxes were levied according to a new valuation made in 1276 for the sexennial tenth imposed in 1274. Then, in 1291, the imposition of a new crusading tenth was made the occasion for a new assessment. This provoked a loud outcry from the clergy, and Bartholomew Cotton complained that the assessors frequently doubled, trebled or even quadrupled the verdicts of juries.[664] But the complaints were clearly based on a comparison with earlier assessments, not with the actual revenues of clerical estates. Durham with an annual income of over £3,500 had its temporalities assessed at £620, and its spiritualities at under £700.[665]

  Edward first
approached the clergy for a grant of taxation in 1275, but was refused on the grounds that they were already paying a tenth to the papacy. Four years later a request for a fifteenth to meet the expenses that had been incurred in Wales was successful, the southern convocation agreeing to pay at this rate for three years, while the York clergy granted a tenth for two years in 1280. In 1283 the clergy were asked for aid for the Welsh war at the twin assemblies at York and Northampton. But although the laymen granted a thirtieth, the clergy refused to co-operate, those at Northampton on the grounds that no representatives of the lower clergy were present. Eventually, after a full assembly had met at London, a triennial twentieth was granted by the southern convocation. It was not until 1286 that the northern clergy were ultimately prevailed upon to grant a triennial thirtieth. The last tax granted to the king on the old 1254 assessment was the clerical tenth of 1290, a grant made in return for the expulsion of the Jews from England.[666]