Under James I, there was a brief attempt to combine the coinage of England and Scotland, using Scots values, but in 1619, England went back to English values. Charles I used separate coinage for England and Scotland.
MINTING OF COINS
Since the value of a coin depended upon the intrinsic metallic value of its gold or silver or copper, this was carefully controlled by the moneyers in the Royal Mints. One of the ceremonial tests devised then is still in use today.
Early in the Tudor era there were two mints in the Tower and other mints operating in Bristol, Canterbury, Dublin, Durham, Durham House in the Strand, Southwark, Tournai (in 1513 only), Waterford, and York. For part of the period, only the Tower Mint was in operation. Under Charles I, new mints were opened in York, Edinburgh, and Aberystwyth.
Minting was by two methods, hammering and milling. Most English coins were produced by hammering. Milling was done in England only from 1561 to 1571, when the French engraver Eloi Mestrell was hired away from the Paris Mint. He used a screw press powered by a horse-drawn mill. Mint workers complained about the technique, claiming it was less accurate. After Mestrell was let go, he turned to forgery in order to live. He was condemned to death for this crime in 1578, since counterfeiting any coin, English or foreign, had been high treason since the fifteenth century. Clipping, culling, melting, or exporting English coins was also illegal.
Sir William Sharington (1495-1553), vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint, began to manufacture testoons illegally, for his own use, in 1547, clipping coins for the metal and falsifying the books. Over three years he embezzled some £4000. He was caught only after Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour asked him to coin more money for Seymour’s use. Sharington was arrested in January, 1549. He confessed, was attainted, and then was pardoned. When he later served as sheriff of Wiltshire (1552), he was praised for his honesty.
DOMESTIC COINS
angel: A gold coin worth 6s. 8d. until Henry VIII and then 10s. In 1565, England was flooded with Flemish-made counterfeit angels.
angelet or half angel: A gold coin worth 5s.
crown: A gold coin first issued in 1526. Worth 5s., it had the royal arms surmounted by a crown on one side. The value was raised to 5s. 6d. in 1611. In 1551 the first silver crowns (worth 5s.) were minted, meant to compete with the lion daaldre, a Dutch version of the thaler, which was the standard trade coin of central Europe. In 1601, silver crowns and half crowns were issued for the first time since 1553 and quickly became the primary coins in use.
dollar: There was no English dollar in the regular coinage, but the thistle dollar (a large silver Scots coin also called a sword dollar and worth 30s. under James VI) was in use in England. In 1600 a “portcullis dollar” was struck in London for the East India Company but was legal tender only in the East Indies. By 1610 the word dollar might refer to any silver coin of thaler size and was sometimes used to distinguish the silver crown from the gold crown. A dollar meant a silver crown while a crown generally meant a gold crown.
farthing: A silver coin worth 2s. 6d. under the early Tudors. No farthings were minted between 1553 and 1613, when an issue of copper “patent farthings” went into circulation. This coin was called a “Harington” because the patent to mint it had been granted to John, Lord Harington as a way to repay the debts he had incurred while supervising the education of the princess Elizabeth.
groat: A standard coin worth 4d. as far back as 1279, the groat was considered old-fashioned after the issue of the sixpence under Henry VIII and the shilling under Edward VI. In 1551 it was devalued to 3d. and later to 2d.
half crown: A gold or silver coin worth half as much as the crown of the same metal.
halfpenny: A silver coin. Production was restricted in 1553 but the coin was reintroduced in 1583.
half sovereign or double crown: A gold coin worth 10s. until 1611, when its new value became 11s. “Harry ten shillings” was the slang term for a half-sovereign coin minted in the reign of Henry VIII.
noble: This gold coin was worth 6s. 8d. until it was devalued in 1464. For the sixteenth century version, see under ryal.
penny: The most common silver coin, worth 1d., it was not minted from 1572 to 1583 but was reintroduced after the minting of three-quarter pence and one-and-a-half-pence coins (begun in 1561) was discontinued.
pound: (£) See sovereign.
quarter angel: A gold coin worth 2s. in 1542. It was abandoned for a time, then reissued in 1572 with a value of 2s. 6d.
ryal or rose noble: A gold coin worth 10s. until the reign of Henry VIII and then worth 15s. Under James I it was replaced by the spur ryal, angel, angelet, and quarter angel.
shilling: (s.) A silver coin worth 12d., first minted in 1504. It was devalued in 1551 to 9d. and later to 6d.
sixpence, testoon, or tester: A silver coin worth 6d.
sovereign: First issued in 1489, this was the first coin to have the value of a pound sterling (20s.) Gold, it showed an enthroned king on one side with the royal arms and Tudor rose on the reverse. The value was raised to 22s. in 1611.
three farthing piece: A silver coin worth three farthings.
threehalfpenny piece: A sliver coin worth 1½ d.
threepenny or three-penny-piece: A silver coin worth 3d.
twopence piece, half groat, or twopenny: A silver coin worth 2d.
FOREIGN COINS IN USE IN ENGLAND
cavallo: A copper coin from Naples.
doit: A copper Dutch coin issued in 1580 and after. It was worth less than a farthing.
double plack: The silver Flemish double patard, worth 4d. in early Tudor England.
ducat: The Spanish ducat was worth 4s. 6d. (1522-38), then 5s. (1538-1554), then 6s. 4d. The double ducat was valued at 13s. 4d. in 1554.
ecu a la couronne (French crown): A gold coin valued at 4s. 4d. until 1526, then 4s. 6d. (1526-1538), then 4s. 8d. (until 1554), 6s. 4d. (until 1560) and finally 6s.
florin: A gold Dutch coin. There were two types, one worth 2s. and the other 3s. 3d.
imperial crown: A gold Spanish coin worth 6s. 4d.
korte: A copper coin from the Netherlands.
moidore, moy, or cruzado: A gold Portuguese coin which was legal tender in England under Mary I. The “long cross cruzado” was worth 6s. 4d. and the “short cross cruzado” 6s. 8d.
pistolet: A gold Portuguese coin worth 6s. 2d. (5s. 10d. after 1560).
real: A silver Spanish coin in use in England only between 1554 and
1561.
SOURCES OF ROYAL REVENUE
Taxes
Henry VII instituted indirect taxes as soon as he took the throne, in particular customs revenues, both import duties and export duties known as tunnage and poundage. The original tunnage was on tuns of wine, and poundage referred to pounds of wool and leather, but they were collected on many other commodities. Excise taxes were generally levied during the first year of the reign and lasted for the life of the monarch.
Even with all the indirect taxes, fees, and rents from Crown lands, Henry VII had to resort to Parliament for money. Since 1483, non-Parliamentary taxation had been illegal. Parliament reasserted this right in 1497 and made grants dependent upon specific military needs.
These taxes were generally in the form of “fifteenths and tenths,” a levy on chattel, merchandise, livestock, and other moveables. Those in urban areas were assessed a tenth of the value of their possessions. Those in rural areas paid a fifteenth. Parliament could also levy a subsidy, a graduated income tax that was developed to its full potential by Henry VIII's advisor, Cardinal Wolsey. Subjects paid at the rate of 1s. to 4s. on the pound.
There were a number of outbreaks of violence directed against tax collectors. Eleven assaults in the London area alone are recorded between 1485 and 1547. The rebellions in Yorkshire in 1489 and Cornwall in 1497 were the result of excessive taxation. In the latter case, rebels killed a subsidy commissioner at Taunton.
In 1513, when a subsidy and a fifteenth and tenth were levied in the same year, a number
of municipalities petitioned Henry VIII to plead poverty. He had to forgive them payment of the fifteenth and tenth. Another subsidy, intended to raise £800,000 over four years, was levied in 1523. It yielded only £151,215 but it did produce statistics concerning the wealth of the population because the tax was levied on all persons with lands, goods, or wages worth £1/year or more. Based on tax collectors’ records, it appears that one-third to one-half of the population escaped this tax entirely by reason of poverty. About 25% had incomes ranging from £2 to £10 per annum. Only 3% were assessed at £40 or more.
The mean taxable income of a peer has been estimated at £801 in 1523 and £921 in 1534. In 1525, Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey attempted what has been called the Amicable Grant. This was a levy of one-sixth on the goods of the laity and one-third on the goods of the clergy. There were immediate protests. The Act of 1483 forbade this extraction of “benevolences” (forced loans) from the wealthy. Many noblemen also pleaded poverty. The king, faced with passive resistance rather than open rebellion, eventually backed down.
A new source of tax income after the break with Rome was the church. In 1533 all payments by English churches to the Pope were stopped. In 1535 the old clerical taxes were replaced by a 10% tax on the annual income of each benefice. Every new incumbent in a clerical office also paid the full first year’s income to the Crown as “first fruits.” The sale of monastic lands brought in additional Crown revenue.
The taxes paid to Henry VII during his entire reign totaled £282,000. Taxes paid to Henry VIII between 1509 and 1540 totaled £520,463. Parliamentary taxes during the years 1541-1547 alone yielded £656,245. Direct taxes were levied at irregular intervals during the reigns of the later Tudors and early Stuarts, usually in response to some emergency or to discharge the accumulated government debts of the previous monarch.
Other Sources of Income
The sale of public offices, the profits of justice (court-imposed fines and the fees paid for writs and letters in civil cases), and income from grants of monopoly permits all provided royal revenues. In 1624, Parliament attempted to take control of the lucrative granting of monopolies and banned the king from making such grants to individuals. Corporations, however, could still be granted monopolies.
Feudal Rights and Recognizances
Over a twenty-five-year period, Henry VII managed to double royal revenue without resorting to much direct taxation. In essence, he blackmailed his peers by enforcing laws against keeping more than a set number of retainers (retaining) and by claiming his feudal rights of marriage and wardship.
Retainers could run the gamut from liveried domestic servants to small private armies, and it was at the king’s discretion which cases to prosecute. His decisions were generally based upon economic rather than political reasons. In 1504, the duke of Buckingham, the earls of Derby, Essex, Northumberland, Oxford, and Shrewsbury, and the Lady Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond and Derby (the king’s mother), were indicted at the quarter sessions in York for illegal retaining. They were not tried. George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, however, was both indicted and tried at the King’s Bench in 1507 for keeping 471 men for thirty months. He pleaded guilty. The penalty was a fine of 100s. per month per man, plus fines. Henry generously reduced the amount, which was unpayable, to a fine of £5,000 to be paid over the next ten years.
Feudal rights included the fees paid when an heir succeeded, the escheat (reversion of property to the Crown if there was no heir—the escheator was the royal official responsible for protecting the monarch’s rights to feudal dues in a county), and the custody of property of widows and idiots. The rights concerning marriage and wardship of a minor heir produced around £6,000 per annum during the later years of Henry’s reign. There were profits from the sale of these rights and other, incidental benefits. When Katherine Woodville, dowager duchess of Buckingham and Bedford, married her third husband, Sir Richard Wingfield, without royal license, she was fined £2,000. Henry took further advantage of her oversight by making her son, the third duke of Buckingham, responsible for the debt.
Mabel, dowager Lady Dacre of the North, arranged the marriage of young Richard Huddleston, a royal ward, to her daughter. Her action deprived the king of the income from his right to sell Huddleston’s marriage. She was thus charged with “ravishing” Huddleston, imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for nine months, and fined 1,000 marks. In order to pay, Lady Dacre and her son, Thomas, had to undertake four recognizances (bonds by which a person agreed to fulfill a condition or forfeit the amount of the bond). The fine was excessive, but there is some indication that it was also intended to punish Lord Dacre for an earlier exploit. He’d abducted and married Elizabeth, heiress of Lord Greystock. In that case, the king did not take action because he had already sold her wardship and therefore had not lost any money because of Dacre’s actions.
In a similar case, Richard Grey, third earl of Kent, abducted one Elizabeth Trussell, probably to marry her to his half-brother, Sir Henry Grey. For usurping the king’s rights, he was fined 2,500 marks. As security, he gave a recognizance for 4,000 marks, after which his fine was reduced to 1,000 marks.
There were forty English peers of full age during the period from 1502 to 1509. As many as two-thirds of them at one time were required to give recognizances on their own behalf or to guarantee the good behavior of friends or relatives.
Henry Percy, fifth earl of Northumberland, already in trouble over retaining, usurped the king’s right of prerogative wardship when he abducted an heiress, Elizabeth Hastings, the daughter of a wealthy knight. For this he was fined £10,000, which was suspended “during the king’s pleasure” in return for Northumberland’s agreement to pay 500 marks every Candlemas (February 2) until 3,000 marks had been paid. The payments were to be made under threat of a forfeit of 6,000 marks if he missed one. Northumberland did not do much better under Henry VIII, even though when Henry took the throne in 1509 he cancelled as many as 175 recognizances. In 1516 Northumberland was tried for retaining by the Star Chamber and sent to Fleet Prison, where he remained for twelve days.
INFLATION
Until about 1525, prices were fairly steady and food was relatively cheap. Then inflation began a slow, steady climb. A horse, which might cost 30s. in 1560, was 40s. in 1580, as much as 83s. in 1638 and up to 102s. during the Civil War. Food prices rose as much as 120% between 1541 and 1641 while wages, especially agricultural wages, stayed nearly the same. By the end of the sixteenth century, grain cost six times what it had in 1500 and wages were little more than twice as high. In the 1630s, prices had risen another 50% over those of 1600. Severe depressions added to the problem, one of the worst lasting from 1620 to 1624. In the economic crisis of 1623, the price of wheat increased in one year from 16s./bushel to 53s. 4d.
Eight pair of knitted hose cost 3s. 4d. in 1561. In 1576 one pair of white silk hose sold for 25s. In 1635, stockings were 4s. 3d. a pair. A pair of worsted stockings cost 7s. in the 1650s. Points, which sold for 1d./dozen in 1550 and 6d./dozen in 1561, were 1s./dozen in 1589. In 1561 a peach-colored beaver hat, edged with silver, with a band of finest lawn, cost £2. In 1603 a plain black beaver hat set the buyer back as much as £4.
WAGES AND PRICES
£2 10s./year was considered a marginal but adequate income in the Elizabethan period. The Statute of Laborers and Artificers (1563) mandated that every unmarried person between twelve and sixty, and married persons under the age of thirty, who had income of less than 40s./year, were to hire themselves out as servants paid by the year. This statute also fixed wages, with some local variation, and specified that household servants were to receive board, lodging, and an allowance of clothing in addition to wages. Under this early minimum wage law, a field worker received 2d.-3d./day for working from dawn to dusk.
Other laws followed, amending the first. In 1594 laborers were getting 1d./day in winter, plus meat and drink, and 2d./day in summer, plus meat and drink. Children, apprentices, and women were paid less than men. On average a woman re
ceived half to two-thirds of what a man made. In 1515 a woman servant could not be paid more than 10s./year plus board and lodging. Under Elizabeth’s statutes, a woman servant in charge of brewing, baking, or malting was not allowed more than 17s./year plus board and lodging. In the seventeenth century, the wages of female domestic servants were increased again, but never seem to have exceeded 40s./year.
In the l590s, when a London artisan earned 7s./week, the costs of various forms of entertainment ranged from 1d. to see a play (2d. if it was a new one), 3d. for a wherry ride on the Thames, and 4d. for a quart of ale, to 8d. for a quart of sack. A meal at an inn could be had for 6d. and so could a whore.
Estimates for the period 1630-1643 indicate that the average annual income in England was £200 to £300 for gentry, £10 to £100 for beneficed clergy, and £40 to £60 for a yeoman. A farm family’s average weekly income in 1640 was 3s. 2d., including the earnings of the husbandman’s wife. Wages paid to thatchers in the 1640s varied from 7s. 6d./week in Essex, to 6d./day and meat in most other parts of the country, to 4d. and three meals a day in Yorkshire.
USURY
The first Usury Act of this period was passed in 1496 and made it illegal to lend or take money at interest. Merchants frequently ignored this law. So did monasteries, which made loans to gentlemen. In 1545 it became legal to charge interest up to 10%. This lasted until 1552. Under the Statute on Usury of 1572, the maximum interest rate was again set at 10%, but the lender had no redress under the law if the borrower refused to pay back more than the exact amount he’d borrowed. In 1624, interest was limited to 8% per annum.
England had no banks in the modern sense of the word, but many businessmen included currency exchange and loans among their services. The second earl of Southampton borrowed £500 from William Denham, a London goldsmith, in 1580. Dr. Fox, another well-known London moneylender, charged 6-7% interest on a loan of £500. A number of goldsmiths used money deposited with them for safekeeping to make loans. Brokers and scriveners placed out the money of others at interest, for a fee. Wealthy merchants loaned their own money.
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England Page 15