Edward I
Page 18
In 1294 the king demanded from the clergy the unprecedentedly high grant of a half, on the new and much heavier assessment of 1291. At an assembly of the clergy of both provinces summoned to meet in September, Edward was offered two tenths. Furious, he threatened to put them out of his protection unless his wishes were met. This was enough for the prelates, who capitulated promptly, while a few sharp words from John of Havering were enough to persuade those of the lower clergy who were thinking of holding out that this would be unwise. Payment was to be made in three instalments, the final one to come in early July 1295. The timetable was an exacting one for so large a tax — the Bury St. Edmunds chronicler estimated a yield of £101,000.[667]
Initially there was considerable difficulty in levying the tax. In Norfolk and Hereford there was trouble with parsons who hoped to avoid payment either by selling all their goods, or by taking them off their lands. Bishop Sutton of Lincoln sent no less than three lists of clergy to Edward with the request that they be arrested, as they had remained obdurate in their refusal to pay, despite excommunication. The Exchequer found collection difficult, as they possessed no copy of the assessment, and there was a muddle about the interpretation of the exemption allowed to those assessed at less than ten marks.[668] By Michaelmas 1295 roughly £66,000 had been received by the Exchequer from this moiety.[669]
The prelates assembled in parliament in November 1295 cannot have been sympathetic when Edward appeared in person to demand a new aid from them. Winchelsey offered a tenth, and the king, wanting more, employed the judges to threaten the clergy, but without success. The offer had to be accepted, although the archbishop promised a further tenth a year later if the war continued.[670] Part of the condition of the grant seems to have been that there should be no governmental interference in the collection of the tax: only the Abbot of Oseney received any help from the sheriffs. The effect of this can be easily seen. By the time set for the full payment, only about £5,000 had in fact been received, though by late September 1296, about two months after the payments were due, receipts totalled £11,243. But the total should have been some £20,000.[671]
The promised tenth in the following year did not materialize. The bull Clericis Laicos which prohibited the payment of taxes to lay authority enabled Winchelsey to resist Edward’s demands, although the king was able to obtain £22,810 from the clergy by placing them out of his protection, and allowing them to buy back his favour with the sums that they would have paid had a tax been granted.[672] With the settlement of the political crisis of 1297 marked by the issue of the Confirmatio Cartarum, and the military crisis of the English defeat at Stirling Bridge, combined with a relaxation of the papal position, grants were once more forthcoming from the clergy. The southern convocation granted a tenth; the northern, more threatened by the Scots, a fifth. Winchelsey insisted that there be no secular interference whatsoever in the collection of the money; the receipts were paid in to the New Temple. The archbishop was also firm that the tax was granted for the specific emergency only, and when, in 1305, he was summoned to the Exchequer to answer for 6,000 marks that had not been paid to the crown, he refused on the grounds that the emergency was over. But he did take his responsibilities over the tax very seriously, writing to the bishop of London in November 1297 to complain of the shortage of funds he was suffering, and explaining that he was borrowing money to meet his obligations. Later he complained that no bishops had followed his example in doing this.[673] The northern clergy were less affected by scruples than was Winchelsey; the fifth that they granted was collected with the aid of royal officials, and a final account drawn up with the Exchequer.[674]
Although Edward I’s methods of extracting money from the clergy by direct grant between 1294 and 1298 almost proved politically disastrous in 1297, they were financially rewarding. There was a great problem in collecting the arrears: in 1296 the abbots of Burton, Glastonbury, Tavistock, Faversham and Colchester were singled out for their incompetence, and in May 1297 the lands of the abbot of Furness were taken into royal hands since he owed roughly £2,700 in arrears.[675] After the crisis year of 1297 there was no concerted effort to secure full payment, and by the time of Edward II’s reign when those collectors who were not quit in their final accounts were brought before the Exchequer, most of the arrears were found to be irrecoverable.[676] Nevertheless, it appears from the receipt rolls that during the period of hostilities with France these direct clerical taxes produced roughly £100,000, as against £150,000 from the lay taxes in the same period.[677]
The taxes granted in 1297 were the last subsidies that Edward I received as a result of direct negotiation with the English clergy. It seems likely that some attempts were made in 1300 and in 1301 to obtain further grants, but the bill presented in parliament by Henry Keighley firmly stated in its final clause that the prelates would not assent to any subsidy without papal consent.[678] Ironically, their flank was turned by the very man they hoped would protect them from taxation, since in a bull issued on 26 February Boniface VIII imposed a tenth on the English church for three years, half the proceeds of which were to go to the king.[679]
Edward had already profited considerably from papal taxation. By 1279 £8,000 had been granted to him by the papacy out of the crusading tenth imposed in 1275, and the money used to repay the Riccardi for their loans.[680] All the receipts of the tax were seized by the crown on the occasion of the second Welsh war, although Edward actually used only a little over £4,000 which was duly repaid out of the lay taxes. Negotiations on the subject of a crusade continued with Rome, and in 1287 the king took the cross. In 1289, after an embassy led by Otto de Grandson and William de Hotham had put the king’s case to Nicholas IV, it was agreed that the proceeds of the tenth collected in England should be paid over to Edward, while a new tenth for six years was to be imposed. In fact, the king had already received some of the money in the form of a loan of £18,566 made in 1286, which was not repaid at all until some revenues were assigned for the purpose in 1302. In 1291, following the successful agreement with Nicholas he received a further 100,000 marks out of the tax.[681]
It seems that Edward’s motives in obtaining payment of these papal crusading tenths were perfectly honourable. He genuinely did plan to set out on crusade, and his promises to do so were not a means of obtaining funds by false pretences.[682] Edward wrote a letter to Florent of Hainault, Prince of Achaea, in June 1294, in which he stated his desire to visit Greece, but expressed his anger at the way in which in a short space of time circumstances had changed, making it impossible for him to go on crusade.[683] But before this the king had borrowed £10,000 from the papal collectors to cover expenditure in Gascony, and with the outbreak of war with France the king took control of the tax, seizing at least £32,480 which, like the loan, does not appear to have been repaid.[684] The needs of war took precedence over the king’s desire to go once more to the East.
To those present at the Lincoln parliament of 1301 relations between the king and the papacy must have seemed at a low ebb. In 1300 Winchelsey had brought to Edward in Scotland a letter from Boniface VIII strongly criticizing the English claims and actions in Scotland, and in reply to this the famous Barons’ Letter was drawn up in 1301, while Edward sent a detailed historical justification of his policies to Rome. But Boniface’s attitude was transformed by his quarrel with Philip IV. Edward I became a favoured ally, and it is not surprising that when news of a papal grant to the king of half the proceeds of a new tenth reached France it was considered that Boniface had done this in order to enable Edward to reopen the war with France. There were some misunderstandings over the collection of the tax, and on Boniface’s death the king claimed that he had been orally granted the entire proceeds of the tax, which was a view supported by the testimony of Otto de Grandson and Bartholomew de Ferentino, but not credited by Benedict IX and many of the English clergy. Nevertheless despite such arguments, the king did receive at least £41,690 from this tax during his reign.[685]
The electio
n of a Gascon in June 1305 as Pope Clement V was rapidly taken advantage of by Edward I. Shortly afterwards, a delegation from England set out for the Curia, and on 1 August a compliant Clement ordered the English church to pay an annual tenth for the next seven years. These receipts were intended to be used for the recovery of the Holy Land, those of the first year to go to Edward I, those of the second to the prince of Wales, and the rest to Edward again. The queen was to receive £2,000 a year from all but the second and last years of the tax. No attempt was made to persuade Edward to take a new pledge to go on crusade, and this time it does look as if the crusade was being used as an excuse to make the grant of the tenths to a lay power look more respectable. By the end of the Hilary term of 1307 £25,502 had been received by the Exchequer, with £2,996 more in the next term.[686]
During the last five years of the reign, Edward I obtained some £70,000 from the clergy by means of these tenths imposed by the papacy. At a time when the costs of the war in Scotland had to be met, and with the opposition likely to make the grant of taxation conditional upon the redress of grievances, it was extremely convenient that the king should have been in a position to receive the proceeds of taxes which he had not imposed. There was surprisingly little opposition to the papal taxes; not even at the Carlisle parliament in 1307, when there was bitter criticism of papal procurations and other exactions, did they come under much attack.[687] Only one chronicler indulged in a tirade against papal taxation.[688]
Over the whole reign Edward I probably received some £500,000 from direct taxes paid by the laity, and £300,000 from ecclesiastical taxes. For the period of crisis from 1294 until 1297 the equivalent figures are £150,000 and £130,000. Taxation on this scale had not been imposed at any earlier period, although the tremendous efforts made to meet the demand for £100,000 to pay Richard I’s ransom offer the closest parallel, when a fourth on moveables, the heaviest rate at which such a tax was ever levied, together with an aid of 20s. a fee, a carucage and a tallage were imposed. Following these measures of 1193 and 1194 were the taxes intended to pay for the defence and recovery of English possessions on the continent, notably the thirteenth of 1207, which yielded about £60,000.[689] The reign of Henry III did not see particularly heavy taxation: there were only four taxes on moveables, the fifteenth of 1225 producing almost £40,000.[690] The tallages, aids and carucages that were collected more frequently yielded very much less.[691]
How was the burden of taxation that Edward I’s financial needs imposed on the country shared out? As the lay taxes were assessed and collected on the basis of the possessions of individuals rather than on land or income, there is little statistical evidence of the weight of incidence of these subsidies. Manorial accounts show only small payments, as there were not many moveables liable to taxation on most demesnes. In the year 1296-7 the earl of Cornwall’s valuable manor of Berkhampstead was charged with only £2 6s. 9d. for the twelfth, a trivial sum in relation to receipts which totalled £160 7s. 4d.[692] The few detailed tax assessments that survive naturally give no indication of the incomes of the men whose moveables are listed, though they do make it clear that the burden of taxation fell not on the lay landlords, but on the villeins and free tenants. The very poor were always exempt, the principle usually adopted being that if, for example, a ninth was levied, those whose property was not worth 9s. would not be taxed. With the low rates of 1283 and 1306 this system could hardly apply, and the levels were set at half a mark and 10s. respectively.
It was not until 1297 that complaints about the weight of taxation were vociferously voiced in the political arena. Prior to that Edward’s demands do not seem to have aroused the opposition that might have been expected. The chroniclers were of course far more interested in the question of clerical taxation, but the impression they give of a generally quiescent laity does not seem far from the truth. As Langtoft pointed out, it was better to pay harsh taxes than to be conquered,[693] and as a popular song, admittedly of slightly later date, stated, it was not the people who actually made the grant who had to pay heavily.[694] The magnates who campaigned in Edward’s armies usually obtained exemption from the payment of the taxes.
The legal records reveal many examples of corrupt practice by tax collectors, notably levying money from those who should have been exempt by reason of their poverty, collecting expenses where these were not justified, and taking more money than was warranted by the assessment.[695] But they do not suggest that much resistance was offered to the collectors, whose task seems to have been much easier than that of the purveyors of victuals. Men did not feel so strongly about giving up cash to the king as they did about parting with goods, and it is interesting that in one case where violence was shown to a bailiff engaged in collecting arrears, he was making a seizure of cattle rather than collecting coin.[696]
There is more evidence of the burden of taxation from ecclesiastical estates than from lay, largely because the clerical taxes were assessed on the income of landlords, rather than on the property of individuals. In order to pay what was demanded for the moiety of 1294 the monks of Dunstable had to farm tithes and sell corrodies and property to a value of roughly a hundred marks.[697] The hospital of God’s House, Southampton, failed to pay one instalment of the same tax which came to £25 and as a result eighteen oxen were taken as pledges. Payment was eventually made, but the cost of obtaining the release of the beasts and of taking the money to London was almost a pound.[698] Ramsey abbey was in severe financial difficulties during the later years of Edward I’s reign, and the letters of Abbot Sawtrey make it clear that the burden of taxation was one of the main reasons. He had to borrow money from friends to raise £1,000 for the papal tenths imposed in 1301, and in 1303 he was finding it difficult to obtain a mere twenty marks. His monks, who considered him financially incompetent, threatened strike action in 1300, saying that they would not sing services unless he made out a bond releasing them from liability for the debts he incurred.[699] In the north the difficulties of the clergy were aggravated by the damage done to their estates by the marauding Scots. A special proctor was appointed to plead in Rome for a reduction of the assessment in the diocese of Carlisle, and Bishop Halton firmly asserted the inability of the clergy to pay the sums demanded of them.[700] It is not surprising to find the canon of Barnwell writing in the bitterest terms of the extortions suffered by the church, the despoliation of the poor and the withdrawal of alms in the reign of Edward I.[701] A man of conventional piety, Edward never let this attribute interfere with political and financial realities.
One indication of the weight of taxation imposed by Edward I is provided by the mint accounts. In the first recoinage of the reign begun in 1279 it is likely that approximately £500,000 was produced by the mints. At the close of the reign the quantity of coin in circulation was increased by the import of much foreign silver: between 1300 and 1302 the accounts show that £262,000 worth of alien coin was minted into coin of the realm. Such figures give an impression of how much coin there was in circulation during this period. There were considerable fluctuations, and a shortage throughout the country during the period of greatest political and financial difficulty, 1294-7.[702] It seems unlikely that there was ever more than £1,000,000 current coin circulating at any time; the figure of £800,000 is probably nearer the mark. And that was roughly the amount that was raised in direct taxation in the course of the reign. In the year 1294-5 wardrobe receipts totalled over £124,000,[703] a figure almost certainly in excess of ten per cent of the total quantity of coin in circulation in England. The taxes needed to meet such demands must clearly have placed a massive imposition on the populace.
Direct taxation was by no means the only method by which a medieval monarch could effectively tap the wealth of his country. It was probably on the outbreak of the war with France that an anonymous foreigner presented Edward I with advice on the best way to raise money for war. Heavy customs duties were suggested, at the rate of 5 marks on each sack of wool exported, and at 1s. in the pound on
all other merchandise taken in or out of the country. These measures were to be backed up by the more ambitious ones of a purchase tax of 2d. in the pound and elaborate sumptuary laws intended to reduce domestic expenditure and so free revenue for military purposes. The main item of the memorandum, the heavy export tax on wool, was adopted by the government, which was doubtless attracted by the author’s calculation that this would yield 100,000 marks in six months.[704]
There was nothing new, in 1294, in the idea of an export tax on wool. In 1266 Edward had been granted the right to levy customs duties by his father, a measure which proved extremely unpopular, and collection was discontinued early in the new reign. In 1275 discussion between the crown and the merchants resulted in the grant in parliament of customs dues of 6s. 8d. on each sack of wool exported. In return, the embargo on trade with Flanders — imposed in retaliation for the seizures of the goods of English merchants made by the orders of the countess of Flanders in 1270 — was relaxed.[705] The revenue from this export duty naturally fluctuated with the fortunes of the wool trade, receipts varying from £8,100 in 1279-80 to £12,900 in 1291-2.[706]
Valuable as these receipts were, when the war with France broke out in 1294 the government sought further means of extracting money from the wool trade. The initial plan was to take a forced loan in wool, and on 12 July 1294 orders were issued for all wool, fells and hides to be taken into safe custody. The ostensible purpose of the exercise was to prevent any wool being exported to France, but it soon became clear that the crown’s intention was to buy up all the wool on credit, export it, and take the profit that would normally have gone to the merchants. This plan had the approval of the magnates, on condition that adequate security was given to the owners of the wool. But the merchants were naturally bitterly opposed to a project which threatened their entire livelihood, and on receiving their complaints, almost certainly including the memorandum already mentioned, the king and his council agreed that instead of the forced loan, the merchants should pay heavily increased customs duties. In view of the wide variations in wool prices it was initially proposed that these should be five marks for the best wool, and three marks for the lower qualities, but the differential was soon abandoned, and the lower rate adopted. On 29 July officials were appointed to collect the new custom.[707]