by Charles Ross
Some recent historians have seen both Edward IV and Henry VII as prisoners of what has been called ‘the antiquated straitjacket of endowed monarchy’, implying that their chief weakness was their inability to tax their subjects freely and that this in turn was a product of their political insecurity.1 Their revenues, it is claimed, were pitifully low compared with the £800,000 commanded by the king of France or the £1,100,000 enjoyed by the Emperor in the 1520s. This comparison, however, overlooks the great differences in size, population and wealth between England and these continental states. It also ignores the fact that Edward and Henry were little less wealthy than their fourteenth-century predecessors, whose capacity to tax their subjects was offset by their constant involvement in expensive wars, and was paid for in political concessions. Edward relied upon his personal energy to maintain his affluence, and even more upon his will or ability to keep out of war, but he was also much less dependent, at least in his later years, on the reluctant cooperation of his subjects. Poverty had been one of the chief weaknesses of the Lancastrian regime. A relative affluence was part of Edward’s strength.
1 Steel, Receipt of the Exchequer, 323–4, 344–5, 35a; for the debts, Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 141; for the money owed to York, above, p. 12.
1 P.R.O., E. 404/74/1, no. 129.
2 Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 463.
3 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 45. This does not allow for the expenses of the great wardrobe, which ran at about £2,000 a year in the early years (45, n. 3).
4 J. L. Kirby, ‘The Issues of the Lancastrian Exchequer and Lord Cromwell’s estimates of 1433’, BIHR, xxiv (1951), 143–5 (representing average expenditure on this head in the first twelve years of Henry VI’s reign).
5 Power and Postan, Studies in English Trade, 44–5 (arrangements under the act of retainer, 1466).
6 R. L. Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches’, 615; CPR, 1461–7, 426.
7 P.R.O., E. 404/74/1, no. 1.
8 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 38; ‘The Household of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, 1466–7’, 667, n. 9; for Clarence and Gloucester, above, pp. 117, 186; for Margaret of York, CPR, 1461–7, 142.
1 P.R.O., E. 404/74/1, no. 35 (8 June 1468).
2 My own calculations from the tables of total overseas trade printed in Power and Postan, Studies in English Trade, 403–4, confirm the figures given by Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 461. For Henry VI, see K. B. McFarlane, ‘War, the Economy and Social Change: England and the Hundred Years War’, Past and Present, no. 22 (1962), 6.
3 Below, pp. 384–5.
4 RP, V, 476–83.
1 ‘The Management of English Royal Estates under the Yorkist Kings’, EHR, lxxi (1956), 1–27; The Crown Lands, 1461–1336, 50–60; Royal Demesne, 158–79, on which what follows is based.
1 P.R.O., Warrants for Issues, E. 404/74/2, no. 36; and for John Hayes below, Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 168.
2 Wolffe, op. cit., 173–4; J. R. Lander, “The Administration of the Yorkist Kings’ (unpublished Cambridge M. Litt. thesis), esp. 227 ff., 257 ff.
1 Wolffe, op. cit., 164, and also 157–8 for the suggestion that some forfeited lands may have been sold.
2 For the Wiltshire lands, CPR, 1467–77, 12, 19, 29, 32, 34, 47, 72, 75, 77, 86, 95, 104–5, 111–12, 116, 118, 129, 139, 143, 186, 1.98, 212, 225. I am indebted to Dr Roger S. Thomas of the University of Swansea for evidence which shows that the lands of the earldom of Richmond had been similarly alienated by the summer of 1462. For other evidence on alienation of forfeited lands, see above, pp. 70 ff.
3 See for example the list of lands worth £24,620 a year in Henry’s hands in 1503–4, many of which had been under royal control since 1485, printed by Wolffe, Crown Lands, 142–6. For his grants to his supporters, see Chrimes, Henry VII, 54–8, though many of those there said to be in favour of the Stanleys were only confirmations of what they had gained under Richard III.
1 CCR, 1461–8, 230.
2 W. E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327–1534, 145–50; Warkworth, Chronicle, 49.
3 A. Feaveryear, The Pound Sterling (rev. edn, 1963), 39–45; T. F. Reddaway, ‘The King’s Mint and the Exchange in London, 1343–1513’, EHR, lxxxii (1967), 1–23; and, for the royal proclamation, CCR, 1461–8, 216.
4 Gregory, 227. Feaveryear denied that the re-coinage was unpopular, but in 1469 the rebel manifesto charged the king with ‘having changed his most rich coin’ (Warkworth, Chronicle, 48).
1 C. W. C. Oman, The Coins of England (1931), 217 ff. C. E. Blunt and C. A. Whitton, ‘The Coinages of Edward IV and Henry VI Restored’, British Numismatic Journal, xxv (1945–8), 4–59, 130–82; and pp. 183–209 of the same journal, A. Thompson, ‘Continental Imitations of the Rose Noble of Edward IV’.
2 Feaveryear, op. cit., 41–2.
3 Above, pp. 364–5. See Plates 18 and 19.
4 Two shipments of wool and cloth alone produced £1,872 in June 1463 (Steel, Receipt of the Exchequer, 288); for Edward’s trading activities in general, see above, pp. 351–2.
1 Steel, op. cit., 344–6, 351–3, 357.
2 CCR, 1461–8, 343–4; CPR, 1461–7, 424; CCR, 1468–76, 9–10.
3 Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors’, 138–44; Power, ‘The Wool Trade in the Fifteenth Century’, in Power and Postan, Studies in English Trade, 74–5; RP, VI, 55–61, 101–3, for the modifications of 1473 and 1474.
1 CC, 559.
2 Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 154–6.
3 For 1471, see above, pp. 185–7.
4 Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 459.
5 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Family of Talbot, Lords Talbot and Earls of Shrewsbury in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished Bristol Ph.D. thesis, 1968). This was one of the wardships particularly mentioned by Wolffe as being part of the ‘Yorkist land-revenue experiment’, Crown Lands, 69.
1 CPR, 1477–77, 593; 1476–85, 48, 228; CFR, 1471–85, 142, 239.
2 This is the estimate given by Wolffe, ‘Management of the Royal Estates’, 7. But about a dozen manors and lordships were afterwards given in wardship to Thomas, marquis of Dorset, in 1480; four Isle of Wight manors went to Earl Rivers; and a few alienations were made from those estates which Clarence held by royal grant. For guidance on this point I am grateful to my former student, M. A. Hicks, who is engaged upon a full-scale study of the career and estates of the duke of Clarence.
3 It is not clear what arrangements were made for the Mowbray inheritance which Edward procured for his second son, Richard, duke of York. Sir Thomas Vaughan, treasurer of the chamber, was appointed ‘surveyor and demiser at farm’ in 1477, and Sir Robert Wingfield, controller of the household, was made steward of the lands (CPR, 1476–85, 10, 12), but no appointments of receivers have been noted.
4 Wolffe, Crown Lands, 142–6; Royal Demesne, 219.
5 Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 188–90, for Richard’s income. For Edward deductions from this total must be made for the queen (£4,500), the prince of Wales (£5,600) and the duke of Gloucester (about £3,500). G. L. Harriss has recently suggested (reviewing Wolffe, Crown Lands, in History, lviii [1973]), that the Crown lands could yield only £4,500 of the £11,000 set aside for the support of the royal household in 1483, but this may have been only a matter of administrative convenience.
1 Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster, I, 243.
2 Ibid., 250–1; A. R. Myers, ‘An Official Progress through Lancashire and Cheshire in 1476’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxv (1963), 1–29.
3 Myers, op. cit, 5.
4 P.R.O., Rentals and Surveys, D.L. 43/15/5; D.L. 43/16/1. Cf. Somerville, op. cit., I, 238, whose calculations omit an item of £829 for 1463–4.
5 Somerville, op. cit., 254.
1 J. T. Rosenthal, ‘The Estates and Finances of Richard, duke of York’, 159–60.
2 R. A. Griffiths, ‘Royal Government… in the Principality of Wales’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Bristol University, 1962).
3 A. J. Pollard, ‘The Fa
mily of Talbot’.
4 Somerville, op. cit., I, 255.
5 Ibid., I, 250; P.R.O., D.L. 29/511/8261.
6 Somerville, 245–6; Bean, Decline of English Feudalism, 215–16, 238–42.
1 B.M. Harleian MS 433, fos 271–2, in Gairdner, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, I, 79–85.
2 Ecclesiastical temporalities were usually farmed to the incoming bishop, often before his election or provision, and sometimes without rendering anything to the king: e.g. CPR, 1467–77, 344, 597; 1476–85, 105, 122, 131, 206, 344. Henry VII, in contrast, forced the incoming bishops to pay heavy fines for the restitution of their temporalities. For the farming of baronial inheritances, see above, p. 381.
3 B.M. Harleian MS 433, fo. 270; Gairdner, op. cit., I, 79–81.
4 CPR, 1461–7, 530; 1467–77, 427. 489–90; RP, VI, 154–5.
5 CFR, 1471–85, 24, 42; CPR, 1467–77, 391–2; 1476–85, 101, 225, 231, 236; J. R. Lander, ‘The Administration of the Yorkist Kings.
1 Ramsay, Lancaster and York, II, 461, 470, citing Enrolled Customs Accounts.
2 Ramsay, op. cit., II, 463; and for the taxation of 1472–5, see above, pp. 214–17, 237.
3 The benevolence of 1475 produced at least £21,656 8s 3d, but the returns are far from complete.
4 Mancini, 67; CC, 559, 564, 567, 575, for his wealth; for the debts, see Scofield, II, 215–16, and Lander, ‘Edward IV: the Modern Legend: and a Revision’, 46–7. The treasure is mentioned by More (Richard III, 19), as well as Mancini and CC; but see the remarks of Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 223–5, on the subject of royal treasures.
5 For purposes of comparison with Henry VII, the joint income of Edward, his queen, and the prince of Wales from land may be taken at about £20,000; £35,000 a year from customs; and £12,000 from the French payments. Ramsay, op. cit., II, 466, who included certain other sources of revenue, suggested £85,000.
1 Wolffe, op. cit., 217.
2 Scofield, II, 386–7.
3 G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors, 48.
4 Cf. Elton, op. cit., 46; Ramsay, II, 457, 467; Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 174, 179–80.
5 Polydore Vergil, English History, 168.
1 Lander, Conflict and Stability, 111; Lockyer, Henry VII, 31.
Chapter 17
LAW AND ORDER
To maintain effective order and to enforce his laws were among the more intractable problems confronting a medieval king. Violence was endemic in English society. This was scarcely surprising in a land where men normally carried arms, where there was neither police force nor standing army, and where the machinery of justice was cumbrous, slow-moving and open to corruption. The result was a crime rate of appalling proportions. Self-help was a constant temptation which few chose to resist.
If medieval men accepted a high level of violence as a normal feature of social life, they were a good deal less complacent about the ease and frequency with which so many criminals escaped justice. Complaints about lack of justice and failure by the Crown to enforce the laws were bitter and frequent and only too fully justified by the facts. Unfortunately, in the present state of our knowledge we have little statistical evidence to support generalizations about the efficiency with which the law was enforced under Yorkist rule. Occasionally, punishments could be condign and severe. The Hampshire peace roll for 1474–5 shows that of twenty people indicted for felony before the local justices of the peace, ten were tried and eight were convicted and sentenced to hang, whilst four others were kept in prison to await the justices of gaol delivery.1 Such efficiency was probably exceptional, and may well reflect the presence of the king in the neighbourhood during his judicial progress to suppress disorder and discontent following upon his return from France in the autumn of 1475. But fuller evidence from the late fourteenth century and earlier fifteenth century suggests a very different picture. The rolls of the justices of the peace in Shropshire between 1400 and 1414, for example, show that of 251 persons indicted for felony, 156 were summoned into the king’s bench, but only 14 actually stood trial and not one was convicted. At Lincoln in 1396, of 224 summoned before the king’s bench only 54 could actually be brought to appear in court, none of whom was convicted; the other 170 were outlawed and none convicted. In the absence of more comparable evidence for the reign of Edward IV, it would be safe to assume that the number of criminals who escaped justice was much nearer this level than the small Hampshire sample would suggest. It has recently been calculated that only between 10 and 30 per cent of persons tried before the justices of gaol delivery were actually convicted.1 A very large number of those indicted for felony never came before a court for trial.
There is a variety of reasons – legal, social and political – why so many wrongdoers escaped the clutches of the law. Contemporary English common law contained a number of devices to protect the accused, and many of these could be used improperly to delay or divert the course of justice. It was often very difficult to apprehend indicted men, and sheriff’s officers sometimes went in fear of their lives. Forcing a messenger to eat the parchment writ of summons he carried was a not uncommon practice amongst those who thumbed their noses at the law.2 The Northumberland knight, Sir William Lisle, who in 1528 declared ‘By God’s blood there is nother king nor his officers that shall take any distress on my ground or within my liberties’, had many Yorkist predecessors.3 In 1467 Lord Strange complained to the king against one Roger Kinaston, who was unlawfully in possession of estates belonging to Strange. Kinaston, he said, had ignored a board of arbitration appointed by the king, letters under the king’s signet commanding him to appear before the council, and similar letters under the privy seal – the messenger carrying these was beaten nearly to death – and a commission of arrest under the great seal had failed to apprehend him.4 That a series of direct royal orders could be so ineffective only serves to highlight the even greater difficulties which confronted the normal agents of the law in bringing offenders to trial.
A man who failed to obey an order to appear in court risked a sentence of outlawry and the forfeiture of his possessions. But outlawed men often disappeared successfully and led normal lives for years on end. With the spread of education, the number of those able to claim benefit of clergy – and hence escape the jurisdiction of the royal courts and virtually go unpunished – increased, and became an obvious abuse of the system. Even for those not so privileged, the chances of escaping punishment when brought before a court were high. Juries were often reluctant to convict persons indicted for felony, which carried the death sentence, though noticeably more willing to bring in verdicts for lesser offences such as trespass or offences against the statutes dealing with wages and prices. Proceedings against a defendant might be discontinued if he could obtain a writ of supersedeas, either from chancery, the king’s justices, the justices of the peace, or from the king himself under writ of privy seal, this last being a convenient device for the wealthy or well-connected offender.1
Many wrongdoers, even when tried and found guilty, escaped the penalties of their crimes by procuring a royal pardon. The Crown itself contributed to the problem of lawlessness by its readiness to grant pardons even for major crimes. Purchasing a pardon (it has been claimed) was a routine pecuniary transaction for many offences including murder. For those with influence at court, pardons could be obtained for even the most scandalous offences. Thus in 1456 the earl of Devon and his sons, Thomas and Henry, had been pardoned a variety of crimes, including the waging of private war, the terrorization of an entire county, and the most atrocious murder (of Nicholas Radford) of the fifteenth century. Henry VI was notorious for his excessive clemency, and his willingness to temper justice with mercy had done much to undermine the authority of the law.2 More research is needed before we can say with any certainty how Edward IV, a king with a reputation for clemency, compares with his predecessor in this respect, but a recent enquiry into his use of pardon as revealed in the records of the commissions of oyer and terminer conc
luded that he was only slightly less generous than his predecessor had been, though men sometimes had to wait longer before a pardon was granted.3 Many of his pardons, it is true, were given primarily for political offences, but since they covered felonies, homicides and riots as well as treason they often provided a cloak for men who were notoriously lawless in addition to being politically disaffected. Success in obtaining pardons enabled even the most hardened and notorious lawbreakers to prove that the wages of crime were high.1
If these various legal devices to block the swift and impartial enforcement of the law did not succeed, men had recourse to a whole range of illegal methods. The sheriff was a notoriously weak link in the machinery of law enforcement at the local level. As the chief executive agent of the courts, his office was often a focal point for corruption.2 By bribery and influence, he could be persuaded to make false returns to writs, or make no return at all, to empanel partisan juries, or fail to compel offenders to appear in court. A spectacular example of contumacy is provided by Sir Robert Wingfield, sheriff of Norfolk in 1454 and 1471, and his wife, Margaret. Together they neglected for thirty-three years to send a prisoner into the king’s bench, in spite of repeated distraints.3 Moreover, sheriffs held office for only one year at a time and could not be held accountable for the failures of their predecessors in arresting offenders.
