Kingship and Crown Finance under James VI and I, 1603-1625 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series)

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ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY STUDIES IN HISTORY New Series

KINGSHIP AND CROWN FINANCE UNDER JAMES VI AND I 1603–1625

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Studies in History New Series Editorial Board Professor David Eastwood (Convenor) Professor Michael Braddick Dr Steven Gunn Professor Julian Hoppit (Honorary Treasurer) Dr Janet Hunter (Economic History Society) Professor Aled Jones (Literary Director) Professor Colin Jones Professor Mark Mazower Professor Miles Taylor Dr Simon Walker This series is supported by an annual subvention from the Economic History Society

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KINGSHIP AND CROWN FINANCE UNDER JAMES VI AND I 1603–1625

John Cramsie

THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE BOYDELL PRESS

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© John Cramsie 2002 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2002 A Royal Historical Society publication Published by The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk ISBN 0 86193 259 5 ISSN 0269–2244

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cramsie, John, 1964– Kingship and crown finance under James VI and I, 1603–1625 / John Cramsie. p. cm. – (Royal Historical Society studies in history. New series, ISSN 0269–2244) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–86193–259–5 (acid-free paper) 1. Great Britain – Politics and government – 1603–1625. 2. Finance, Public – Great Britain – History – To 1688. 3. Monarchy – Great Britain – History – 17th century. 4. James I, King of England, 1566–1625. I. Title. II. Series. DA391.C73 2002 336.41'09'032 – dc21 2002066445

This book is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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Contents Acknowledgements Note on sources Abbreviations Introduction: the politics of crown finance in England 1. Jacobean crown finance 2. Kingship and the making of fiscal policy 3. Crown finance and the new regime, 1603–1608 4. The refoundation of the monarchy, 1609–1610 5. The failure of Jacobean kingship, 1611–1617 6. Crown finance and the renewal of Jacobean kingship, 1617–1621 7. The incomplete reformation of finance and politics, 1621–1624 Conclusion: the failure of kingship and governance Bibliography Index

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Page vii ix xi 1 13 40 67 89 117 151 180 205 219 237

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Acknowledgements This project began as a PhD thesis at the University of St Andrews and I have received a great deal of institutional assistance since its inception. The staff of numerous libraries and archives made available the raw materials out of which it is fashioned: St Andrews University Library, the Centre for Kentish Studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the British Library, the Public Record Office and the Bodleian Library. I am deeply grateful to the appropriate authorities in each case for their generous permission to cite and quote from their holdings. Crown copyright documents in the Public Record Office are quoted by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Folger Library manuscripts are quoted by kind permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Finance was the life blood of this project just as it was to the Jacobean regime. In my case, thanks are due for the research funding I received from the St Andrews School of History and the University between 1993 and 1997, a travel grant from the David Russell Trust in 1995, and a seminar stipend from the Folger Institute in 1996. Finally, I want to express my very deep gratitude to the fellowship committee at the Folger Institute and Folger Shakespeare Library for awarding me a fellowship in 1999. This book might not have been written without either that financing or the opportunity to have my work nurtured in that truly remarkable scholarly community. Writing a book is ultimately a solitary exercise, but it does not occur in isolation and I have benefited from the company of many scholars in the past few years. Linda Levy Peck has been a familiar presence from the early days in St Andrews and I am grateful for the continuing interest of another Jacobean ‘projector’. Pauline Croft happily found the time to discuss all things Jacobean at the Folger in 1999. Both she and Linda Peck encouraged my desire to take seriously the earl of Suffolk’s tenure as lord treasurer. I have learned a remarkable amount about early modern Scotland from Roger Mason and this book would be much poorer had he not been so generous with his ideas. The same is true of Jenny Wormald, to whom I owe a great deal. That this book exists at all is a credit to her for having read the thesis, revision proposal and finished manuscript – and offering nothing but praise and encouragement. Steve Gunn probably does not appreciate how effortless he made the process of producing this book – no reader or editor could have been better. Most important, he and Jenny believed that a new look at James and finance was worth the effort. In a study that emphasises the critical role of personal relationships in kingship, it is most appropriate to acknowledge the three people who have contributed the most to my work as a historian both personally and profesvii

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sionally. My gratitude to my undergraduate mentor, Stanford Lehmberg, is longstanding – Stan has been a constant friend over the longue durée in which I have been fascinated by James and finance. It was John Guy who persuaded me to take up the subject again in graduate school, but not without challenging me to see the Jacobean world in a radically different and compelling fashion. John’s willingness to share his vast knowledge and insight made him a great mentor and now makes him an even better colleague. Finally, Stephen Alford has been a remarkable friend and intellectual kamerad. This book – and its Elizabethan cousin – are among the best things to emerge from a partnership which started in a basement office in St Andrews – still, they aren’t quite the Cosmos, Sven and Ole’s, Isthmus City or Springfield Gorge. Academic life sometimes offers rewards and misery in perverse fashion. Important finishing touches were put to this book after I joined a truly marvellous group of historians in the Union College History Department and I greatly appreciate the warm welcome one and all offered me from the moment I arrived. In contrast, had it not been for my family I would not have weathered three years at ‘the collegiate university’ in Springfield, Missouri. For their humour, presence and love when they were truly needed most, this book is dedicated to Mom, Dad, Jody, Mike, David and Cyndy. John Cramsie Schenectady, 2001

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Note on Sources Citations of classical works refer to the original book, volume and section number and not to the pagination of the particular editions cited. Original manuscript spellings have been retained with the following exceptions: ‘u’ and ’v’ have been reversed in manuscripts, but not in printed works; abbreviations have been extended in brackets; punctuation has been altered only where necessary. Dates have been appended to documents where relevant and corrected in brackets for the year beginning on 1 January. It was generally found more efficacious to drop shillings, pence and half-pence from amounts cited. Citations from the Cranfield manuscripts at the Centre for Kentish Studies require a brief explanation. Cranfield’s papers were recently catalogued into broad categories with the result that all relevant manuscripts are noted by the same citation; for instance CKS, U269/1 OE108 designates all the correspondence from Villiers to Cranfield. I have chosen to include A. P. Newton’s original manuscript numbers in brackets to facilitate closer identification of documents; e.g. CKS U269/1, OE108 [MS Cranfield 7]; where this was not possible I have described the document in brackets.

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Abbreviations APC BL Bodl. Lib. CKS Commons journal CSP CUL Debates, 1610 Debates, 1621 DNB FSL HH HHL HMC Lords, 1621 Lords journal PRO Proceedings Elizabeth Proceedings, 1610 Proceedings, 1614

Acts of the privy council of England, ed. J. R. Dasent and others, London 1890–1964 British Library, London Bodleian Library, Oxford Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone Journals of the House of Commons, 1547–1714, London 1742 Calendar of state papers Cambridge University Library Parliamentary debates in 1610, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, London 1872 Commons debates in 1621, ed. Wallace Notestein, Frances Helen Relf and Hartley Simpson, New Haven 1935 Dictionary of national biography Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC Hatfield House Library, Hertfordshire Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA Historical Manuscripts Commission Notes of the debates in the House of Lords, 1621, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, London 1870 Journals of the House of Lords, 1578–1714, London 1767 Public Record Office, Kew Proceedings in the parliaments of Elizabeth, ed. T. E. Hartley, Leicester 1981–97 Proceedings in parliament, 1610, ed. Elizabeth Read Foster, New Haven 1966 Proceedings in parliament, 1614 (House of Commons), ed. Maija Jansson, Philadelphia 1988

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Introduction

Introduction: The Politics of Crown Finance in England ‘all thies counsells be to the kyngs dishonoure and reproche, whoes honoure and sauitie is more and rather supported and vpholden by the wealth and ryches of his people, then by his owne treasures’: Thomas More, Utopia

The demands of crown finance in England generated an extended debate about the practice of kingship and governance under James VI and I. The transformation of economic resources into revenue required political action on the part of the king and those who assisted him in ruling. It obliged him to extend legal claims to his subjects’ wealth and property or to ask directly for support through taxation, loans and gifts. In effect, the king sought to transfer his subjects’ wealth from their hands to his own by persuading them to send some part of their ‘own’ to Whitehall or to expend it locally in needful fashion. This process required James first to make policy and then see that policy implemented. The key to understanding crown finance, therefore, rests in James’s kingship: how he operated as a political actor, the principles and mindset from which he did so and the manner in which he ruled. The king was served by individuals whose duties are best captured by using the term ‘governor’, after the style of Thomas Elyot’s influential humanist manual, The boke named the governor. James’s kingship in particular makes specific bureaucratic or functional labels like councillor or minister problematic, for the fluidity of Jacobean kingship put a premium on individuals who successfully combined duties or offices, especially the responsibilities of counselling their king and carrying out his decisions. James and his ‘governors’ did not operate in an economic or financial vacuum, free to conjure up their conception(s) of a well-funded crown. At the same time Britain and Ireland were manifestly not too poor to support the Jacobean regime. Thus the ultimate ‘failure’ of crown finance under James lay in an inability to fashion a stable and lasting settlement of the crown in England, a failure which was overwhelmingly political rather than institutional. It is the central argument of this study that it was the failure of Jacobean kingship in practice which made crown finance a problematic aspect of governance.

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KINGSHIP AND CROWN FINANCE

The scholarship on Jacobean finance An older generation of scholarship was quite clear about what constituted James’s failure in crown finance: he spent too much and did so with feckless extravagance.1 Historians more recently have explored the intense demands upon Renaissance princes to act as bountiful patrons and, in particular for Britain and Ireland, the importance of patronage for administration and for the practical extension of the royal will outside the confines of London, Edinburgh or Dublin.2 Thus James stands among other bountiful Renaissance princes albeit not without questions as to the wisdom of his rewards or the political advantages and liabilities they brought him. James has also been in some measure excused for his apparent personal failings by the so-called revisionist emphasis on the functional breakdown of the financial system.3 The system was obsolete, corrupt and administratively inefficient and its manifold failings included decayed rents from crown lands, undervalued parliamentary subsidy ratings and imperfect customs administration.4 If James asked too much of a creaky, quasi-feudal edifice, it was because he ‘was expected to be and was, generous’.5 This study proceeds from the assumption that a new look at finance can make a significant contribution to the current re-examination of James VI and I. It is valid to argue with respect to the work of Frederick Dietz and Menna Prestwich that decades-old studies (1932 and 1966 respectively) warrant revisiting. There are two solid reasons for this. Recent scholarship has required us to look at the early Stuart period in new ways and has reassessed, in some cases overturned, the attitudes underlying the scholarship of Dietz and Prestwich. Most important, we have moved beyond the caricatured

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This was expressed most sharply by F. C. Dietz, English public finance, 1558–1641, 2nd edn, London 1964; D. Harris Willson, King James VI and I, London 1956; Menna Prestwich, Cranfield: politics and profits under the early Stuarts, Oxford 1966. 2 See, especially, Linda Levy Peck, ‘ “For a king not to be bountiful were a fault”: perspectives on court patronage in early Stuart England’, Journal of British Studies xxv (1986), 31–61, and Court patronage and corruption in early Stuart England, London 1990. See also Aidan Clarke, ‘Pacification, plantation and the Catholic question, 1603–1623’, in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, III: Early modern Ireland, 1534–1691, Oxford 1976/1999, 206–8. 3 This is most strongly argued in Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English politics, 1621–1629, Oxford 1979, 64–70, and The causes of the English civil war, Oxford 1990, 161–84. 4 R. W. Hoyle (ed.), The estates of the English crown, 1558–1641, Cambridge 1992; M. J. Braddick, Parliamentary taxation in seventeenth-century England: local administration and response, London 1994, and The nerves of state: taxation and the financing of the English state, 1558–1714, Manchester 1996, 56–65. Jonathan Scott, England’s troubles: seventeenthcentury English political instability in European context, Cambridge 2000, re-examines the demands placed upon the system by Charles I and the political implications of his policies. 5 S. J. Houston, James I, London 1995, 14. See also Roger Lockyer, James VI & I, London 1998, 78–99.

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INTRODUCTION

James: the indolent, lazy and uncouth monarch has been replaced by an astute politician whose policies had much to commend them. Second, we now conceive politics very differently. Shorn of preoccupations with constitutional or parliamentary battles, politics is increasingly viewed through wider social, cultural and intellectual dimensions. In short, our understanding of the period has changed too dramatically for crown finance not to be revisited. Crown finance was recently described as terra incognita for contemporary scholars.6 In fact, the neglect of crown finance has been relative. Important aspects of finance have been examined. Michael Braddick’s study of the seventeenth-century longue durée has charted the transformation of a financial system focused on the person of the monarch into a system in which organised taxation funded the state.7 While the transformative period really set in after James’s reign, the ‘tax-state’ offers a revealing counter-perspective to the ‘personal’ Jacobean system. The structural focus of Braddick’s work neatly complements the work of Pauline Croft, Linda Levy Peck and Lamar Hill. Their studies of Robert Cecil, Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, and Sir Julius Caesar respectively, examined specific Jacobean initiatives and important moments in the policy-making process.8 Without Professor Peck’s detailed examination of the early Stuart patronage system, in her Court patronage and corruption, we would not appreciate the relationship between patronage and crown finance.9 The essays on the English crown estates edited by R. W. Hoyle have clarified a complex dimension of finance,10 while thanks to the work of Julian Goodare, we also are moving toward a modern understanding of Scottish crown finance under James.11 These works together have offered new insights and analyses of key elements of finance in Jacobean Britain and Ireland.12 A crucial reason to revisit finance is the re-examination of James, a project in which Jenny Wormald has led the way. Her work, together with that of

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Mark Kishlansky, A monarchy transformed: Britain, 1603–1714, London 1996, 351. Braddick, Parliamentary taxation, and Nerves of state. Linda Levy Peck, Northampton: patronage and politics at the court of James I, London 1982; ‘A collection of several speeches and treatises of the late Lord Treasurer Cecil and of several observations of the lords of the council given to King James concerning his estate and revenue in the years 1608, 1609, 1610’, ed. Pauline Croft (Camden Miscellany xxix, 1987), 245–317; L. M. Hill, Bench and bureaucracy: the public career of Sir Julius Caesar, 1580–1636, Stanford 1988. 9 Peck, Court patronage. 10 Hoyle, Estates. 11 Julian Goodare, State and society in early modern Scotland, Oxford 1999, 102–32; ‘The nobility and the absolutist state in Scotland, 1584–1638’, History lxxviii (1993), 161–82; and ‘Parliamentary taxation in Scotland, 1560–1603’, Scottish Historical Review lxviii (1989), 23–52. 12 See also David Thomas, ‘Financial and administrative developments’, in Howard Tomlinson (ed.), Before the English civil war: essays on early Stuart politics and government, London 1983, 103–22.

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KINGSHIP AND CROWN FINANCE

Maurice Lee, Thomas Cogswell, Brown Patterson, Bruce Galloway and Neil Cuddy has transformed our knowledge of the king and important aspects of his reign.13 Collectively these scholars have done much to demolish old stereotypes, assert the effectiveness of James’s rule and question negative assessments of his handling of religion, diplomacy, union with Scotland and the governance of multiple kingdoms.14 Finally, crown finance touched important aspects of political thought, law and parliament. Conrad Russell, Kevin Sharpe, Tom Cogswell, Johann Sommerville, Glenn Burgess, J. H. Burns and Roger Mason, sometimes in opposition to one another, have overturned conventional wisdom on these subjects too.15 It is no longer possible to argue, as Whig historians did, that James’s reign put Britain and Ireland on a high road to civil war and on a course toward the inevitable victory of parliamentary democracy. These scholars have opened up the discussion of political culture and undermined the conceptual starting-point from which Dietz and Prestwich approached the king and his reign. There is one shortcoming to this corpus of scholarship which justifies this study: these specialised examinations have not produced a greater whole with respect to understanding crown finance. Michael Braddick’s work is something of an exception. It contains great insights and the role of parliamentary taxation cannot be understood without it. However, Jacobean Britain and Ireland were not yet tax states. The basic premise of this book, therefore, is that finance needs to be approached by means of a unifying focus on its intersection with politics. It is acknowledged that James was a financial disaster in Scotland and England, but his spending and lack of success in cajoling money

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Jenny Wormald, Court, kirk and community: Scotland, 1470–1625, London 1981; ‘James VI and I: two kings or one?’, History lxviii (1983), 187–209; and ‘James VI, James I and the identity of Britain’, in Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill (eds), The British problem, c. 1534–1707: state formation in the Atlantic archipelago, Basingstoke 1996; Maurice Lee, Jr, Government by pen: Scotland under James VI and I, Urbana 1980; ‘James I and the historians: not a bad king after all?’, Albion xvi (1984), 151–63; and Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI and I in his three kingdoms, Urbana 1990; Thomas Cogswell, The blessed revolution: English politics and the coming of war, 1621–1624, Cambridge 1989; W. B. Patterson, James VI and I and the reunion of Christendom, Cambridge 1998; Bruce Galloway, The union of England and Scotland, 1603–1608, Edinburgh 1986; Neil Cuddy, ‘The revival of the entourage: the bedchamber of James I, 1603–1625’, in David Starkey (ed.), The English court from the Wars of the Roses to the civil war, London 1987, 107–24. 14 See also the essays in Julian Goodare and Michael Lynch (eds), The reign of James VI, East Linton 2000. 15 Russell, Parliaments; Kevin Sharpe (ed.), Faction and parliament: essays on early Stuart history, Oxford 1979, and The personal rule of Charles I, New Haven 1992; Cogswell, Blessed revolution; J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and patriots: politics and ideology in England, 1603– 1640, Basingstoke 1999; Glenn Burgess, The politics of the ancient constitution: an introduction to English political thought, 1603–1642, Basingstoke 1992, and Absolute monarchy and the Stuart constitution, New Haven 1996; J. H. Burns, The true law of kingship: concepts of monarchy in early modern Scotland, Oxford 1996; Roger A. Mason, Kingship and the commonweal: political thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland, East Linton 1998; Roger Mason (ed.), Scots and Britons: Scottish political thought and the union of 1603, Cambridge 1994.

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INTRODUCTION

from parliament tend to conflate finance with bounty and patronage on the one hand and ‘Stuart constitutional’ debates on the other. These perspectives, undoubtedly valuable, overshadow other, perhaps more integral dimensions of crown finance: the nature of kingship and governance. John Watts’s recent study of Henry VI makes a compelling case for emphasising these themes, albeit for the fifteenth century. Watts warns against perspectives which argue that ‘the attentions of public figures were focused mainly on their private concerns’. Scholarly focus on patronage and affinities failed to ‘place the personalities and individual interests in the context of wider politics and politics itself in the context of government and of ideas about government’.16 We run the same risk with Jacobean finance. Finally, a more favourable portrait of James also makes it seem less outrageous to question whether his role in crown finance was simply to fritter away money or dispense patronage. James may have been a munificent patron, but his relationship to finance encompassed far more than patronage and liberality. A ‘politics of crown finance’ moves the subject onto new ground, though the political dimensions of crown finance have not altogether been neglected. The works of Braddick and Ian Archer have dealt at length with operative political relationships between ‘centre and locality’ with respect to formal taxation.17 A number of county studies have also opened up the local dimensions of political authority.18 At a different level of the political, Glenn Burgess and Johann Sommerville have addressed themes in political thought and kingship. They have detailed how, when the practice of governance or particular policies were hotly disputed, appeals were made to the rule of law and political thought, usually in the law courts or parliament. In their contrasting and combative ways, Burgess and Sommerville have reconstructed the language and philosophical content of engagements over important aspects of finance such as impositions. Conrad Russell, however, argues that exceptional intersections of politics and finance like impositions have much less to tell us about the ‘wider world’ of politics and governance in which most business was addressed.19 The reconstruction and analysis of ‘routine’ Jacobean policy-making is the basis from which to uncover more. Professor Peck’s study of Northampton most closely realised this kind of agenda. We learn much about policy-making – the processing of information, expert advice, counsel and decision-making – yet Northampton died 16 17

John Watts, Henry VI and the politics of kingship, Cambridge 1996, 1, 10–11. Ian Archer, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London, Cambridge 1991, 10–15. 18 Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the provinces: the government of Stuart England, New Haven 1986; Thomas Cogswell, Home divisions: aristocracy, the state and provincial conflict, Manchester 1998; David Underdown, Fire from heaven: life in an English town in the seventeenth century, New Haven 1992; Anthony Fletcher, Sussex 1600–1660: a county community in war and peace, London 1975; A. Hassell Smith, County and court: government and politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603, Oxford 1974. 19 Russell, Parliaments, 1–26.

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KINGSHIP AND CROWN FINANCE

mid-way through James’s reign and finance was only one among several areas of his competence. The careers of other figures, like Robert Cotton, Caesar and Cecil have similar limitations.20 None of these comments are meant to detract from the value of the scholarship so far. Rather they are intended to suggest in concrete terms why we need a study of finance in its own right. At the simplest level, finance itself should be the focus, rather than being simply one aspect of another agenda. And the agenda must be political. A new political history of Jacobean finance This study approaches finance from the perspective of what some have called ‘new political history’, particularly ‘the interrelationships of and interactions between, people, institutions and ideas’ around the elements of ‘counsel and policy-making’.21 Three political themes entwine: the practice of kingship undertaken by James as king of England and its impact on finance; the interaction between James and his governors in fiscal policy; and crown finance as a political rather than an institutional enterprise. The starting-point is an archival approach which eschews the administrative and institutional in favour of the political. The historian must reconstruct an explicit policy-making archive which breaks down artificial distinctions between personal and government papers, creating, in effect, a virtual archive. It requires an approach to major collections, local holdings, even single documents, which stitches them back together with specific emphases on kingship and governance. The print culture also plays an important role and, in a number of cases, governance cannot be understood without integrating early printed books into the archive.22 The ability to produce a complete study of crown finance finally depends upon using this archive in a holistic fashion. It is not sufficient to be simply empirical or positivist. It is not possible to reconstruct kingship and governance without re-establishing the working relationships between governors. The crucial step is to analyse the movement of information and restore the original purposes of the working papers used by governors. Such a policy-making archive is testimony not only to the content of business, but to the relationships within the networks of governors and the manner in which James actually ruled in partnership with them. 20

Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631: history and politics in early modern England, Oxford 1979. 21 The agenda is most concisely sketched by John Guy in the introduction to his The Tudor monarchy, London 1997, 1–8. Examples of such an approach are Watts, Henry VI, and Stephen Alford, The early Elizabethan polity: William Cecil and the British succession crisis, 1558–1569, Cambridge 1998. 22 John Cramsie, ‘Commercial projects and the fiscal policy of James VI & I’, Historical Journal xliii (2000), 345–64, develops this conceptual framework with respect to projects centred on contesting the Dutch mastery of the fishing trade.

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INTRODUCTION

A virtual archive is critical for defining how James operated as a political actor, in other words how his kingship worked in practice. Traditionally, James’s progresses have supported the model of a hunting king, his overworked councillors left behind in London. Yet the reintegration of the hundreds of letters and papers which moved between London, governors and the king fundamentally changes our view of James’s kingship. Usually policy-making was personal, verbal and, consequently, largely unrecoverable. James’s progresses transformed this into a written and recoverable process. What these documents consistently reveal is that James’s kingship was attentive and hands-on. It was also highly political in the sense that he was decidedly accessible and open to counsel along a variety of avenues. This in turn created an open and fluid policy-making process which placed a premium on personal working relationships among governors and officials, in sharp contrast to institutions and defined procedures. It was not the formal queenship by privy council of Elizabeth I, but the personal rule of a Scottish king. Chapter 2 of this book will examine the impact of the fluidity of James’s kingship on the overall character of finance. Ultimately finance served the ends of kingship and governance such as defence, justice, diplomacy, administration and patronage. But how did James conceive of his role as king? What demands did that place on the crown finances? What was his mindset with respect to finance itself? These questions are explored in chapter 1 in the context of the political lessons supplied by the humanist curriculum which James and his governors experienced. Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus, the Cyropaedia, schooled James in the politics of finance and underpinned his agenda for finance in England. Richard Bonney identified four major groups of documents which were available for his examination of French crown finance: decrees, ministerial correspondence, notarial archives and financial statistics. Bonney judged the latter, which he likened to English exchequer records, ‘the most important source’.23 This study is founded on the opposite premise, that ministerial correspondence is the most vital source for the study of finance. In describing such material Bonney cut to the crucial issue: The system of government dominated by a chief minister had one great advantage from the historian’s viewpoint in that it led the finance minister to write down his opinions on occasions when the chief minister was in a different location, too busy or too ill to listen to him in person. We can thus gauge to a considerable extent the way in which decisions were reached and the arguments presented, though not, it must be said, on every single issue nor for the whole period.24

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Richard Bonney, The king’s debts: finance and politics in France, 1589–1661, Oxford 1981, p. ix. 24 Ibid. p. viii.

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The letters and papers of Jacobean governors serve the same ends and a wider understanding of finance is to be found in them. Such documents answer central questions about how policy-making and kingship functioned with respect to finance. Who were the policy-makers? In what forums did policy-making take place? What expert advice and information shaped policy options? What intellectual baggage and personal interests did policy-makers bring to the process? How were policies offered to the king and at what stage in their formation? Who counselled James on such matters? Who actually made the decisions? Who was responsible for administration and oversight? Chapter 1 thus also explores the mindsets of governors toward finance while chapter 2 examines how governors functioned within the operation of James’s kingship. The last major theme of this book is crown finance as a political enterprise. The structural side is relatively well-studied and the traditional framework of revenues – lands, customs, profits or regalities and supplies from the subject – is well-rehearsed. A political emphasis on finance looks to the policies and instruments for exploiting revenues (and cutting expenditure), the intersection of the structural and the political. Projects represent the ultimate such fusion. Twenty years ago Joan Thirsk examined the early modern projecting movement in her Ford Lectures. She explained how ‘project’ and ‘projector’ entered the lexicon: ‘Everyone with a scheme, whether to make money, to employ the poor or to explore the far corners of the earth had a “project” . . . a practical scheme for exploiting material things . . . capable of being realised through industry and ingenuity.’25 By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, projects, Thirsk concluded astutely, became caught up in a complicated tangle of conflicting interests: they were being used by the Crown to further its financial interests, by local authorities to assist in the relief of the poor and by private speculators who began to recognise what a gold-mine a successful project could be and wanted their share in its profits.26

What began as entrepreneurial schemes developed into a central component of Elizabethan patronage and finance.27 Under James projects functioned as discrete instruments and as a conceptual framework to exploit crown finances.28 Why not, in effect, privatise crown finances and turn them over to the greed-driven talents of projectors? In exchange for giving the crown a fixed rent or percentage of the profits, projectors could ferret out or create all manner of revenues. 25 Joan Thirsk, Economic policy and projects: the development of a consumer society in early modern England, Oxford 1978, 1–2. 26 Ibid. 51. 27 Peck, ‘Court patronage’, 31–61. 28 Joan Thirsk, ‘The crown as projector on its own estates, from Elizabeth I to Charles I’, in Hoyle, Estates, 297–352.

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The real meaning of projects, however, can only be teased out through their political dimensions. Not only did projects suit bureaucratic weaknesses, and satisfy demands for patronage, as they had for Elizabethan governors, they were also ideally suited to Jacobean kingship and James’s agenda for finance derived from the Cyropaedia. James’s fluid and personal kingship meant that he was accessible to the counsel of projectors. The many hundreds of surviving projects in the papers of governors attest to their central place in the making of fiscal policy. Projecting seemed to offer an ideal means to pair public good and private gain, in effect to reconcile the competing financial interests of governance and patronage. Further, projectors shouldered the political burden of ‘taxing’ the subjects. Shifting the onus onto projectors made some short-term political sense, but the long-term political consequences came in what was, after impositions, the greatest political challenge to Jacobean fiscal policy, the monopolies debates in the parliament of 1621. One final political dimension of projects is worth noting. Several attempts were made to regularise and restrict both the offering and granting of suits and projects. Commissions to vet projects and the book of bounty, which detailed the kinds of rewards the king would grant, were the obvious results. Clearly their intent was to protect certain revenues and curtail James’s munificence. However, the effort to restrict projects by institutional and procedural means was an attempt in effect to reconstruct the practice of kingship itself by limiting the scope and fluidity of James’s personal rule. It is only by delving into the political that we can construct this kind of holistic assessment of crown finance and its integral relationship to kingship and governance. The themes of kingship, governance and projects are pursued throughout the main body of this study with varying degrees of emphasis. Following the conceptual chapters on finance and policy-making, James’s reign in England is broken down into five chronological chapters. The first takes as its topic the attempts from 1603 to 1609 to craft an English financial settlement, to reinvigorate the crown finances after the strain of war with Spain and in light of the Stewart accession. This presented distinct challenges for James and his governors both with respect to his Elizabethan inheritance and through division within the regime over whether an English financial settlement or Anglo-Scottish union should be the focus of governance. The collapse of union in 1607 effectively settled the issue, but raised a fundamental point of uncertainty for any settlement: James’s reluctance, after several parliamentary failures, especially over union, to employ parliament as a tool of governance. Robert Cecil developed a revolutionary design for the refoundation of the monarchy, the centre-piece of which was a parliamentary settlement that included annual taxation to support the crown. The rump of this design became the Great Contract which dominated the parliamentary sessions of 1610 and generated the most searching examinations of kingship, governance and finance in the reign. The collapse of Cecil’s design at the lofty heights of political philosophy is the subject of chapter 4. The 1610s are a troubled decade for historians because of the wide range of 9

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archival losses. The working papers of governors and the king, so abundant for the previous years, are absent and we have to rely upon a more tangential body of documents to study the period: reports to diplomats like William Trumbull and the Chamberlain–Carleton correspondence for instance. These have produced a rather skewed sense of the decade, one which emphasises the politics of patronage and court favourites at the expense of kingship and governance. Yet it is possible to find patterns in James’s activities and the work of governors responsible for finance which suggest that this salacious portrait is overdrawn. This is the subject of chapter 5. The defining issue of fiscal policy was James’s explicit refusal to countenance a role for parliament in finance following the failure of the Great Contract. Three successive groups of governors attempted to establish a lasting settlement for finance within that agenda: Salisbury and Caesar until May 1612; a corporate approach to fiscal policy led by Caesar and Northampton before the Addled Parliament in 1614; and a conciliar regime of governors who tried to guide policy during the treasurership of the earl of Suffolk. This chapter presents the first treatment of Suffolk’s tenure from the standpoint of governance rather than abject corruption and court intrigue. Finally, governors had to contend with developments in James’s practice of kingship. James fashioned regimes entirely of his own making after the death of Salisbury while, at the same time, employing a form of kingship-by-favourite first with Robert Carr and then with George Villiers. The failure of Jacobean kingship reached its ultimate expression in the collapse of the crown finances during the king’s journey to Scotland in 1617. Upon his return, James embraced a programme of financial reform, one first sounded by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere in 1615. The reforms of 1617–18 succeeded because James and Villiers remained resolute in seeing them through. However, reform ushered in another development in James’s kingship, the rise of Villiers from favourite to alter-rex, surpassing the standing of a mere favourite by virtue of his authority as a governor, policy-maker and clearing-house for royal bounty. The imperative for Villiers to consolidate and expand his position as alter-rex eventually undermined reform and brought him into open conflict with his former client, Lionel Cranfield. Chapter 6 examines the process of reform through the parliament of 1621 while chapter 7 analyses Cranfield’s struggle to redefine the practice of kingship with his fiscal policies. Cranfield expanded the conflict between private gain and public good implicit in projects and patronage into an attack on the whole of Jacobean finance. His uncompromising demands for absolute authority to reform finance, particularly patronage, challenged the very basis of Villiers’s position and kingship by alter-rex. Their conflict played itself out in the parliament of 1624 when Cranfield and James ranged themselves against Villiers and Prince Charles over the rush to war after the failure of the Spanish match. James’s practice of kingship by the 1620s, in particular the rise of Villiers to alter-rex, made it impossible for the king to protect Cranfield from political destruction. 10

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The political aspects of crown finance decisively shaped James’s reign in England. The conclusion to this book will therefore engage with the revisionist emphasis on the functional breakdown of early Stuart government, asking whether it is an appropriate perspective from which to understand the ongoing reassessment of Jacobean kingship and governance. The limitations of the revisionist approach are examined throughout the body of this book, but the conclusion will draw them together by means of what is perhaps the most striking political reading of finance to emerge from the Jacobean regime. Lord Chancellor Ellesmere obtained and read the 1551 edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, printed in London by Abraham Vele.29 His marginalia dot More’s dialogue on the challenges of serving and counselling a monarch. In particular, he read Utopia with attention to flawed dimensions of policy-making, the difficult partnership of public good and private gain and conceptions of finance, the very points this study is at pains to illuminate. Ellesmere’s engagement with this text offers a window into what a pre-eminent Jacobean governor believed constituted a political rather than a structural failure of crown finance.

29

The Ellesmere copy is in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, STC 18094, copy 2.

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Jacobean Crown Finance Crown finance is relatively well-studied from a structural standpoint. Traditionally parliamentary taxation has been separated from prerogative revenue and prerogative revenue further divided into customs, lands and the profits of assorted regalities. On the expenditure side, the offices of state, household and royal bounty are most commonly highlighted as areas for cost-cutting. Jacobean governors used a similar framework, but were a good deal less concerned with paradigms once description ended and policy-making began. It is perhaps more profitable to follow that lead, eschew a structural approach and consider finance as a matter of governance. Hence the issues are how governors sought to mobilise economic wealth, transform it into financial resources for the crown and spend it productively. This agenda required political action and it argues strongly that finance should be constructed as an intersection of politics, personalities, ideas and economic means. This chapter will examine governors’ conceptions of finance, in particular what texts of the humanist curriculum and contemporary thought taught them about the politics of finance. Under James, ideas met practice in the projecting movement. The result was that Jacobean finance evolved into a project writ large. The curriculum for governors and the political dimensions of finance James VI’s tutors possessed three of the most influential pedagogical manuals for the education of governors: The boke named the governor (1531) by Thomas Elyot; Jean Luis Vives’s De tradendis disciplinis (1531); and Roger Ascham’s The scholemaster (1570). Elyot and Vives laid out the humanist curriculum for governors: ‘grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy constituted for every Tudor humanist the essence of the studia humanitatis’.1 In practice tutors emphasised grammar and rhetoric, beginning in grammar school and leading to full participation in the canon of classical authors.2 Elyot’s Governor was preeminent. It commended the study of Greek and Latin from the age of seven, but this was ‘but an introduction to the understanding of authors’ and Elyot, like Quintillian in the Institutio oratoria,

1 2

Quentin Skinner, Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes, Cambridge 1996, 23. Ibid. 25–9.

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warned against destroying the child’s enthusiasm with over-rigorous language training.3 Elyot proposed a dual track until the age of fourteen whereby students perfected their grammar and read the more entertaining authors: Aesop, Aristophanes, Hesiod, Homer, Horace, Lucian, Lucan, Ovid and Virgil. From fourteen to seventeen, it was time for more serious study of rhetoric, history and cosmography through Cicero’s Topica and De partitione oratoria, Tacitus’ Agricola and Annals, Hermognines’ Greek rhetoric, Quintillian, Erasmus’ Copia verborum et rerum, Isocrates, Ptolemy’s Tabulae, Livy’s early history of Rome, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Quintus Curtius Rufus’ Life of Alexander, Caesar’s commentaries and Sallust. At the age of seventeen it became imperative to impart ‘virtuous manners’ to students and to train them in moral philosophy. The familiar texts of Plato, Aristotle’s Ethics and Cicero’s De officiis were joined by Erasmus’ Education of a Christian prince and the biblical works attributed to Solomon.4 Finally, Elyot supplemented the studia humanitatis with English common law while Vives added ‘auxiliary arts’ including science, maths and medicine.5 There is solid evidence that Jacobean governors read and engaged with these works. The citations in James’s published works provide one example. A crude tally of the most frequently cited authors offers a sense of those who most influenced him. Plato, Cicero and Aristotle formed a ‘big three’ of sorts followed by Isocrates and Xenophon. Predictable works like De officiis, Aristotle’s Politics and Plato’s Laws, are joined by the Cyropaedia, Cicero’s Letters to friends and Plato’s Politicus; Aristotle’s Ethics, his Oeconomica and Plato’s Republic are somewhat less prominent. The vast majority of these citations occur in Basilicon doron, James’s manual for effective kingship. James distilled the fruits of his learning and kingly experience into an erudite handbook which in its conception echoed works like the Cyropaedia, De officiis and studies of governance by Johannes Ferrarius and Jean Bodin.6 Book ownership provides another avenue for investigation and inventories exist for the library of Queen Mary and items recovered or newly purchased for her son.7 The books assembled met the instructional needs of James’s humanist tutors, George Buchanan and Peter Young, who possessed the knowledge and instructional tools to fashion a godly and virtuous prince.

3 4 5

Thomas Elyot, The boke named the governor, ed. S. E. Lehmberg, London 1962, 29. Ibid. 28–40. Skinner, Reason and rhetoric, 22–3; Jean Louis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, London 1531, 201–26. 6 Johannes Ferrarius, A woorke of Ioannes Ferrarivs Montanus touchynge the good orderynge of a common weale, London 1559; Jean Bodin, The six bookes of a commonweale, ed. Kenneth Douglas McRae, Cambridge, Mass. 1962. 7 John Durkan, ‘The library of Mary, queen of Scots’, in Michael Lynch (ed.), Mary Stewart: queen in three kingdoms, Oxford 1988, 71–104; G. F. Warner, ‘The library of James VI’, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, Edinburgh 1893, i, pp. xi–lxxv.

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The curricula of Vives and Elyot are well-represented, including poets to whet James’s appetite, the rhetorical guides of Apthonius and Cicero and five editions of the Cyropaedia; Buchanan himself owned Xenophon’s works in Greek.8 The reading lists in these manuals mirror the works of history, politics and moral philosophy referenced for the post-1603 printed editions of Basilicon doron. James’s decision to participate in the advice genre and his arguments in Basilicon doron attest to his engagement with the humanist collection fashioned by his tutors. The clear parallels between the curriculum, the collection and the printed references reinforce James Craigie’s contention that the citations represent James’s learning and are probably his handiwork.9 Subordinate governors left references to works on governance in speeches, treatises and working papers, but connections are often impressionistic. Students tutored at home, in grammar schools, at universities like Aberdeen, St Andrews, Glasgow, Cambridge, Oxford and Paris or the Inns of Court, encountered ‘a training in and for citizenship, which would equip its recipients to serve their prince, their kingdom and their commonwealth’.10 The library inventory of Andrew Perne (d. 1589), who influenced Robert Cecil at Cambridge, suggests something about the intellectual milieu in which Cecil and his contemporaries studied.11 Perne owned the compilations of Aristotle (including the Politics, Ethics and Oeconomica), Plato (Perne’s edition probably included the Politicus) and Xenophon (including the Cyropaedia), De officiis, Curtius’ Life of Alexander and Machiavelli’s Prince; Perne also possessed the 1586 edition of Bodin’s De republica, published after Cecil left St John’s. Similarly the books of James Reynolds (d. 1577) at Exeter College, Oxford, formed a collection ‘befitting a young don and a College Lecturer in Humanities’.12 The students of scholars like Reynolds would have included future governors and two of Reynolds’s near-contemporaries at Oxford were Julius Caesar (Magdalen Hall, BA 1575, MA 1578) and Ralph Winwood (1577), the future secretary of state.13 Reynolds owned several works with particular resonance for finance, the Cyropaedia, Aristotle’s Politics and De officiis.

8 9 10

John Durkan and Anthony Ross, Early Scottish libraries, Glasgow 1961, 80. The basilicon doron of James VI, ed. James Craigie, Edinburgh 1944, ii. 95–105. Mason, Kingship and commonweal, 107; Dominic Baker-Smith, ‘Florens Wilson: a distant prospect’, in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart style, 1513–1542: essays on the court of James V, East Linton 1996, 1–14; D. O. McNeil, Guillaume Budé and humanism in the reign of Francis I, Geneva 1975, 6–14, 37–48 11 Perne’s inventory can be found in Books in Cambridge inventories, ed. E. S. LeedhamGreen, Cambridge 1986, i. 419–79. The cross-references to particular editions are in vol. ii and the accompanying references listed in Catalogue of books printed on the continent of Europe, 1501–1600, in Cambridge libraries, ed. H. M. Adams, Cambridge 1967/1990. 12 Reynolds’s library is documented in Private libraries in Renaissance England, ed. R. J. Fehrenbach and E. S. Leedham-Green, Binghamton, NY 1992–8, v. 104–37. 13 Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 5–7; DNB, s.v. Ralph Winwood.

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The engagement of governors with their student books is problematic except where we have annotated copies, exercise books and direct references in papers and speech. Lord Chancellor Ellesmere is a case in point. Ellesmere studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, and cut his teeth on the common law at Furnivall’s Inn before progressing to Lincoln’s Inn.14 Louis Knafla made the connection between Ellesmere’s school-days and his work as a governor: ‘he did make a habit of citing those Greek and Roman writers “fashionable” to the sixteenth century Englishman, especially Aristotle, Cicero, Plato and Seneca. However the only works with which he became conversant were Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics, works which he pillaged for philosophical concepts and legal maxims’.15 As evidence, Ellesmere’s reform plans in 1615 included maxims of Cicero and Demosthenes on suitors and the need to act.16 Donations indicate engagement. The Bodleian Library benefactors registers record books given by governors. Lord Treasurer Buckhurst’s gifts in 1600 included Louis Le Roy’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Politics, Plato’s Republic, De officiis, Cicero’s De oratore and Petrarch’s works in Italian. Thomas Lake, another future secretary, also donated Petrarch’s works and Diodorus Siculus’ incomplete universal history. Caesar’s gifts reflected his civil law training and were dominated by law books. Robert Cecil donated De oratore and Pierre de la Ramée’s commentaries upon it, Diodorus Siculus, Guicciardini’s history of Italy, Virgil’s Bucolics and Antonio Mureti’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics, Oeconomica, Topica and Rhetoric while his elder half-brother, Thomas Cecil, sent Herodotus’ Histories and the Cyropaedia.17 If these and similar works pervaded the intellectual and political milieu of governors, what ideas did they offer? They primarily schooled governors in conceptions of finance which were political rather than institutional. Finance was integrated with essential principles of good government: the distinction between liberality and prodigality, the relationship of public good and private gain and fiscal policy as a mark of tyrannical or virtuous government. These themes were riddled with questions of how to define practice and created modes of thought and discussion that directly touched kingship in its most political aspects: if seeking after excess rather than what was simply necessary defined tyranny (Aristotle’s Politics), when precisely did the fiscal policies of kings and governors become instruments of tyranny?18 What was the boundary between the necessary and the excessive and who was to be the judge? Governors – and the political nation – took a decidedly political view of finance because refashioning principles into consensus definitions of practice represented political challenges. They were faced in council, at

14 Louis Knafla, Law and politics in Jacobean England: the tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, Cambridge 1977, 6–8, 39–64. 15 Ibid. 40. 16 HHL, MS Ellesmere, 2610/1, 10 [Ellesmere’s pagination]. 17 Bodl. Lib., Benefactors register, i, 1600–88, 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 21, 24, 94, 220, 227. 18 Aristotle, Politics, ed. Ernest Barker, Oxford 1998, 2.7.

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court, during parliament and in the localities. The themes of liberality, public good and private gain and tyrannical practice underpinned most of the political conflicts about finance during James’s reign. Book iv of Aristotle’s Ethics provides perhaps the classic examination of liberality, upon which James drew heavily in Basilicon doron. Liberal individuals employ rather than horde wealth and, consequently, are ‘more concerned with giving to the right recipients than with getting wealth from the right sources or not getting it from the wrong ones’.19 Aristotle elaborated two political issues for governors. Right giving challenged individuals on how to ‘give to the right people and the right amount and at the right time and fulfill all other conditions of right giving’. No ruler who aspired to virtue could skirt these potentially fraught considerations. And, while liberal individuals might focus more on giving, Aristotle argued that they should none the less avoid taking ‘money from a wrong source’ – rather vaguely described as obtaining ‘supplies from others’ – and show care in the preservation of their property if they wished to ‘employ it for the assistance of others’. This led naturally to the injunction that ‘a liberal disposition gives according to its substance’ or, as Robert Dallington wrote in his Aphorismes civill and militarie (1613), ‘[in] Oeconomie, men must cut their coate to their cloth’.20 There were financial and political constraints to liberality and the definition of prodigality revolved around contrasting points: the majority of prodigal people . . . their desire is to give and they do not mind how or where they get the means of giving. Hence even their giving is not really liberal: their gifts are not noble, nor given for the nobility of giving, nor in the right ways; on the contrary sometimes they make men rich who ought to be poor and will not give anything to the worthy while heaping gifts on flatterers and others who minister to their pleasures.21

Aristotle spelled out the need to reward merit, Xenophon’s Cyrus displayed the vast wealth collected to reward the worthy and Cicero emphasised service to the common good as the essential criteria in De officiis.22 Classical principles of liberality and prodigality permeated early modern political culture.23 Thomas Elyot took up Aristotle’s standard: ‘he that is liberal neglecteth not his substance or goods, nor giveth it to all men, but useth it so as he may continually help therewith others and giveth when and where and on whom it ought to be employed’.24 Liberality–prodigality under-

19 20

Idem, Nicomachean ethics, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, Mass. 1947, 4.6–7. Idem, Ethics 4.15–20; 4.34; Robert Dallington, Aphorismes civill and militarie, London 1613, 41. 21 Aristotle, Ethics 4.23; 4.33–5. 22 Idem, Politics 5.3; Xenophon, Cyropaedia, trans. Walter Miller, Cambridge, Mass. 1914, 8.4.35; Cicero, On duties, trans. Walter Miller, Cambridge, Mass. 1913, 1.8.25. 23 Peck, Court patronage, 1–11. 24 Elyot, Governor, 130–2.

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pinned Bodin’s chapter on reward and punishment, which contended that ‘if the good be not rewarded and the bad punished according to their deserts, there is no hope that a Commonweale can long continue’. As Bodin wrote: The laws of liberalitie commaund that he should obserue well to whome he giues, what hee giues, at what time, in what place and to what end and . . . he must first recompence them that haue well deserued, before he giue to such as haue nothing deserued; and aboue all, let him measure his bountie according to his abilitie.25

James’s nod to the curriculum in his Basilicon doron showed real rhetorical flourish, preaching that virtue lay in the mean between two equally destructive extremes: ‘what differeth extreame prodigalitie, by wasting of all to possesse nothing; from extreme niggardnesse, by hoarding vp all to enioy nothing like the Asse that carying victuall on her back is like to starue for hunger’? – a stock reference familiar in Aesop. James mined De officiis, Sallust’s Jugurthine war and Seneca’s De beneficiis for a traditional admonition to bestow reward in proportion to merit and in a manner which does not waste the crown’s estate, ‘otherwaies, your Liberalitie would decline to Prodigalitie’.26 Finance was directly concerned with the definition of good government and tyranny.27 James juxtaposed good rulers and tyrants with great verve in Basilicon doron and his central argument was that a tyrant ‘thinketh his people ordeined for him, a prey to his passions and inordinate appetites’.28 The particular face of tyranny depended upon a tyrant’s method of maintaining stable rule and this was most clearly outlined in book iv of Plato’s Politics, a book cited more than a dozen times by James. Oppressive tyrants impoverished their subjects through overwork and imposed punitive taxes after the manner of Dionysus of Syracuse. This breed of tyrant was easy to spot, but others turned tyranny into the nature of a kingship; subject to the one safeguard that the reformed tyrant still retains power and is still in a position to govern his subjects with or without their consent . . . otherwise the tyrant should act or at any rate appear to act, in the role of a good player of the part of a King.

Good stewardship disguised tyranny and kingly tyrants must ‘refrain from expenditure in lavishing gifts which cause public discontent (and that will always arise when money is painfully wrung from a toiling and moiling peoples and then lavishly squandered on harlots, aliens and luxury trades)’, present financial accounts ‘which will make him appear to be more of a

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Bodin, Six bookes, 584, 592, 594. James VI & I, Political writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville, Cambridge 1994, 43–4, 48. Bodin, Six bookes, 210–18. James VI & I, Political writings, 20–1.

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steward than a tyrant’ and extract money from subjects seemingly for public goods and defence.29 The reverse of good stewardship linked tyranny and prodigality. Cicero captured the point in De officiis and Bodin drew out its early modern implications. Cicero warned against many who ‘squandered their patrimony by indiscriminate giving’, a terrible folly because it deprived them of the means to continue giving. What was worse, such ‘lavish giving leads to robbery; for when through over-giving we begin to be impoverished, they are constrained to lay their hands on the property of others’.30 Prodigality was more dangerous than simply the wasting of a ruler’s estate against which James warned. Sooner or later it led even the best rulers down the path of tyranny. The connection was obvious to Bodin: ‘I would not onely haue the prince liberall, but bountifull, so as he proue not prodigall: for from a prodigall he will grow to be an exactor and of an exactor a tyrant: and after that he hath giuen his owne, he must of force pull from others to giue.’31 And, the character of a prodigal tyrant was easy to identify. A good ruler ‘chargeth his subiectes as little as he can, neither exacteth any thing of them, but when the publike necessitie requireth’ according to Bodin, ‘whereas the other drinketh his subiectes blood, gnaweth their bones and out of them also sucketh euen the marrow, so by all means seeking to weaken them’.32 Robert Cotton’s history of Henry III sounded the same warnings in the midst of James’s reign: ‘Followers to a King excessiue in guifts, are excessiue in demaunds . . . for such prodigallity in a soueraigne, euer ends in the rapine and spoyle of his subjects.’33 James’s subjects did not brand him a tyrant on the basis of his fiscal policies, but conceptions of fiscal tyranny functioned as a potent basis for more measured criticism. Bodin, at his most astute, identified the central political problem for rulers. The differences between tyranny and good rule were not hard to comprehend at either extreme. However, circumstance and personality frequently led rulers to enforce policies the severity of which ‘may seeme unto them tyrannicall and vnto others commendable’ or the reverse. Bodin suggested that, if the balance between extremes is virtuous, a virtuous ruler was the one who found the mean between a ‘most good king and a most detestable Tyrant’.34 He stripped away the simple outward appearances and 29 30 31 32 33

Aristotle, Politics 5.11.14–21. Cicero, On duties 2.15.54. Bodin, Six bookes, 594. Ibid. 212. Robert Cotton, ‘Short view of the long life and reign of Henry the third’, in Smeeton’s historical & biographical tracts, London 1820, ii. 11–12. The tract was not published until 1627, but Graham Parry agrees with Cotton’s statement before the privy council that he first wrote the history in 1614 and suggests that Cotton may have revised parts of it during 1616: ‘Cotton’s counsels: the contexts of Cottoni posthuma’, in C. J. Wright (ed.), Sir Robert Cotton as collector: essays on the early Stuart courtier and his legacy, London 1997, 82–3. 34 Bodin, Six bookes, 216 and 218 respectively.

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revealed the complexity of tyranny, in effect creating the opportunity to justify a policy and simultaneously condemn it. Even the best ruler might adopt the methods of a tyrant without actually becoming one. Subjects might have been hard pressed to distinguish Elizabeth’s imperium from Aristotle’s kingly tyranny in her policies. She spent wisely, governors accounted in parliament for her good stewardship and she imposed on her people to secure the future of godly religion and the realm. Yet, by the end of her reign, subjects were giving voice against taxation which impoverished them and monopolies which illegally deprived them of their property and livelihood.35 The implications were charged and Bodin’s own example is telling. He recounted a prince who ‘was sweet, gratious, courteous, so could he not denie any thing to any person’ which produced a bounty ‘as that the like was neuer in any prince of his time’ and correspondingly ‘greater customes and payments exacted than euer before’.36 Bodin’s contrast between the austere Francis I and his son Henry II presaged the comparison between Elizabeth and James decades later. The humanist curriculum schooled governors in the connections between finance, prodigality and tyrannical rule. The conflict between public good and private gain was the subtext to these themes: ‘To vse the publyke weale for a particular gayne or aduantage, is not onely a thyng fowle and dyshonest, but also mischeuous and very abhomynable.’37 The subordination of public to private constituted a defect in individuals and a symptom of a misgoverned state. Plato attributed the failure of the Persian empire to the subversion of community which left the people to pursue their own gain and discount the public good.38 Aristotle defined the despotic state as one in which rulers considered their personal interests above the public good.39 This was a commonplace and James marked a good ruler as one who subjects ‘his owne priuate affections and appetites to the weal and standing of his Subiects, euer thinking the common interesse his chiefest particular’.40 Private affections were easily construed as personal financial gain. Plato suggested that a ruler’s acquisitiveness was the beginning of the state’s downfall while Cicero argued that avarice was the most offensive vice in governors. It was no great challenge to develop these tropes of prodigality, private gain and avarice into the critiques of fiscal policy which were expressed in James’s parliaments or by his own governors. Governors studied what became the central issues of Jacobean finance: the relative merits of James’s giving, meeting expenses with new revenues, the 35

David Harris Sacks, ‘The countervailing of benefits: monopoly, liberty and benevolence in Elizabethan England’, in Dale Hoak (ed.), Tudor political culture, Cambridge 1995, 273–85. 36 Bodin, Six bookes, 217–18. 37 Thomas Elyot, The banket of sapience, London 1542, 39v. 38 Plato, The laws, trans. Trevor J. Saunders, Harmondsworth 1970, iii.697–8. 39 Aristotle, Politics 3.6. 40 James VI & I, Political writings, 20.

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impairment of his estate by expenditure and the applicability of political judgements to fiscal policy. The humanist curriculum made governors entirely familiar with the concepts of prodigality–liberality, public good–private profit and fiscal tyranny which confronted them in their duties. However, they dealt with contrasting principles which were subject to variant readings. Bodin’s connection of tyrannical methods, prodigality and finance is a case in point. Aristotle admitted that liberal individuals were ‘certainly prone to go to excess in giving’, but more troublesome for governors was his observation that ‘we do not call the lavishness of princes Prodigality; because we feel that however much they spend and give away they can hardly exceed the limit of their resources’.41 Just what monarchs were entitled to define as ‘their resources’ was the crux of the impositions debate; whether the duties regulated trade, and thus legitimately constituted part of the ruler’s own like other customs, or whether they illegally deprived subjects of their ‘property’. Was this tyranny or Bodin’s virtuous mean? Then again was prodigality worse than its other extreme? Aristotle concluded that mean individuals ‘fell short in giving’, indulged a ‘sordid greed, since they all endure reproach for gain and for a small gain’ or combined both defects into a ‘greater evil than Prodigality’.42 Jacobeans faced a formidable challenge in reconciling the practical faces of prodigality, liberality and meanness with the definitions in the curriculum. Governors thus faced recurrent questions in finding political compromises and fashioning effective policies. How were they to assist their king in being truly liberal, in finding the mean between prodigality and meanness? Which fiscal policies would allow them to avoid the taint of tyrannical practice? Did a mean even exist between private gain and public good? James certainly stressed the responsibility to attain a virtuous mean in the administration of justice, to use ‘such moderation, as it turne not into Tyranie: otherwaies summum Ius, is summa iniuria’ – citing Plato’s Laws and quoting De officiis.43 Bodin had no doubt that this was a central challenge when he wrote that virtue ‘consisting in the meane, is enuironed with many vices, much like vnto a straight line, which is hard to be found among a million crooked’ and ‘as it is hard for euerie man to do: so for princes whom diuers strong perturbations call out of the middle course vnto the one or the other of the extreames, it is of all others most hard’.44 James and his governors shared a curriculum which schooled them in the politics of finance. They carried its principles and ideas into their public lives. It was left for them to discover, in the words of Salisbury, ‘whether the practice be seasonable for the time’.45

41 42 43 44 45

Aristotle, Ethics 4.18; 4.23. Ibid. 4.37–44. James VI & I, Political writings, 43; Plato, Laws iv; Cicero, On duties 1.10.33. Bodin, Six bookes, 218. ‘Several speeches’, 288.

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Governors and the patronage culture The central themes of liberality, public good and private gain in the curriculum for governors intersected with reality in the patronage culture, the political milieu in which private gain and classical, particularly Senecan, ideals of liberality thrived.46 As Linda Levy Peck describes it, patronage ‘structured early modern society . . . these private, dependent, deferential alliances were designed to bring reward to the client and continuing proof of power and standing of the patron’. Clients secured preferment, place or lucre in return for ‘loyalty and service’ to their patrons. Governance depended on robust patron–client relationships: the skilful construction, management and exploitation of personal political relationships and patronage networks stretching like a web from London through the localities. At the centre of this social spider’s web rested the monarch, who governed a polity founded on the patron–client dynamic.47 In the absence of a modern bureaucracy and civil service, patronage directly from the monarch and indirectly via lesser patrons activated personal governance.48 The goal was to yoke together public service and personal effort in a manner which simultaneously yielded public good and private gain. James wrote in Basilicon doron of binding the nobility to the king’s service in a partnership of service and reward, particularly as executors of the law: and so vse your selfe louinglie to the obedient and rigorously to the stubborne . . . beating euer in their eares, that one of the principall points of seruice that ye craue of them, is, in their persons to practise and by their power to procure due obedience to the Law, without the which, no seruice they can make, can be agreeable vnto you.49

The reciprocity of service and reward was the essence, as the oft-quoted words of Salisbury attest: ‘liberality to welldeserving subjects doth multiply and confirm affection and duty to princes’ while ‘for the king not to be bountiful were a fault, for that duty is best and surest tried where it is rewarded, which is the cause and makes men the willinger to do service’.50 However, the nature of service was increasingly open to debate and disagreement, the product of tensions between a recipient’s religious pedigree, the ‘terminology of private

46

Any discussion of the patronage culture is indebted to the scholarship of Linda Levy Peck, but I have tried to frame this discussion in a way which addresses more particularly this study’s emphasis on crown finance rather than seek to summarise fully her work and that of others. 47 Peck, Court patronage, 3–4. 48 S. L. Adams, ‘The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective’, in John Guy (ed.), The reign of Elizabeth I: court and culture in the last decade, Cambridge 1995, 35–6. 49 James VI & I, Political writings, 29. 50 ‘Several speeches’, 278, and Proceedings, 1610, i. 6 respectively.

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commodity and the common weal’ and the classical definition of public service to the state.51 If this represents the patronage culture in the abstract, how individuals behaved within it substantially affected finance. Clients expected rewards that befitted the quality of service rendered, but they also longed for favour in keeping with their ambition, needs and perceived standing among contemporaries. Thus we find a projector who sought a royal charter for a company of exploration, explaining that ‘yt is usuall in ffrance, Spaine and other kingdomes to allowe unto all such as by good meanes, w[i]thowt hurtinge or preiudicinge anie person, advantage the kinges revenewe or his purse, to some a fourth, to some a third and others a moytie of the procedue of theire proiect’.52 Obtaining an ‘appropriate’ reward required the cultivation of patrons who valued what clients could offer. Drawing favourable attention from a patron was essential, as was distinguishing oneself from the throng of seekers. It is no wonder that all manner of books and pamphlets surfaced, designed to explain politics and the arts of self-promotion, from the famous Courtier of Castiglione to Dallington’s Aphorismes and Thomas Gainsford’s Rich cabinet (1616), a veritable dictionary of virtues, vices and politic terms. Ben Jonson satirised patronage networking in Volpone with the character of Sir Politic Would-be. Sir Politic hoped to secure a pension from the council of Venice as a reward for one of his projects. He worked through the intercession of a ‘common seargant’, convinced such officers really put the words in the mouths of the Great Council.53 Sir Politic’s predictable failure suggests that it was, finally, pointless to cultivate patrons who were unable to offer a suitable reward directly or work the networks to obtain it for clients. Many clients served their patrons and the crown in positive, even exemplary, fashion. However, patrons – monarchs, governors, local officers, prosperous subjects – were always under obligation to evaluate the merits of clients’ claims. Like modern critiques of welfare and taxes, it was an early modern stock-in-trade that the undeserving profited at the expense of others. Dallington offered the principle that ‘in conferring of dignities and offices, the best is according to euery mans worth and sufficiency for the place’, while Salisbury spent much of his career counselling James that ‘benefits that are promiscuously bestowed and without convenient examination of merit or value, do not only beget further importunity in those that lack, but breed contempt of gifts and ingratitude in the giver’.54 Gainsford’s Rich cabinet, written for would-be courtiers and servants, sounded the warning that those who hope for ‘preferment by order of seruice must, not onely giue attendance accordingly, but endure with a great deale of patience; yea sometime with

51 52 53 54

Adams, ‘Patronage’, 42–3. BL, MS Harleian 4807, fo. 61r. Ben Jonson, Volpone or, the fox, ed. R. B. Parker, Manchester 1983, 226. Dallington, Aphorismes, 253–4; ‘Several speeches’, 278.

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despight, to see an inferior person prefered before him’.55 Patrons – most notably James and his favourites – were regularly challenged in this way to justify the merits of their clients and rewards. Further, what resources, either directly or indirectly, could patrons call on for their clients and at what political and financial cost?56 Xenophon’s Cyropaedia chronicled how Cyrus expended all his wealth in rewarding his deserving soldiers while the great campaigns in Persia aimed in part to capture further riches.57 The demographic explosion in the ‘number of those who could consider themselves gentlemen and, thereby, members of the political elite’ presented Elizabeth and James with their own armies of would-be recipients.58 Beginning in the 1580s, the patronage culture and the costs of war made acute demands on the resources of the crown. Robert Cecil in 1602 calculated that the queen’s wars cost her £651,131 more than the subsidies granted to pay for them.59 Patronage was dramatically politicised. The politics of patronage and governance interacted in destructive fashion with the earl of Essex as the pivot. Essex’s attempts to carve out a place for himself and his clients at court were ham-handed and partisan and repeated failures to affect policy and secure reward left him and his clients nursing a bitter, Tacitean view of politics that precluded consensus and long-term accommodation.60 Patronage embodied reward for service, but Elizabethans developed an almost psychotic sensitivity in reading favour, disfavour and vindication in rewards. James thus met an unenviable situation in 1603: a dearth of patronage, no shortage of seekers and a patronage culture marked by incessant, bitter competition. He also faced governors whose disposition toward him was uncertain, and inherited a political elite which had hardly confronted the polarisation wrought by the doomed Essex. Roger Wilbraham captured the rush for patronage in telling fashion: ‘It is the manner, after the death of a long-reigning prince, that by discontented minds or wits starved for want of employment, many new projects, suits, inventions and infinite complaints are brought to the successor instantly . . . so it happened at this time.’61 James responded with a range of rewards, knighthoods and titles, appointments and new offices, pensions and annuities. This christmas of bounty haunted James politically and has stood as a defining feature of his reign. However, it was too easy for James’s contemporaries to fix the problem in his character and their explanation passes without sufficient challenge. No one would dispute that 55 56 57 58

Thomas Gainsford, The rich cabinet, London 1616, 9v. Peck, Court patronage, 32–8. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 2.4.9–10. Peck, Court patronage, 31; Adams, ‘Patronage’, argues persuasively for the emergence of a ‘new politics of patronage’, born of changes in political behaviour and fiscal policy between 1570 and 1590. His dismissal of supply and demand problems, however, is unconvincing. 59 HH, MS Salisbury 92, fos 69r–70v. 60 Paul Hammer, The polarisation of Elizabethan politics: the political career of Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, 1585–1597, Cambridge 1999, 112–19, 130–44, 270–98, 315–69. 61 Robert Ashton (ed.), James I by his contemporaries, London 1969, 63.

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James remained receptive to the demands of the patronage culture throughout his reigns in Scotland and England, but the context of his actions needs to be emphasised. He arrived in England at the head of a new dynasty, the son of the demonised queen of Scots and England’s first foreign ruler in centuries. James’s success in holding his inheritance was not a forgone conclusion and his formative years in Scotland had schooled him in the perils of unconsolidated royal authority. The preservation of Stewart monarchy in Scotland required the king to assert dominion over the nobility and kirk and fashion bonds of loyalty with his subjects. Kinship and lordship were the basis of Scottish society and its political culture has been described as baronial.62 In George Buchanan’s Scotland, magnates, like their English cousins at Runnymede, bound monarchs to contractual obligations and discharged those who proved remiss. The true lawe of free monarchies was James’s ultimate statement of disagreement, but he was ‘too traditional in his approach to kingship in Scotland to see in a strong monarchy a denial of the political and social importance of “the people” or in practice the magnates’ and employed the latter as his ‘natural counsellors’.63 Ties of centre and locality were reinforced, if imperfectly, at the same time as the scope of government expanded. These developments combined with the self-assertion of lawyers and declining clerical influence to create a ‘proliferation of offices and the demand of the laity to hold them’.64 An office-holding patronage culture was on the rise. As evidence, the privy council was reduced to thirty-two members, only officers of state were automatically admitted and councillors were expected to undertake routine administrative business.65 Demands on the monarch increased, but did so within a dynamic of royal self-promotion and national self-confidence that bound James to those seeking office and reward. James ‘understood very well the art of managing men and gave a lot of time to it’ while his capacity for swift retribution also proved advantageous.66 James’s success in Scotland owed much to these skills and to the exercise of patronage by the Scottish crown. The imperative did not change after 1603; if anything James might have empathised with Xenophon’s Cyrus, whose youth, education and campaigns formed only the prelude to his great work, the organisation of princely government in his vast new empire. Book viii of the Cyropaedia stands as a sustained exposition of effective kingship. The most honourable and conducive path to personal security for Cyrus and to the preservation of his new empire was to make nobles more powerful friends of himself than of any other

62

Jenny Wormald, Lords and men in Scotland: bonds of manrent, 1442–1603, Edinburgh 1985. 63 Idem, Court, kirk, 148. 64 Ibid. 153–9. 65 Lee, Government by pen, 9. 66 Wormald, Court, kirk, 150–5.

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ruler. Cyrus created his own service nobility and bound it with tables at court, seating, gifts and attentiveness. The king, as good shepherd, acquired eyes and ears throughout the empire by rewarding those who best served him and such liberality spurred others to act similarly. Cyrus was the model of fatherly kingship.67 Much like Cyrus, James rewarded a multitude upon his accession. Some deserved it for honour’s sake, some moved him to simple generosity and others earned it by service. James likened himself to the ‘Shepheard to so faire a Flocke’ in 1604 and spoke of rewarding his people, ‘being so farre beholding to the body of the whole State, I thought I could not refuse to let runne some small brookes out of the fountaine of my thankefulnesse to the whole, for refreshing of particular persons that were members of the multitude’.68 The Cyropaedia exalted such practice while the Jacobean imperative to build an affinity with politic liberality was self-evident. The Cyropaedia supplied James with a conception of crown finance that defended, even encouraged, sustained liberality. James wrote only briefly in Basilicon doron about finance: money as the sinews of war; only ‘honest, diligent, mean’ individuals should be financial officers and liberality descended to prodigality when rulers wasted their own estates.69 His comments on revenue and taxation followed directly from his definitions of liberality and prodigality: And aboue all, enrich not your selfe with exactions vpon your subiects; but thinke the riches of your people your best treasure, by the sinnes of the offendaires, where no præuention can auaile, making iustly your commoditie. And in-case necessitie of warres or other extraordinaries compell you to lift Subsidies, doe it as rarely as ye can: employing it onely to the vse it was ordained for; and vsing your selfe in that case as fidus depositarius [faithful trustee] to your people.70

The initial statements are the key. The peculiarities of punctuation should not separate ‘thinke the riches of your people your best treasure’ from the first clause nor attach it to the point on offenders. The royal manuscript autograph indicates more clearly the relationship: ‘speciallie enriche not youre self uith exactions upon youre subiectis but thinke the richesse of youre people youre best pose’.71 James’s reference from the Cyropaedia concerns an exchange between Cyrus and King Croesus over liberality and finance. Xenophon observed that a caring shepherd and good king were much alike and the latter ‘ought to make his people and cities happy, if he would derive benefit from them’. To that end, Cyrus, Xenophon wrote, ‘far exceeded all other men in the amount

67 68 69 70 71

Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.1.1–48; 8.2.1–14; 8.4.4–11. James VI & I, Political writings, 144–5. Ibid. 33, 37, 48. Ibid. 48. Basilicon doron, i. 157–8.

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of the revenues he received, yet he excelled still more in the quantity of presents he made. It was Cyrus, therefore, who began the practice of lavish giving and among the kings it continues even to this day’. Cyrus’ theory was questioned by Croesus, who ‘warned him that by giving so much away he would make himself poor, whereas he was in a position to lay up in his house more treasures of gold than any other man’. Cyrus asked Croesus to assign a figure to the fortune he might accumulate in that fashion. When Croesus had done so, Cyrus ordered Hystaspas and Croesus’ servant to make the circuit of the court, tell everyone gathered that the king was in need and secure pledges of assistance. Not surprisingly, they returned with pledges far in excess of Croesus’ estimate. Cyrus’ retort is illuminating: Do you observe Croesus, that I, too, have my treasures? But you are proposing to me to get them together and hoard them in my palace . . . I, on the other hand, believe that if I make my friends rich I shall have treasures in them and at the same time more trusty watchers both of my person and of our common fortunes.72

Cyrus’s great liberality was tied to his faith in his subjects: he could expend much of his treasure in responding to their needs and wants and stand confident that they would reciprocate. The debate between Cyrus and Croesus which entwined liberality and finance was the conceptual underpinning of James’s argument in Basilicon doron to the effect that his subjects’ riches were his true treasure. James’s kingship was defined by vast liberality, but such practice also marked an exemplary ruler in the curriculum which the king and his political subjects studied. Cicero wrote: The great Cyrus was portrayed by Xenophon not in accord with historical truth, but as a model of just government . . . and indeed it was not without reason that our great Africanus did not often put those books out of his hands, for there is no duty belonging to a painstaking and fair-minded form of government that is omitted.73

Elyot agreed and in the Governor exclaimed of Cyrus’ engagement with Croesus: ‘Lord God, what a notable history is this and worthy to be graven in tables of gold . . . the benevolent mind of a governor not only bindeth the hearts of the people unto him with the chain of love, more strong than any material bonds, but also guardeth more safely his person than any tower or garrison.’74 Elizabeth likened her subjects to a treasury in parliamentary speeches, but James experienced an ironic inversion of Cyrus’ tale as king: the

72 73

Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 8.2.13–24. Cicero, Letters to his friends, trans. W. Glynn Williams, Cambridge, Mass. 1927, iii, 1.1.23 (letter to Quintus). 74 Elyot, Governor, 127.

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greater his liberality, the less giving his subjects became.75 The Cyropaedia was interpreted by Samuel Lewknor in the parliamentary session of autumn 1610 as a tale of lavish spending on favourites followed by recovery of those wasted monies in time of necessity.76 The king understood Xenophon very differently in practice, but he did not deviate from his course of liberality. The answer lies less in James’s self-confessed ‘infirmity’ in giving – a convenient form of public penance – than in what he reasoned was appropriate and necessary, guided by both his reading of the curriculum and by political experience. Xenophon’s Cyrus articulated a final crucial point: ‘when I have obtained what I see is more than enough for my needs, I use it to satisfy the wants of my friends; and by enriching men and doing them kindness I win with my superfluous wealth their friendship and loyalty and from that I reap as my reward security and good fame’.77 The course of liberality was to be financed out of ‘superfluous wealth’. James made the same point in Basilicon doron: ‘empaire not by your Liberalitie the ordinarie rentes of youre crowne; whereby the estate Royall of you and your successours, must be maintained, ne exhaurias fontem liberalitatis [so that you do not drain the fountain of liberality]: for that would euer be kept sacrosanctum & extra commercium [inviolable and not to be traded]’.78 Fiscal policy had two goals: to cut the king’s coat according to his cloth and find the cloth to cut another wardrobe. The operation of James’s principles can be seen in the book of bounty issued in 1610. It was not an instrument designed only to limit liberality. It was meant to prevent ‘any thing that may either turne to the diminution of Our Reuenew and setled Receipts or lay more charge upon Our Ordinarie’ and assign additional funds, Cyrus’s superfluous wealth, to the king’s bounty. James and his governors were charged with Aristotle’s task of ‘getting wealth from the right sources and not getting it from the wrong ones’ to finance governance and true liberality.79 Projects became central to that end. Crown finance and practice: the project par excellence William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s lord treasurer from 1572 to 1598, dealt with the patronage culture in a manner that subsequently affected finance. He faced the unenviable task of reconciling the consumptive interests of the patronage culture and the financial requirements of the crown in discharging the responsibilities of governance. More simply put, how was he to pay for rewards and, for instance, finance campaigns in the Netherlands?

75 76 77 78 79

Proceedings Elizabeth, ii. 412. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 403. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.2.22. James VI & I, Political writings, 48. Aristotle, Ethics 4.1.7.

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Burghley and his colleagues opted for ‘princely parsimony’, and the relative dearth of patronage in the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign is an oft-told tale. Elizabeth’s closed hand saved money, but it did not markedly stem demands and it did ensure that competition intensified among clients and patrons. Burghley exploited concealed and long-forgotten revenues associated with the crown estates, but, more significantly, developed commercial revenues as a new resource: ‘the exploitation of the customs revenues through farming, various import and export concessions and monopolies’ which avoided putting pressure on crown revenues, were of limited duration and functioned as indirect taxes by transferring ‘the burden of the reward of its servants from the crown to the commonwealth’.80 These policies represent the advent of projects in crown finance: By 1580 projects were becoming caught up in a complicated tangle of conflicting interests: they were being used by the Crown to further its financial interests, by local authorities to assist in the relief of the poor and by private speculators who began to recognise what a gold-mine a successful project could be and wanted their share in its profits.81

Customs revenues were increasingly important and, when ‘projects became successful native industries, the customs receipts from foreign imports of these same articles fell and the Crown’s revenues suffered’. Customer Thomas Smith believed that lost revenues were more than recouped through increased exports, but Burghley remained unconvinced. Projectors took their cue and ‘new projects began to be presented in fresh form to forestall criticism: would-be patentees promised the Crown a percentage of their profits to offset any loss that might be incurred in customs revenues’. The crown developed a concessionary stake. Simultaneously, the face of projects changed as increased numbers of projectors were ‘no longer inventors and skilled craftsmen, but courtiers, merchants and speculators who planned to hire the services of such craftsmen, while they themselves shouldered the main financial risk’.82 The crown granted rights to a potentially profitable project for a fee or percentage and projectors recouped only the fruits of their inventiveness, industry and diligence. Not only might certain forms of reward become self-financing, they might even work to the financial advantage of the patrons. These advantages were not lost on James and his governors. The importance of projects is demonstrable in the papers of Jacobean governors. Over three nights in December 1757 St Paul’s coffee house was the venue for the sale of Sir Julius Caesar’s library, mortgaged by one of his last descendants ‘for £40 to an upholsterer for a debt’.83 Item 52 was titled simply ‘Projects’, taken from Caesar’s original title, ‘The Contents of the 14 booke, 80 81 82 83

Adams, ‘Patronage’, 39–40. Thirsk, Projects, 51. Ibid. 57–8. BL, MS Lansdowne 123, fos 1v–3r, 8r–v, 9r, 34r; MS Lansdowne 124.

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in fol[io] co[n]taining Proiects’. It was eventually purchased by the British Museum and became Additional Manuscript 10038. Among a hundred bags, boxes and books delivered upon Salisbury’s death to Thomas Wilson, keeper of the king’s papers, was a volume called ‘Suites and proiects’.84 The book passed out of the keeper’s hands and is now among the Harleian manuscripts.85 The Cotton manuscripts contain three similar collections for Northampton and two are replete with his annotations.86 These volumes are hardly new discoveries – those of Caesar and Cotton have often been cited – but their conceptual value deserves greater emphasis. The collections reveal the great diversity of projects, how they functioned as discrete instruments, what attracted Jacobean governors to them and the extent to which projects supplied an approach to finance itself. The range and pervasiveness of projects becomes clear when individual designs are integrated within the traditional framework of finance.87 Robert Cotton’s ‘Meanes to repair the Kings estate’ was the most thorough-going analysis of that framework.88 Cotton’s schema simultaneously reflected practice and offered counsel on effective management. From Cotton’s perspective, monarchs repaired their estates by abating charges, raising ready money and improving revenues. Abatement was divided between cutting expenses in state and household offices and reducing the king’s bounty (by resumption of pensions, annuities, fees of officers and grants of lands and restraining such gifts in future).89 Grants of the subject were the venue for raising ready money, chiefly via parliamentary grants and extra-parliamentary loans (voluntary or forced) and gifts (benevolences and the like).90 The improvement of revenues grew from the ruler’s sovereign power over lands, goods or merchandises and regalities, what might together be termed the king’s own. This section required three separate folios.91 This graphically highlights the emphasis on revenue-raising among governors and provides at least one explanation for the pervasiveness of projects: their potential for tapping new or discarded sources of wealth. It is possible to map projects from the Caesar, Salisbury and Cotton volumes, supplemented by the Ellesmere and Cranfield archives, onto this template and create a survey which spans James’s English reign.

84 85 86 87

BL, MS Lansdowne 168, fos 211r–14v (21 June 1612). BL, MS Harleian 4807, fos 1r–68v. BL, MS Cotton Titus B 4, B 5; MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6. The projects cited are a representative sample reflecting governors’ interests between 1603 and 1625. See BL, MSS Add. 10038, 36767; MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6; MS Cotton Titus B 5; MS Harleian 4807; MS Lansdowne 165; Bodl. Lib., MS Carte 121; HHL, MSS Ellesmere 441, 445, 465, 2610 and the supplementary entries provided for complete listings. 88 Peck, Northampton, 113–17. 89 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 66r. 90 Ibid. fos 43v–4r. 91 Ibid. fos 66r (abatements, grants of the subject), 66v (lands), 67r (merchandise), 67v (regalities).

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Revenue-raising is the appropriate starting-point. Lands were either the king’s or the subject’s and projects directed at both were routine.92 Management of the king’s estates covered selling, farming and manuring and improving. Numerous projects existed for sales including old castles and ruined houses; demesne of manors; copyholds as fee-farms; and coppice woods and dotard trees. Other projects suggested that the king directly farm his lands or stock his holdings ‘as in old tyme’. Improvements of forests, wastes and commons were ever-present, but often stumbled over abuses in practice or James’s shrewd anticipation of spoilage in the hands of projectors. The subject’s property offered possibilities by virtue of their titles, tenurial incidents and royal stewardship of the realm’s lands; the two former grew out of failures in record-keeping and surveying.93 Defective titles were consistently exploited by confirmation; issuing titles for illegal assarts; the like for encroachments on royal lands;94 hunting royal deer and game; and sale of title to lands entailed to the crown upon death of the holder. Tenurial profits centred on James’s residual feudal rights: wardship; reliefs and heriots; respite of homage;95 alienations; knighthoods; right of marriage for widows; custody of lunatics; and other concealed obligations. The surrounded marshes of the Fens were the foremost example of lands ‘unfitt in care of the publique Father to be lost to the Common wealthe’ and their drainage remained the grandest land project throughout the Jacobean and Caroline periods.96 Cotton’s goods and merchandises encompassed commercial revenues. Customs and impositions were just one component and if every duty were included, the projects in this area would dwarf all others. Cotton offered two general strategies for improving the customs: expanding trade and raising the import/export duties. Increase and balance of trade were sought with major projects: enforcement of the Statute of Employments and laws for the preservation of bullion within the realm, dyeing and dressing cloth before export and the creation of a British fishing fleet.97 The erection of houses of credit and exchange in major commercial cities could be expected to improve trade. Various projects singled out the Great Farm, currants, French and Rhenish wines, silk, tobacco, Irish customs, 3d. tax on merchant strangers and ulnage.98 Ellesmere and Cranfield particularly concerned themselves with 92

Richard Hoyle, ‘ “Shearing the hog”: the reform of the estates, c. 1598–1604’, in Hoyle, Estates, 204–62. 93 David Thomas, ‘Leases of crown lands in the reign of Elizabeth I’, and Richard Hoyle, ‘Reflections on the history of crown lands, 1558–1640’, in Hoyle, Estates, 179, 424–6. 94 See also Thirsk, ‘Crown as projector’, 309–10. 95 See also PRO, SP 14/87/75, fo. 154r–v; SP 14/87/75I, fos 155r–6v; SP 14/87/75II, fos 157r–9v (all 30 June 1616). 96 BL, MS Cotton Titus F 4, fos 316r–20v. See also Thirsk, ‘Crown as projector’, 310–14. 97 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v; HHL, MS Ellesmere 447, 465, 478, 2610; Prestwich, Cranfield, 178–86; Cramsie, ‘Commercial projects’. 98 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610; BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 224v–5v; MS Add. 10038, fos 73r–7v (Sept., Nov. 1613); MS Harleian 4807, fos 62r–v (undated); MS Harleian 5257, fos 2r–17v (undated).

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trade while the increases of customs duties by Dorset and Salisbury both in the revision of the book of rates and laying new impositions are well known.99 Licensing new manufactures and commodities, many with attendant customs duties, and the revival of charges on others, was the subject of countless projects: kelk for dyeing cloth;100 execution of the Statute of Maulsters (one of many projects preserved by Caesar concerning brewing); licensing alehouses and ‘publick innes by way of rent yerely’;101 pinmaking;102 projects for a fine on usury (as a form of commerce);103 the making of ‘sopeasshes’;104 the growth of mulberry trees and development of silkmaking;105 dyeing with logwood; reforming abuses in the paper trade;106 alum;107 steelmaking; and starchmaking.108 These were just a few, but they were not without legal problems, particularly on monopolistic grounds.109 Monarchs sometimes retained the sole trading and purveying of certain goods: Edward I the wool staple, Edward III tin, Henry VI grain and Elizabeth ‘by warrant of privy seales’ caused ‘a greate proportion of beere to be purvayde transported and soulde to hir use beyonde the sea’.110 At varying times prerogative pre-emption was proposed or employed in favour of cloth, lead, tin, alum, iron ordnance, wine and salt, while foreign imports such as Spanish pepper and quicksilver, French salt, Florentine corn and Italian alum attracted similar attention.111

99 HH, MS Salisbury 129, fos 6r–8v (1610?); HHL, MS Ellesmere, 2458. For projects to increase the book of rates see BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v; PRO, SP 14/86/25, fo. 39r–v ([Jan?] 1616). 100 See also Thirsk, Projects, 35–40. 101 See also HH, MS Salisbury 142, fos 189r–93v (1604); MS Salisbury 189, fo. 60r–v [1604]. 102 See also BL, MS Lansdowne 152, fos 302r–29v (various, 1606–8); Thirsk, Projects, 78–83, 149–50. 103 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 67r; MS Add. 10038, fos 19r, 30r; 202r–3v (Aug. 1609), 204r–5v (3 May 1610), 206r–7v (7 Mar. 1611 [1612]), 208r–9v (1 July 1608), 210r–11v (25 Feb. 1618 [1619]); MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 76r; MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v. 104 BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 19v, 318r–19v (18 Sept. 1607). See also Thirsk, Projects, 6, 102–5. 105 BL, MS Harleian 4807, fos 57r–60v (undated); MS Add. 10038, fo. 20r; MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 195r–6v (copy of a project from the time of Henry VIII); HH, MS Salisbury 193, fo. 28r–v ([1606]); PRO, SP 14/25/6, fos 16r–17v ([January?], 1607); PRO, E 407/128 (18 Nov. 1609); E 407/128 (c. 31 Dec. 1612); Thirsk, Projects, 7, 120–2, 143. 106 BL, MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 330r–1v (undated). See also Thirsk, Projects, 56–7, 143. 107 See also A. F. Upton, Sir Arthur Ingram, c. 1565–1642: a study in the origins of an English landed family, Oxford 1961, 108–44. 108 BL, MS Cotton Titus B 4, fos 297r–8v; MS Lansdowne 152, fos 114r–30v (various 1609–12); Peck, Northampton, 67–9; Thirsk, Projects, 83–93. 109 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610; BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 46r–v. 110 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 46r. 111 See also the following references. Lead: BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 111r; MS Add. 10038, fos 19v, 189r–90v (24 Jan. 1606 [1607]), 191r–2v (30 Mar. 1619); MS Cotton Titus B 5, fo. 267r–v. Tin: MS Add. 36767, fos 67r–8v (11 Aug. 1606), 212r–27v (Oct. 1608); MS Cotton Titus B 4, fos 336r–7v (undated); MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 406r–18v (undated; some

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Purveyance was placed here because of its commercial nature and various projects for relief by composition were advanced (besides national efforts in parliament).112 Regalities snared a plethora of projects and James might well have become Henry VII redivivus – albeit not as Francis Bacon envisaged – had governors fully exploited them. Cotton fashioned categories for temporal regalities and those simply called ‘mixt’. Mixed regalities were primarily clerical: dispensation for pluralities; ‘Restitution of the temporalities of Abbots and Bishops for w[hi]ch Hen[ry] the 7 receaved great sommes’; ‘Corodies in cathedrall or collegiat Churches’; benefit at the vacancy of bishoprics; the tenth part of properties formerly held by religious houses, despite being in lay hands should be paid ‘since they weere setled in the crowne by a former lawe’; the king could gain £20,000 annually if he exercised concurrent jurisdiction as had the pope and legates like Wolsey; tithes out of parishes;113 finally, another of Henry VII’s projects, promotions to deaneries.114 Temporal regalities were largely the profits of justice and administration. Revival and enforcement of the Elizabethan statutes for apprentices offered potentially large sums.115 Two different suits sought a corporation of appraisers for inventorying the goods of the deceased. Projects galore concerned monetary compositions and legal pardons which would have turned loose murderers, rapists and felons as well as settling with those responsible for ‘outlawries upon debt’, ‘uncustomed good’, new buildings in London and infractions against penal laws and proclamations;116 general pardons found their way into projects similarly.117 Payable fines were examined for dereliction by sheriffs, exemptions from serving as JPs and sheriffs, customs officers trading as merchants, prisoners who escaped while in charge, keeping of slanderous books against the king or state, grants of naturalisation, excessive apparel, licences to keep retainers and confirmation of liveries and coats of arms granted by former monarchs; old fines, amercements and nichilled debts were targeted for recovery in similar projects.118 with notes and endorsements by Northampton). Alum: MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v; MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 351v–60v (undated; endorsed by Northampton). Iron ordnance: MS Add. 10038, fos 320r–1v (3 Oct. 1608); Pepper: MS Add. 10038, fos 21v, 30r; MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v. See also HHL, MS Ellesmere 478, 2610. 112 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 119r; MS Add. 10038, fo. 19r; PRO, SP 14/63/29, fo. 29r–v; SP 14/66/9, fo. 9r–v; SP 14/66/17, fos 17r–18v (11 Sept. 1611). 113 BL, MS Add. 36767, fos 352r–7v; MS Add. 10038, fos 264r–8v. 114 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 51r, 67v, 72r; MS Add. 10038, fos 22r, 30r, 119r, 265r–6v (22 Sept. 1607), 267r–8v (undated); HHL, MS Ellesmere 478, 2610; BL, MS Add. 36767, fos 352r–7v (undated); MS Harleian 4807, fos 32r–4v (undated). 115 See also PRO, SP 14/24/71, fo. 124r–v; SP 14/24/72, fo. 125r–v; SP 14/24/73, fo. 126r–v (all 1606?). 116 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 67v. 117 See also PRO, SP 14/80/1, fo. 1r (5 Jan. 1615); SP 14/80/38, fo. 55r; SP 14/80/115, fo. 181r. 118 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 20v; MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v; HHL, MS Ellesmere 465.

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Impulses for creative bureaucracy translated into new offices: keeper of patents for new inventions, various offices to hold bonds and recognisances, a register of all burials, christenings and marriages and a corporation dedicated to preserving ancient monuments and records.119 Profits due from the seals of offices (chancery and exchequer particularly) had room for improvement. Outright sale of offices was rejected, but plans were afoot for entry fines to offices (a form of sale) and new honours and knighthoods to be sold upon completion of the Union – an impulse which seems to have been transferred to the creation of baronets.120 Projects for ‘small copper monies of halfpe[n]ce & farthings’ were fools’ gold that glinted with variable brilliance.121 An appropriate place to finish with regalities is the collection of old debts, a major project of the period, but one which defies neat categorisation owing to the diverse natures of the debts involved. A vast array of projects hoped to exploit the king’s own. At the same time, projects were also advanced for areas less obvious than revenue-raising. Projectors also devised schemes which targeted grants of the subject and abatements. The major popular grants were parliamentary subsidies, loans on privy seals and voluntary offerings (benevolences, free gifts).122 The significant projects to address parliamentary revenue were those to revise and increase the value of the subsidy, tenth and fifteenth, but the political challenge of dealing with chronic undervaluations was never met.123 Loans and benevolences were conceived as projects. Two of Caesar’s chief projects in 1609 were ‘Privy seales not payed’ from the round of 1604 and ‘Newe privy seales to others’.124 Following the forced loan of 1611, Cotton brought together among his projects lists of ‘Men able to lend and yet lend not upon their Pr[ivy] Seales’.125 In 1616 a project whereby 1,000 people would be asked to lend £100 was offered, while Edward Coke proposed that those who had particularly tasted of the king’s bounty be asked for larger sums.126 Cotton did much of the groundwork for the revival of benevolences, sifting and accumulating precedents, working papers and past plans;127 Henry Martin also proposed a benevolence, which Caesar placed in his project volume,128 while 119 BL, MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 200r–1v, 210r–v; MS Add. 10038, fos 21v–2r, 271r–2v (19 July 1612). 120 See also Peck, Court patronage, 9–28, 116–23, 162–98; Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the aristocracy, Oxford 1965, 82–97. 121 See also PRO, SP 14/72/135–40, fos 242r–54v. 122 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 66r. 123 See also PRO, SP 14/23/28, fos 59r–60v; SP 14/23/29, fo. 61r–v; SP 14/23/30, fos 62r–3v; SP 14/37/38, fo. 80r–v; BL, MS Harleian 188, fos 2r–32v (addressed to Northampton). 124 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 19r; MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 119r. 125 BL, MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 175r–80v (12 Dec. 1612). 126 PRO, SP 14/87/63, fo. 126r–v (19 June 1616). 127 BL, MS Cotton Titus B 4, fos 126r–8v; MS Cotton Titus B 5, fos 158r–9v, 174r–v (erroneously catalogued as pertaining to privy seals); MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 301r–13v. 128 BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 241r–2v (25 Apr. 1612).

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a benevolence was collected in 1614 upon the lead of Archbishop Abbot and the clergy. Cotton also included James’s ‘soveraigne right, as aides for knighting of ye K[ing’s] eldest sonne or mariage of his Daughter’ among grants. Salisbury pursued this project for Prince Henry in 1609 which accounts for the inclusion of ‘Aides for the Lady Elizabeth’ among Caesar’s projects that same year.129 Retrenchment and reform figured unambiguously among projects.130 A series of papers by Gerson Wilford and John Pount, an ‘intymacon of the excessive arrerages and debtes retayned in the handes of the Kinges accomptantes . . . contrarie to the lawes of this Realme in that case provided w[i]th the true cause thereof and the Remedie how it maie bee p[re]vented’, was endorsed by Dorset as ‘A proiect toching Acomptes’ and kept by Caesar with his projects.131 Cotton presented some of Wilford’s reports to Northampton who read and endorsed them.132 Among Salisbury’s projects were those to redress the abuses of manorial stewards for better answering the king’s rightful revenue and another for precise division of crown revenue among the four exchequer tellers, lessening duplication and assigning accountability.133 ‘Abateme[n]ts of charges in the howsehold, wardrobe, Admiralty ordina[n]ce, works, starcha[m]ber, liberties of the Excheq[uer], Ireland, Low Cou[n]tries etc’ were projects looking for practical expression throughout the reign, first enunciated by Dorset and taken up by Caesar and Salisbury at his death.134 This conceptualisation of abatement is reinforced by the inclusion in Caesar’s volume of the list of superfluous household officers which Dorset received from Knollys and Wotton.135 During the ensuing years Morgan Coleman, the officers themselves, Thomas Vavasour and Cranfield all presented projects for household reform.136 Projects were pervasive instruments of policy and no facet of finance was untouched by them. Among these papers, there are more than 150 extant projects which were examined by governors between 1603 and 1625. Yet assigning the term ‘project’ to such a diverse collection risks destroying its meaning, even if it was common currency. The original Tudor projects which Joan Thirsk examined were entrepreneurial measures aimed at developing

129 130 131 132 133

BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 119v; MS Add. 10038, fo. 19r. See, in particular, HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610. BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 82r–122v. BL, MS Cotton Titus B 4, fos 299r–300v. BL, MS Harleian 4807, fos 18r–19v (undated), 40r–v (12 Jan. 1608 [1609], authorised by Salisbury). 134 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 29v; MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 111r (11 Aug. 1608); PRO, SP 14/5/53, fo. 125r–v. 135 BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 352r–3v (18 Dec. 1607). 136 PRO, SP 14/61/117, fo. 208r–v (27 Feb. 1611); SP 14/63/22–4, fos 30r–2v; SP 14/94/57–9, fos 89r–94v; BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 96r (undated; [c. Sept. 1612–June 1613]); CKS, U269/1, OW150, OW10 (both Apr. 1618) [MSS Cranfield 4731 and 4753 respectively]; OW150 (8 Oct. 1619) [MS Cranfield 6277].

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new trades, manufactures and agricultural practices. This strand is evident in projects like Fen drainage, fishing busses, dyed and dressed cloth, mulberry trees and silkworms. It is more difficult to see waste grounds, knighthoods, enforcement of apprenticeship statutes, benevolences and abatements in the wardrobe as ‘projects’ cut from the same cloth. What was it that collectively warranted the term project? It was the partnership of public business and personal gain at the conceptual and practical level. Projecting was a mentality and a way of doing things which either paired public and private or remade political relationships along the same lines to serve the ends of governance. It is this salient feature which makes projects significant because they did not simply play a ubiquitous instrumental role. Rather, the projecting mentality infused finance. Caesar captured its place in crown finance in his evaluation of the project for fees and fines collected in local courts: we conceive the best course for raising profitt of perquisite of courtes is to put them in lease for some short tyme, whereby the charge [of allowances for stewards, bailiffs, receivers and the like] will cease and the profitt is like to be improued by private industrie, w[hi]ch may afterwardes be used for a president to the Kinge for further improvement when the leases should expire.137

Public and private intersected at various points in projects and with varying degrees of intensity. Dozens of projects reached the crown in the form of personal suits and the transactional nature of them is unmistakeable. Transactions linked the work of individuals as diverse as glassmakers, dyed cloth factors, Dutch drainage experts in the Fens and agents who arranged for the confirmation of defective titles. All hoped to persuade individuals to part with some portion of their financial livelihood in exchange for a particular good or service. The public–private partnerships frequently acted as a kind of proto-privatisation: individuals undertook the crown’s business, with legal, administrative and, occasionally, financial assistance from the crown. The great farm of the customs and the associated lesser farms are ready examples. The crown leased the collection of its import and export duties for a fixed term of years to a syndicate of merchants in return for an annual payment. Lesser farms were frequently leased to important individuals with the right to sublet them.138 Benefits were divided along public–private lines. In some cases direct monetary gains were shared out between projectors and crown. In others, the crown received a fixed sum with any surplus reserved to the projectors. The king’s wardrobe constitutes an interesting derivation. Lionel Cranfield contracted to manage the wardrobe at a set charge after which any savings were his to pocket. The project was a success for the crown and for Cranfield – who churlishly complained that the sugar customs, leased for £2,000 but yielding a profit of £4,000, were poor compensation for £8,000

137 138

BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 9v. CKS, U269/1, OEc25 [MS Cranfield 4039] ([Mar. 1613]).

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profit from the wardrobe. Finally, the crown might also profit via social, economic or political developments that only indirectly translated into revenue or savings. Projects in the 1610s to establish a tapestry industry expected governors to be satisfied with new employment, asking that the articles be ‘duty-free’ throughout their manufacture and sale.139 The boundaries between individuals’ private lives and their public obligations as subjects were exploited by governors who thought in terms of a market for exemptions. For example, individuals could purchase relief from the duty to serve as sheriff or be required to pay more for having their documents sealed. Such projects were often justified by the great ease afforded to subjects from either staying or procuring the exercise of the crown’s authority. Projects for licensing apprentices highlight this and other aspects of the intersection of public and private. The 1563 Statute of Artificers ordered that apprentices be indentured for seven years, but indentures were seldom taken; according to the projectors it was for want of a responsible officer. Consequently, ‘unskilled artificers exceedingly increase, wherfore auncient artificers doe finde themselves much impoverished by yonge men that daylie sett upp & use trade contrarie to the said statute’. The projectors hoped that James would grant by ‘letters patent to some meet person full power and authoritie to enroull & record the said indentures in such places . . . where their is not alreadye any authorised for that purpose’. They also sought power to dispense with the statutory fines against offenders which had already been settled. The projectors believed established artificers would compound for up to a fourth of statutory forfeitures to receive a dispensation. Assuming 60,000 artificers in England and Wales capable of paying, the projectors believed they would realise £139,375. For their efforts, they asked for a twenty-oneyear grant and 5s. in the pound for expenses, yielding them approximately £43,555. James was offered £200 in rent and the remaining proceeds of the compositions, potentially more than £90,000. Crown and projectors stood to gain handsomely while unskilled artificers and shoddy goods would be checked.140 What emerges by James’s reign is the extent to which governors acting within the project mentality effectively transformed the crown itself into a projector. Lionel Cranfield, as master of the wardrobe, never acted as anything other than the king’s officer, but he operated like a projector, selling his expertise with accounts and reaping a personal profit of £8,000 for his efforts. The crown acted as the prime mover for dozens of projects. Some relied on subjects alone, some were opened to the talents and labours of ‘private’ undertakers and others employed crown officers such as Cranfield operating like projectors. Salisbury held a project for populating the ‘abundance of vacant and waste groundes’. James could achieve this by leasing 100 acres each to 5,000 yeomen who would enclose the land, work it and 139 140

FSL, MS Folger G.b. 10, fo. 114r–v. BL, MS Harleian 4807, fos 24r, 25r, 63r–4r.

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construct sturdy houses and farm buildings. Their rent would be £20, yielding new revenues of £100,000, while promises of stability and prosperity aimed to meet social concerns: ‘by this meanes his Ma[jes]tie shalbe better enabled in [military] force and strengthe by raisinge of soe many able subiectes, his subsedy so muche increased, the common wealth greatly inriched and bettered by providing of so many dwellinge houses for so many desolate people w[hi]ch nowe doe wante placed of habitation’. Salisbury even deemed it a commonwealth project fit ‘to be offred to ye Parliament’.141 Governors were not above co-opting projector’s suits and leaving them with little to show for their entreaties. James ordered that the apprentices project be recast by Caesar and Salisbury to eliminate the suitors so that he could ‘make the best use of this sute for himself, so as it may evidentlie apeare to bringe a profitt w[i]th honor to his coffers & w[i]thout enormitie or inconvenience to his subiectes’.142 He and Salisbury ultimately vetoed it after Caesar judged ‘the p[ro]fit very uncerteine & extreme small’.143 The Jacobean project memoranda no longer appear as mere lists. Extant in every collection which once belonged to a governor involved with finance, they record the project mentality itself at work. Caesar’s own memoranda span a decade of policy, from Dorset’s original notes through Caesar’s own massive list of 105 projects in 1609 and his accounts of the treasury commissioners’ work through 1614. And, in one archival corner or another can be found most of the projects which found their way on to such documents. Despite this, perhaps the most vivid testimony to projects comes from the stage and the talents of Ben Jonson in The devil is an ass. The rollicking image of Merecraft, ‘the wit, the brain, the great projector’ is indelible: the one who ‘projects Ways to enrich men or to make ‘em great, By suits, by marriages, by undertakings’.144 Merecraft’s entry is a projector’s tour de force: Sir, money’s a whore, a bawd, a drudge, Fit to run out on errands: let her go. Via pecunia! When she’s run and gone, And fled and dead, then will I fetch her again With aqua-vitae out of an old hogshead! I’ll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs, Dust, but I’ll have her! Raise wool upon eggshells, Sir and make grass grow out o’marrow bones, To make her come.145

Merecraft deals projects like cards: aqua vitae, dogskin leather, bottled ale, wine from raisins, the new office of master of dependencies, cosmetics and

141 142 143 144 145

Ibid. fos 14r–15v. Ibid. fo. 8r. BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 15r (24 Aug. 1609). Ben Jonson, The devil is an ass, ed. Peter Happe, Manchester 1994, 90. Ibid. 92.

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the uproarious sealing of toothpicks. The size of his deck is so far beyond that of individual projectors that Merecraft must surely represent the crown itself. Projects therefore existed as discrete instruments like cards in a deck, but also embodied a powerful mental framework. They were meant to pair public good and private gain and serve the course of true liberality without moving the king to tyrannical exactions. However, projects had the potential to complicate all the political dimensions of finance which governors studied and they repeatedly created conflict in fiscal policy between governors and within the political nation. Before turning to the course of crown finance it is necessary to examine the policy-making process. Not only did Jacobean political culture provide fertile ground for projects, but James’s style of kingship created an open, fluid process of counsel and decision-making within which they flourished.

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Kingship and the Making of Fiscal Policy James VI brought his own experience of kingship to England in 1603 and his gender, ethnicity and personality reshaped the polity. Finance was one aspect of governance that was particularly affected. Typically James’s influence on finance is identified with wasteful extravagance and corruption. Neither charge can be refuted, but they deserve to be contextualised. James was hardly more extravagant than his Tudor predecessors or his early modern contemporaries. For Francis Bacon and other governors who looked to the Tudor past, Henry VII’s expenditures were virtually a Jacobean ideal, but less for scale than form: ‘he never spared charge which his affaires required and in his building was magnificent, but his rewards were very limitted, spending more upon his owne state and memory then upon the deserts of others’.1 Decay and corruption too were inherited from Burghley’s treasurership and Cecil attempted to clean up his father’s mess as much as James’s own. Finally, if finance is a political issue then James’s role must be defined more broadly than as simply presiding over prodigality and peculation. The theory and practice of James’s kingship decisively affected finance, particularly the policy-making process and his conception of a monarch’s role in it. The decisive factor was the fluidity of policy-making, the willingness of James to take counsel widely and trust his own counsel above others. This enabled projectors and the projecting mentality to penetrate policy-making so deeply that they became both the instruments of policy and a mindset informing policy-making itself. The kingship of James VI and I Fifteen years ago, Jenny Wormald challenged historians to understand James I of England by starting with James VI of Scotland.2 This agenda is especially valid for James’s kingship, which emerged in Scotland as an inseparable marriage of political thought and practical politics. It centred on the enhancement of the Stewart imperium – that ‘the king is emperor in his own kingdom’ – and followed the agenda of ‘Renaissance monarchs to consolidate their territories, eliminate rival jurisdictions within them and assert their

1 2

CKS, U269/1, OE1482 [MS Cranfield 6902]. Wormald, ‘Two kings’, 192.

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sovereign authority over their subjects’.3 James has emerged as an adept king of Scotland.4 By 1597, as Wormald has written, James’s ‘control of the church and state was becoming irresistible [and] he settled down to write about it’ in The true lawe of free monarchies and Basilicon doron.5 These works are important for the history of political thought and play leading roles – as they did among the king’s contemporaries – in debates over ‘absolutism’ and ‘ancient constitutions’, political rights and sovereignty. They also represent an entrée into James’s practice of kingship. The king’s writings, particularly Basilicon doron, took shape out of his education, experiences growing into the office of monarch, efforts to impose his rule amidst the ferment of Scottish politics and ideas about effective imperium. They are neither esoteric philosophical statements nor political agenda. Rather, they are reflective and prescriptive, enabling us to understand how James approached the task of ruling. Lawlessness and religious challenges constituted the Scottish context for the True lawe. James contended that subjects owed obedience or prayerful acquiescence at the hands of a tyrant.6 Rebellion was indefensible, yet James argued that the best preventative was good government.7 He regarded his coronation oath as ‘the clearest, ciuill and fundamentall Law’ defining the king’s office as salus populi, even if he denied that it constituted a contract with anyone but the divine.8 The responsibility to rule well represents a duty ultimately motivated by ‘the Great day of Iudgement’ ahead. A ruler’s conscience, ‘the light of knowledge that God hath planted in man’ to distinguish right and wrong – a motif shared with Bodin – is a powerful tool for godly living and good rule. It makes possible a daily accounting of wrongs by commission and omission ‘either in your Christian or Kingly calling’.9 The burden of responsibility weighed heavily on the sovereign. Monarchs as lawgivers and judges were ordained to secure the commonweal. A ruler may be ‘aboue the law, as both the author and giuer of strength thereto; yet a good king will not onely delight to rule his subiects by the lawe, but euen will conforme himselfe in his owne actions thervnto, alwaies keeping that ground, that the health of the common-wealth be his chiefe lawe’. To this

3 Mason, Kingship and commonweal, 104. See also Roger A. Mason, ‘This realm is an empire? Imperial ideas and iconography in early Renaissance Scotland’, in Barbara E. Crawford (ed.), Church, chronicle and learning in medieval and early Renaissance Scotland, Edinburgh 1999, 76–7. 4 Wormald, Court, kirk, 143–59; Lee, Government by pen, and Solomon; Goodare, ‘Parliamentary taxation’, 23–52, and ‘Nobility’, 161–82; Goodare and Lynch, Reign of James. 5 Jenny Wormald, ‘James VI and I, Basilikon doron and the Trew law of free monarchies: the Scottish context and the English translation’, in Linda Levy Peck (ed.), The mental world of the Jacobean court, Cambridge 1991, 45. 6 James VI & I, Political writings, 75–84. 7 Ibid. 30–1. 8 Ibid. 65, 81. 9 Ibid. 17–18.

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end the monarch could interpret, mitigate, even suspend the laws if they proved ‘doubtsome or rigorous’ and ‘vpon causes onely knowen to him’.10 Nevertheless, ‘a good King, although hee be aboue the Law, will subiect and frame his actions’ to it and ‘vpon the perill of his soule to procure the weale of both soules and bodies, as farre as in him lieth, of all them that are committed to his charge’.11 James argued in the True lawe that only God could judge whether his government advanced the public good, but there was, he wrote in Basilicon doron, no shortage of earthly wits willing to offer judgements. There was no better remedy than to employ the equivalent of a governing conscience and ‘so to rule as may iustly stop their mouthes for all such idle and vnreuerent speeches; and so to prop the weale of your people, with prouident care for their good gouernment, that iustly, Momus himselfe may haue no ground to grudge at’.12 Basilicon doron understandably emphasised the essential feature of effective kingship in the Scottish polity, the need for personal rule.13 James’s framework of three books of duties only underscores this focus while echoing Cicero’s books of duties for his son in De officiis. Books ii and iii of Basilicon doron elaborated the principles of effective personal rule. Justice and equity were the essence and they were realised by the establishment and execution of good laws and kingly behaviour which instructed servants and subjects in a virtuous life. James mouthed the commonplace that a few good laws well executed were preferable to a multitude. While parliaments were ordained for the making of laws, each ruler judged the necessity of new laws and the summoning of assemblies. The execution of laws must be indifferent and it was preferable for new rulers to mete out severe but fair justice before showing their capacity for mercy. Rough justice was a characteristic evil in Scotland and it was vital for the ruler to ‘beate down the hornes of proud oppressours’ and ensure that royal justice prevailed. James examined the particular political vices to which the Church, including religious hotheads, the nobility and the burghs were prone before addressing diplomacy and just wars.14 Matters of principle were followed by what James described as making an ‘example in your life and person’. The former consisted of the ‘gouernment of your Court and followers, in all godlinesse and vertue’ while the other was marked by ‘hauing youre owne minde decked and enriched so with all vertuous qualities, that therewith yee may worthily rule your people’. The ruler should choose loyal, diligent, honest and virtuous individuals, free of corruption, vice and flattery, as personal servants and officers. Crown officers were particularly important because they ‘concerne likewise the weale of your

10 11 12 13 14

Ibid. 75. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 31. Wormald, ‘Two kings’, 197. James VI & I, Political writings, 21–33.

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people, for the which yee must bee answerable to God’. They must be ruled by rewards and exemplary punishment with the goal being to ‘maintaine peace in your Court, banish enuie, cherish modestie, bannish deboshed insolence, foster humilitie and represse pride’.15 Rulers should cultivate an array of virtues, led by temperance and followed by justice, magnanimity, humility, constancy, liberality and wisdom at the same time as they practised a dignified personal comportment in dress, eating, speaking, gesturing, studying, writing, games and exercise (especially hunting) and other pastimes. James emphasised duties over techniques of rule in Basilicon doron, but his attention to governing nobles, servants and officers emphasises delegation and management rather than a model of administrator-king. James’s avid reading of Plato’s Politicus must have been formative. He urged Henry to learn ‘well your owne craft, which is to rule your people’ and suggested the study of Scripture, law and statutes, contemporary and classical history and a good grounding in the ‘other liberall arts and sciences’. The goal was not scholarly expertise, but to ‘be on the counsell of all crafts, that yee may be able to containe them all in order’ which makes ‘you thereby able to vse your office’.16 James’s programme followed the study of kingship or statesmanship in Politicus, Plato’s dialogue between the young Socrates and his visitor which treats statesmanship as a branch of knowledge. Every branch of knowledge ‘has a particular function to perform’, but the branch ‘responsible not only for all of them, but for the laws and every other aspect of the state as well and which creates the best possible fabric out of all these materials . . . is statesmanship’.17 The operative definition of kingship was reached through the study of knowledge. In the words of Socrates’s visitor: when we consider all the branches of knowledge we’ve mentioned, then, we have to conclude that none of them is identifiable with kingship. The point is that genuine kings do not actually do things themselves; they govern people whose domain is doing and they know when to embark on and initiate courses of action which are particularly important to the state and when it’s better to hold back. They delegate action to others.18

Politicus implied certain norms of kingship with consultation and decision-making being particularly important. If statesmanship represented a branch of knowledge which governed all others, then it was the individuals who acquired it, rulers, that were best able to govern. In James’s practice of kingship, the matter at issue was not whether to trust governors or other counsellors, but rather that James alone possessed the highest order of knowledge, statesmanship, with which to evaluate counsel and make decisions. As he rhetorically asked, ‘I bid you know all crafts: For except ye knowe euery 15 16 17 18

Ibid. 34–8. Ibid. 44–7. Plato, Statesman, ed. Julia Annas and Robin Waterfield, Cambridge 1995, 305e. Ibid. 305c–d.

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one, how can ye control euery one, which is your proper office.’19 There was thus nothing particularly lofty when James explained to members of parliament in 1621 why they were not well suited to offer counsel on certain matters, chiefly diplomatic and religious issues surrounding the Spanish match: These are unfit things to be handled in Parliament except your King should require it of you; for who can have wisdom to judge of things of that nature but such as are daily acquainted with the particulars of treaties and the variable and fixed connexion of affairs of state.20

Even collectively, members did not have the requisite understanding of the many entwined details that James possessed, as one whose remit encompassed all matters of state and governance. Plato’s Politicus effectively offered James a means to rank the counsel he received when the process of consultation progressively gave way to decision-making. The education which James prized reassured him that he could, if not ought to, trust his own counsel. And this line of reasoning could lead to the conviction that the king alone, acting as politicus, possessed the ultimate ability – not simply the right – to determine cases of necessity and define the public good – a loaded issue that would be revisited regularly under Charles I. Delegated governance was simultaneously a statement of principle and an assertion of political reality addressed by Elyot in the Governor: But since one mortal man cannot have knowledge of all things done in a realm or large dominion and at one time discuss all controversies, reform all transgressions and exploit all consultations, concluded as well for outward as inward affairs, it is expedient and also needful that under the capital governor be sundry mean authorities as it were aiding him in the distribution of justice in sundry parts of a huge multitude21

Delegation is a truism, but the Cyropaedia adds another dimension. It was not simply a logistical necessity, it made ‘leisure’ possible, something Cyrus needed ‘if he were to be able to confine his attention to affairs of paramount importance’.22 The administrator-king in the mould of Henry VII or Philip II implicitly endangered good governance as much as the indolent monarch. Rulers who were too hands-on lost the opportunity to reflect on their actions, but they also impaired a critical dimension of governance: counsel. The connection was obvious to Elyot who wrote that ‘his labours being levigate [lightened] and made more tolerable, he shall govern with the better advice

19 20

James VI & I, Political writings, 44. Quoted and discussed in David L. Smith, The Stuart parliaments, 1603–1689, London 1999, 45. 21 Elyot, Governor, 13. 22 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.1.13–14.

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and consequently with more perfect governance’.23 Delegation opened governance to more individuals and ensured that, in accounting for their activities, their range of experiences and viewpoints would find their way into the process of consultation.24 ‘And moreover’, Elyot wrote, ‘where there is a great number of counsellors, they all being heard needs must the counsel be the more perfect’ and the people’s safety better guarded.25 Whether James possessed a theory of counsel is unclear; he seems to have been unconcerned to examine the subject in detail. This partly reflects the pervasiveness of counsel in political thought and the curriculum. Students and would-be governors sought mastery of two essential skills: One is reason, the faculty that enables us to uncover the truth. The other is rhetoric, the art that enables us to present the truth with eloquence . . . reason lacks any inherent capacity to persuade us of the truths it brings to light. This is why the persuasive force of eloquence must be added if reason is to be empowered and given effect.26

The fruit of empowered reason for governors was good counsel, the ‘end of all doctrine and study’ in Elyot’s mind.27 Consultation was ‘the act wherein men do devise together and reason what is to be done’ after examining the state of the commonweal. Effective and profitable consultation depended on good counsellors and a process which put the ‘general and universal estate of the public weal . . . before any particular commodity’. Some individuals were more fit than others to counsel and it was the ruler’s duty to select those who were ‘void of all hate, friendship, displeasure or pity’ in matters open to question and dispute. Sound and wide-ranging consultation marked the beginning of political wisdom for those who ‘intend to be to their public weal profitable, for the which purpose only they be called to be governors’.28 Elyot’s principles were influential. James may have been reluctant to examine counsel directly because it carried disturbing political implications which took on greater significance in England and Scotland after 1550. Political radicals like Buchanan joined governors like Burghley in believing that a monarch’s power was restrained by the obligation to take counsel and rule for the public good. James countered in the True lawe and Basilicon doron that any obligation to govern for the public good was a debate with God and only at the king’s discretion did the wider body politic have a place in the dialogue. The realities of earthly government meant that James held the power to define salus populi and judge his effectiveness in achieving it. As James was reported to have said in 1622,

23 24 25 26 27 28

Elyot, Governor, 13. See ibid. 231–4. Ibid. 239; idem, Banket of sapience, 21v. Skinner, Reason and rhetoric, 2. Elyot, Governor, 238. Ibid. 236–41.

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‘he would govern according to the good of the common weal, but not according to the common will’.29 Nevertheless, consultation was integral to the models of kingship James inherited from Politicus, the Cyropaedia and Elyot’s Governor. Characteristically for James, he contested consultation as a matter of political theory, but embraced it in practice. For ‘the better reformation’, he wrote ‘of all these abuses among your estates, it will be a greate helpe vnto you, to be well acquainted with the nature and humours of all your Subiects and to know particularly the estate of euery part of your dominions’.30 There was great scope for consultation in James’s kingship and governance in Scotland proved to be a conversation of many rather than one.31 Jacobean consultation was enormously fluid, a reflection of James’s personality and the less formal character of Scottish monarchy. The personal nature of James’s kingship and his studied involvement of magnates, lesser nobility and the new professional class in governance were integral.32 The Scottish court contributed. Henry Wotton informed Robert Cecil that it was ‘ruled more in the French than in the English fashion. Anyone can enter while the king is eating . . . he speaks to those who stand around him while he is at table . . . and they to him’.33 James’s love of debate and vibrant personality found play in this environment while his peripatetic nature increased the fluidity of court and of policy-making.34 James defended his love of hunting by citing Xenophon’s fulsome praise for Cyrus’s outdoor pursuits, while his circuit of palaces and hunting lodges functioned much like Cyrus’s circuit of regional capitals and followed the practice of fellow rulers, including his mother.35 These factors aroused jealousies among councillors, ministers and courtiers who sought or expected an enhanced, even monopolistic, influence. George Nicholson, English envoy in Scotland, asserted that James was ‘so inclinable to his Chamber and his favourites’ advice for their desires to do anything now inconvenient soever, as all good men are weary and will withdraw themselves by little and little as they may’. Nicholson counted James’s nobles and councillors among the alienated, displeased ‘that the Chamber should meddle and carry the King in all things, placing and displacing at their pleasures, having his Majesty so addicted to them, as he uses his authority to their humours’.36 Perceptions of James as the captive of his entourage come from a mis-

29 30 31

Thomas Birch, The court and times of James the First, London 1849, ii. 289. James VI & I, Political writings, 31. Wormald, ‘Two kings’, 198; Burns, True law, 69–72; John Guy, ‘The rhetoric of counsel in early modern England’, in Hoak, Tudor political culture, 292–310. 32 Wormald, Court, kirk, 149–55; Goodare, ‘Nobility’, 164–75. 33 Ashton, James I, 4–5 (c. June 1602). 34 In 1615 Thomas Coke wrote to John Coke of James’s stay in Cambridge, from which he returned most content, his imagination having been fired in debate and argument with the learned fellows: BL, MS Add. 64875, fo. 156r–v (16 Mar. 1615). 35 James VI & I, Political writings, 56; Lynch, Mary Stewart, 9–12. 36 Quoted in Lee, Solomon, 141.

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understanding of the king’s personality and of the rivalries underlying the information in reports such as Nicholson’s. James’s open countenance, love of debate and determination to stand above faction or the dominance of anyone moulded policy-making and was designed to secure ‘unity and peace under his unchallenged authority’.37 James ‘was a remarkable combination of a man of informality and casual and friendly approach [who] saw kingship in its highly academic and its highly personal guise’.38 Northampton sang the king’s praises before parliament in 1610 and included among James’s ‘excellent vertues . . . that all his subjects had accesse unto him’.39 Henry Wotton pinpointed the real dynamic: ‘In the handling of affairs of state he is held to be one of the closest Princes in the world, but he does not settle even the smallest matters without counsel.’40 James took counsel, but knew his mind and guarded his authority. Neither was he indiscriminate in whom he consulted. James emphasised that it is not onely lawfull, but necessarie, that yee haue companie meete for euery thing yee take on hand, aswell in your games and exercises, as in your graue and earnest affaires: But learne to distinguish time according to the occasion, choosing your companie accordingly. Conferre not with hunters at your counsell, nor in your counsell affaires: nor dispatch not affaires in hunting or other games41

However, James’s disposition was not infallible and in practice he sometimes compromised his own advice to choose royal servants wisely and exercise particular care in ‘ruling them whom ye haue chosen’.42 Once governance moved from the realm of kingship to outright administration, James distanced himself from the process. He ‘did not share the interests of his administrators in the sheer slog of government’.43 The nobility, James told Prince Henry, ‘must be your armes and executers of your lawes’.44 M. Fontenay’s assessment has been instrumental in creating the view of James as ‘too idle and too little concerned about business, too addicted to his pleasure, principally that of the chase, leaving the conduct of business to the Earl of Arran, Montrose and the Secretary’.45 However, James demanded that subordinate governors keep him fully informed in all matters of policy while his temper exploded if business was neglected or ran up against administrative backwardness, as evinced by this furious note:

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Burns, True law, 223. Wormald, Court, kirk, 150, 155. Debates, 1610, 17. Ashton, James I, 4. James VI & I, Political writings, 58. Ibid. 34. Wormald, Court, kirk, 155. James VI & I, Political writings, 29. Ashton, James I, 3.

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I have been Fryday, Setterday and this day waithing upon the directioun of my affairs, nevir man comand. Thame of the [exchequer] that was ordainit to tak the compts nevir one. The turns of the hous should have bene endit this day, na man comes down. I sent for the advocat baith Fryday and Setterday – nather met nor answer. . . . Quhat is spokin this nicht is forgot the morne46

The young king’s boast, according to Fontenay, ‘that there occurred no matter of importance of which he did not take cognisance’ became altogether true in his adult kingship.47 James held true to the kingship described in Politicus and the Cyropaedia rather than adopting the role of administratorking. It was inevitable that James would affect the English polity after 1603; his personality, Scottishness, gender and style of kingship refashioned what governors understood ‘the nature and limits of their game to be’.48 Francis Bacon believed that James’s accession was an historic moment in the period since the death of Henry VIII: The reign of a child; the offer of an usurpation . . . the reign of a lady married to a foreign Prince; and the reign of a lady solitary and unmarried. So that as it cometh to pass in massive bodies, that they have certain trepidations and waverings before they fix and settle.49

Gender represented a particularly dramatic change. Elizabeth’s queenship overcame the male elite’s unease only with great difficulty.50 ‘If a queen were confidently to demonstrate the attributes of power’, Carole Levin has written, ‘she would not be acting in a womanly manner; yet womanly behavior will ill-fit a queen for the rigors of rule.’51 Elizabeth should provide a ruler-consort or, at the very least, her queenship should be once removed from personal rule: while women were not incapable of governance, they were less competent than men.52 But Elizabeth remained ‘an unmarried woman who wielded power’.53 Where James defended his authority against dangerous philosophers, presumptuous magnates and religious hot-heads, Elizabeth asserted her authority against the expectations of gender and the

46

William Purves, Revenues of the Scottish crown, 1681, ed. D. M. Rose, Edinburgh 1897, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. I am grateful to Jenny Wormald for discussing this document with me. 47 Ashton, James I, 3. 48 Dale Hoak, ‘Introduction’, in his Tudor political culture, 1. 49 Bacon to Ellesmere, Apr. 1605, in The letters and the life of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, London 1861–74, iii. 250. 50 The works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath, London 1857–9, vi. 275–7 (‘History of Great Britain’), 305–18 (‘Eulogy for Queen Elizabeth’). 51 Carole Levin, The heart and stomach of a king: Elizabeth I and the politics of sex and power, Philadelphia 1994, 3. 52 Ibid. 10–12. 53 Ibid. 171.

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dangers of political marginalisation through marriage or the designation of a successor. A queen’s court created barriers to the openness of policy-making practised by James in Scotland.54 Courtiers and governors might seek influence with James through his chamber cronies, but Elizabeth’s bedchamber was barred on the basis of gender. Ritual courtship and pretended affection were prerequisites to preferment at the Elizabethan court.55 Like her Scottish cousin, Elizabeth took counsel, but predominantly from within the ranks of her councillors or trusted lesser officers and confidantes. Typically, the privy council was the locus of Elizabethan counsel and policy-making, but, in what John Guy has termed her ‘first reign’ (1558–85), there were opposing conceptions of its role. Councillors like Burghley contended that Elizabeth’s prerogative ‘was limited by the advice of the Privy Council’ or parliament, while the queen held a position James VI would have found agreeable: ‘her imperium was ordained by God alone and her prerogative unlimited by her councillors’ advice’ or parliament’s.56 Elizabeth controlled policy-making through her power to limit, reject or redefine the process of counsel.57 However, the Spanish war, ‘the conduct of which required strategic planning and instant reflexes’, loosened Elizabeth’s control; as she ‘persistently dithered, decisions were taken on her behalf and for the first time she tacitly condoned the fact’.58 Essex’s failed rising in 1601 was the last challenge to the privy council’s exclusive place in policy and Robert Cecil’s pre-eminence among his colleagues.59 Elizabethan governance did not survive the queen. The fluidity of Scottish counsel and policy-making was grafted onto an enlarged English privy council, with its administrative sophistication, and accommodated within the tighter formalities of English court culture. James sought to expand his affinity outside Cecil’s own with appointments, particularly to include former supporters of Essex, and to reward those who had supported his accession. The appointment of Scots to the council and other offices, albeit to second-tier positions, was designed to give practical expression to the union of the crowns. The gender barriers which separated the bedchamber from political involvement collapsed.60 Cecil, with some frustration, described the 54

Pam Wright, ‘A change in direction: the ramifications of a female household, 1558–1603’, in Starkey, English court, 147–72. 55 John Guy, ‘The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?’, in Guy, Reign of Elizabeth, 3–4. 56 Ibid. 13. 57 Idem, ‘Counsel’, 301–3. 58 Idem, ‘1590s’, 4. 59 Idem, Tudor England, Oxford 1988, 452–3. See also Penry Williams, The later Tudors: England, 1547–1603, Oxford 1995, 341–88. 60 For the foregoing discussions see Pauline Croft, ‘Robert Cecil and the early Jacobean court’, in Peck, Mental world, 134–8; Neil Cuddy, ‘Anglo-Scottish union and the court of James I, 1603–1625’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society xxxix (1989), 109–11, 121–5; Linda Levy Peck, ‘Peers, patronage and the politics of history’, in Guy, Reign of Elizabeth, 106–8; Wormald, ‘Two kings’, 201–3.

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extent of the change: ‘It fareth not with me now as it did in the Queen’s time . . . for then I could have done as great a matter as this without other help than myself; she heard but few and of them I may say myself chief; the king heareth many, yea, of all kinds.’61 We should not make too much of Cecil’s pique at no longer monopolising counsel not least because the political elite had no collective experience of a male ruler. When the privy council held session with Queen Anna during his absence, James joked, ‘Ye and youre fellowis thaire are so proude nou that ye haue gottin the gyding againe of a Feminine Courte in the olde fashion, as I know not hou to deal uith you.’62 The privy council effectively monopolised late Elizabethan governance, but Jacobean kingship presented governors with a different dynamic. Councillors and officers, courtiers and his entourage, even favourites and family competed to counsel the king with varying degrees of advantage. This open, fluid process of consultation virtually defined James’s practice of kingship and the making of fiscal policy. Governors and policy-making A single model of Jacobean policy-making is impossible, not least because James’s kingship changed over the course of his English reign. Nevertheless, all but the most dysfunctional policy-making processes feature common elements: information/knowledge, counsel/advice, decision-making, oversight/evaluation. The processing of information (including that produced by oversight) shaped the content of counsel while the character of this advice and the evaluation of it were the crucial elements in producing policy decisions. Elyot described a very similar process in the Governor: first the state of things present ought to be examined, the power, assistance and substance to be esteemed; sembably things passed with much and long deliberation to be revolved and tossed in mind and to be conferred with them that be present; and being exactly weighted the one against the other, then to investigate or inquire exquisitely the form and reason of the affair and in that to be wholly resolved so effectually that they which be counsellors may bear with them out of the counsel house, as it were on their shoulders, not only what is to be followed and exploited, but also by what means or ways it shall be pursued and how the affair may be honourable; also what is expedient and of necessity and finally how the enterprise being achieved and brought to effect may be kept and retained.63

Elyot’s addition of administration creates a tour d’horizon of governance itself. Not only should the process produce policies, it should also hand to those 61 62 63

Quoted in Lee, Solomon, 144. Letters of King James the Sixth, ed. Patrick Coates, Edinburgh 1835, p. xlix (5 Aug. 1608). Elyot, Governor, 235 (emphasis mine).

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responsible for execution an agenda for effecting and maintaining them. If we examine policy-making at these points, a number of consistent features recur which make possible the reconstruction of a framework for fiscal policy. The points at which James himself intersected with the process then allow us to define the character of his personal rule in matters of finance. The appearance of Elyot’s thumb-nail sketch in his section on consultation underlines the degree to which counsel was the pivot of governance. Consultation was equally central to Jacobean policy-making because it reflected James’s personality, his acceptance of counsel’s role – even if it occurred on his terms – and the degree to which governance was dominated by personal political relationships between the king, governors, others around him, local elites and subjects in the country.64 Consultation between these individuals occurred through a variety of instruments and along a number of channels. It might be verbal, written or published, couched formally or informally, presented personally or from a distance and received privately or publicly. Beyond his openness, affability and delight in conversation, James’s love of sports and the countryside influenced consultation markedly. While in this James emulated his Stewart and Tudor predecessors, he was criticised for his apparent indolence.65 However, the king who wrote so engagingly about kingship was equally passionate about that ‘sport’ and personal rule did not simply dissolve once the royal retinue left Whitehall. James’s movements created two general forums for policy-making: London and the court on progress. These venues shaped the surviving evidence from which we can reconstruct policy-making. The London forum shifted between the standing palaces of Whitehall and Westminster, or closely removed at Greenwich and Hampton Court, and the city residences of governors. It was dominated by direct, verbal interaction. This took place in the council, with or without James, and during the personal attendance of governors upon the king and each other in various settings. In contrast, when James was on progress the predominantly personal and verbal process was committed to paper. The same is true when governors worked out of their various residences in London or the countryside. The paperwork generated, the scattered letters and memoranda, allow us to recreate more closely the great swirling river of information, advice, discussion and debate that was policy-making. When we do so, James emerges as a very different king from David Willson’s ‘Sylvan prince’. Reconstructing policy-making for periods when king and governors were in London is more difficult than for when they were scattered to their various residences. In the latter case, the problem is loss of documents and the limitations of what governors would put on paper, but the personal character of the process in and around London worked against the production of a written 64

Kevin Sharpe, ‘Crown, parliament and locality: government and communication in early Stuart England’, English Historical Review ci (1986), 321–50, is an important sketch. 65 Willson, King James, 175–96.

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record altogether. Governors naturally conducted business face-to-face, thrashed out details and reached some kind of modus vivendi even if that meant some limited their voice in policy. Further, the vast majority of the voluminous government records record the administrative end-product of policy-making. The privy council registers are a case in point. The council is conspicuous in discussions of Jacobean governance.66 Admittedly it possessed high political status, but the identification of institutional structures with policy-making creates distortions. The loss of the early council registers (1601–13) in the Whitehall fire has long been accepted as a crippling blow to recreating the council’s workings.67 Fragments of the registers actually survived, most notably an abstract for 1547–1610 and, while it would be preferable to have the council books, the surviving registers make it clear that they never contained the information necessary for reconstructing policy-making.68 The personal interactions which were the birth and nursing of policy went unrecorded. Three council meetings in September 1615 are illuminating.69 The clerk of the council marked 24 September in the registers with a letter to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, the appearance of three men on bond, entry of James’s pro forma resolution in a dispute, a passport granted to a preacher for the Turkey Company in Constantinople and a letter to the bailiff of Jersey to grant re-trial to a petitioner.70 What the clerk did not record was that James assembled his councillors that day at Greenwich and sought their counsel on paying his debts.71 James was interested in retrenchment, but others argued that parliamentary supply was the only way. He commanded them to debate the question and, if they opted for parliament, devise preparation that would give hope of a better outcome than the Addled Parliament. On 25 September, the day the register records an appearance by five bonded servants and another passport granted, James’s councillors met at Whitehall and resolved that parliament was his best hope.72 Councillors who were not entirely happy with the decision attempted to draw the agenda back to retrenchment. We know only that ‘after some dispute the former resolution 66

Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 173–225. The standard study of the privy council is Edward R. Turner, The privy council of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 1603–1784, Baltimore 1927, i. 1–214. Caroline perspectives are found in Richard Cust, The forced loan and English politics, 1626–1628, Oxford 1987, 13–90, and Sabrina Alcorn Baron, ‘ “The board did think fit and order”: the structure and function of the privy council of Charles I, c. 1625–41’, unpubl. PhD diss. Chicago 1995. 67 APC, 1618–19, 342; Turner, Privy council, ii. 448–54; ‘Several speeches’, 254. 68 BL, MS Add. 11402. 69 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fos 224r–33r; PRO, SP 14/81/115, fos 184r–98r. I am grateful to John Guy for drawing my attention to this document in the fall of 1993. A flawed analysis is J. D. Alsop, ‘The privy council debate and committees for fiscal reform, September 1615’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research lxviii (1995), 191–211. 70 APC, 1615–16, 285–90. 71 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 224v. 72 APC, 1615–16, 290–1.

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was confirmed’ and the meeting was rescheduled for the 28 September.73 Eighteen privy councillors debated the steps necessary for a successful parliament, but our only ‘complete’ report was written ex parte by Thomas Lake.74 Even this is once removed, written and corrected after the fact. The closest account consists of Ellesmere’s notes made as discussion unfolded and preserved among his papers.75 The original altercations over summoning parliament, arguments opposed and responses would have been fascinating.76 However, political sensitivity and a desire to record a consensus favouring parliament deterred Ellesmere and Lake from detailing disputes closely. Similar considerations are largely responsible for the registers’ sterile character, the exclusion of clerks from debates and the rarity of personal minutes.77 A case like this illustrates the need to recreate a policy-making archive and indicates the sources from which to do so: the ‘personal’ papers of James and his governors. The policy-making process, particularly consultation, would be recorded there, if anywhere.78 The virtual archive we must construct for Jacobean finance eschews the institutional interests of early archivists and restores the original relationships between papers. It is empirical and conceptual, interested in the information itself, but even more keenly aware of what the collections and individual documents have to tell us about governors, their relationships to one another and the way in which they conceptualised and practised their duties. The survival of collections like Cranfield’s papers in Kent or Ellesmere’s at the Huntington Library indicate that the Whitehall fire is too simple an explanation for Jacobean archival holes.79 According to Thomas Wilson, keeper of the king’s records, the greatest threats to working papers and collections were his inability to recover those ‘rightly’ belonging to James, and Robert Cotton’s acquisitive nature.80 He complained to James that since Salisbury’s death (1612) he had been unable to recover the French, Latin and Irish papers, numerous council books and the papers of the disgraced favourite Carr, and of Secretary Winwood, Dorset and Suffolk.81 73 74

BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 225r. Ibid., fos 224r–33r. An incomplete draft, with Lake’s corrections, is PRO, SP 14/81/115, fos 184r–98r. 75 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628. 76 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fos 224v–5r. 77 As for the registers, 28 September passed with business on the dispute between Lord Willoughby and Lord Norris and assisting Abraham Derkinderen to recover £400-worth of pearls sewn into a dress of ‘the Ladie Arbella [Stewart], now lately deceased’: APC, 1615–16, 293–4. 78 A. G. R. Smith, ‘The secretariats of the Cecils’, English Historical Review lxxxiii (1968), 500–2, helps define the importance of the councillors’ papers over the institutional records. 79 APC, 1613–14, pp. v–viii; PRO, SP 14/105/20x, fo. 29r (12 Jan. 1619). 80 PRO, SP 14/135/14x, fo. 20r (1622?); SP 14/81/69, fo. 120r (24 Aug. 1615); SP 14/81/69x, fo. 121r–v (24 Aug. 1615); Sharpe, Cotton, 58–66. 81 PRO, SP 14/135/14x, fo. 20r; SP 14/118/76b, fo. 106r (1620?). See also SP 15/42/91, fos 150r–1v (1622?) for Wilson on the role of the paper office.

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The ‘teething problems’ of establishing a working archive were also factors: ‘State documents in the early seventeenth century were often kept in a jumbled pile in the Secretary’s office, whence many drifted back to private houses.’82 The ‘virtual archivist’ must complete Wilson’s work.83 In doing so for the London forum, it is regrettable that there were no great diarists among James’s governors and that Salisbury did not possess his father’s passion for penning memoranda. If anyone in Burghley’s ‘academy’ developed such tendencies it was Caesar, who proved a copious writer of notes and memoranda throughout his career.84 Caesar’s papers in his inimitable hand provide some of the best information on policy, yet his correspondence is hardly voluminous, suggesting both the dominance of his role as an expert and that much of his partnership with Salisbury (and later Northampton) operated in person. It is only when one or the other was at a distance that we find a trail of correspondence, some of which anticipates conducting business face-to-face. Caesar’s journal of Salisbury’s first months as lord treasurer in 1608 offers a glimpse into the London milieu they shared.85 Many of Salisbury’s days were taken up with the barons in exchequer causes, handling business in the court of wards or presiding over active revenue commissions. On other occasions Salisbury was ‘w[i]th the king & w[i]th the ll[ords] in Counsell touching the affaires of State’.86 These were days during which James was attended by Salisbury and his councillors, perhaps in formal council, as well as the council itself meeting and Salisbury personally attending his master. A surviving memorial of business in James’s hand signposts this complex interaction. For their Sunday meeting, James divided the agenda as follows: Memoreall for Sondaye. with the counsall. anent vagabondes & ydle beggeris. anent the abuse of hospitallis & almase houses. anent compte taking of some of my greate officers. anent the praeparation for the parliament.

82 83

Sharpe, Cotton, 64, 73–4. Interesting studies of ‘state’ papers, including contemporary Jacobean works, are BL, MS Harleian 94, fos 51r–8v; MS Lansdowne 137, fos 1r–93v (31 Dec. 1610); Thomas Powell, Direction for search of records, London 1622; R. B. Wernham, ‘The public records in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in Levi Fox (ed.), English historical scholarship in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Oxford 1956, 11–30. See also discussions in Graham Parry, The trophies of time: English antiquarians of the seventeenth century, Oxford 1995, 76–7. 84 Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 6. 85 BL, MS Lansdowne 168, fos 297r–307v. See also L. M. Hill, ‘Sir Julius Caesar’s journal of Salisbury’s first two months and twenty days as lord treasurer: 1608’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xlv (1972), 311–27. 86 BL, MS Lansdowne 168, fo. 300v. Such days were 29 May and 5, 12, 24, 26 June: ibid. fos 298r–300v. State business (usually undefined) was also the agenda for 8, 11, 14, 16, 17, 22 May; 1, 4, 8, 10, 14, 15, 19 June; 17, 19, 21 July: ibid. fos 297r–303r.

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with the beagle [Cecil]. anent the greate park of nonesuche. anent the letter to Winwoode. anent the frenshe ambassadoure. anent douglassis better examinacion. anent arthoure aston & his pairtenaris suite. anent charles his maister. anent the leagier ambassadouris comming out of Spaine. with the bishoppe of canterburie. anent papistes conclusions in generall. anent worcesters comission in particulaire. anen richarde murraye.87

James had prepared to be king-in-council and king with his governors.88 The loss of many of Treasurer Dorset’s working papers creates another archival hole; what we do have are usually letters direct to colleagues and papers Caesar or Salisbury kept for their own reference, for instance Dorset’s 1606 list of projects in Caesar’s project book.89 The Dorset archive itself was destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666 and its loss points up the nature of collections as personal possessions. It should have been removed from Dorset House long before the fire because James issued Wilson with a warrant for its recovery in 1620.90 Nevertheless, Dorset’s letters in other collections indicate that he wrote copiously, regularly to Salisbury and frequently complained how and why James’s coffers were empty and that God alone knew how they could be replenished.91 The aging treasurer was often at the mercy of a fantastic variety of ‘phisiks’ and found working at home preferable, which explains why his papers were engulfed in 1666. One letter to Salisbury in October 1605 effectively summarises the activity that was counsel, policy-making and judicial responsibility while James and his governors were in London together: My lord, acording to my promise I attended here in court from our coming from the star chamber until five of the clok to have ioind with your Lo[rdship] toching some good cours for the French merchauntes, but considering how late it was & that at your Lo[rdship’s] return from the tower it was likely that you wold strait to the king to report what was doon theare & I also having much busines to dispatch at home, I went away ready & willing to mete you at any time & place when soever you will apoint. . . . I taried the half hour after fyve.92

87 88 89 90 91 92

PRO, SP 14/14/51, fo. 115r ([23 June 1605]). For another memorial by James see HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 51r (undated). BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 314r–15v (24 Sept. 1606). PRO, SP 14/118/76b, fo. 106r; HMC, Sackville, i, pp. xiii–xiv. BL, MS Add. 36767, fo. 92r (30 May 1607). HH, MS Salisbury 112, fo. 163r (5 Oct. 1605).

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These records are interesting and at least offer some sense of the working relationships between governors, but the consultation between them and James is largely elusive. Periods of progress and absence have more to tell us because then policy-making found its way onto paper. Jacobean governors had to reacquaint themselves with an activist and peripatetic ruler.93 They adapted to the regular running of posts, but it was thought necessary to have formal instructions for James’s absences. When James departed London, matters might arise other than those ‘which wee left last in memoriall (with you o[u]r principall Secretarie) to bee debated of by o[u]r Councell’. Councillors were to assemble once a week before Queen Anna and stand ready to meet oftener at Cecil’s order for acquaintance of James’s pleasure or other matters of importance.94 In practice they met more often.95 James would return if matters warranted, but he expected Cecil to acquaint him diligently how ‘all thinges passe amonge yow whereby wee maie either send yow our approbacon or geve yow some further direccons’.96 The council praised James’s ‘resolution to hold ye middle path betweene necessarie cares & necessarie repose’. The language and the instructions conjure up the practice of Xenophon’s Cyrus: his care to delegate so that he might obtain necessary leisure, and the system of post-horses to carry directives.97 These instructions formally established the exercise of James’s personal rule outside London.98 The wealth of surviving correspondence long noted by scholars is testimony to the existence of this system.99 The packets carried by the post riders were the practical links in the continuance of governance. Ideally we would like to pair and sequence letters between governors and reconstitute the contents of the packets through internal references. The former is quite straightforward in cases where the letters have survived, but reconstituting packets is a rarity as the contents were invariably broken up or found themselves moving back and forth between governors in ‘new’ packets.100 The Jacobean paper trail is fascinating and several letters can serve as examples to highlight the process. The operation of the post was closely monitored and its failure to appear in the morning never ceased to irritate James.101 ‘I fownd great laziness in the postes’, the earl 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Guy, Tudor England, 310; Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 173. PRO, SP 14/12/13, fos 17r–18r (9 Jan. 1605). BL, MS Lansdowne 168, fos 297r–307v. PRO, SP 14/12/13, fo. 18r. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.1.13–16; 8.6.17–18. PRO, SP 14/12/20, fo. 35r. Willson, King James, 186; Croft, ‘Robert Cecil’, 135–9. For example, the four letters which constituted a packet from Buckhurst to Cecil in December 1603, one of which describes the letters enclosed: HH, MS Salisbury 102, fos 71r–2r; MS Salisbury 187, fos 136r–7v (11 Dec. 1603). 101 Joan Parkes, Travel in England in the seventeenth century, Oxford 1968, 225–31. See James’s proclamations for the better ordering of the posts between 1604 and 1609: Stuart royal proclamations, I: Royal proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625, ed. James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes, Oxford 1973, 74–82, 219–24.

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of Worcester wrote. ‘The king was very inquisityve all the morning what myght bee the cause, examining the howrs and myles, concludyng it could be no other but the post was sonke.’102 Delays brought sharp comments: ‘The letters from my Ll[ords] of the Councell with the dispatch for Ireland came hither this evening after fowre of ye clock . . . which is not much above two myle an howre to[o] slow for anie specill service of his Ma[jes]ty if cause shalbe of more hast[e].’103 Between 1604 and 1611 Salisbury was the primary, but not sole, terminus for James’s letters.104 When James did not write to him personally, letters were usually composed at his command, frequently by Thomas Lake and Roger Aston. Nearly every letter from court commenced with a note of when the original packet which occasioned the response arrived and James read through it. Aston wrote to Salisbury, ‘I receaved y[ou]r L[ordships] letteres this Sondaye the vj att X in the fore noone derected frome Witt Hale yesternyght att xij a cloke, this enclosed his Ma[jes]ty has amended in thre sondry plyces, his desyerr is thatt yo[u]r L[ordship] wold send it awaye with as much sped as yow maye.’105 These statements occur like salutations, but demonstrate that for nearly every letter or packet leaving court, one had arrived from a governor. James playfully and aptly described the process in the continuation of his earlier jibe to Salisbury which equated female monarchy with kingship on progress: ye sitte at youre ease and directis all; the newis from all the pairtis of the uorlde comes to you in youre chamber, the King’s owin resolutions dependis upon youre posting dispatches and quhen ye list, ye can (sitting on youre bedde-sydes) uith one call or quhisling in youre fist, make him to poste nicte and daye till he come to youre presence106

Few of the original letters sent to court before 1612 have survived and too many consultations remain one-sided. In the case of Salisbury’s letters, very few are extant and those which survived are often drafts. The usual gremlins of ignorant clerks, vermin and the Whitehall fire may not have been responsible this time. Instead, it appears that the letters were deliberately destroyed. Several of Northampton’s letters offer evidence of this dynamic at work. Northampton’s discreet nature seems to have made him wary of committing things to paper. While James was at Royston he wrote to Lake:

102 Worcester to Salisbury, 24 July [1609]), HH, MS Salisbury 127, fo. 108r; 2 Apr. 1604, MS Salisbury 104, fo. 121r–v. 103 HH, MS Salisbury 123, fo. 93r (5 Dec. 1607); MS Salisbury 128, fos 1r–3v (10 Oct. 1609). 104 The process is illuminated particularly well in Levinus Munck’s court journal covering the years from 1603 to 1605: HH, MS Salisbury 278. 105 PRO, SP 14/66/54, fo. 110r (6 Oct. 1611). 106 Letters of James the Sixth, p. xlix.

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Worthy knight I must entreat you over againe to doe me the same favor you did in presenting unto his M[ajes]ty the first frutes of this dayes worke at the starr chamber, which I knowe will be very acceptable to him and yet wold faine have my letter burned.107

Northampton’s intent was clearer three days later: I have yealded his M[ajes]ty . . . a very iuste account of this daies labor wholly spent about the reformation of his howse, the flawes and excessis of which are infinit . . . beseche his M[ajes]ty from me to burne this letter with his owne hande when he hath perused it for it is trewe that I forgate to put him in minde to make it a martyr.108

Sorting out James’s household was politically unenviable, but Northampton’s caution seems not to have been reserved for treacherous waters.109 ‘[I]f the kinge forget instantly to burne my letters’, Northampton explained, ‘put him in minde from me, for I wold be loth that all the groomes of his chamber should eyther reade what I write ore divulge what I delivere, for my [ode] tells me when the kinge is heer that letters are a praye which many hunt after.’110 These particular letters did not meet their hoped-for fiery end, but they may have been the exception. James’s pattern was to read packets in his bedchamber, which he advised in Basilicon doron should be a place of secrecy and close communication and not a ‘common in the time of your rest, aswell for comelinesse as for eschewing of carrying reports out of the same’.111 Roger Aston wrote to Salisbury that after he [James] had red the yerle of Norhamttones letter he cast it in the fyre saing he wuld commett thatt to the same cabinett to kepe that kepeed all the rest, after it was burntt he repentted and sayd there was so good sportes in it as he was sorry it was burntt . . . for yor L[ordships] letter it was as his Ma[jes]te sayd vere fantastike and wold have it keped tel the nextt morning att wich tyme he called for it, agane red itt and so commetted it to the fyre.112

The prospect of James regularly burning his ministers’ letters or the grooms of the chamber spiriting them away for their own reasons to unknown places is tantalising. Together with the king’s sense that consultation had an appro-

107 108 109 110 111 112

PRO, SP 14/15/93, fo. 154r (18 Oct. 1605). PRO, SP 14/15/97, fo. 158r (22 Oct. 1605). HH, MS Salisbury 189, fo. 1r–v. PRO, SP 14/15/87, fo. 146r (13 Oct. 1605). James VI & I, Political writings, 51. HH, MS Salisbury 123, fo. 104r–v (10 Dec. 1607). Nor was it alone, as Aston reported the same fate of another of Salisbury’s letters, ‘w[h]ich came to my hand this Tewesday att nyght, the xxix of this enstand . . . the letter enclosed his Ma[jes]e presenttly burntt’: MS Salisbury 126, fo. 74r. The paucity of Buckingham’s letters to James is remarkably similar: BL, MS Harleian 1581, fo. 1r.

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priate time, place and company, James may have shared Northampton’s mindset with respect to correspondence and acted accordingly. The clearest examples of counsel offered to James are the numerous letters and drafts composed by Northampton for the king and Carr after Salisbury’s death in 1612.113 The high survival rate of Northampton’s letters suggests that the favourite’s was not a fiery cabinet and that Wilson or someone else eventually recovered at least some of his papers. It is for the period 1614–17 that Wilson’s inability to recover papers belonging to Winwood and Suffolk strongly affects the attempt to reconstruct the Jacobean policy-making archive. One of Winwood’s letterbooks is extant, but the bulk of his correspondence is evidently gone. Some of it was deliberately destroyed. John More informed William Trumbull that, following Winwood’s death, ‘Wee have order to deliver all Mr Secretaries papers to Mr Secretary Lake, but I have burnt as many of your privat papers as I have lighted on and have order from the King to reserve all your letters of the last halfe year to be consigned to my lord of Buckingham.’114 Suffolk’s papers were lost after Lady Suffolk moved them to Chartwell.115 Consequently, his presence in the archives is so ephemeral that it is virtually impossible to document in detail whether his treasurership possessed any shades of gray amidst the blackness of corruption. There are exceptions, notably some of Suffolk’s project papers, material in the Ellesmere and Cranfield archives which overlap the period and letters exchanged during James’s progress to Scotland in 1617, but finding the policy-making process on paper in this period is a challenging task. However, archival fatalities do not alone explain this. The papers of Ellesmere and Cranfield evidence a sometimes competitive conciliarism in policy. It would seem that 1614 ushered in a diffusion of counsel and leadership, a process that was exacerbated by James’s kingship-by-favourite. This process did not fully play out until the appointment of Cranfield as lord treasurer in 1621, and a renewal of strong fiscal leadership reflected in his massive collection. Before turning to consider how governors developed the substance of their counsel, an example of the process at work is appropriate. Villiers and James were at the Newmarket hunting lodge in 1622 when the favourite wrote to Cranfield, charged with managing the privy council in London, that His Majesty having heard how successfully the Lords have proceeded with those gentlemen that have been before them about the contribution and that now they have sent order into the remote countries about the same business, thinketh it high time that according as he spake unto you himself and hath put you in remembrance since his coming hither you go on with the general pardon and move it to the consideration of the Lords [of the Council] and hath commanded me to tell you that he seeth no cause why it should not now 113 114 115

Chiefly CUL, MS Dd.III; BL, MS Cotton Titus C 6; CSP, domestic, 1611–18, 133–219. HMC, Downshire, vi. 321 (4 Nov. 1617). I am indebted to Pauline Croft for this information.

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proceed, being the best opportunity to encourage his subjects to show their affections more freely.116

The ‘contribution’ referred to the benevolence levied after parliament was abruptly dissolved in 1621 without voting adequate funds for military expenses. The council’s success with two resisters emboldened them to expand their requests. Hearing of this, James concluded that it was opportune to try another project to raise money outside parliament: the sale of general pardons.117 This project was originally the work of William Hakewill and attracted Suffolk’s attention, but the privy council refused to sanction it in 1615.118 Cranfield revived it.119 In terms of policy-making, James was kept abreast of details concerning the benevolence and additional letters indicate him tracking its progress.120 There are references to personal consultation between James and Cranfield in London.121 Cranfield was also entrusted with summoning the council and having the policy debated. Finally, James did not proceed with the pardon when his councillors refused to sanction the project, despite Cranfield’s efforts to make it workable.122 Fiscal policy was made via these relationships between James and his governors with personal attendance and correspondence as the chief avenues of consultation. The substance of counsel was a meld of experience and various information streams including administrative documents, petitions and suits and historical records or precedents. Information and experience produced three interconnected types of counsel: that which assisted a governor’s own business, that which furthered work with colleagues and that which advised the king. This process came together in governors’ working papers and the management of them.123 Wilson defended his office in 1622 along utilitarian lines: ‘officers and counsellors have made that use of it and me that many of them that are yett alive will saye it is not an office to smale purpose’.124 Cotton was Wilson’s great bogeyman, but his fragmentary borrowing records demonstrate how often his holdings were employed by governors.125 Cranfield obtained copies of Suffolk’s papers on the general pardon. When

116 117

CKS, MS U269/1, OE108 [MS Cranfield 6] (7 Feb. [1622]). Pardons figured among projects before 1614, but without the fiscal ambition of these later efforts: BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 310r (26 Sept. 1607). 118 PRO, SP 14/80/1, fo. 1r (5 Jan. 1615); Bodl. Lib., MS Carte 121, fos 1r–20v; HHL, MS Ellesmere 445. 119 CKS, MS U269/1, OE1689 [MS Cranfield 8936]. 120 CKS, MS U269/1, OE108 [MSS Cranfield 7, 2418, 2421]. 121 CKS, MS U269/1, OE1689 [MSS Cranfield 4460, 7602, 7603, 7624, 7626, 8936, and two uncatalogued manuscripts in the OE1689 folder]. 122 PRO, SP 14/124/32, fo. 81r–v (12 Dec. 1621); SP 14/124/49, fo. 104r–v (17 Dec.). 123 BL, MS Lansdowne 137, fos 1r–93v (31 Dec. 1610). There is another copy at MS Harleian 94, fos 51r–158v. 124 PRO, SP 15/42/91, fos 150r–1v (Wilson to [Secretary Calvert], [1622?]). 125 Sharpe, Cotton, 58–66; BL, MS Harleian 6018, fos 148r–85r; Peck, Northampton, 101–21.

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Cranfield developed an interest in the construction of fishing vessels (busses) to contest the Dutch mastery of the herring trade, he turned to the work of John Keymer which had circulated in policy circles since Elizabeth’s last years. He even looked to Elizabethan expenditure records as a guide for his own attempts to budget the offices of state and household. Ellesmere’s was the archetype of a legal mind turned to finance. An interest in trade and hostility toward aliens drove him toward strict enforcement of statutory restrictions on foreign merchants, both for revenue and as projects to enhance commercial wealth.126 He constructed an abstract for tapping the fiscal utility of the king’s prerogative and cast about for legal precedents and judicial mechanisms to cancel grants, sack time-serving officers and sue corrupt administrators, finding sanction in precedents as diverse as the prosecution of Edward I’s master carpenter for stealing nails.127 Caesar’s working papers represent a pre-eminent policy-making archive. He shared Cotton’s sense of history, devotion to precedent and humanist mind. He also painstakingly organised and catalogued his library, and the projects surveyed in the previous chapter are a fraction of its thousands of letters, memoranda, minutes, reports, precedents and miscellany.128 Caesar collected information and composed memoranda to counsel his own actions, evaluate current policy and chart future options. This work enabled him and others to fulfil their responsibilities. The first treasury commission, entrusted with fiscal policy after Salisbury’s death, is a case in point. A subcommission led by Caesar spent six weeks assembling a provisional report on nineteen projects, following a format which included estimates and particular advice in each case. Caesar and his colleagues drew on their own experiences and their findings developed out of a process of information-gathering and consultation with projectors, crown officers, merchants and other experts. For instance, Caesar incorporated a project he had nursed the previous year to establish a chartered fishing company to contest the Dutch herring industry. The paperwork generated by the project between 1611 and 1612 can be found in Caesar’s project book, almost entirely in his own hand.129 Perquisites of courts began with an account for 1609, and the revenue potential was only fully realised when Caesar examined an auditor’s report showing the crown’s losses over the course of Elizabeth’s reign. The memo is among Caesar’s projects, endorsed by him and incorporated to the exact figures in the subcommission’s report. Collections are replete with similar examples of governors creating the substance of counsel. Information and counsel made it possible for governors to operate effectively with one another and in their individual capacities as the king’s 126 127 128

HHL, MS Ellesmere 465, 1216/4, 1672, 1673. HHL, MS Ellesmere 476, 1216/1. The best sources for reconstructing Caesar’s library are BL, MS Lansdowne 123 (printed auction catalogue of Caesar’s library), 124 (Caesar’s own catalogue of his collection). 129 Cramsie, ‘Commercial projects’, 353–8.

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servants. However, counsel was even more essential to the king. Decision-making was his responsibility and there was an unshakeable belief within the political culture that he could not rule effectively without counsel. James did not dissent, writing ‘Where in the points of your office, ye should ripely aduise indeede, before yee giue foorth your sentence.’130 However, openness to consultation, the extent to which James expanded the channels upon Elizabeth’s death and the fluidity of the process not only challenged James’s ability to meet his own responsibilities in policy-making, but made it difficult for governors to lend their assistance. Plato’s politicus might ‘delegate action to others’ and Elyot could praise the hearing of a ‘great number of counsellors’, but there was such as thing as too much counsel and too many counsellors: in many heads be divers manners of wits, some inclined to sharpness and rigour, many to pity and compassion, divers to a temperance and mean between both extremities; some have respect to tranquillity only, others more to wealth and commodity, divers to much renown and estimation in honour. There be that will speak all their mind suddenly and perchance right well; divers require to have respect and study, wherein is much more surety, many will speak warily for fear of displeasure; some more bold in virtue will not spare to show their minds plainly, divers will assent to that reasons wherewith they suppose that he which is chief in authority will be best pleased. These undoubtedly be the diversities of wits.131

From amidst a diversity of wits, Elyot proposed that kings could discern good counsel as coming from those who favoured the commonweal before their own particulars and whose exposition followed the patterns of reasoning which counsellors ought to employ: counsellors garnished with learning and also experience shall thereby consider the places, times and personages, examining the state of the matter then practised . . . revolving long and oftentimes in their minds things that be passed and conferring them to the matters that be then in experience, studiously do seek out the reasons and manner how that which is by them approved may be brought to effect.132

These determinations were hardly unique to Jacobean governance, but the manner in which governors received and evaluated counsel are central questions of crown finance. The combination of projects and James’s dynamic of consultation established the context in which these determinations were made. The process challenged the regime’s ability to make fiscal policy well and worked against the efforts of governors and of James himself. The hundreds of projects in governors’ collections testify to what must have been 130 131 132

James VI &I, Political writings, 54. Elyot, Governor, 239. Ibid. 240.

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a cacophonous advocacy. Thanks to the multiple avenues of consultation, governors were left to fathom a vast range of wits. Caesar’s archive shows how well he met Elyot’s standards for so doing. Yet, while the work of governors might curtail poor policies, they could not ensure good ones. Alderman Cockayne’s project to export dyed and dressed cloth is only the most striking example. James’s adoption of this disastrous project followed months of expert investigation and serious debate on the part of governors. But what were they to do when faced with the plausible advocacy of a policy from many sides? How much examination, debate and re-evaluation was required to separate the wheat from the chaff? And how many times must the process be repeated because another wit, brain or great projector, to paraphrase Ben Jonson, found a receptive ear? Consultation itself was fallible, not just the process through which it occurred. In one respect, projects made consultation and policy-making generally even more problematic. The public good was Elyot’s other measure for evaluating counsel, but projects made that standard virtually unusable. It rested on distinguishing between public good and private gain, but projects partnered them by design. They either predefined private gain by conflating it with public good or disguised it altogether behind the mask of the commonweal. This made projects fraught instruments by which to evaluate the public good during policy-making. Consequently, crown finance as a project par excellence left governance open to charges of private gain at the level of individual projects and subversion of the public good at the level of policy-making and kingship. It created tensions between governors and within the political nation. John Hoskyns’s reference in parliament (1610) to failed governance and fiscal policy under Richard II is a notorious example.133 Once consultation and decision-making produced an agreed policy, it passed into the hands of those responsible for its implementation. The agenda was to persuade James’s subjects to send some part of their ‘own’ to the centre or expend it locally in a way which furthered his policies. The solid corpus of scholarship on local government has repeatedly emphasised that the implementation of policy hinged on political negotiation between ‘centre and locality’ and within local communities. Authorisation and persuasion were two sides of the same coin. On the one side, the ‘first prerequisite for the effective government of the localities was that men who enjoyed influence and prestige which brought deference and obedience should be given the authority to act’.134 The crown empowered local governors through patronage and symbolic recognition of their social standing, but it also had to persuade them to enforce its wishes.135 This process occurred by negotiation, particu133 134

Debates, 1610, 11–12. Fletcher, Reform, 3, and ‘Honour, reputation and local officeholding’, in Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (eds), Order and disorder in early modern England, Cambridge 1985, 92–4. 135 Sharpe, ‘Crown, parliament and locality’, 323.

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larly with JPs and lord lieutenants who shouldered the weight of what Keith Wrightson calls the ‘quickening of county administration’, the expanded regulation of society and the economy.136 A commitment to order and authority united centre and locality, but it was impossible for governors to regulate every aspect of local society in accordance with statutes and royal policies. Governors interpreted, refined and prioritised policy to fit local circumstances, a duty they nursed and guarded closely.137 Thomas Cogswell has recently reminded us of the variability of the experience and practice of authority among local communities, yet he is surely correct to reiterate a fundamental norm of governance: local governors had to balance the virtues of efficient administration against resentment at the intrusion of government into people’s pockets and lives.138 Negotiation with local governors influenced the implementation of various fiscal policies. Michael Braddick has anatomised how it affected parliamentary taxation, although he has argued – not entirely convincingly – that negotiation over taxation usually reflected debates within communities and not between centre and locality.139 Negotiation affected the collection and expenditure of local rates (poor relief, militia rates, coat and conduct money) while the crown depended upon an array of local officials to forward rents, fines, duties, compositions and other proceeds of the king’s own. Whether negotiations and disputes reflected issues between centre and locality or within local communities, implementation depended upon creating a ‘multilateral assent to the policies of government’ which produced, in Anthony Fletcher’s words, ‘a commitment to action and the energy to see that action accomplished’.140 Projects departed from this traditional political process. They bypassed local governors and established relationships.141 Projects effectively absolved the crown of the duty to negotiate with local communities because the responsibility was passed to the projectors. Further, they represented a disturbingly unilateral approach to governance. Steven Hindle’s groundbreaking new study of the English state argues that the ‘state’ was a social and cultural construct encompassing many members of English society and a collective authority in which the direction of governance was as much shaped by ‘local’ interests as top–down policies.142 Projectors were therefore doubly intrusive in that they executed a policy and did so without reference to the interests or involvement of the individuals who were ‘the state’ in a locality. Perhaps the most famous example of this process and its pitfalls concerns the undertakers who compounded with keepers of illegal inns, among them the ubiquitous 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

Keith Wrightson, English society, 1580–1680, New Brunswick, NJ 1982, 152. Fletcher, Reform, 39–44, 62. Cogswell, Home divisions, 303. Braddick, Parliamentary taxation, 65 and passim. Wrightson, English society, 153; Fletcher, Reform, 62. Russell, Parliaments, 101–3. Steve Hindle, The state and social change in early modern England, c. 1550–1640, Basingstoke 2000, 1–36 and passim.

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Giles Mompesson.143 The tactics and the very presence of the undertakers worked against the regime. Mompesson and his deputies were authorised to licence inns because that duty fell outside the authority of JPs and justices of the assize were unequal to the task.144 Mompesson became the receiver of the rents and fines from inns and received a £100 pension. Of Mompesson’s patent, MPs declared ‘as it was ill in the project, so it was worse in the execution’.145 In an infamous case, Mompesson’s undertaker persuaded the keeper of an alehouse to supply him with lodging and promptly charged the man with keeping an unlicensed inn.146 The public–private partnership failed because projectors had no incentive to limit and regulate inns, the public good aimed at in the policy. The personal profit of licensing moved them to perpetrate frauds in the style of Mompesson’s agent and to take as many licences as they could. These were central allegations in parliamentary investigations, but so was suborning the authority of assize justices.147 In 1621 MPs objected to projectors as a matter of principle, but projectors also subverted the traditional political negotiations that took place between local governors and subjects over law enforcement and financial demands from the centre. The issues associated with the implementation of policy also occupied governors. The 1612 examination of assarts – illegal holdings cleared out of royal forests and chases – is a case in point. The aim of the project was to offer offenders titles through composition. According to the commissioners, ‘the service hath heretofore bin performed by Mr Nicolson w[i]th reasonable benefitt and without clamo[ur]’ and advised it be resumed.148 Otto Nicholson in reality had a less than ‘reasonable’ history with assart hunting which began with a twenty-one-year licence in 1600 when he ‘expected to confiscate the assarts without allowing the occupiers the chance to compound’. The exchequer regularly faced local complaints about his activities, and finally agreed with assart holders that they be allowed to negotiate a proper lease rather than be preremptorily deprived of their holdings.149 The crown reconfigured the traditional process of political negotiation when it operated as a projector, but governors were not unaware of, or unresponsive to, the political challenges of employing projectors or making projectors of local governors and officials. Dorset was so angry about the doings of one Mr Yewart, a general surveyor employed by the commission for enfranchising copyholds within the manor of Wakefield, that he intended to ‘thrust him out of 143

Debates, 1621, ii. 108 (20 Feb.); Elizabeth Read Foster, ‘The procedure of the House of Commons against patents and monopolies, 1621–1624’, in William Appleton Aiken and Basil Duke Henning (eds), Conflict in Stuart England: essays in honour of Wallace Notestein, London 1960, 64–75. 144 Russell, Parliaments, 101–2. 145 Debates, 1621, ii. 112. 146 Ibid. iv. 86; Russell, Parliaments, 102. 147 Debates, 1621, ii. 174–84; iv. 84–7. 148 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 6v. 149 Thirsk, ‘Crown as projector’, 325–7.

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comission & never [again] conioine so bad a man, so extortious & so bankrout with knights & gentlemen that intend nothing but honest, sincere & profitable proceding for the king’.150 Salisbury similarly pronounced judgement on Thomas Shirley: ‘I frame no hopes out of this Proiect knowing the man as I do’, from whom ‘I never expect more then ye first payment (if any).’151 James’s practice of kingship, particularly his openness to counsel, combined with projects to make crown finance a highly political enterprise. Where it involved the partnership of public good and private gain, crown finance was consistently scrutinised at all levels of political society. This scrutiny shared much with Cicero’s reading of Plato: ‘Those who propose to take charge of the affairs of government should . . . keep the good of the people so clearly in view that regardless of their own interests they will make their every action conform to that.’152 The tension between public good and private gain inherent to projects thus threatened to make finance an even more controversial political subject than it was already. Finally, the political profile of finance heightened with James’s accession because the Elizabethan governors whom the king inherited made a financial resettlement for the crown a fundamental focus of governance. The quest for a settlement underpinned Jacobean policy-making for the rest of the reign and it is to the advent of that agenda that we now turn.

150 151 152

HH, MS Salisbury 120, fo. 150r (5 Apr. 1607). BL, MS Add. 36767, fo. 204v (21 Aug. 1608). Cicero, On duties 1.1.25.

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3

Crown Finance and the New Regime, 1603–1608 The Elizabethan regime aged badly under the strains of war and James had the pleasure of discovering the wood beetle in his inheritance: ‘xenophobia, war-weariness and the turmoil created by rising prices, bad harvests and outbreaks of plague and influenza, fomented particularism and resistance to the crown’s fiscal and military demands’.1 The view from Edinburgh was somewhat different. Scotland was untouched by war and James’s ambitions focused on consolidating his accession and effecting a union of England and Scotland. This contrasts with the beleaguered fin de siècle regime which governed in London. Beyond the accession itself, Elizabeth’s governors were decidedly anglocentric in outlook, focused on ending the Spanish war and reinvigorating the realm.2 The fledging Jacobean regime faced an inevitable period of transition while standing divided against itself on union and reconstruction. Crown finance was a central point of conflict. As early as 1594, Robert Cecil had wrung his hands and lectured Gloriana that it was ‘hygh tyme to abate’ charges associated with matters as simple as dispatching agents abroad.3 To such concerns were added the financial realities of the accession and James’s own conceptions of kingship and finance. Between 1603 and 1607 James and his governors struggled to hammer out an agreed agenda for governance. The collapse of union in 1607 finally established finance as the king’s great matter, but it did so without clarifying the shape of any financial settlement. James VI and the financial settlement of England James VI may have inherited a financial system with ‘considerable potential’ from an administrative viewpoint, but political reality was something altogether different for the new king and his governors.4 Cecil and Lord Treasurer Buckhurst undertook a series of stock-takings which indicate the mindset of governors during the early days of the regime. Among Cecil’s papers are two

1 2 3 4

Guy, ‘1590s’, 1. For instance, HH, MS Salisbury 188, fo. 29r–v. PRO, SP 12/250/20, fo. 36r [Oct. 1594]. Thomas, ‘Administrative developments’, 103–22.

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summaries of charges, one for the Irish wars and another for all major military charges. The reports indicate that the entire cost of Elizabeth’s wars was nearly £5,000,000 and that this figure exceeded her income from subsidies, land sales and other sources by more than £651,131. The various Irish campaigns accounted for more than £2,300,000, dwarfing all other expenditure except that on the Low Countries, which was costed at £1,419,596. Overall, the raw numbers are not as important as the writer’s conclusions. First, that the wars placed a substantial burden on the regime despite high levels of parliamentary supply and land sales. Further, that the Irish wars might have turned out disastrously had there not been money on deposit from previous subsidies. Finally, that such an object lesson begged the question of whether it was wise to demand subsidies only when war was afoot.5 There is the distinct implication not only that the regime should look to its revenues so that it could generate a solid, recurrent surplus, but that parliament could be, even ought to be, asked to play a part in that agenda. Elizabeth certainly intimated as much when she accepted supply in 1593, while Henry Knyvett proposed the creation of an annual land tax of £100,000 to fund the queen’s wars.6 For the new regime these constituted central questions in constructing a financial settlement. Expenditure concerned governors at least as much as revenue. The scale of demands and charges for the establishment of the new dynasty produced consternation.7 The rush of suitors following Elizabeth’s death compounded existing difficulties, but the issue was never as simple as exchanging a parsimonious ruler for an open-handed one. Elizabeth died in debt and left spending commitments, while some charges were difficult if not impossible to avoid if the regime was to continue to function at all. The redemption of base coinage in Ireland is a case in point. Henry Danvers apparently convinced James that ‘all will breake there unless the old coyne’ be redeemed and Cecil was left with the unenviable task of telling his new master that current circumstances made the policy untenable. Cecil moaned to the council in London that ‘I must be so unwillcome to him, as to lay before him how contrary a condition this kingdome is in at this instant to answer his Royall intention’, particularly with the looming charges associated with Elizabeth’s funeral and his own coronation. Further, the debasement was born of extreme financial necessity and, while it was always intended that the coin should be redeemed eventually, it was never to be but by little and little as the crown could bear it. Not knowing what James’s final resolution would be, Cecil concluded by urging his colleagues to hasten the sale of goods from a captured carrick.8 5 6 7

HH, MS Salisbury 92, fos 68r–70v. Proceedings Elizabeth, iii. 174, 105. Willson, King James, 159–96; G. P. V. Akrigg, Jacobean pageant, Cambridge, Mass. 1963, 15–33. 8 HH, MS Salisbury 99, fo. 118r–v (16 Apr. 1603).

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Within a matter of months, exchequer expenditures for the previous four years had been consulted and a list of proposed retrenchments forwarded to Cecil by Buckhurst.9 Buckhurst’s intent seems to have been to write to the responsible officers and require them to cut costs, perhaps with specific goals. Military expenditure was targeted with the prospect of a Spanish peace and hopes grew that the running sore of Ireland could be reduced from its current deficit of £115,979. The cost of the household stood at the head of Buckhurst’s list; at £93,000 it was more than double that of the late queen’s while Queen Anna’s court had yet to be established.10 The contretemps over the 1604 Christmas masque further reveals a regime whose English governors were preoccupied with finance. Cecil’s draft letter on behalf of the council sounded several notes at once, reassuring James that many Christmases had passed without such festivities, discouraging him from the idea of asking courtiers to bear the charge and suggesting that it was better to spend the £4,000 than have outsiders report such straits for money.11 Governors had good cause to devote their attention to a financial settlement, but the socio-political context was hardly inspiring. The regime confronted a people war-weary and in search of tax relief.12 Monopolists were attacked in the parliament of 1601, in part as convenient scapegoats for wider economic pressures.13 Subsidy debates in 1593, 1597 and 1601 aired genuine concern over the burden of taxation, albeit from the perspective of local elites eager to protect social stability.14 Members also reflected financial and economic concerns when arguing that the queen should collect more from ‘her own’ by addressing old debts, exchequer fraud, the export of coin and bullion and the like.15 Arthur Hall was expelled in 1593 for ‘infamously’ asserting that true parliaments were a thing of the past and members were now only assembled to grant subsidies.16 Radical voices like Hall’s were the exception as Elizabeth’s subjects overall forwarded the sums voted.17 However, there remains stark testimony to tax aversion: the collapse of the subsidy. Michael Braddick has explained the complexity of local issues involved in its decay, suggesting that it is wrong to assume that taxation was a point of conflict between centre and locality.18 Yet, if they supported taxation

9 10 11 12

PRO, SP 14/2/45, fos 120r–1v (13 July 1603) PRO, SP 14/5/53, fo. 125r–v ([1603]). HH, MS Salisbury 109, fos 89r–91v. The debate is surveyed in Guy, ‘1590s’, 9–11, and examined in more detail in Jim Sharpe, ‘Social strain and social dislocation, 1585–1603’, in Guy, Reign of Elizabeth, 192–211. 13 David Dean, Law-making and society in late Elizabethan England: the parliament of England, 1584–1601, Cambridge 1996, 87–8. 14 Proceedings Elizabeth, iii. 57, 63–4, 102, 105–10, 194–6, 329–33, 336–9. 15 Ibid. iii. 82–3, 335, 342, 362. 16 Ibid. iii. 153. 17 Dean, Law-making, 49. 18 Braddick, Parliamentary taxation, 17–21.

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in principle, the queen’s subjects proved less disposed to match theory with practice.19 The frequent and heavy demands of the 1590s must account for some of the willingness to exploit the administrative failings of subsidy commissions or evade demands via ‘local’ disputes.20 Demands at the local level for soldiers, ships and provisions may have added 50 per cent again to the ‘national’ tax bill.21 Even if the tax burden of the 1590s in London represented a 40 per cent decrease over the 1540s in real terms, the perception of hardship was a strong one, as Ian Archer argues.22 The Irish campaigns constituted another substantial burden. In Steven Ellis’s estimation, ‘the traditional machinery of Tudor government was operating at the limits of its capacity’ in repeatedly demanding ‘men, money and arms for Ireland, together with numerous other assessments for poor relief, purveyance, ship-money tax, gunpowder tax, privy-seal loans and the heavy burden of national taxation’. The Welsh saw 2.9 per cent of their total population conscripted, while six western counties supplied 25 per cent of the English troops.23 Burdens were also distributed in a regressive fashion: the wealthiest evaded accurate subsidy ratings, the tenth and fifteenth fell disproportionately on the poor and ‘drafts were tantamount to a policy of social cleansing’.24 Many of these demands petered out after 1603, but could they have been sustained long into James’s reign? If Leicestershire is any example, the tension produced by renewed military demands during 1618–26 suggests the difficulties the regime might have faced had peace not come in 1604.25 If the social and political conditions in England were not conducive to an ambitious financial settlement, James himself was an uncertain element. The previous two chapters addressed James’s mental world, his thoughts on finance, the ideas he drew from the humanist curriculum and the interaction between his kingship and finance, but it is perhaps worth considering something of James’s practical experience of finance in Scotland. Julian Goodare has created an initial framework for the subject.26 Expenditure and revenue in Scotland were similar in more than a few respects to their English counterparts. Traditional revenue came from lands, profits of justice, feudal incidents, customs, the mint and parliamentary supply. James’s governors

19 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid. 71–99, 124. Braddick (ibid. 49–50) concedes this for the tenth and fifteenth. Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: war and politics, 1588–1603, Princeton 1992, 64–8. Archer, Pursuit of stability, 9–14. Steven G. Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, 1447–1603, London 1999, 343–4. Roger Schofield, ‘Taxation and the political limits of the Tudor state’, in Claire Cross, David Loades and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds), Law and government under the Tudors, Cambridge 1988, 238–55; Braddick, Parliamentary taxation, 41–58; Ellis, Ireland, 343. 25 Cogswell, Home divisions, 13–18, 108–26. 26 The ensuing summary is derived from Goodare, State and society, 102–32. See also Athol L. Murray, ‘Sir John Skene and the exchequer, 1594–1612’, Stair Society Miscellany, Edinburgh 1971, i. 125–55; Purves, Revenues.

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particularly exploited land, customs and parliament. They faced the familiar problem of decayed rents in a period of inflation and revoked lands alienated during royal minorities, bringing an improved share of landed wealth into crown coffers, frustrated regrants where possible and annexed certain lands to the crown by parliamentary statute.27 Such measures naturally provoked complaint, but there was strong support for extending the scope of customs revenues to new items like wine in 1590, for a general revision of the book of rates in 1597 and the use of farming. The wine duty also sent governors searching for new kinds of duties on sales and commodities. Finally, the crown experienced some success in expanding the frequency and burden of parliamentary taxes, but failed to establish an uncontested precedent for regular supply. The efforts of Scottish governors with income served the needs of a regime which could not pay its bills. Mary supported her regime out of her French dower revenues, but James presided over a growing household, a demanding patronage system and a court which needed to reflect his and Scotland’s Renaissance stature. Scottish governors experienced the transition to a costly royal household with a wife and heirs before their English counterparts; the cost-shifting across the border after 1603 left the Scottish finances in a flush of solvency.28 Before that, particularly by 1595, ‘the problem of financial reform was becoming increasingly pressing and James himself was displaying considerable determination to deal with it’.29 Within a year James appointed eight commissioners, the ‘Octavians’, charged to cut superfluous administrators, fees and allowances, prohibit ‘pensionses, rewards, fees, & gratuities, proceeding from his Majestis liberallitie’ and reduce the household to the size ‘of his noble progenitors’.30 Initially they pruned staff by seventy, cut pensions and exploited ‘lost’ land revenues, but vested interests played upon their Catholic backgrounds to force their resignation in 1597.31 They were quickly reappointed to a broader-based commission and in December 1597 parliament confirmed much of their work.32 The commission petered out in June 1598, perhaps for too tightly constraining James’s bounty but more likely because James was ‘deceived by the very successes of the reformers to believe that they . . . were no longer needed’.33 Projects were a notable feature of Scottish policy, supporting Goodare’s conclusion that the ‘Scottish state in search of cash was nothing if not enterprising.’34 Mary was offered projects which included retaining the benefits of wardship, licensing export of prohibited goods, exploitation of the coinage 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Murray, ‘John Skene’, 126–7; Goodare, ‘Nobility’, 168. Goodare, State and society, 129. Murray, ‘John Skene’, 127. Purves, Revenues, pp. xlii–xliii, 11–20; Murray, ‘John Skene’, 127–8. Lee, Solomon, 135–6; Murray, ‘John Skene’, 129; Lee, Government by pen, 18–19. Murray, ‘John Skene’, 130–1; Goodare, ‘Nobility’, 168. Murray, ‘John Skene’, 131. Goodare, State and society, 122.

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and mines, pre-emption of salt, monopolisation of coal by the crown and the development of a Scottish fishing fleet.35 James rewarded his Scottish servants and creditors with monopolistic patents and, after 1603, he and his governors in both kingdoms pursued a similar course with projects.36 Commercial projects attracted considerable attention; the Scottish book of rates was revised in 1611 and the customs tack (farm) brought a significantly greater rent at each renewal. Anti-usury statutes were enforced with fines for offenders and copper monies were authorised twice. Monopolistic patents increased markedly after 1618 – as they did in England. Scottish projects included glassmaking, tanning and sealing leather, sugar refining, pottery vessels and soapmaking. Problems of private gain and public good were likewise encountered in Scotland. Inspection and sealing fines were extorted by holders of new offices from Scottish merchants trading into Ireland. Nathaniel Udward’s soap patents aroused particular irritation because of the poor quality and high price of his product; the burghs finally bought out his patents at a high price. Scotland and England were united in seeking the means to mobilise economic resources to meet the demands of governance and patronage. By far the most important achievement in Scotland was the confirmation of the ‘first general customs duty on imports’.37 Scotland, like England, soon experienced a sustained expansion of customs and commercial revenues. Interestingly, ‘further increases made in the early seventeenth century were introduced on privy council authority alone’, a course analogous to new impositions in England.38 James was directly involved with both policies. Patronage made incessant demands and, with respect to Scotland – as much as in England – if ‘James VI was too liberal, it was not because he distributed rewards without obtaining political advantage, but because the demand for patronage exceeded the supply’.39 The episodic, short-lived approach to retrenchment characteristic of Scotland usually brought on by crises of solvency, mirrored practice in England before 1617.40 The seminal lesson of even a cursory look at Scottish finance is that James was in no measure unprepared for the financial realities he faced in England. Only in the case of parliamentary revenue did his English experience prove a frustrating departure.41 Which brings us to why, having abundant experience with fiscal difficulties, James did not commit himself or the regime in England to a thoroughgoing settlement before 1607. The traditional Whig response always was that James was blinded by the gold at the end of the accession rainbow.42 Yet 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

BL, MS Harleian 4612, fos 50r–1v. The survey is from Lee, Government by pen, 13–14, 85–6, 131, 196–203. Idem, Solomon, 135; Murray, ‘John Skene’, 130. Goodare, ‘Nobility’, 173. Idem, State and society, 111. Ibid. 119. Idem, ‘Parliamentary taxation’, 23–52. Echoes of this are still found in Lockyer, James, 79.

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James arrived in England prepared to govern and the so-called secret correspondence did more than pave the road to riches. The months of routine correspondence between James, Cecil, Lord Bruce and Henry Howard established future working relationships. It is difficult to tease out precisely what agendas were discussed, but the impression given by the letters is that substantial policy matters were addressed. The correspondence between James and Cecil was relatively circumspect, but Howard and Bruce acted as blinds for numerous packets addressing routine business in both kingdoms.43 At one point Cecil excused bothering James with ‘pety particulers’ by writing ‘what ought men of any understanding to be more afrayd of then to offer soe much counsell to a prince of soe much understandinge, if it weare not trew that we haue founde in your mynde a plentifull springe of favour and gratitude’, while in the same letter apparently defending himself for not writing often enough.44 It would be surprising if the mass of Howard correspondence did not cover important business like finance, particularly when related matters such as peace with Spain and the Irish wars were afforded sustained attention.45 It is unlikely that James entered England ignorant of the kingdom’s affairs, including its financial situation. Neither was he ignorant nor unresponsive to emerging currents of reform.46 Numerous secular and ecclesiastical papers circulated both inside and outside the political elite, many prompted by the social, political and religious strains of war.47 There are frequent connections between secular issues and the financial demands of the war. Venality, maladministration, monopolies, purveyance and the tax burden found voices in a range of papers while the well-known ‘Thinges grievous and offensive to the Comonwealth’ extended complaint to the sale of crown land, impost on wines, restraint of grain and stalling debts due the crown for private gain.48 In the secret correspondence Cecil praised James for seeking to gain his ‘future fortune’ by showing Elizabeth’s honest subjects an inviting ‘example of your kingly government’.49 One complaint against the queen, still current in 1612, was that she ‘for manye yeeres refused to looke into anye [glass] least it might [reveal] unto her wrincles and decayes of State’.50 James heeded such sentiments and looked to provide an example of his ‘kingly government’ by the

43

See, for example, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland, ed. John Bruce, London 1861, 12, 17, 20–1, 36, 37, 38–40, 44, 45, 77. 44 Ibid. 20–2. 45 Ibid. 30–7. It is evident from reading the secret correspondence that Howard was the workhorse and that the drafts in BL, MS Cotton Titus C 6 represent only a fraction of what was passing between Howard, Bruce and James. 46 R. C. Munden, ‘James I and “the growth of mutual mistrust”: king, Commons and reform, 1603–1604’, in Sharpe, Faction and parliament, 45. 47 Ibid. 43–52. 48 Ibid. 46–7; PRO, SP 14/1/68, fos 127r–8v. 49 Correspondence of King James, 14. 50 BL, MS Add. 22591, fo. 56r.

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openness with which he accepted petitions for reform, spoke against corruption in Church and State and took steps to deal with monopolies, purveyors and those who exacted excessive fees, however imperfectly realised.51 Yet a thorough commitment to a financial settlement did not emerge. The new regime accomplished very little in its first parliamentary session in 1604; division over union and settlement contributed. James’s commitment to union was driven by principle and a desire to ensure dynastic security as a multiple-monarch within the Isles, but the English remained uncertain of the principle let alone the as-yet-unstudied practical details.52 If the English were not sold on union, governors apparently failed to sell their new king the concept of a financial settlement. James’s financial coming-of-age in Scotland may have been influential. By 1603 James and Scottish governors were practised hands at financial survival via ‘certain recognisable policies which were regularly adopted to stave off insolvency’, including projects and other short-term revenue hunts.53 The king’s very success in managing recurrent crises may have worked against those who counselled the urgency of a financial settlement in England. One tactic in Scotland was for the crown to run up debts which became the responsibility of the financial officers against whose accounts they were charged. The officers wagered that the crown would eventually pay up or protect them from creditors.54 We find a telling echo of such practice in James’s suggestion that courtiers personally bear the charge for performing the Christmas masque in 1604, an idea which prompted Cecil to explain to James that he ‘may not expect to fynde many willinge to undergoe thinges of extraordinarye charge often, w[hi]ch in former tymes hath been but seldome imposed uppon them’.55 The regime apparently opted for a dual approach in 1604 because it remained divided over the focus of governance (in principle and practice). It simultaneously pursued union and attempted to construct a financial settlement. This may not have been altogether unreasonable. James was intent on a gradual approach to union and his initial aims were limited to agreement in principle, naming commissioners to undertake the real work of fleshing out practice and renaming his kingdoms.56 However, the level of rancour and the amount of time spent disputing even this limited agenda quickly made

51 52

Munden, ‘Reform’, 45–52. Galloway, Union, 163–72; Munden, ‘Reform’, 62–6, 71; Neil Cuddy, ‘The conflicting loyalties of a “vulger counselor”: the third earl of Southampton, 1597–1624’, in John Morrill, Paul Slack and Daniel Woolf (eds), Public duty and private conscience in seventeenth-century England: essays presented to G. E. Aylmer, Oxford 1993, 126–7. 53 Goodare, State and society, 119, 129. 54 Ibid. 125–7. They were acting very much like English projectors, while also resembling French projector-financiers who advanced credit on new offices, tolls or recovery of decayed revenues: Julian Dent, Crisis in finance: crown, financiers, and society in seventeenth-century France, Newton Abbot 1973, 58. 55 HH, MS Salisbury 109, fo. 89v. 56 Galloway, Union, 15–25; Munden, ‘Reform’, 62–5.

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juggling union and financial settlement fraught. Unsatisfactory progress with either policy did nothing to solidify governance while the failure of one, particularly union, only made the course more difficult for the other. A last-minute subsidy attempt which followed weeks of discussion about a more permanent settlement highlights further difficulties. It was attributed to ‘sundry motions and insinuations’ or may have been the work of James’s Scottish counsellors.57 This suggests both division between union and settlement and uncertainty among governors over the basic shape of any settlement. The transition to the Jacobean regime after the accession created a political milieu of division and uncertainly which affected finance, particularly in parliament. The settlement in parliament The mind of Robert Cecil proves enigmatic at the best of times and his reading of the political climate in 1603–4 is no exception. A spectrum of interests found their voices in 1604 – union, ecclesiastical causes and secular reform, with grievances like monopolies, purveyance, debts, sales of crown lands and wardship looming large among the latter.58 It is arguable whether monopolies or purveyance, however routinely irritating, would have occasioned sustained hostility had they not been exacerbated by other demands. One wonders if this was not precisely the situation that Cecil tried to exploit throughout James’s first parliament. The 1610 sessions witnessed the most intense negotiations for a settlement and Cecil raised the possibility of unrelenting demands via just such grievous policies if settlement failed, even conjuring up those arch-exactors, Empson and Dudley.59 Cecil may have believed that the times made a persuasive case for abolishing such measures in exchange for regularised taxation.60 He routinely supported reform as a great ease to the subject, a sentiment seconded by Edwin Sandys who, in the heady days of July 1610, when the Great Contract looked set to become reality, was ‘happy to live in those days wherein we with our own eyes see that effected which our ancestors never dreamed of’.61 However, even Cecil was uncertain about the exact shape of a settlement for the crown when Lords and Commons assembled in 1604. Purveyance and wardship dominated the session’s work on endowment. Cecil offered a wardship project, originally raised in 1598 at Burghley’s death:

57

Commons journal, i. 242. See also Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 126–7, for the potential influence of James’s Scottish counsellors. 58 Munden, ‘Reform’, 43–66, 71; Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 126–7. 59 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 300–1. 60 Pauline Croft, ‘Wardship in the parliament of 1604’, Parliamentary History ii (1983), 39–40. 61 Proceedings, 1610, i. 159.

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abolition of the court ‘in return for a fixed annual payment to the Crown’.62 Members embraced the project, but Cecil precipitously abandoned it after examining defensive reform proposals proffered by the court’s own officers.63 Cecil feared the political fallout of being opposed by his own subordinates in pressing a scheme for which neither fellow governors nor James had much enthusiasm. Despite offers of perpetual compensation with a surplus, Cecil doubted whether parliament would offer enough. Further, the master found renewed fondness for his own reform which allowed ‘tenants-in-chief to buy out the wardship of their heirs during their lifetimes’ rather than leaving the childrens’ disposition to the court.64 Robert Wroth proposed a bill to this effect which might prove advantageous to composition. Faced with reform or the elimination of wardship after 1604, Cecil never again demonstrated a preference for its abolition. Purveyance occasioned some of the bitterest speeches. Members decried the abuses of purveyors: impressment of carts, open purveyance warrants and excessive quantities taken below market price.65 Numerous statutes already regulated purveyance, but members believed – with good cause – that they were deliberately ignored by the officers of the household, the Greencloth, and they demanded that the officers answer for the abuses. James was sympathetic to the extent of punishing abusive purveyors, but attacks on his servants acting for the provision of his household were difficult to countenance. Effective attention was deferred until the 1606 session. Parliamentary failure in 1604 brought home the financial realities. Privy seals met some immediate demands, but Cecil, Dorset and the council intensified attention to projects in 1605.66 So abject was the situation by the summer that the embarrassment of ‘emptie coffers’ figured prominently in the reasons for a second prorogation of parliament.67 Cecil, by now earl of Salisbury, and his colleagues presented the situation to James with the authoritative stamp of a council memo. They praised James’s resolution to stay his expenses and welcomed his support for projects, but the only hope for such a course lay in projects not becoming the ‘common pasture for all that are in need or have unreasonable desires’. Reservations about projectors were forceful: ‘it falleth that every private and needy person that hath wit to

62 63 64 65

The ensuing discussion is based on Croft, ‘Wardship’, 39–47. HH, MS Salisbury 105, fos 81r–4v. Ibid. fo. 82r, and Croft, ‘Wardship’, 42, 45; MS Salisbury 101, fo. 164r–v (20 Oct. 1603). Pauline Croft, ‘Parliament, purveyance and the city of London, 1589–1608’, Parliamentary History iv (1985), 14–19. 66 HH, MS Salisbury 106, fo. 14r–v (22 July 1604); BL, MS Lansdowne 164, fo. 516r–v (Aug. 1604). The projects involved included compositions for supplying the king’s house with wood, arrearages of recusants’ lands, entailed lands, defective titles, assarts and ‘leases of exchequer and duchy lands’: ‘Several speeches’, 274–5; HH, MS Salisbury 190, fo. 111r (29 June [1605]). 67 HH, MS Salisbury 111, fo. 142r–v (30 July 1605); Proclamations: James I, 117–18 (28 July 1605).

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discern the scope of the [project] commissions finds either some pretext or other to draw benefit from your Majesty’. The patronage culture and private gain must give way before James’s necessities.68 The emphasis on projects and retrenchment reveals uncertainty about parliamentary endowment. Governors were clearly struggling towards a settlement and the place that parliamentary revenue, if any, would play in it. Finally, there remained the division between settlement and union within the regime itself. The ambitious agenda Salisbury laid out for the 1606 session tried, again, to pursue a dual track, albeit with an emphasis on finance. The issues were to be union, a renewed effort at endowment by composition for purveyance and, with the last Elizabethan subsidies exhausted, a traditional vote of supply. Salisbury would not flatter his colleagues with protestations that James’s promises to prosecute abusive purveyors had been anything ‘but shadowes and colors w[i]thout substance’.69 Purveyance and projects were fiscal necessities and, while he had concerns about their irritating nature, Salisbury was not above seeing political ends in their unpopularity. An apprenticeship under the late Elizabethan regime contributed to such tactics. The pressures of war ‘triggered an authoritarian reaction from privy councillors and magistrates, whose emphasis on state security, the subversion of religious nonconformity and the threat of “popularity” and social revolt became obsessional’.70 One of Salisbury’s accession memorials included the ‘preservation of ye K[ing]s prerogative roiall w[hi]ch containeth preeminences appertaining to ye Crowne’ in titles to lands and goods as well as ‘defense of his P[er]son and state’.71 This language suggests the kind of high-handed streak which allowed Salisbury to consider unpleasant financial exactions as an inducement to supply the king and thereby remove the circumstances which produced them. The ongoing abuses of purveyance drove leading members of the Commons in 1606 to reject such an approach.72 They ignored composition and devoted their energies to its legal dimensions. John Hare’s bill mandated enforcement of existing statutes which would have destroyed its profitability. But James possessed the benefit de facto and his necessities made composition the only acceptable course. Hare’s bill was passed to further an increase in the subsidy bill, but Commons and Lords could not reconcile their positions and James offered a proclamation addressing some abuses. Undeterred, members added purveyance to their grievances and James tetchily answered that he would punish the Greencloth when warranted. Salisbury’s plan for purveyance collapsed over the clash of legal principle and fiscal necessity, an

68 69

‘Several speeches’, 273–8 [16 July 1605], 277–8. Salisbury to the privy council, 7 Oct. [1605], HH, MS Salisbury 189, fos 100r–3v. The dating of this document can be found in Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 33 n. 19. 70 Guy, ‘1590s’, 1. 71 HH, MS Salisbury 188, fo. 29r. 72 This discussion is drawn from Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 23–31

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emerging level of political conflict which would be revisited in 1610 and 1614. The major success in 1606 was in securing normal parliamentary supply.73 In seeking it, Salisbury played upon perceptions of internal threat after the Gunpowder Plot, gratitude for deliverance from the plotters and desires for meaningful secular reform (projects and purveyance).74 With a thorough description of James’s estate and pretences of financial restraint, Salisbury built up a consensus for supply.75 The Commons speedily and with goodwill agreed on two subsidies and four fifteenths.76 Expressions of gratitude for James’s preservation joined with watchful preparedness to carry the debate. Salisbury had astutely assessed the moment. James responded with fulsome thanks and offered tangible appreciation.77 He approved desires to settle with purveyors and asked members to confer with the Lords ‘both to understande the kings occasions, [and] to declare to their Lordships the greavances of the people’. The connection between supply and James’s willingness to entertain grievances was not lost. Dorset expounded on James’s necessities in conference, rehearsing royal debts (£734,000) and the costs of an expanded establishment.78 His report on alienated revenues completed the crown’s case for endowment and additional supply. Members spent the following weeks debating whether to legislate against purveyance or compound to buy out the prerogative right. Against the preferences of James and Salisbury they resolved to legislate, but then returned to grievances and supply.79 Despite genuine concern over James’s debts and an explicit quid pro quo offered by Secretary Herbert, discordant voices emerged against augmenting the former grant. One member argued that ‘whereas it is moved wee should fill the kings Coffers . . . if the bottomes be out then can they not be filled’, while Edwin Sandys didn’t wish to see their generosity tainted with a ‘heavy or unpleaseing’ addition. James settled the issue by offering to receive the Commons’ grievances personally, though he expected moderation in their collection and discussion and requested an answer on augmentation. The House voted 140 to 139 in favour; a margin of twenty-six agreed it should be by subsidy and there was scant dissent on adding another subsidy and two fifteenths.80 James and Salisbury had

73 The parliamentary diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606–1607, ed. David Harris Willson, Minneapolis 1931, 1–184, supplemented for both houses by the Commons journal, i. 256–314, and the Lords journal, ii. 355–448. 74 Munden, ‘Reform’, 58. 75 See also Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 130–1. 76 Commons journal, i. 266. 77 Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 32. 78 Ibid. 42–5, 371–5. 79 Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 23–5. 80 Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 72–85.

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preserved consensus with words and deeds that seemed to promise satisfactory attention to purveyance and grievances.81 James’s outward interest in grievances dissipated with the extra subsidy and the purveyance bill never passed the Lords. Francis Bacon reported James’s answer that he would remedy legal grievances with the judges, matters of state with his councillors and commercial complaints with merchants.82 Yet James prefaced his resolution with more revealing words: ‘The next challenge was by way of question, namely, whether these Grievances were not Grievances of former tymes and yet then we found no fault, but commended the Gouvernment.’83 According to the Venetian ambassador, James ‘listened, but in an elegant discourse he deferred all consideration of the points raised to a future Session. The members complain that, after granting subsidies, they have obtained nothing . . . and the populace make this shrewd remark, “Three subsidies, much evil, no redress” ’.84 James would take counsel from parliament in a way he determined. Parliamentary second thoughts were too late as the subsidy bill was delivered to the Lords by the entire Commons before James’s answers were heard.85 Grievances received ineffective attention and not only recurred but were used by Salisbury in the Great Contract as points of ease. Members were roundly disappointed by James’s action in the bargain over supply and vocal condemnation of that deal in 1610 spearheaded a determination that the same thing would not happen again. Finally, governors received sharply negative answers in their attempts at parliamentary endowment in 1604 and 1606. They could not overcome the lingering taste of Elizabethan demands, growing distaste with the king’s own policies and practices or the doses of political ill-will that union brought to the table. The collapse of union the following year had a lasting impact on kingship and finance. James and his governors never resolved the division between settlement and union: the Commons did it for them in 1607. Finance took centre-stage. Division within the regime had not served the interests of fiscal policy which had consequently operated as a series of shifts and starts reminiscent of Scottish finance.86 The failure of union represented an opportunity to address this, but it was a hollow victory for governors like Salisbury because the events of 1607 also meant that financial recourse to parliament was questionable. Caesar reckoned that parliamentary ill-will promised an ‘unfortunate’ outcome for new attempts to gain funding.87 Further, even if governors fashioned a ‘workable’ parliamentary component, they had to deal with the

81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 28. Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 158–64. Ibid. 166. CSP, Venetian, 1603–7, 353. Commons journal, i. 309; Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 164. For instance, HH, MS Salisbury 190, fo. 111r (29 June [1605]). BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 308r–v.

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king’s disposition. James’s bitter rants against the ‘house of hell’ in 1610 were not born solely of events that year; rejection of union also contributed markedly.88 Finally, lingering resentment also coloured James’s personal and political relationships with English governors. This became fundamentally a question of counsel: what sort of counsel would James heed in the settlement of his estate, from whom and with what impact on fiscal policy? The settlement outside parliament Currents emerged in 1607–8 which shaped finance for the rest of James’s reign. With the collapse of union, James became as determined as his governors to have a settlement and meetings with Salisbury, Northampton, Suffolk and Worcester in August 1607 put his estate at the centre of governance.89 In embarking on this course three questions hung over the regime. Which governors would assume responsibility for creating a settlement? What principles would inform their work? What would be the king’s role in the process? Whatever his past disappointments, James entrusted leadership in the affair to Salisbury in September 1607. Other governors, Dorset (before his death) and Northampton, would support his work as needed, but it was Julius Caesar who emerged as second in importance. Caesar took on much of Dorset’s daily work from the beginning.90 The Salisbury–Caesar partnership dominated policy and developed into a genuine friendship. The bond between them was strongest in James’s service as they shared the burdens of office. Writing from court, Salisbury assured his assistant that ‘we do owr selfs right (yt[that] are but few amongst many talkers) when his M[ajes]ty knowes who are dayly labowrers in his publick service, where neyther glory nor gain are included’.91 Salisbury often praised Caesar’s ‘ioynt cares & labors w[i]th me’ during his absences, seeing his ‘care for ye publick and yowr love to me’.92 Salisbury provided an example of their partnership and the difficulties which worried them both when he wrote: Having disbursed all we have, I am here only a Beare bayted for yt[that] we have not. In w[hi]ch respect I am going for 3 whole days into ye contry and leave both my power and discretion for all his M[ajes]tys service w[i]th yow as in the safest hands comanding all mine to do as yow comand yem[them].93

88

PRO, SP 14/58/26, fo. 61r (21 Nov. 1610); HH, MS Salisbury 128, fos 168r–9v (3 Dec. 1610); Cuddy, ‘Union’, 112–16. 89 HH, MS Salisbury 193, fo. 137r (15 Aug. 1607). 90 HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 84r ([3 Dec. 1607]); BL, MS Add. 36767, fo. 123r; HH, MS Salisbury 122, fo. 72r (20 Sept. 1607); BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 106r; HH, MS Salisbury 130, fo. 128r (8 Jan. 1608). 91 BL, MS Add. 36767, fo. 204r. 92 Ibid. fos 196r and 280r (9 Aug. 1610) respectively. 93 Ibid. fo. 266r (6 Oct. 1609).

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Caesar’s journal, recording Salisbury’s first months as treasurer, described him as ‘the most likely ma[n] of this kingdome to raise up the mines of a decayeing estate’, in sharp contrast to Dorset from whom Caesar ‘received causes rather of dispaire then otherwise & found hi[m] more dismayed then my selfe’.94 Ultimately, Salisbury depended upon Caesar; voluminous manuscripts testify to his labours. Caesar created a financial assessment in 1607 as the prelude to their work.95 It was actually a revision of a memorandum he had composed in September 1606 which had led him to pray for a chaste-minded Joseph to deliver them from its stark reality.96 What he had particularly done in 1606 was compare expenditure with that in 1602, attempting to give some perspective on an annual increase of £140,000.97 Caesar’s additional analysis in 1607 admitted that the rate of expenditure since James’s accession was not a temporary phenomenon. Caesar established a virtual template for policy until James’s death: charges to be met by staying all bounty prejudicial to James’s revenues, cost-cutting to bring expenditure within Elizabethan levels and ‘increasing the revenew w[i]thowt co[m]mitting either against the lawe or the conveniency of the pollicy of this estate’.98 These were the courses Caesar advocated in 1606, but none of them were seen as panaceas in 1607. From the standpoint of revenue, the crown lands were inadequate, the political backlash from union made it dangerous to impose upon the people and parliamentary ill-will promised an ‘unfortunate’ outcome for supply.99 Caesar’s response was to counsel princely parsimony, with 1602 as the example, and all possible improvements of the king’s own.100 He detailed a series of projects for new revenues and ready money, offered abatements in charges and looked hard at bounty. Caesar turned up the volume against the disjunction between private gain and public good in projects and patronage. He demanded to know why the recovery of old debts, for instance, should serve as rewards for needless new officers. Existing offices of appropriate stature should reward prominent suitors when they became available while poor petitioners should be preferred only if their suits entailed gain by personal initiative instead of at the expense of James’s revenues. Moreover, why shouldn’t ‘the kings favourites & mere attenda[n]ts forbeare sutes tending to his losse’?101 And James should actively shun ‘needeles expenses

94 95

BL, MS Lansdowne 168, fo. 303v. BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 301r–2v (8 Sept. 1606/20 Sept. 1607), 303r–5v ([1606]), 306r–11v (17 Sept. 1607). The whole set of manuscripts was drawn together, reviewed and amended by 26 September 1607, the date of Caesar’s endorsement (fo. 311r). 96 BL, MS Lansdowne 164, fo. 419r–v (23 Sept. 1606). 97 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 303r. The major culprits between 1602 and 1606 were the cofferer, Prince Henry, the wardrobe, ambassadors, the jewel-house and fees and annuities. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. fo. 308r–v. 100 Ibid. fos 308v–10v. 101 Ibid. fo. 308v.

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. . . ffor in point of government nothing is more acceptable to ye generality of subiectes then when they see theire princes to followe the steps of their noble predecessors’.102 Caesar’s attitude and recommendations indicate a mindset which was held in common with his colleagues. It was also shared by James: ‘for the matter of my rentis [finances], quhiche I can not denye, stikkes much in my mynde, till I see it come to some goode & certaine ende. . . . I meane by all the pairts thairof as well addition & multiplication of meanes, as by reformation of abusis, & subtraction of unnecessarie & not honorable chairges’.103 There was nothing particularly controversial in these ideas for retrenchment or in the suggestions for new and improved revenues. However, Caesar’s dismissal of parliament reveals what had now become a central issue in financial settlement. Did parliamentary revenue, either endowment or normal supply, have a role to play? Caesar’s memorandum offers us his political– financial assessment, but it was James’s position that mattered. James wrote to the privy council in October 1607 to confirm the new emphasis of governance on settlement. At no point did he raise the question of parliament: I doubt not you will not omit to think upon all means of addition and increase of rent as well by some new and careful inventions without the unjust burden of my people, as also by your frequent sitting upon your ordinary commissions . . . and on the other part that you will also think upon the best means for subtraction and decrease of charges, as well by reformation of corruption as by cutting of needless superfluities, the honour and greatness and safety of the king and kingdom being always respected.104

The course of events in parliament since 1604 and James’s reaction to them ushered in a radical departure for governors: a profound unwillingness on the part of their master to employ parliament as a tool of governance. Fiscal policy danced around this issue for the rest of the reign. The king’s letter also spelled out the practice of kingship James intended to operate in his great matter: [In] this disease I am the patient and you have promised to be the physicians, to use the best care upon me, that your wits, faithfulness and diligence can reach unto, as for my parte, you may assure yourselves that I shall facilitate your cure by all the means possible for a poor patient, both by observing as straight a diet as you can in honour and reason prescribe unto me, as also, by using seasonably and in the right form, such remedies and antidotes, as you are to apply unto my disease.105

James reiterated at the close that his governors would find him a ‘counsailable & plyable a pateint, as I assure my self ye uill proue faithfull, diligent, (& I

102 103 104 105

Ibid. fo. 309r. HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 84r ([3 Dec. 1607]). Ibid. fos 113r–14v ([19 Oct. 1607]). Ibid. fo. 113r [underlining on manuscript by Salisbury?].

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hoape) fortunate phisitians’.106 If any of James’s governors expected a free hand in constructing a settlement and his ready acceptance of what they produced, this letter would have disabused them of the notion. Counsel and policy options might originate in the wits of governors, but James would decide on the best course of treatment once his doctors presented their diagnoses and offered prescriptions. He would not take their remedies sight unseen or refrain from prescribing his own antidotes, and this included refusing to swallow any parliamentary potion. Projects were central to the king’s great matter because the subsidies voted in 1606 were inadequate to supply his necessities.107 Within a day of Caesar praying for his chaste-minded Joseph, Dorset gathered some two dozen projects, the first such compilation of the reign.108 This and similar memos composed by Caesar are our touchstone for what might be regarded as the salad days of projects between 1606 and 1609. After examining the documents, it is impossible to understate the serious labour put into projects by Dorset, Caesar and Salisbury. It is important, however, to emphasise that they did not labour because James had chosen projects over parliament. Projects were an established means to pair public good (chiefly revenue or savings) and private gain (rewards for suitors). Projects became important in the 1580s and 1590s because the Elizabethan regime needed to maximise its revenues and at precisely the same moment it collected high levels of parliamentary revenue. Projects suited James’s practice of kingship because he was open to counsel and took a Cyropaedian approach to bounty, but their importance after 1607 increased because of James’s unrelated antipathy to parliament and his consequent inability to exploit parliamentary revenue. The point is reinforced by Dorset’s methodology in his ‘meanes to increase yerely revenue and to rais present monie’. He employed a taxonomy which was equivalent to endowment (yearly revenue) and ready cash (present money). He proposed farming management of the mint, the king’s woods and outlawries to ensure a certain revenue and shed the charges of direct administration. Endowment was expected from surrounded grounds, concealments brought to rent, fishing licences, allowing ‘freholders in forests to sell their woods’, issuing copper monies, answering ecclesiastical court fines in the exchequer, fines on bonds in king’s bench and installed debts. Permanent abatements in the accounts of the cofferer, wardrobe, navy ordinance, works, the Star Chamber, liberates and Ireland were seen as a means to ‘increase’ revenue available for other charges. Projects for ready money included clearing arrears of receivers-general, enfranchising copyholds, leasing mortgaged lands, creations in the new order of knighthood, disposing of the earl of Hertford’s lands and compositions for defective titles, assarts, lands entailed

106 107 108

Ibid. fo. 114r. PRO, SP 14/52/6, fos 6r–6Av (8 Jan. 1610). BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 314r–15v (24 Sept. 1606).

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to the crown and exemption from juries. From this sample, Dorset hoped to endow the crown and pay immediate demands. Efforts renewed in 1607 incorporated many of the previous year’s projects as Dorset reviewed his earlier list. New projects were added and, by Dorset’s death in April 1608, many projects were pending, under continuing scrutiny or active.109 Improved customs revenues and new impositions emerged as the most significant project for endowment in the absence of any parliamentary option. This was central to James’s thinking when he pledged, among other things in October 1607, to curb his own expenditure and ordered his officers to cost all suits before forwarding them.110 They were to observe particular care with those involving customs farms and their renewal because, he wrote, ‘ye knowe hou greatlie that concernis my profite & that that is almoste the onlie sure hoape that is left for increase of my rente’. James’s reckoning was that customs were the last, best hope of a permanent increase in his revenues. By the close of his reign, those expectations had become reality. The king confronted the hawkish parliament of 1624 with the dangers of commercial interruption: ‘customes are the best p[ar]te of my revenewe and in effect the substance of all I have to live on’.111 To be sure, James’s predecessors exploited customs revenue and reaped financial rewards, but they never uttered such a categorical statement of principle.112 Equally significantly, James did not mention crown lands. The king and his ministers were not simply taking advantage of expanding peace-time trade. It was not just by economic good fortune that they reaped nearly £40,000 in extraordinary customs revenues in 1620 and just £544 from the crown lands.113 They deliberately placed customs at the centre of financial settlement. Customs and impositions were to be their dissolution of the monasteries, an endowment which James had no intention of frittering away for the sake of senseless warfare. The currant impost fired Dorset’s mind with visions of new revenues as early as September 1605.114 Refusals to pay the impost were couched in terms of illegality and Suffolk’s deputy-farmers wanted action which would ‘not only free this doubt upon this particular of the imposition on corinths: but upon all impositions of like nature, set upon other commodities without act of parliament’.115 Similar questions were raised by the tobacco impost.

109 These projects included depopulations, improvement of woods, recovery of drowned lands (surrounded grounds), sale of inheritance to entailed holdings, enfranchising copyholds, fines upon buildings in London, exemptions from juries, the Scottish mines and impositions. 110 HH, MS Salisbury 134, fos 113r–14v. 111 PRO, SP 14/160/62, fo. 100v. 112 S. J. Gunn, Early Tudor government, 1485–1558, London 1995, 122–4; Dietz, Public finance, 44, 305–27. 113 PRO, SP 14/116/121, fo. 172r (29 Sept. 1620). 114 The following discussion is drawn from Pauline Croft, ‘Fresh light on Bate’s Case’, Historical Journal xxx (1987), 525–36. 115 Quoted ibid. 531.

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Neither issue came to a head, but refusals on grounds of legality had serious implications for impositions outside statutory approval. Currants were mixed up in negotiations to charter a new Levant company. Dorset and Salisbury had an agenda in the talks concerning the standing of extra-parliamentary impositions: ‘If this trade of Turkey were settled, it would be most profitable for the crown and commonwealth, for then all the imposition of currants and consequently all other impositions were settled for ever.’116 Their utility had been carefully thought out. Currants and tobacco were part of the larger realignment of finance which included the revised book of rates and the farm of the great customs, all proceeding apace at the end of 1604. The Levant charter was agreed in October 1605 with assent to the currants. However, questions of trade and commerce were fertile political ground.117 Jealousies aroused by ‘monopolistic’ trading companies and ‘animosity against the customs-farmers’ were among the forces at work which spurred John Bate to defy the impost even after the new charter.118 Bate could not be ignored and the result was his celebrated exchequer case in July 1606. It was the perfect opportunity to settle the legal issues.119 In Dorset’s giddy judgement, the crown’s arguments were ‘so plain & so full of streunth & his consumacon so waighty & effectuall so as his Ma[jes]tie may rest assured that the iudgement by the Barons wilbe clere & certain on his side not only to please his Ma[jes]tie but even to please god him self’.120 According to Pauline Croft, Salisbury wanted a verdict ‘stated as briefly as possible to avoid further controversy’, but the exchequer barons and Dorset appreciated that Salisbury’s characteristic curtness and certitude were inappropriate.121 In a ‘caus of so grete importans’ and certain that the merchants would contest the judgement, the Barons were adamant that they ‘argue it & so to giwe reasons of their iudgement’; that done and reported ‘it wilbe forever settled and an assured foundacon for the K[ings] imposicons forever’.122 The decision was a long time in coming for Dorset and Salisbury and the immediate exploitation of the favourable judgement further waited upon possible legal challenges.123 It was not until Salisbury’s treasurership that they were exploited in earnest. The replacement of the crown estates by commercial revenues is confirmed in Caesar’s analysis of the Great Contract. ‘I am not ignorant that they bee the surest & best livelyhood of the crowne’, Caesar wrote of the

116 117

Ibid. 530. C. G. A. Clay, Economic expansion and social change: England, 1500–1700, Cambridge 1984, ii. 117–18, 198–9. 118 Croft, ‘Bate’s Case’, 533–6. 119 Croft argues that Dorset and Salisbury had hoped that this would have happened with the disputes over the tobacco impost in 1604 but that case was settled outside the exchequer: ibid. 531. 120 HH, MS Salisbury 118, fo. 144r–v. 121 Croft, ‘Bate’s Case’, 536. 122 HH, MS Salisbury 118, fo. 144v. 123 Croft, ‘Bate’s Case’, 536.

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estates, ‘and that the realme is then most happie when they be so great as that by them the kings state and honor maie bee maynteyned & his expences bothe ordinarie and extraordinarie sufficientlie defraied’. This preface was answered with irony: ‘But this maie be wished and hoped for.’ Practice offered a different reality and Caesar turned the tables on Sir John Fortescue’s endowed crown, putting the estates into their Jacobean perspective: ‘Neither shall wee fynde yt[that] ever king of England lyved merely uppon his land revenews; but partlie uppon them, p[ar]tlie uppon his customes and imposicons or taxes, & p[ar]tly uppon subsedies, ffifteenths, tenths, benevolences and the like given him by his people.’124 The policies of Charles I and Archbishop Laud toward cathedral lands represent an interesting counterpoint. They treated them as a true endowment and avoided many policies employed on the crown’s own estates.125 The experiences of Dorset and Salisbury had stopped them thinking of the estates as anything but one element in a larger mixture and they consciously advanced customs to primacy. Salisbury concluded his first months as treasurer with his regular summer progress while Caesar spent the summer of 1608 as he did many, reviewing policy. During that time he drew up a curious list of Dorset’s projects.126 Caesar’s purpose is uncertain. The abstract may have been for his own benefit, but probably represents work for Salisbury. Salisbury was still finding his way toward a settlement as well as reacting to the short-term demands placed upon him now that he had the full responsibility of the treasurership. Of the projects which received Salisbury’s attention in those months, five alone entailed endowment: leases of surrounded grounds, impositions, recusants and abatements in pensions and diets; surveys underway held out hope of permanent increases by crown lands. Salisbury’s initial flurry of activity met only the tasks of assuming formal control and paying James’s pressing debts. The report of James’s debt payments reads like a project list of those first months: the earl of Hertford’s lands, sale of woods, leasing mortgaged lands, defective titles, assarts, enfranchising copyholds and old debts; only the sale of land, Gogerthon’s silver ore project and the aid for Prince Henry were later initiatives.127 The long-term course of endowment under Salisbury had yet to be mapped. Caesar’s summer project list represents a major contribution to that process. Dorset’s list of 1606, Caesar’s of August 1608 and another of ‘what p[ro]iects remaine yet unfruitfull’ compiled by him in April 1609 formed the core of his massive abstract of 105 ‘Newe Proiects’, completed in August.128

124 125

BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 130v. Stanford E. Lehmberg, Cathedrals under siege: cathedrals in English society, 1600–1700, Exeter 1996, 146–50. 126 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 111r–12v (11 Aug. 1608). 127 PRO, SP 14/52/6, fo. 6Ar (8 Jan. 1610). The 1606 subsidies raised £453,000 and projects cleared all but £160,000 (outstanding loans drawn on Elizabeth’s privy seals excluded). 128 The manuscripts are BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 314r–15v (24 Sept. 1606); MS

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Forty or more of the projects were original, but many were not without precedent. Caesar and Attorney-General Hobart were charged with examining the catalogue after governors dispersed for the summer. Caesar fully reported to Salisbury at court on the long hours spent weeding them down.129 The product of these labours was his melodramatically endorsed ‘Breviate of my vacation care’.130 Caesar’s marginalia in the earlier catalogue would seem to reflect the process of vetting which produced this document.131 Projects were evaluated by two marks, some combination of plusses and minuses or left blank. These probably reflect each man’s opinion. Six projects aside, only those with two plusses were included in the breviate’s list of forty. If this is the case, then the breviate was fashioned from at least two rounds of evaluations; some twenty other projects originally approved had their plusses circled and the entries crossed through by Caesar. The breviate appears to have been fashioned for presentation to James’s councillors upon their return at the new term. Entitled ‘Questions & Answers to the[m]’, it contained financial accountings in addition to ‘newe p[ro]iectes of gaine . . . picked out of 97 videl’.132 The projects show signs of further weeding: nine were crossed out, three added and marginalia were made by Caesar. It is probable that the changes reflect Salisbury’s scrutiny; Caesar had written to him that ‘the work is of such co[n]sequence, that we are out of hope to bring it to so good a co[n]clusion, unlesse yo[u]r L[ordshi]ps succesfull hand both hammer & square it. In hope whereof wee will prepare it to yo[u]r hand’.133 The additions would seem to bear out Salisbury’s involvement. While the project for usury was one which Caesar had in hand himself (and opposed), two projects for processes in ecclesiastical courts to be answered in the exchequer or sealed in the king’s name are in Salisbury’s project volume.134 Old debts, fishing licences, copper monies and old houses and castles were veteran projects which garnered final approval through the long process;135 recusants and London buildings remained within ‘co[m]positions for the Kings p[ar]t of penall lawes’;136 new knighthoods and licensing alehouses were present casualties. In the summer of 1609 Caesar and Salisbury thus conducted the most significant examination of projects in the reign. This hard look convinced Salisbury that projects were not in themselves a sufficient basis for a perma-

Lansdowne 165, fos 111r–12v (11 Aug. 1608), 119r–20v (14 Apr. 1609); MS Add. 10038, fos 19r–23v (10 Aug. 1609). 129 PRO, SP 14/47/83, fos 175r–6r (17 Aug. 1609). 130 BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 28r–31v (28 Aug. 1609). 131 Ibid. fos 19r–23v. 132 Ibid. fos 28r–30r. 133 PRO, SP 14/47/83, fos 175r–6r. 134 BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 202r–3v (Aug. 1609), 208r–9v (1 July 1608); MS Harleian 4807, fos 32r–5v. See also PRO, SP 14/19/85, fos 155r–6v; SP 14/19/86, fos 157r–8v. 135 Proclamations: James I, 232–3. 136 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 29v.

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nent settlement of James’s estate. Out of Salisbury’s dissatisfaction developed his idea for a settlement, refoundation, which again included parliamentary endowment. Salisbury committed himself to presenting his conceptions and arguments in writing for James’s benefit.137 They are a remarkable chronicle of Salisbury’s intellectual evolution and the milieu of harsh experiences and sober reflections out of which his plans for refoundation were born. Salisbury hoped to persuade James that parliamentary endowment was the vital element in any lasting cure for his financial ills and, because they were a proven point of conflict in previous sessions, it was therefore necessary to suspend work on projects. Henry Neville similarly read the politics of projects two years later: ‘And when his Ma[jes]ty hath made use of his peoples affection to put him out of want any fitt Projects that shall be offred may bee the boldlyer entertained to fill his coffers.’138 Salisbury took his arguments to James early in 1610, when the atmosphere at court was still decidedly hostile to parliament.

137 138

‘Several speeches’, 271–312. PRO, SP 14/74/44, fo. 87r.

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4

The Refoundation of the Monarchy, 1609–1610 The search for a financial settlement took a decisive turn when Salisbury persuaded James to reconvene parliament and make it the venue for an ambitious ‘refoundation’ of the monarchy. Salisbury presented James with the most comprehensive blueprint for his estate in the reign, but it was a decidedly political assessment. The argument was simple: James’s estate could not subsist without further burden to his subjects and it was politically inadvisable to impose that burden outside a parliamentary settlement. Salisbury wanted to attempt what Henry Knyvett proposed in 1593, the creation of an annual tax to support the crown’s necessities. This was a revolutionary idea. Jean Beaulieu recognised the enormity of the suggestion, writing that parliament according to the common opinion and hope, is like to bring forth very great alteration and reformation in the State . . . it being in question not onely to eradicatt the strongest and most inveteratt Diseases of the State, but also to admitt new Seeds of temperature or distemperature in that bodie, you may think with what caution, wariness and slowness they will proceed in so important a Worke . . . of so high Nature and of so great Consequence both to the King and to the State.1

Beaulieu was astute. What began as a financial settlement developed into a far-reaching examination of kingship, governance and finance at the levels of political thought and practice. It was at precisely this intersection that refoundation collapsed. Salisbury and refoundation Salisbury’s ideas for a refounded monarchy are contained in a set of written treatises. The extent to which these constitute a framework rather than simply presenting various options cannot be overstated. Salisbury fashioned refoundation with the assistance of Caesar who, the evidence indicates, probably drafted some or all of Salisbury’s addresses to James counselling a parlia1

Ralph Winwood, Memorials of the affairs of state in the reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I, ed. Edmund Sawyer, London 1725, iii. 124–5 (1 Mar. 1610).

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mentary settlement.2 However, the design had little support from fellow governors, who hesitated to confront James with unpleasant financial truths or to align themselves with a project which was both revolutionary and had decidedly uncertain prospects.3 Salisbury alone assured himself that James would afford him just and gracious acceptance, not only because they shall come from me with a single heart and humble confidence, but because I should be unworthy of the honour and trust I have, if I suffer the consequences of your pressing and important necessities to take the start of my clear accounts and honest counsels.4

James responded to Salisbury’s opening addresses by ordering his councillors to consider the means whereby he could live within the greatness of his predecessors, without taking ‘from our servants or subjects all hope of reward’ and to advance projects which furthered the socio-economic development of the commonwealth.5 James was not prepared to move easily to an agenda for finance which included parliament. The lengthy reply which followed was given under the auspices of the council, but it was effectively Salisbury’s.6 Its first part rehearsed his push for parliamentary endowment and outlined a general strategy for the session based on bargaining.7 The second offered James an overview of his refounded monarchy which built upon propositions about projects, retrenchment and bounty in the earlier treatises.8 First admitting uno concesso that some form of supply would be had in parliament, James would see ‘the whole bulk of your estate, as it must serve to answer your certain and casual expenses and to reward your servants and others’. To that end, Salisbury intended to allocate specific revenues to offices while a table of assignments would be prepared out of which to support the royal establishment. Provision for normal wages, entertainment and imprests would dramatically improve the king’s service. Although the richest princes could not support a multitude of retainers, official salaries for a ‘selected number of choice servants of both kingdomes’ would be possible ‘once your Majesty can hold in reasonable conformity with your estate’. Salisbury anticipated an endowment sufficient to support James,

2

‘Several speeches’, 266. Compare BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 292r–3v (Caesar’s draft financial treatise, 23 Sept. 1609) and MS Lansdowne 151, fos 32r–46v (Caesar’s brief evaluating Salisbury’s parliamentary bargain, the Great Contract, 17 Aug. 1610) with ‘Several speeches’, 280–96 (Salisbury’s addresses). See also BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 23r–6v (draft of first treatise to James, 16 July 1605). 3 ‘Several speeches’, 266–9. 4 Ibid. 281. 5 Ibid. 296–8 ([c. after 12 Jan. 1610]). 6 Ibid. 268. 7 Ibid. 299–303. 8 Ibid. 303–12.

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his closest affinity of servants and the administration on a workable, but binding budget.9 A salaried affinity did not preclude James from acting the part of Cyrus towards well-deserving subjects, but giving must be judicious and tempered by the advice of commissioners.10 There might exist ‘infinite causes of expense, but not infinite means’ and Salisbury could wish to see voluntary charges limited by James’s ‘timely and judicious resolution’.11 Salisbury’s rhetorical sense of history was a lens through which James must understand his kingship. It ‘almost hath not been the destiny of this crown to be involved in extreme lack’, Salisbury instructed, ‘wheresoever it hath met a liberal hand . . . it is not possible for a king of England . . . to be rich or safe, but by frugality’.12 Henry VII and Henry VIII had proved this: it soon appeared that riches and excess could not long stand together here, when his son King Henry VIII (to whom he left a million and a half pounds) had spent it by and by and without the fall of abbeys had proved (in arido) the poorest son of the richest father that ever this land had.13

Salisbury believed that too much of James’s bounty fell within the bounds of prodigality. James was cognizant of Salisbury’s message, pledging himself in October 1607 to ‘observing as straite a dyete ye can in honoure & reason praescryve unto me’.14 But therein lay the crux: an inability to define the common ground between liberality and frugality with any more specificity than had the classical authors in the curriculum. Salisbury’s refoundation intended to enforce frugality by means of the book of bounty with ‘order[s] to be observed in the proceeding with every suit’.15 The book declared the necessity of limiting grants, explained the workings of the commission and offered would-be suitors guidance with a memorial of suitable grants.16 Suitors were ordered to refrain from pressing their demands, James’s officers were encouraged to stay suits contrary to the memorial before they passed the seals and ready-made warrants were prohibited to prevent suitors bypassing the commission. Guided by the memorials, commissioners were to meet suitors once or twice a week, vet their petitions upon reference from James or his councillors, deliberate and return certificates to the council which would render formal judgement. The commissioners were James’s bulwark, protecting crown revenues by judging how all suits ‘maye hurte o[u]r revenewes, stand w[i]th the good of o[u]r subiectes or 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ibid. 303–4. Ibid. 301, 304–10. Ibid. 300. Ibid. 285. Ibid. 286. HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 113r; ‘Several speeches’, 283–4. ‘Several speeches’, 249, 305–9. A declaration of his maiesties royall pleasure, in what sort he thinketh fit to enlarge or reserve himselfe in matter of bountie, London 1610 (STC 9223.2).

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be agreeable to o[u]r lawes’.17 They also spared James the onus of refusal. Casual revenues were expected to serve as James’s bank of bounty, but only those to which his entitlement was ‘prima facie reputed clear and unquestionable’.18 These structural tools looked to refashion James’s practice of kingship, but failed to do so when to put to the test. The explanation is revealed by tracking individual grants as they passed along the sequence of seals, something which has been done by Linda Levy Peck: ‘The early years of the reign were marked by a multiplicity of brokers and a contradictory process: on the one hand, important Household officials, especially members of the Bedchamber, secured grants and, on the other, privy councillors stopped grants once they had been obtained from the king.’ Before 1614 Salisbury and Northampton were instrumental in stopping grants, but these ‘stays were frequently temporary’.19 James’s unwillingness to leave Cyrus’ side in the debate with Croesus prevented him from accepting the impossibility of being ‘rich or safe, but by frugality’.20 Salisbury was forced on the defensive by such statements: ‘yo[u]r Ma[jes]tie hath beene troubled with a woord that fell from my penne wherein I onley glanced that I sawe a fatalitie in the state that it would never be rich’.21 A minute for the regulation of suits in 1608 is telling: ‘yt hath pleased his Ma[jes]ty in his greate wisdome to resolve of some restraint and choice in his guiftes for some shorte time untill his great debtes bee pasyfied’.22 Caesar’s notes reveal a royal mindset which accepted that these strictures should be observed ‘till it shall please God to rid hi[m] out of debt, & that hee hath equalled his revenue to his charge’.23 The mental underpinning of the commissions was disastrously incompatible with their professed purpose. Fiscal policy was not characterised by a contest between prerogative (projects) and parliamentary revenue that found expression in Salisbury’s design.24 Projects offered many good precedents for ‘adorning and enriching’ the commonwealth and their importance was acknowledged in Salisbury’s refoundation.25 He had lost his taste for those ‘sour and harsh supplies’ but he pledged to ‘remove all difficulties and lets that may block or choke up the passages of these excellent designs’; to which end a project commission, staffed by ‘experts of science and occupation’, was again advocated. This would vet projects and anticipate abuses on the part of projectors in the same 17 18

BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 2v; ‘Several speeches’, 301. See Declaration, 13–24, for the final demarcation, though it is somewhat different from Salisbury’s proposals in ‘Several speeches’, 305–7. 19 Peck, Court patronage, 42–4. 20 ‘Several speeches’, 285. 21 HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 95r–v (22 Oct. 1606). 22 HH, MS Salisbury 126, fo. 128r (1608). 23 BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 74r. 24 Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 133–4. 25 ‘Several speeches’, 310–11.

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manner as the commission of suits would curtail inadvisable bounty and prodigality. It is essential to recognise that Salisbury was not simply opposing projects and prerogative revenues. ‘I am not of those’, he maintained, ‘that think it can sort with the majesty of a king that his occasions should depend upon the will of his subjects, by which men make not the king the judge and mediator of things, but the people.’ Princes are the parents of the commonwealth and possess power ‘in case of politique necessity, to help themselves in their body politique, by their subjects . . . fortunes, a power so material and inherent in the person of the king’ that it was unquestionable. But Salisbury believed that the prerogative wielded out of necessity should respect ‘whether the practice be seasonable for the time’. Salisbury expected the commission to carry out a genuine examination of projects, deliver recommendations and put on them a public stamp of approval or rejection. The commissioners’ judgements were further expected to become guiding precedents.26 Far from burying projects, Salisbury hoped that an open evaluation would reform them and confront the ability of projectors to conflate public good and private gain or disguise the former altogether with the language of salus populi. Perhaps the most emotive element in Salisbury’s design was his attempt to combat English xenophobia. He strove to reassure James about his own stance after the union debacle and his determination to be the Scots’ defender-cum-advocate in the coming session.27 Among the salaried affinity, Scots would receive a third more.28 Salisbury defended this course as the maintenance of ‘such particular men as are necessary for the service of princes’. Against charges that the Scots should live at home, Salisbury answered with vigour: ‘what can be more just reply to such a one than to ask him, whether he would be glad that he that was their king and now is ours also, should live there too?’29 However, Salisbury did not hesitate to tell James some home truths about the Scots which had become obvious in the union debates. Henceforth, with the garden of casualties well tended, neither they nor the English would be ‘suffered to range up and down the field of your Majesty’s possessions, nor of your subjects, after such things as for the most part deceive their expectations and offend the people’. Therein, Salisbury argued, ‘consists the life of this project; then is that object of distaste taken away and on the contrary one step to the Union gained . . . whoso sees not that the harsh effects and ill order of your Majesty’s gifts heretofore hath troubled the passage of this desired Union’.30 Law and nature were fully resolved to bring forth the union of the kingdoms, and Salisbury argued that refoundation was a crucial step.

26 27

Ibid. 288–9. The ‘crisis of favour’ Salisbury appears to have experienced after 1607 is posited in Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 132–3. 28 ‘Several speeches’, 304. 29 Ibid. 309–10. 30 Ibid.

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Parliament was the ‘tickle shore’ to which James would be driven to avoid the rocks of his necessities. Salisbury promised the strongest preparation that he could devise to smooth the passage and that initiatives ‘shall be so far declared to be mine own, as your Majesty shall run no censure for any of my follies’.31 It is clear that a prerogative bargain reminiscent of purveyance was in the offing. Salisbury wished that James would be pleased to value your grace and bounty to your parliament, with dispensing with some of that monarchical power which is inherent in your royal person. Provided always, that it be not such things as tend to the diminution of your sovereign and absolute authority, in point of state and government, of which kind somewhat may be thought of, wherein your Majesty hath power to do more than ever you meant or mean to do.32

Salisbury resolved upon the dispensation of as yet unspecified parts of the prerogative ‘as it reacheth at the money and means of your people’.33 By employing the distinction between the absolute and ordinary prerogative, Salisbury would test an increasingly uneasy consensus over the scope and authority of the prerogative in finance when he faced parliament.34 The broad outline of the refounded monarchy was the decisive element in persuading James to support Salisbury’s project: endowment would provide sufficient additional revenue to put his estate on a sound footing; James’s family, affinity and offices of state would be funded in a certain, reliable fashion; casualties would serve his own unexpected needs and reward welldeserving subjects; the commission of suits and book of bounty would act as a bulwark against endless importuning suitors; projects for the lasting enrichment of his commonwealth – and private purses in due proportion – would be realised; the temper of English xenophobia would be checked and the possibility of union reborn. Salisbury more than answered James’s demand for ‘some good and safe means to preserve our estate from want, from whence ariseth such a hydra of evils and dangers as it ought to be one of the principal cares of the greatest princes to cast out that monster both in root and seed’.35 James’s feelings at the prospect of his necessities ending were unlikely to have changed since 1607: ‘I coulde thinke my selfe as happie in all other respectis as any other king or monarke that ever was since the birthe of chryste.’36

31 32 33 34

Ibid. 295–6. Ibid. 302. Ibid. John Guy, ‘The “imperial crown” and the liberty of the subject: the English constitution from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights’, in Bonnelyn Young Kunze and Dwight D. Brautigam (eds), Court, country and culture: essays on early modern British history in honor of Perez Zagorin, Rochester, NY 1992, 74–5. 35 ‘Several speeches’, 297. 36 HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 113r ([29 Oct. 1607]).

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The Great Contract In its final form, the Great Contract consisted of an agreement to establish a tax which would provide the crown with a new annual revenue of £200,000 in exchange for the elimination of wardship and purveyance and certain other reforms. The parliamentary narrative leading to the agreement need not detain us, but there are several significant moments in it which help to explain why, ultimately, the Contract failed.37 At the same time, the Contract became a vehicle for reflection on the nature of the polity, raising central questions concerning the balance of James’s political theory and practical kingship. Thus James and the members of parliament faced the possibility that their actions might change the basic demarcations of authority. Finally, it was obvious from Salisbury’s treatises that his efforts in parliament would be founded upon a course of explicit bargaining. The only concession to the parliamentary image and ritual which veiled the normal parley over supply was in framing negotiation as between Lords and Commons, with James remaining above the fray. Behind the scenes the king was anything but uninvolved, but the pretence was effective. It is essential to see both sessions for what they were: sharp parley seeking the most favourable terms for any settlement. It will become apparent that these sessions challenge Conrad Russell’s perception of James’s parliaments as consensual assemblies whose members ‘voted as many subsidies as were asked of them and did so with reasonably good grace’.38 The Great Contract did not embody Salisbury’s conception of a refounded monarchy. Salisbury hoped to secure agreement in principle to his agenda, as set out in the Lords: ‘we must not look only to put the King out of debt but have sufficient supply to maintain and support his yearly and annual charge’.39 However, members pushed James and Salisbury, against their preference, into an individual bargain for wardship while deferring supply entirely.40 Their offer of £100,000 for wardship alone precipitated a tense conference between members and the Lords. ‘Shall I flatter you’, Salisbury 37

There exists no satisfactory study of the Great Contract. Eric Lindquist, Alan Smith and Wallace Notestein have all looked at Salisbury’s project in detail, but there are problems with their interpretations. The major difficulty is that the authors did not consult the manuscripts which were subsequently edited by Croft as ‘Several speeches’, so that there is a disjunction between their evaluation of parliamentary events and Salisbury’s thinking and intentions. See Eric Lindquist, ‘The failure of the Great Contract’, Journal of Modern History lvii (1985), 617–51; Alan G. R. Smith, ‘Crown, parliament, and finance: the Great Contract of 1610’, in Peter Clark, Alan G. R. Smith and Nicholas Tyacke (eds), The English commonwealth, 1547–1640: essays in politics and society presented to Joel Hurstfield, Leicester 1979, 111–27; and Wallace Notestein, The House of Commons, 1604–1610, New Haven 1971, 255–434. For a detailed narrative of the session see John Cramsie, ‘Crown finance and governance under James I: projects and fiscal policy, 1603–1625’, unpubl. PhD diss. St Andrews 1997. 38 Russell, Parliaments, 49. 39 Proceedings, 1610, i. 8. 40 Commons journal, i. 402–3; Proceedings, 1610, i. 35 (12 Mar.).

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reasoned, ‘when the Wardes is taken away 200m. li. a yere will then be sufficient . . . you haveinge given cause of augmentacion by your demand’. Unless members offered James satisfaction ‘not reddendo singula singulis, but sub tota materia 200m. li. a yere above whatsoever we defalked from him by our contract, the Wards will not be had’.41 Salisbury unnerved members with his willingness to sacrifice their labours and it soon became apparent that their response would be a flat refusal. James intervened to buttress Salisbury’s efforts, counselling him about saving the negotiations in the event of a refusal.42 The Lords could retort that a sudden refusal was unfitting; if the demand was too high members should make a counter-offer; or Salisbury might suggest that James would entertain a lower price. If they then insisted on their single contract, in James’s mind, ‘twas a signe they had no desire to deale’ and further negotiations were indeed pointless. James expressed confidence in Salisbury’s ability to ‘keepe the matter from a rupture’ until his return. To that end, though he meant ‘not to compound for all his offers but in grosse’, James suggested a conference at which all the heads might be particularly valued, hoping to make members ‘more open to compound for the whole’.43 Members duly informed the Lords that they had contracted for tenures alone because only the partakers of the benefit should be taxed for it and because £300,000 was unprecedented and politically impossible.44 Salisbury reminded them of the value of those things which had been offered and refused their answer, affirming that the Lords had never said that for less than £300,000 retribution could not be had.45 Salisbury and James lost over price, but revived the original plan for refoundation within the formula of a contract. Impositions came to the fore in the session. Throughout the weeks of negotiations the Commons’ committee busily collected grievances.46 In the heady atmosphere after James’s leave to examine tenures, the king praised the Lower House for its discretion in burning a bundle of idle grievances, but thought it prudent to set parameters: abuses of government were acceptable, but not questions of authority or legal right; genuine grievances, not members’ particular complaints.47 But, by the end of April, the committee had determined upon an exhaustive examination of the legality of impositions and the judgement in Bate’s Case.48 Salisbury, Ellesmere and the Lords generally were angry at this, their ire mirroring James’s own.49 Speaker 41 42 43 44 45 46

Debates, 1610, 150–1. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 74 (1 May). Lake to Salisbury, 30 Apr. 1610, HH, MS Salisbury 128, fos 118r–19v. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 75; i. 80 (4 May). Ibid. ii. 80; Commons journal, i. 425 (5 May). Commons journal, i. 404–54, is the best source for the work of the committee for grievances. 47 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 61 (21 Mar.). 48 Ibid. ii. 73 (30 Apr.). 49 Ibid. i. 67–9 (26 Apr.); i. 82 n. 2.

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Phelips was given a provisional injunction against debating the issue which he delivered. This touched off a two-week dispute over freedom of speech and debate.50 James relented and agreed to a debate, but he masterfully argued that ‘as this cause of impositions is fit to be handled for the ease of the subject, so this other business of support was necessary to be handled for the good of the kingdom’ and wished them to ‘proceed pari passu in both’.51 The price of debate was renewed attention to support. However, James implicitly tied progress on support to the satisfactory resolution of grievances, foremost among them impositions. The subsidy debates which took place in May suggest how grave were the implications of this for the Contract. Twenty weeks without material progress took its toll on James. Members might be ‘well-affected to the state’, but Salisbury seemed incapable of moving them to a conclusion and the forthcoming debate on impositions promised nothing but more delays.52 James intervened with a message through Salisbury, who was at pains to emphasise that he was only a messenger. James anticipated satisfaction from this ‘great council’ on the matter of support, but the time for agreement had passed. He was content that the contract remain suspended until the next session, by which time members would understand the disposition of their countries ‘that now make you startle’ from bargaining. As support was suspended, so the people’s grievances must wait the next session.53 Instead, James expected immediate attention to supply, for which he would ‘have just cause to complayne of this greate senate’ if they denied him in such a time of necessity.54 Salisbury gave for inducement a promise to suspend some £20,000 worth of impositions once supply was voted and no impositions would be laid before the next session; they were also reminded of James’s offer to refrain from laying any future impositions except in parliament.55 Supporters of James spoke for at least two subsidies while other members opposed any before their grievances were answered.56 George More supported two subsidies, but suggested that their grievances be put in readiness in hope of James answering them despite Salisbury’s speech. Finding ‘the Howse bent against subsidies’, Caesar intervened with a message from James, defending himself against suspicions that the events of 1606 would be repeated: ‘Some may think that supply being now yielded to the King, the parliament shall be dissolved and then the matter of tenures, which was projected, was but offered and not meant. His Majesty’s answer to that is, he means expressly the parliament shall meet again. Others may think that then we shall have no

50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Ibid. ii. 82–114. Ibid. ii. 116 (25 May). Ibid. ii. 132–3; i. 100–1. Ibid. ii. 135–9 (11 May). Debates, 1610, 54. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 140–1. Commons journal, i. 438 (13 June).

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answer to our grievances’, but he promised to hear and redress them, including impositions. Caesar opined that supply would encourage James’s favour and supported the motion for two subsidies.57 Many members remained unconvinced and a decision was postponed at the urging of James’s supporters.58 Caesar arrived the next day with a formal assurance from James of his pledge to hear their grievances before the recess.59 Moreover, James would deliver his lowest sum for support once he had seen the grievances, ‘whearby it might appear unto hym what yearly proffitt wee desyred to take from hym’.60 James’s assurance was ineffective in clearing the spectre of 1606: ‘have we not received messages of that kind with the like promises . . . of good answers to our grievances and that promise should have been inserted in the preamble of the grant of the subsidy’. Maurice Berkeley agreed: Lord Danver’s patent, suspended in 1606, had been reborn in the hands of the hated projector Stephen Proctor, ‘of which we complain now’; the way was clear: ‘hear answer to our grievances first’.61 Sandys believed that the division of opinion made it unseemly to put the question to a vote, and this was agreed.62 The next day, Caesar reported the message that James was indifferent on the motion and doubted not but that they would satisfy him after their grievances were answered.63 Caesar also conveyed James’s irritation that one subsidy had been so disputed and ire with members who had questioned his government and applied to it precedents drawn from turbulent reigns. The initiative had done little but raise doubts among members of parliament about James’s goodwill and reminded them of past disappointments. James’s failure to move members to a successful vote of supply and one in any reasonable proportion to his demands compromises Conrad Russell’s statement that just ‘once in the reign of James I, over the issue of impositions [in 1614], did they attempt to make supply conditional on the redress of grievances’.64 All other Jacobean parleys were only ‘the sort of semi-tacit compromise and mutual exchange of favour which marks the political process in any system’; this was the real thing because it was ‘an explicit pistol-point demand’.65 James would have found these semantics problematic. Members consciously looked to 1606 when redress had been promised as the reward for voting supply and failed to occur in a timely or positive fashion. They refused to be bought with promises in 1610 and explicitly said as much. Moreover, James accepted the inevitability of answering members’ grievances if he was 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Debates, 1610, 56. Ibid. 55–6 (13 June); Proceedings, 1610, ii. 134, 142–3. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 143 (14 June); Debates, 1610, 56. Ibid. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 146. Commons journal, i. 439. Debates, 1610, 58 (15 June). Russell, Parliaments, 49. Idem, The Addled Parliament of 1614: the limits of revision, Reading 1992, 5–6, 25–6.

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to receive any supply. The intersection of redress of grievances and supply in 1610 and 1614 did not represent qualitatively different moments, but engagements with varying degrees of constructiveness and determination. Both were examples of political reciprocity at its most elemental. Freed from further debate, members returned to support and asked the Lords to consider further retribution, the king’s lowest price and projects for levying support other than those wholly upon the land.66 Members’ obvious defiance of James’s course caused consternation in the Lords. Salisbury believed this represented a crisis and wanted the backing of a delegation to sound out James before any answer was returned.67 Ellesmere disagreed, but the Lords favoured Salisbury’s motion. They were uncertain whether to re-open negotiations against James’s preference. James promised to answer them shortly.68 The beagle and his master were at loggerheads over the question of whether a successful conclusion to refoundation was still possible. James’s actions indicate he no longer believed so, at least not in the present session. Salisbury looked to the consequences of failure and was willing to persevere. He persuaded James to continue the project, but would suffer his master’s reproaches in the autumn for ‘self love of youre owin counsaill in holding together of this parliament quhair of all men waire dispaired, as I have oft told you, but your selfe alone’.69 The Lords’ anxiety over further proceedings heightened while they awaited James’s price.70 Salisbury defended his project and, with Northampton, turned back talk of disputing the means of levying support in the conference. They wanted the focus firmly on retribution and James’s price rather than drawing in complicating issues which both men believed were premature. The conference was spirited with Salisbury and Richard Martin sparring over the value of retribution and new heads offered by members.71 The king’s price was £140,000 support over and above that which he lost, valued at £40,000 each for purveyance and tenures: £220,000 in all.72 Consideration of support resumed after the great impositions debate, but grievances became the main focus.73 James received petitions concerning temporal and spiritual grievances which were so extensive that he likened them both to tapestries fit for hanging.74 He answered those concerning profit a few days later, including in his reply a long defence of impositions by Salisbury, but enjoined them to return to supply and support now that he had

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Commons journal, i. 441 (18 June). Proceedings, 1610, i. 109–10 (19 June). Ibid. i. 110 (21 June). HH, MS Salisbury 134, fos 143r–4v ([6 Dec. 1610]). Proceedings, 1610, i. 113–17 (26 June). Ibid. i. 117–20 (26 June). Ibid. ii. 168–9. Commons journal, i. 445–7. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 253–72 (7 July).

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answered some of their grievances.75 Dissatisfaction with partial answers was testified by one subsidy and one fifteenth voted the next day.76 It was hardly voted with good grace and cannot be seen as anything but a conditional gesture when compared to James’s necessities. Redress and supply remained insolubly connected. It was agreed that support would receive undivided attention for the rest of the session.77 That resolution was almost certainly the result of a private meeting between Salisbury and selected members.78 He failed to answer their continuing concerns over impositions and could not persuade them to meaningful supply.79 However, he seems to have found common ground in the need to act effectively on support or see parliament prorogued, perhaps dissolved. The pace was correspondingly brisk in the next ten days and James agreed to accept £200,000.80 Salisbury warned that the ‘distance is so little, the bargain so advantageous and the contentment both of King and people so great as if you should not accept it, you would hereafter repent yourselves’.81 The Commons’ account closed: ‘If this offer succeeded not, then this would be an End of this Parliament.’82 Members agreed to give £200,000 in support by a margin of sixty and the committee was empowered to review the negotiations and propose any new points of retribution which did not touch James in honour and profit.83 Finding some formula for a binding resolution of what had been accomplished became Salisbury’s focus.84 Against him, Sandys and the members who remained at Westminster were still looking to add further points of ease.85 Salisbury stuck to his desire for a binding statement which was supplied by George More’s device for a memorial.86 The Commons’ memorial was passed and delivered to the Lords, but members were not through and sought a conference the following day. Sandys summarised the points of the Contract, including the Commons’ reservation of the power of proposing new retribution which did not affect James’s honour and profit. Sandys offered new points, but Salisbury refused them and answered only the earlier

75 76 77 78

Ibid. i. 129–34; Debates, 1610, 153–63; Croft, ‘Bate’s Case’, 523–4. Commons journal, i. 448 (11 July). Proceedings, 1610, ii. 276. The members consulted by Salisbury were Henry Neville, Edwin Sandys, Maurice Berkeley, Herbert Croft, John Scott, Francis Goodwin and Edward Alford, some of the king’s sharpest fiscal critics in the Commons: ibid. ii. 274 n. 1. 79 Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 136–7. 80 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 283. 81 Ibid. i. 146. 82 Commons journal, i. 451. 83 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 284 (17 July). 84 Ibid. ii. 288–9. 85 Ibid. i. 154–5 (19 July). They wanted provision inserted for the four Welsh shires, the king to be bound by demurrers, fees of courts to be made certain, penal laws to be rationalised and recompense for the officers of the soon-to-be dissolved court of wards. 86 Ibid. ii. 289–92 (20 July).

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additions now that they had received the Commons’ memorial.87 It and the Lords’ own were entered in the journal two days later.88 Salisbury’s answer to the new propositions was included while the Lords were determined to protect James’s interest and their own by also laying equal claim to the powers of addendo and explanation.89 That same afternoon James arrived from Whitehall to answer the rest of the Commons’ grievances, give the royal assent to the bills and prorogue parliament until October.90 Negotiations had been arduous, tempers and frustrations had built up among all concerned, but something historic had been accomplished: Edwin Sandys was ‘happy to live in those days wherein we with our own eyes see that effected which our ancestors never dreamed of’.91 Wardship and purveyance had been swept away along with some of the most irritating Jacobean projects. Salisbury had faced his master with harsh reality and spared no pains to effect a difficult solution. He had prevailed and ‘brought the rest of the greate houndes to a p[er]fect tune, w[hi]ch was before by there voyce much devided’.92 Had the Great Contract endured, that might have been the end of the story. However, the long debates had aired deeply conflicting political attitudes and beliefs that demanded reconciliation. The frantic search for a binding statement of agreement and the rush to add more points of ease were telling evidence that ‘This great contract between the King and the kingdom is concluded but not finished’. And there remained Salisbury’s ominous statement: ‘I long to hear my master say he approves it.’93 The conflicts of political thought and practice ‘I marvel that you should make a doubt for your assurance’, Salisbury challenged members. ‘I leave it unto you whether the king may not bind himself by an act of parliament. I know not what an act of parliament may not do.’94 The question of assurance, whether there could be a secure and binding agreement between James and his subjects, was the rock upon which the Great Contract foundered. Members resolved that assurance could only be by act of parliament, ‘in such sort as by the advice of my Lords, the Judges, shall be thought sufficient both for his Majesty’s annual revenue by this contract and also for the people’s security’.95 Salisbury expected that stable support would ultimately be established in the provisions for its levy while assurance 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Ibid. i. 163 (21 July); Commons journal, i. 453. Proceedings, 1610, i. 164–5 (23 July). Lords journal, ii. 661–2. Proceedings, 1610, i. 166. Ibid. i. 159. PRO, SP 14/56/42, fo. 136r ([24 July] 1610). Proceedings, 1610, ii. 289–90. Ibid. i. 66 (20 Apr.). Ibid. i. 159 (21 July).

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was never contested in Caesar’s long brief evaluating the Contract.96 However, the security of the subject preoccupied the Lower House: ‘with what cords we shall bind Sampson’s hands, that is to say his Majesty’s prerogative’.97 Members would have agreed readily with Salisbury’s assessment of the strength of an act of parliament, but they lived under a cloud of political practices and philosophical statements which undermined their trust in James and his governors. The political debates surrounding the Great Contract constitute a new chapter in an established debate on the relationship between James’s prerogative and the law. Members faced the issue with reference to purveyance in 1606. Those debates took place on levels of political philosophy and practical governance which proved contradictory. Members preferred legislation which enforced existing statutes to composition, but the Lords and judges argued against any bill by asserting ‘that the statuts for Purveiors doe not bind the King’.98 The composition arguments reveal the crippling disjunction at work. Francis More favoured it, but would leave the details of security in the bargain to the judges.99 Nicholas Fuller rounded on the notion. He had heard Justice Popham argue that statute could not bind James’s prerogative in purveyance. Until the ‘judges do directly affirme wee may have security lett us not talke of Composicion’, Hare argued. But for the judges to oblige was to make Hare’s own bill acceptable. Bacon argued that James could voluntarily dispense with purveyance as not being ‘essentiall and inseperable’ to his kingship while James intervened to commend the question to the judges.100 If ‘36 laws hath not helped us, one more will not ease or availe us’, answered Edwin Sandys, while if they should ‘compound for the incomberance and oppression we might by the same reason also be drawen to compounde for removing anie other greavance’.101 When Hare’s bill was allowed to pass to further the subsidy and was debated in the Lords, the judges became the issue. Hare reported their conference with the Lords, including Popham’s affirmation of the king’s prerogative in purveyance.102 Fuller fought Popham, but the chief justice stood firm and ‘delivered one Iudgment in all mens opinions of dangerous consequence, that the prerogative was not subiect to law, but that it was a transcendent above the reach of parlement’.103 When the ‘Iudges over-

96 Lindquist, ‘Great Contract’, 644–8, makes much of the problems of levy, but it is clear from the Lords journal, ii. 662, that its mechanics had never been part of the agenda during the session. 97 Winwood, Memorials, iii. 194. 98 Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 60; Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 27. 99 Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 60. 100 Ibid. 65–6. 101 Ibid. 71. 102 Ibid. 120. 103 Ibid. 121; PRO, SP 14/20/36, fo. 82v.

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ruled all on the prerogative side’, they destroyed the logical basis of security in any composition with James.104 Members had explicitly confronted the practical challenges of binding the prerogative by statute. They were unable to find an effective formula and the judges resisted their attempts. The dispute over John Cowell’s law dictionary, The interpreter, renewed the issue in 1610.105 A number of Cowell’s definitions and commentaries irritated members.106 That the English king was ‘above his law’ as an absolute monarch and therefore ‘to bind the prince to or by the laws were repugnant to the nature and constitution of an absolute monarchy’ particularly struck at assurance. James had no choice but to respond and intervened before any resolution could be made on punishing Cowell. James ‘had as absolute power as ever any monarch in this kingdom . . . [and] taketh himself tied unto no elected power’, but was careful to assert ‘the marriage between law and prerogative is inseparable and like twins they must joy and mourn together, live and die together, the separation of the one is the ruin of the other’.107 The common law was ‘the counsellor of his actions with which he will always consult in the course of his government’.108 For its boldness, Cowell’s book would be suppressed by proclamation.109 Tenures presented an opportunity for James to answer continuing concerns over his sympathy for ideas like Cowell’s. The royal philosopher contrasted the general power of kings in their likeness to gods and fathers with that of the ‘setled and established State’ of the English crown. In general, subjects were bound to supply their king’s necessities; in England that was a parliamentary process for which they were presently assembled. Good kings, unlike tyrants, lived within the bounds of their laws and James never doubted that he, above all good kings, would be remembered for having ‘his Lawes duly obserued’. James also restated the axiom with which he protected his prerogative: ‘I wil not be content that my power be disputed vpon: but I shall euer be willing to make the reason appeare of all my doings and rule my actions according to my Lawes.’ The practical extension of this stance came in James’s insistence that members dispute the abuses of government, not its legal establishment.110 While some members objected to liberal

104 PRO, SP 14/20/36, fo. 82v; Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 31–2. Burghley and Elizabeth had opposed similar legislation proposed by Hare in 1589 because the bill restrained the prerogative on both theoretical and practical grounds: Dean, Law-making, 81. 105 For discussion of Cowell see Sommerville, Royalists and patriots, 113–19; Burgess, Ancient constitution, 149–55; Linda Levy Peck, ‘Kingship, counsel and law in early Stuart Britain’, in J. G. A. Pocock, Gordon J. Schochet and Lois G. Schwoerer (eds), The varieties of British political thought, 1500–1800, Cambridge 1993, 91–4. 106 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 37–9. 107 Ibid. i. 29, 31, 50; Debates, 1610, 24. 108 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 51. 109 Ibid. ii. 49; Proclamations: James I, 243–5. 110 James VI & I, Political writings, 180–91.

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allusions to God and kingship, the majority found them agreeable.111 James had articulated the prerogative’s duality and his willingness to ‘maintain a clear distinction between his authority in essence and his actual legal authority in domestic affairs’, but the practical challenge of assurance had yet to be faced.112 Members considered the decision in Bate’s Case after a lengthy contest in which James warned them against disputing his prerogative or the judgement.113 Impositions were defended by Chief Baron Fleming as being part of the king’s absolute prerogative, exercised by the king in his estimation of the public good and incontestable.114 Argument revolved around whether the subjects’ trade goods constituted their property and fell within the purview of common law or, as Fleming argued, were commodities trafficked on the high seas, ‘beyond the territorial jurisdiction of English common-law’ and therefore subject to the absolute prerogative.115 While it might be argued ‘that impositions were less a form of taxation than a means of regulating trade’, this was disingenuous to the point of incredibility. Revenue drove impositions and it was difficult for members not to view them as taxation without consent and an attack on property rights.116 The bill against impositions which finally passed the Commons declared ‘that by the laws of England no impositions could be lawfully laid by the king upon the subjects’ goods but by consent in parliament’.117 The danger of not enacting such a statement of principle was to accept those aspects of Fleming’s decision which gave monarchs an absolute prerogative to impose upon merchandise and effectively create a precedent for taxation without consent which might be extended and upheld by the judges. When ‘the powder was spent on both sides’, in Dudley Carleton’s words, members had been unable to make either case in a matter so ‘intermixed with prooffs of divers natures: records, Acts of Parliament, judiciall acts, arguments legall, &c’. Members framed a petition which asserted parliament’s sovereign power of ‘taxing or imposing upon the subjects’ good or merchandises’. James’s predecessors had confirmed these rights in statute and members asked him to follow their examples with the abolition of all impositions set without parliamentary assent and by the passage of a law to prohibit the same course in future.118 Salisbury asserted that James was warranted by law, precedent and the judges’ decision in Bate’s Case: ‘I know not what he should have more.’119 Salisbury was unlikely to have responded otherwise, but his expla111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

Proceedings, 1610, ii. 59 n. 2. Burgess, Ancient constitution, 155. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 82–118. Guy, ‘Imperial crown’, 74–6. Burgess, Ancient constitution, 141–2. Sommerville, Royalists and patriots, 140–9. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 165 (17 July 1610). Ibid. ii. 266–7 (7 July). Ibid. i. 131; Debates, 1610, 154–62.

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nation for the setting of impositions is more interesting. He argued the merits of necessity from reason of state, a position originally examined by Dorset and in which he had concurred: it was then thought no ill counsaile to preferre the former project of Impositions as the best temporarie remedie for those charges which were like to come on too fast to attend a Parliament, rather then to make choice of extending the King’s prerogative for raysing of money any other waie upon the subjects or to make benefitt by any rigorous prosecution of penall lawes, much less to fall upon monopolies and other vaine projects devised by bankrupts and hatched in prisons.120

Salisbury’s hypocrisy was courageous not least because he and Dorset had long employed penal laws, monopolies and projects. Necessity was the crux. Salisbury avowed: I am sure if they knew your Majesty’s necessity they would, were they in my place, do as I do, let them think of me as they please. I assure myself I shall be freed from being either an Empson or Dudley. From my heart do I wish that impositions and the necessity thereof might end with this parliament and so your Majesty, your issue and estate were well and needed not these means.121

However, impositions were not a temporary measure, but a fundamental part of a long-term settlement of the crown, legitimated by an exchequer ruling which members refused to accept.122 Stronger thinking was behind the defence of purveyance in 1606. The consistent argument of the Greencloth had been that necessity absolved them from obeying the statutes and placed their actions outside statutory purview, while Salisbury maintained that James’s necessities would not allow any course with purveyance but composition.123 This was not simply James’s personal necessity. Salisbury and Northampton openly argued in 1610 that necessity produced a hydra of dangers which members had an obligation to repair.124 Members understood Salisbury to mean that the ‘King and the Prince must live in honour and plenty, if not in plenty, not in safety. If not in safety, we not in plenty.’125 Northampton praised members’ care for James’s wants as a manifestation of their ‘care of the public good’.126 The argument being advanced was that the public good required that James’s estate be sound because a ‘body more consumed than nourished would not be durable’.127 120 Debates, 1610, 156. Attorney-General Hobart explicitly defended impositions by reason of state during the Commons debates: Proceedings, 1610, ii. 199. 121 Proceedings, 1610, i. 133. 122 HH, MS Salisbury 118, fo. 144v. 123 Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 17–27. 124 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 24. 125 Ibid. ii. 35. 126 Ibid. ii. 40, 39–45 passim. 127 Ibid. ii. 44.

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Among his fellow lords, Salisbury stated simply that ‘True necessity must be satisfied and not disputed.’128 James was equally blunt: ‘The supply of the king is the good of the people.’129 The attainment or preservation of the public good, salus populi, was the purpose of the absolute prerogative.130 If the public good required that the king’s necessities be supplied, the fiscal implications were ominous and would seem to have been demonstrated in practice with purveyance and impositions. The depth of uncertainty felt by members over legislating on the prerogative was revealed in their first work on tenures. Their initial offer stipulated the conversion of all tenures to common socage, thereby wholly extinguishing wardship and other attendant feudal incidents.131 Beaulieu reported to Trumbull the wariness that moved this demand, their ‘fear of being circumvented in their Contract; because they hold this Matter of the Wardships to be so fast annexed to the King’s Prerogative, as that it cannot be wholly seperated from it, but by the extinguishment of the Tenures whereby he doth hold them’.132 However, James was determined to retain the honour and rank inherent in the different tenures. Chief Justice Popham and Chief Justice Coke expounded on the details of the offer and Coke argued that wardships and incidents were common prerogatives which subjects also possessed and could therefore be legislated away without extinguishing the tenures.133 Members debated the Lords’ position, fearful that by retaining the tenures ‘the old law of wardships might again be called to life’, but relented in the face of James’s resolution.134 However, they were adamant that the ‘judges and the King’s counsel that be actors in this business be named in the act of parliament, their memory to be recorded to all posterity’. Fears of adverse judicial interpretation were behind the Commons’ assertion in their memorial that ‘the Extent of every Article that is desired for the Good of the Commons, in this great Contract with His Majesty, should be expounded and explained, in all Clauses doubtful, by the House of Commons, according to their true Meaning’.135 The determination to extinguish tenures and assume adjudicative primacy was driven by the belief that the present political climate made legislating on the prerogative problematic. The linked issues of legislating on the prerogative and necessity legitimising the exercise of its absolute component brought the debate to dizzying heights of political thought. The issues forced members to admit that their 128 Ibid. i. 69 (26 Apr.). Another version records: ‘When I shall carry to the lower House a demand of 6,000,000 [sic] li. supply and 2,000,000 [sic] li. support, I must go furnished with good reason. I think this reason is necessity, which must be relieved’: ibid. i. 218. 129 Ibid. ii. 106. 130 Guy, ‘Imperial crown’, 75. 131 Proceedings, 1610, i. 53–4. 132 Winwood, Memorials, iii. 145. 133 Proceedings, 1610, i. 56–60, 64–5. 134 Ibid. ii. 70. 135 Lords journal, ii. 661–2.

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polity had no accepted or effective means of compelling James to obey the law.136 Members had the pronouncements of James, the judges and their colleagues to confirm this. To their argument that impositions stood as a precedent against taxation without consent, James answered (like Fleming in 1606) that this was tantamount to suggesting ‘that because a king may do in excessive manner, therefore he shall not do it at all’. Beware of such arguments, James warned: ‘You must not set such laws as to make the shadows of kings and dukes of Venice.’ Necessity was explicit. How, James asked, could it be a ‘fit matter to dispute taking away 70,000li. a year from me when you are called to consider of supply and support for me? I have expounded my necessities myself and my Treasurer at large to you and the first devise and dispute is what to take from me’. He avowed that only ‘some extraordinary necessity’ would cause him to lay further impositions and then only after he had taken counsel of his parliament, but he would reserve the final judgement to himself. As for the Contract specifically, James answered: ‘God grant it never do me nor my posterity good to resume that which I once bargain for.’137 This was the James of Basilicon doron and the True lawe who took counsel of his subjects in the debate on the public good and policy only at his discretion; the king who promised at his coronation to advance the common weal, but denied that this was a contract which made him answerable to anyone but God for his kingship. After James’s speech, Thomas Wentworth went away ‘exceeding sad and heavy . . . that he saw nothing in that speech any way to restrain the power of imposing, even upon our lands and goods, our property, but we must be still at the mercy (for the moderation therein) of a good and gracious king’.138 Subjects could only hope their king would be a good king. This was the inherent contradiction of the imperium that James had fashioned out of his Stewart kingship and Tudor inheritance. The polity could neither compel James to act for the public good nor define salus populi and necessity independently of him. Richard Spencer understood this when he spoke against composition for purveyance in 1606: no security can be given from the king. For as saied he as love is only betweene equalls in some degrea [sic] or measure so contracts and if such a contract be broken on the Kings side there is no remedy [but] to sue by peticion. And if a law passe on that behalfe no man can forbid the King to dispence with it.139

When necessity compelled the king to break their contract, Mr James asserted, ‘when our greavances notwithstanding continue, if wee be greaved for breach and that wee are notwithstanding trobled with purveiors . . . for south wee have tied the King to condicions which he cannot keepe’.140 136 137 138 139 140

A counter-argument is provided in Burgess, Absolute monarchy, 18–20. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 106. Ibid. ii. 108. Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 66. Ibid. 67.

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The collapse of the Great Contract Members had three months during which to reflect on the Great Contract and the challenges of contracting with their king and binding his prerogatives. By the time they returned in October, they had sounded out their countries and established the criteria by means of which their trust in James’s performance under the Great Contract would be satisfied.141 Like members of parliament, Salisbury and Caesar had spent the summer evaluating the Contract. Salisbury apparently called for copies of both memorials just before departing for Holdenby where he was to meet James.142 At the same time, Caesar comprehensively evaluated the Contract on fiscal and political grounds.143 The Contract had been agreed hurriedly amidst a confusion of additional propositions and they were sizing up the project.144 Evidence of James’s involvement in this process is indeterminate and largely circumstantial. Some of James’s reservations and demands delivered in the autumn session dove-tailed with those of Caesar and it would have been uncharacteristic for him to have remained disinterested. What will become clear is that Salisbury, Caesar and James were very nearly of one mind on the Contract, though with one substantial exception. Salisbury was willing to bargain for a better deal.145 James was not. Salisbury’s study of the Commons’ memorial compelled him to inform members that it ‘containeth much ambiguity with reference to addendo, diminuendo, etc.’.146 The tardiness of both Houses in perfecting the Contract compounded his concern. Salisbury was angry with what he took to be a cool-

141 142

PRO, SP 14/57/32, fo. 44r–v; SP 14/57/62, fo. 85r–v. The response to Salisbury’s request is PRO, SP 14/57/12, fo. 18r–v (10 Aug.). On 9 August he wrote to Caesar of his departure for Holdenby, and seems to have left that day or on the following one: BL, MS Add. 36767, fos 280r–1v. On 6 August Lake, Suffolk, Worcester and Knollys were at Holdenby; Lake was sent on to Kirkby with letters for James; Suffolk wrote to Salisbury on 7 August that he, Worcester and Knollys would wait at Holdenby for James and attend him there until Salisbury arrived. It appears that James did not in fact reach Holdenby before 11 August, by which time Salisbury was already there: Lake to Salisbury, Holdenby, 5 Aug., SP 14/57/5, fos 8r–9v; Lake to Salisbury, Holdenby, 6 Aug., SP 14/57/7, fo. 12r–v; Lake to Salisbury, Kirkby, 7 Aug., SP 14/57/8, fos 13r–14v; Suffolk to Salisbury, [Holdenby]), 7 Aug., SP 14/57/9, fo. 15r–v; Salisbury to Caesar, [Holdenby], 11 Aug., BL, MS Add. 36767, fos 282r–3. 143 BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fos 125r–39v (17 Aug.); MS Lansdowne 151, fos 32r–46v, is a misfoliated draft; the proper sequence of folios is 40r–1v, 32r–9v, 42r–6v. Caesar’s more realistic assessment of the Contract’s value excluded the likelihood of improving income by trading away specific revenue devices. He settled on a net gain of £100,000 from accepting parliament’s annual support of £200,000 after trading those existing sources of revenue: MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 44v. 144 HH, MS Salisbury 206, fo. 80r–v. 145 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 301. 146 Ibid., i. 252 (23 Oct.); Lords journal, ii. 661–2.

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ness on their part, rehearsing James’s continuing necessity and arguing the benefits of the Contract, tasks which he had not believed it would be necessary to repeat.147 Waving their memorial, Salisbury called it ‘a contract and no contract, for a power is left to add, diminish and explain’. Speaking for himself and the Lords, Salisbury seconded James’s position: he was not ‘so enamored with it as to yield to all your desires and to cram the child is the way to choke the child’. James’s message was clear. They must have a speedy and binding conclusion. ‘The longer you are about it’, Salisbury warned, ‘the more will the King’s affections kindle against the contract.’ Salisbury seemingly tested the waters to see if he could move members to increase their offer. Caesar’s brief undoubtedly provided the impetus. Harking back to his humanist education and training in the civil law, Caesar examined the Contract’s fiscal and political dimensions in utramque partem, hoping to establish the utility of so unprecedented a reform.148 Caesar answered his own questions by this pro–contra debate, but took the unusual step of having his analysis copied. There seems little doubt that, in the context of their partnership and friendship, Caesar did this for Salisbury’s benefit. Salisbury started his journey back to London on 15 August, intending to meet Caesar that coming Saturday (18 August).149 Caesar’s brief was composed on the 17th. Conventional scholarship has assumed that both copies were essentially the same product. In fact, Caesar subsequently revised his original. It is difficult not to believe that Caesar and Salisbury spent much of their Saturday meeting discussing the brief, with Salisbury’s criticisms being found in Caesar’s corrections. Further, unfinished, notes among Salisbury’s papers were drawn from Caesar’s brief and more closely reflected his revisions than the scrivener’s original.150 The amendments cast the Contract in a more favourable light and were more realistic about financial alternatives.151 Optimistic retrenchments were replaced with vague, unspecified abatements.152 The original posited no clear gain by £200,000 support, but the revision assessed the revenues to be reliquished and their possible improvements more stringently and arrived at a gain of £50,000; £100,000 if improvements were excluded.153 The conclu-

147 148 149

Proceedings, 1610, ii. 297–300 (25 Oct.). Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 5–10; Skinner, Reason and rhetoric, 19–65. BL, MS Add. 36767, fos 284r–5v (13 Aug.); HH, MS Salisbury 196, fo. 14r–v (15 Aug.). See also Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 176–7. 150 HH, MS Salisbury 206, fo. 80r–v (undated). 151 Debates, 1610, 164–79, reprinted the clean copy. Hill, Lindquist, Prestwich and Smith uniformly reference Gardiner’s transcription apparently without having read the actual manuscript copies. 152 BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fos 41v, 32r–v [misfoliated], 33v. 153 Ibid. fos 125r–v, 40r–v. Caesar generally excluded the possible improvements to the revenues being traded and settled on the Contract’s net value as £100,000 (fo. 44v). The assessment in HH, MS Salisbury 206, fo. 80r, gives a net gain of £98,000, far closer to

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sions were still discouraging. The deficit for ordinary and extraordinary charges had grown from £150,000 to £200,000 thanks to Prince Henry’s establishment and revenues lost through redress of grievances, particularly impositions.154 Even with the Contract, the crown was short of the support it required by at least £100,000. Caesar was pessimistic about getting more: ‘certeinely, they will never bee p[er]swaded to any yerely support further then they have offered already’.155 Salisbury probably agreed, but made another attempt. James’s necessity remained and Salisbury put that case before members with inflated numbers, hoping – yet again – to move them to assist. Sounding much like James in the last session, he carped that the consequence of their demands in grievances and impositions was to deprive the king of £60,000. Members might retort that ‘he had it not all of right’, but James had it ‘de facto and hath lost it’. Further, his debts had risen from £300,000 to £500,000 (padding Caesar’s figures by £100,000). These circumstances challenged James’s resolution ‘never to be a poor king upon this contract and yet is poorer than he was’. Salisbury hoped members would draw the obvious conclusion, that James needed more from them, which, from his focus on impositions, must include a refusal of their impositions bill. However, he cautioned that they were deceived if they believed that because the king’s wants multiplied their desires should also. James was unlikely to yield more in exchange.156 Salisbury looked to the most compelling argument in the brief to coerce members: James could subsist without parliament. Salisbury protested that he did not speak ‘by way of menace’, but the consequences of failure must be faced: I am no physician to anatomise the King’s wants; but except you redeem the things which before I speak of, they must be more pressed than they have been. . . . I do not say the King shall send you an Empson and a Dudley, but this I say, the King must not want . . . he must not lack to please you. If a ward fall it will cost you more than it hath done.157

By positing James’s subsistence without support, Salisbury was rejecting the core of his argument with James over the past two years, but reflecting the conclusion of Caesar’s brief: ‘I trust yo[w] are satisfied that the king is not in Caesar’s revised figure of £100,000 than his earlier assessments, first of £65,000, then £45,000 and finally £85,000: BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 40r. 154 HH, MS Salisbury 206, fo. 80r, gave the same figures of £50,000 and £100,000 for the ordinary and extraordinary deficits respectively. The other lost revenues were from seacoals, part of the pre-emption of tin, logwood and alehouses: BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 41r. The original (fo. 126r) gave the total as £48,000. 155 Ibid. fo. 32v. 156 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 300–1. Caesar estimated the losses at £50,000: BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 41r. 157 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 300–1.

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such extreme need of the Co[m]mons helpe to relieve his p[re]sent wantes, but that he can by his owne meanes & w[i]thout taking any desperate course relieve hi[m]selfe.’158 The brief’s central political defence of such a course was that in using his prerogative rights James wronged no one. Salisbury’s conclusion echoed this: ‘the King will not do injustice to his subject; he will not do all he may do. But more than he hath done he must do’.159 James weighed in when members ignored Salisbury’s prodding. The last session was consumed in ‘nothing but joy and acclamations, the other half in nothing but ejulatus and grievances’. All the time his estate ‘lay a-bleeding’ and ‘he could not abate his expenses nor cut his coat according to his cloth because he could not know his cloth till the parliament was done’. Their grievances had also taken £30,000 from his revenue and their lingering plunged him deeper into debt. James demanded a resolution: ‘The conclusion is this . . . resolve upon the giving me an answer affirmative or negative to your memorial and then whatsoever you shall offer to me I shall be ready to hear. . . . I have offered you a bargain, look into it and then to what you as dutiful subjects shall present me.’160 The Commons’ offer of £200,000 was well known. That, in framing his demand, James stated that he was waiting to hear from them indicates that he, like Salisbury, was trying for a better offer. Members deferred an answer and James spelled things out in the plainest terms. It defied common sense that he would proceed with the Contract except that he received supply and support. Did not the last session open with a demand for the ‘entire repair of his wants and establishing of his estate’? Had matters not moved to support only after he received a ‘general promise’ of supply?161 No man, James affirmed, ‘can be so weak in himself nor so easy to be abused as to conceive that that was a relinquishment of the matter of supply’. James demanded £500,000 as the price of continuing with the Contract: could he conclude a bargain which did not preserve his estate and posterity and was that possible ‘without a large supply of treasure and yearly revenue’?162 The language is oblique, but James’s sudden demand was probably a response to his own realisation that Salisbury had given up hope of getting supply. Caesar’s brief addressed future supply, but the pro-Contract position expressed serious doubts while the contra voice went to great lengths to explain how the debt could be paid without it. The pro-position asked whether ‘w[i]thout p[ro]ceeding in the s[ai]d co[n]tract or giving the[m] better co[n]tentment in theire p[ro]posed greiva[n]ces, yo[w] shall be hable to

158 159 160 161

BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 35r. Ibid. fo. 35v; Proceedings, 1610, ii. 300–1. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 309–11 (31 Oct.). The Commons’ resolution on this point had been vague enough for James to have had grounds for interpreting it as a promise: Commons journal, i. 403. 162 Proceedings, 1610, ii. 313–16 ([6 Nov.]).

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drawe fro[m] them one peny more for yo[u]r supply’.163 Grievances were the real key, the pro-voice positing that ‘It may well bee, that his Ma[jes]ty, by yealding the[m] co[n]tent in some of theire grieva[n]ces, wherin they are not yet satisfied w[i]th the late answeres may win fro[m] the[m] 3 subsidies & 6 fifteenths.’164 Caesar’s opposing position was clearly sceptical of those preconditions and provided instead a complex series of projects and sales of royal lands to service the debt.165 Tellingly Salisbury had been silent on supply throughout the last session and had even protested his detachment from James’s peremptory demand in May.166 Armed with Caesar’s projects for a non-parliamentary solution, Salisbury may have been content to forgo supply, but James was not. However, James’s unwillingness to return to grievances ensured that he could not meet the preconditions in Caesar’s brief.167 Members’ irresolution, which unleashed James’s abrupt demand for supply, was a consequence of their coming to grips with the challenge of establishing satisfactory security for the provisions of the Contract. They made redress the test of their assurance, their ability to bind the prerogative and the measure of the trust which they could place in James to frame his kingship according to the law and public good. To Salisbury’s address, Maurice Berkeley had risen and opined that it was something other than lacklustre attendance which explained their backwardness.168 Berkeley wished that ‘the first thing we do be to call for the King’s answers to our grievances and if we find the answers satisfactory we may then with cheerfulness go on with the contract’. His argument was entangled, but acute: if we find them short of our expectation and not satisfactory in points where nothing but law is demanded, when this bargain is made, we can have a law made for our security. And if we find we may not be sure of that, what courage can we have to go on to the bargain?

Berkeley was almost certainly referring to their bill against impositions, first requested in the petition of grievances and presently lying unread in the Lords. He was among the most outspoken critics of James’s treatment of their grievances after supply had been voted in 1606 and pointed to it as a sign of his bad faith. Fuller seconded Berkeley and the House brushed aside George More’s plea on James’s behalf to perfect and pass their memorial. In pursuing this course, Berkeley and other members held to a resolution which had been established in the previous session. Sandys informed Salisbury in the session’s dying hours that four things of importance remained for the Contract including ‘the grievances satisfied and the contract 163 164 165 166 167 168

BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 41v. Ibid. fo. 32v. Ibid. fos 33v–5r. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 132–3. Ibid. ii. 311. Ibid. ii. 305 (27 Oct.).

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perfected’.169 Samuel Calvert certainly maintained that understanding in his letter to William Trumbull: ‘it will be pressed to have the King bound to banish all grievances in consideration of the Royal contribution of £200,000 yearly’.170 James’s answers to the grievances were called for immediately, but Bowyer stalled on having them copied and delivered from the Lords.171 James’s Halloween demand for an answer on the Contract intervened, but members refused to delay the reading until after his address. James understood what members were doing with the grievances and challenged their course: It may be objected that you will be ready to relieve the King’s necessities; but withal you would hear an answer to your grievances. In the former session I was not only content to hear and to promise to make answer to your grievances before the end of the parliament, but I did give you an answer; now to require this again is actum agere, to tread upon my feet. . . . I am sure I have answered you in all. I know not whether I have pleased you but it befits you therefore to give me an answer.172

Members spent two days debating James’s demand and reached the compromise position of deferring a direct answer but perfecting their memorial as Salisbury had first entreated.173 Members, including the likes of Berkeley and Brooke, were moved by the authority of James’s demand for a reply, but strong voices continued to challenge the king over grievances. Edward Duncombe believed that there was no possibility of answering James without first examining grievances: ‘If there be a jealousy that the justice of the kingdom hath been stop[ped], then there may be some jealousy in this too, therefore remove away this jealousy.’ ‘Doubt is upon security’, argued Thomas Wentworth. ‘If the King have a power over the laws, we cannot have security, therefore we must see if the law can bind the King, then it may be.’ Fuller argued that seeing the law properly executed with regard to impositions, the ecclesiastical commission and the Welsh shires was the foundation upon which they could proceed in security. One Mr Hyde (unidentified) reminded his colleagues that they retained the power of addition and proposed to include impositions in the Contract and to ‘have in our bargain a declaration of the law of England in point of impositions and other such things’.174 The speakers who made a difference in responding to James’s demand all stuck at grievances. Pretence at consensual language gave way to candour in their speeches which reveal underlying conflicts on principle. Subsidies were not of the greatest concern to Brooke, who did not want to see the bargain break for that reason and believed, tellingly, that if James could not supply his

169 170 171 172 173 174

Ibid. i. 161 ([21 July]). HMC, Downshire, ii. 328 (22 July). Proceedings, 1610, ii. 305. Ibid. ii. 311 (31 Oct.). Ibid. ii. 312 ([3 Nov.]). Ibid. ii. 392–400 (2, 3 Nov.).

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necessity ‘with the right hand, he would take it with the left’.175 But if impositions were not included in the bargain it was better to break and leave the king to impose alone rather than assess the subject for support and see impositions continue.176 Mr James, who had spoken strongly against composition in 1606, became passionate that ‘so long as an arbitrary power of government (of impositions, of proclamations) shall remain, what heart can we have to go on to the business?’177 If there was a defining moment in the history of the Great Contract, it came in the speech of Thomas Beaumont, who preceded Mr James. He argued that they were undone both ways in the bargain, either the king’s necessity went unsupplied or the subject was impoverished. They could not agree with the king, but ‘if we break, what shall we think can become of us, when even as things now stand our liberties are infringed. . . . Is it now held inconvenient to speak for confirmation of that Charter which our ancestors got with much sweat and blood?’ ‘Notwithstanding so many laws as have been made that no imposition shall be set without assent of parliament’, he charged, ‘are not impositions set voluntarily and maintained to be just? In the case of purveyance wherein 36 laws were made to restrain it, is it now an undutiful speech to name the word law?’ Beaumont was incapable of believing in security for their bargain and the obscure MP made his case in words oft-quoted: ‘The walls between the King and us are the laws and if he and his ministers shall leap over them or break them down, what have we to secure us?’ If impositions were put down, the levy reasonable and ‘all our grievances drawn in together into the contract’, Beaumont’s constituents were ‘willing to give 200,000li. a year and also to give some present supply’. Whether Beaumont truly brought the voices of his country into the Commons is unknown, but he spoke for many members who agreed, ‘I think not 5 voices excepted’, that they could not proceed with the Great Contract according to James’s demands.178 Roger Wilbraham recorded what must have been a common sentiment at the Contract’s collapse: ‘the Commons never treated further of that contract, the most of them doubting, those great royalties were never intended to be abolished’.179 On 14 November Speaker Phelips delivered James’s acknowledgement that the members had rejected the Contract, but that did not end the session.180 The crown attempted to bargain redress of some grievances, including several points in the Contract, in exchange for normal supply. The political atmosphere, hardly conducive to negotiations, was perhaps best captured by Samuel Sandys’s tart comment that ‘since we could not have fair Helen, the Lords would turn us to her dirty

175 176 177 178 179 180

Ibid. ii. 317; Debates, 1610, 129. Debates, 1610, 129. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 319. Ibid. Ibid. ii. 320n. Ibid. i. 327.

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apron’.181 Following a private meeting between James and thirty members at which Henry Neville denied that supplying the king’s ordinary necessities was their responsibility, James needed little convincing that parliament was a spent force.182 His opinion was confirmed when Thomas Wentworth and John Hoskyns subsequently launched into attacks against the Scots.183 Adjournments and prorogations followed, beginning on 24 November, and parliament was formally dissolved in February 1611. The events surrounding the Great Contract must give us pause to reconsider the ‘revisionist’ orthodoxy on parliaments and politics, most recently in Conrad Russell’s discussion of the Addled Parliament. That failed assembly alone, Russell contends, manifested genuine constitutional conflict.184 Further, conflict in 1614 was not between ‘rival constitutional ideas’, but one ‘almost exclusively centered on royal claims to raise money’.185 Accordingly, constitutional dispute over impositions – every bit as disputed in 1610 as in 1614 – had ‘little chance of developing [into] a serious argument between prerogative and the rule of law when James was as certain he was legally in the right as the Commons were’.186 Yet that is precisely the question members unsuccessfully confronted with purveyance, naturalisation, impositions and tenures in James’s first parliament. Nor could they effectively address that question when presented with the potentially contradictory and ill-defined nature of the dual prerogative and when, as Russell perceptively remarked on impositions, ‘both sides were so firmly convinced that they were legally in the right that they never fully absorbed that the other party thought differently’.187 Whether this represents a ‘constitutional’ conflict per se is a sterile argument over a Whig–Revisionist shibboleth. Rather, in the Jacobean polity this was something potentially insoluble, and perilous: an inability to interpret the philosophy of James’s imperium in a way which reconciled it to his practices as king, not least in the relationship between law and prerogatives. These incongruities of both principle and practice within fiscal policy, seen in matters like impositions, purveyance and projects generally, were compromising the performance of governance and a parliamentary role in it. The question at the heart of negotiations on the Great Contract was really a simple one. Would James be true to his word embodied in an act of parliament? James told parliament in 1604 that ‘The righteous and iust King doeth . . . acknowledge himselfe to bee ordained for the procuring of the wealth and prosperitie of his people’ and that he would ‘ever preferre the weal of the body and of the whole Common-wealth, in making of good Lawes and constitu-

181 182 183 184 185 186 187

HMC, Rutland, i. 424. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 403. Debates, 1610, 144–5. Russell, Addled Parliament, 5–6, 25–6. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 7. Ibid.

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tions, to any particular or priuate ends of mine’.188 Were that the extent of James’s espoused philosophy, members in 1610 would have answered the question affirmatively. But there was another: ‘although I haue said, a good king will frame all his actions according to the Law; yet is hee not bound thereto but of his good will and for good example-giuing to his subiects’.189 Which James would give the royal assent to the act for support? Ellesmere may have derided it, but, reflecting on James’s first parliament, he recognised the Commons’ stance: ‘there was no hope to have any security for the same, because they sawe that their grievances were not answered and lawe & Iustice was denyed theym’.190 Redress of grievances was members’ assurance in Salisbury’s Great Contract for parliamentary endowment. On a practical level redress tested James’s good faith against the precedent of 1606. But redress also embodied the reaffirmation of parliamentary counsel, one of the subjects’ means of participating in policy-making which affected the commonweal.191 The dogged defence of the prerogative by James, governors and judges had to be answered. Satisfying members’ grievances, particularly on impositions, would demonstrate that statute could bind the prerogative, that the law could stand against the demands of necessity and the king could be compelled to act for the public good. James could not, would not, provide that demonstration of trust, of consensus. Speaking of security during the union debates, he avowed that ‘yee need neuer doubt of my inclination: For I will not say any thing which I will not promise, nor promise any thing which I will not sweare; What I sweare I will signe and what I signe, I shall with Gods grace euer performe’.192 ‘I would heartily wish’, James intoned, ‘my brest were a transparent glasse for you all to see through that you might looke into my heart and then would you be satisfied of my meaning.’193 In 1610 grievances were the glass through which members hoped to look into the king’s heart, but James refused them and in so doing shattered Salisbury’s plans for the refoundation of the monarchy.

188 189 190

James VI & I, Political writings, 142–3. Ibid. 75. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2599. This same position was staked out after the proclamation dissolving parliament: A record of some worthy proceedings in the honovrable, wise and faithfvll House of Commons in the late parliament, London 1611 (STC 7751); A memorable speech in the Hovse of Commons 1611, London [1611] (STC 7740), 8; an edition of Worthy proceedings which omits the compiler’s preface; Proclamations: James I, 257–8 (31 Dec. 1610). 191 James VI & I, Political writings, 155–8. 192 Ibid. 178. 193 Ibid. 162.

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5

The Failure of Jacobean Kingship, 1611–1617 There is a timeless feel of failure and decay to the 1610s: the death of Robert Cecil, the emergence of Robert Carr as James’s favourite, an addled parliament, the poisonous intrigues of the Howards, Carr’s fall and the spectacular rise of George Villiers. James appears as an indolent king presiding over a regime riddled by faction, corruption and murderous intrigue. Contemporaries painted these details in vivid hues and left historians a compelling lead to follow, but the portrait is vastly overdrawn. The regime’s failures and the nastiness of patronage politics are justifiably recorded, but they have skewed the perspective. We lack a corresponding portrait of the period from the standpoint of kingship and governance. There is a good reason for this. We do not possess the voluminous working papers and collections from which to depict governance with the same depth and clarity as in the first decade of James’s reign. It may never be possible to produce a finished portrait of kingship and governance in the second decade, but there are discernible patterns in the work of governors on finance that are sufficient to suggest that we cannot present the 1610s only as a study in irredeemably corrupt court politics or interpret finance entirely from that perspective. This chapter will endeavour to provide a more rounded treatment, paying particular attention to James’s agenda for policy and its interaction with the treasury regimes of Salisbury, Northampton and the earl of Suffolk. Fiscal policy after 1610 It is now somewhat unfashionable to suggest that parliament occupied a central place in the minds of Jacobean or Caroline governors outside the 1620s or 1640s. Their political horizons focused on court and patronage and parliament was an occasional venue in which to pursue court-based disputes over place and policy.1 Thus parliament variously acted as a vehicle for proand anti-Spanish voices, those equally moved by proposed marriage alliances (and substantial dowries) with France, Tuscany or Savoy and coalitions eager

1 Conrad Russell, ‘Parliamentary history in perspective, 1604–1629’, History lxi (1976), 1–27; Derek Hirst, ‘Court, country and politics before 1629’, in Sharpe, Faction and parliament, 105–38; Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, ‘After revisionism’, in their Conflict in early Stuart England: studies in religion and politics, 1603–1642, London 1989, 26–32.

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to reconfigure patterns of influence or, especially after 1614, to break the stranglehold of Carr and the Howards.2 These motives prompted parliament ‘talk’ picked up by court contacts and passed on to agents like Winwood, Carleton and Trumbull. However, it might be argued that the problematic sources for the 1610s have also distorted our sense of parliament. It occupied a place in the minds of James and his governors which transcended court politics. This is not to suggest that the decade should again be written as a parliamentary narrative, but that the collapse of the Great Contract directly influenced how governors conceived of parliament and did so in a manner which substantially affected kingship and fiscal policy. The failure of parliament in 1610 was a source of political consternation. Projects held out hope that new and established revenues could serve the demands of governance and patronage, of public good and private gain, in a more robust fashion. However, governors never operated under the illusion that eager Merecrafts held more than an uncertain solution to the crown’s outstanding debts or persistently large deficits. Salisbury confessed to James that ‘I be not able to recover your estate out of the hands of those great wants, to which your parliament hath now abandoned you, seeing that place hath ever been the only foundation of supply to those princes whose necessities have been beyond the cares and endeavours of private men.’3 Caesar composed the assessment which underpinned Salisbury’s statement: the debt was £400,000 and the annual deficit ran to £140,000.4 Parliament was the logical recourse when large, pressing demands confronted the crown, something which had been a political reality throughout the Elizabethan apprenticeship of James’s governors. The failure of the Contract constituted a watershed, one which Salisbury explained to the king: ‘Now that the parliament hath left your Majesty to stand upon your own foundation, fixed only upon the firm and lasting pillars of your ancient powers and profits . . . it is not now a work to repair some small defects, but to raise a new building.’5 For the next decade, governors faced a notable conceptual and practical challenge with fiscal policy: how to effect repairs in James’s estate and make it self-sustaining without parliamentary revenue. At the same time parliament represented the traditional recourse for major financial challenges. It is hardly surprising that this juxtaposition of political reality and instinct made for a fiscal policy that bordered on the schizophrenic. It contributed to periods of uncertainty as James and governors struggled to conceptualise and then raise that ‘new building’.

2

Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 208–16; Russell, Addled Parliament, 14–16; PRO, SP 14/96/48, fo. 83v. 3 An early draft of this address, corrected by Salisbury, described parliament as ‘the publicke fountain as yet so dry’: HH, MS Salisbury 140, fo. 224v. 4 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 138r–9v (2 Jan. 1610 [1611], reviewed and amended 12 Oct. 1611). 5 ‘Several speeches’, 312 (23 Jan. 1610 [1611]).

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Finally, they also had to deal with the demands this would place on his kingship in practice. Salisbury (and Caesar) offered James a framework in January 1611.6 The deficit was the principal cause of the debt and Salisbury counselled retrenchment. However, the issue was conceived in larger terms than a wasteful household, corrupt officers and bounty. Salisbury addressed the operation of James’s kingship with respect to patronage and his oversight of crown finance. He did not counsel another episodic cost-cutting drive but a redirection of policy characterised by a permanent retrenchment in expenses. It was James’s duty to adjust spending to fit political and financial circumstances just as, for instance, he dispensed bounty liberally and opened the avenues of counsel when he took possession of his new realm in 1603. James’s kingship must adapt itself to what Salisbury presented as a pre-accession norm: Caesar’s comparison of current expenses with those of 1602 which suggested £74,000 in cuts with the cofferer of the household, the king’s wardrobe, his chamber expenses and navy accounting for most of the savings.7 Caesar proposed a ‘collegial’ approach whereby officers ‘carefully examine, whether that it bee not faisable’ to establish a budget to which they then would adhere.8 Salisbury pressed James to hold officers accountable for preventing charges in the first place, insist that they present him with quarterly accounts and force them to ‘yield you a reason for’ increases.9 The complementary course was to improve revenues, which Caesar believed was possible with ‘due regard that the subiect bee not oppressed, w[hi]ch may iustly bee, where the subiect shall pay no more then before, but all paymentes shall run to the right centre of the kinges coferes’. He had in mind the great farm of the customs and sweet wines, casualties, accounts of receivers-general and sheriffs, wardship and projects not ‘contrary to the lawes nowe in force or iustly distastefull to the people’.10 Salisbury and Caesar (with the exchequer barons) assumed responsibility for improvements, but a ‘collegial’ effort with and against vested interests was only possible with James’s authority, demonstrated by direct involvement. In effect, they asked James to refashion his kingship by engaging personally not just with aspects of counsel and decision-making, but also more directly and frequently with the oversight and ongoing evaluation of policy. Salisbury warned that he and Caesar ‘have not in our hands or heads the power of prevention’ and requested that they be exonerated for the failings of officers if James did not embrace their counsel and adapt his kingship accordingly.11

6 7

Ibid. 312–17. BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 158r–9v (20 Dec. 1610), 148r–9v (16 Jan. 1610 [1611], reviewed and amended 16 Jan. 1611 [1612], 26 Apr. 1614); ‘Several speeches’, 315. 8 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 138r. 9 ‘Several speeches’, 316–17. 10 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 138r–v. 11 ‘Several speeches’, 314–17.

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Salisbury and Caesar did not limit their counsel to the deficit and normal spending and Caesar’s working papers suggest the difficulty of conceptualising policy without parliament. Caesar calculated that extraordinary, nonrecurring expenses had averaged £100,000 annually. He could only leave extraordinaries in time of war or in peace for the ‘necessity, co[n]veniency or honour of the king or kingdome . . . to the greate wisedome of the Parliament, to who[m] it apperteineth’.12 But Caesar adopted an almost parliamentary outlook in distinguishing between kinds of expense. He separated out those for ‘pleasure or bountie’. This would seem to signal Caesar’s reading of recent events as one in which it had become almost politically unthinkable to obtain supply for anything tainted by private gain. For such expenses he wrote, ‘I knowe not in all the world what meanes may bee thought on to beare the burden’ save the £40,000 annually received in repayment of the Dutch loans, but unless they were stopped, they ‘will prove more inco[n]venient to the king & state, then I dare speake or thinke at this present’.13 Salisbury had no such luxury when facing James and again played the political foil to Caesar’s analyst. He repeated in abbreviated form earlier arguments for judging suitors on merit and pressed his master to rule once and for all on grantable suits.14 James could no longer play Cyrus to the sceptical Croesus and think that filling certain subjects’ purses ensured that all of them would act as his treasury in time of need. However, the situation only decayed. When Caesar reviewed his memo in October, the deficit had increased by £20,000, nothing had been accomplished in the matter of new revenues, abatements or improvements and the debt had grown by £100,000. Caesar resorted to counselling land sales to finance the latter while deriding ideas to pay pressing debts by more borrowing.15 The failure to lay the foundations of Salisbury’s new building between 1611 and 1612 must stand as an indictment of James’s kingship.16 The most pronounced element was the personal and political strain between James, his English governors and the political nation.17 James was personally wounded by English xenophobia and the failure of refoundation in parliament.18 Thomas Wentworth and John Hoskyns had done much to stoke the king’s ire. Wentworth raised Cyrus’ maxim (though attributed to Constantine) that it was ‘better to have his treasure in his subject’s purses then in his treasury’ before descending to impolitic rhetoric: he would be ‘glad to heare of Spayne, that the Kinge spent all upon his favorites and wanton courtiers’ and invoked

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 138v. Ibid. fos 138v–9r, 211r–12v. ‘Several speeches’, 314–15. BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 138r–9v. PRO, SP 14/61/33, fo. 61r (26 Jan. 1611). PRO, SP 14/63/29, fo. 39r (12 Apr. 1611). HH, MS Salisbury 147, fo. 162r–v (7 Dec. 1610).

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‘Rehoboam’s ancient counsellors’ to fault those counselling James.19 For Hoskyns, James’s financial difficulties rested with those that begged so much of the King as the kingdom hath sat in consultation these seven years how to relieve the King and know not how to do it. . . . This fault he concluded could not be personal but national, but where he should lay it, he knew not. The Irishmen, he said, certainly were not to blame for this; for we see rather than they will do it, they turn costermongers. The Dutchmen could not be accused of; they would take any course of industry to prevent it. And the English, he said, he could quit of this offense.20

The Scots were damned by omission as those holding ‘consultation how to draw out of this cesterne as fast as wee fill it’.21 James’s revealing letter to the council speaks of dejection over more than just impolitic speeches: Onely we are sory of our ill fortune in this cuntry, that having lived so long as we did in the Kingdome where we were born we came out of it with an unstained reputation and without anie grudge in the peoples hartes but for wanting of us. Wherein we have misbehaved our selfe here we know not nor we can never yet learn. . . . Our fame and actions have been daylie tossed like tennice bals amongest them and all that spite and malice durst doe to disgrace and infame us hath been used. To be short this lower howse by their behaviour have periled and annoyed our health, wounded our reputation, emboldened all ill natured people, encroched upon manie of our priviledges and plagued our purse with their delayes. It onely resteth now that yow labor all you can to doe that yow thinke best to the repairing of our estate. And as for the repairing and clearing of our hono[u]r we will ourself thinke specially there uppon and at o[u]r return acquaint you with o[u]r thoughtes therein.22

This was a reaction not only to parliament’s failure to relieve his necessities, but also to the activities of members like Hoskyns and Wentworth who turned the serious business of finance into a partisan attack on the Scots. He was further irritated by his councillors’ own partisanship in refusing to punish Hoskyns or Wentworth. Some of James’s personal anger toward the English can be gauged by his paying off the debts of his bedchamber cronies, a move which, among other things, provoked clashes between the Scots and the exchequer officers over fees for service.23 Perhaps the most revealing remark on James and parliament was John Castle’s satisfied jibe about the king’s difficulties with the Edinburgh convention in 1617: ‘ “The English will gett this

19 20 21 22 23

Debates, 1610, 144. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 344. Debates, 1610, 145. HH, MS Salisbury 147, fo. 162r–v (7 Dec. 1610). Cuddy, ‘Union’, 117; HMC, Downshire, iii. 21.

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proffitt by it, not to be held the only refractories of the world in accommodating their souveraignes desiers.” ’24 If James was personally affected, he was also politically influenced by events. Three days after the session was prorogued in December, Salisbury replied to a letter from his master discussing what had transpired: ‘I am not a little greved at my hard fortune (though more at my faults) when I looke back upon that Rock, whereon I rann.’25 Salisbury’s bargaining ran aground on grievances and the paucity of means to bind the contracting parties. The basics of parliamentary politics were called into question by the Contract’s failure. This was the meaning of James’s original letter to Salisbury, often in hindsight interpreted simply as a condescending rebuke. He wrote I have fownde that by the perturbations of youre mynde, ye have brokkin foorthe in more passionate & strange discoursis these two laste sessions of parliament . . . quhairin for pittie of youre greate burthen I forbare to admonishe you . . . youre greatest error hathe bene that ye ever expectid to drawe honnie out of gall, being a litle blyndet with the selfe love of youre owin counsall in holding together of this parliament, qwhair of all men waire dispaired, as I have oftt tolde you, but youre selfe alone.26

But that was past and it was ‘nou tyme for you to caste youre caire upon the nexte best meanes how to helpe my state, since ye see thaire is no more truste to be laide upon this rotten reede of Egipte’.27 James’s characterisation of parliament as a rotten reed represents both an expression of anger and political calculation. He had no difficulty understanding how little could be expected from parliament financially. It is sometimes overlooked that a crucial facet of James’s kingship, built as it was around counsel and conversation, was that he listened closely and reflected on what individuals said, members of parliament included. He met thirty members on 16 November ‘as private men’ for an open exchange, asked them whether or not they believed he was in need and, when they agreed, inquired whether his subjects ought to relieve him or not. Henry Neville answered frankly and ‘with a distinction; where youre Majesty’s expense groweth by the commonwealth we are bound to maintain it, otherwise not’.28 Earlier in the day Samuel Lewknor offered members an interpretation of the Cyropaedia at odds with James’s own. Lewknor had read of Cyrus that, when he had exhausted his treasure with gifts and could not be supplied by his people as he expected, he wrote to his friends who had in so large a measure tasted of his bounty to send him by a day appointed such sums of money as they could, which they did and brought in a great treasure. 24 25 26 27 28

HMC, Downshire, vi. 219. HH, MS Salisbury 134, fo. 117v (9 Dec. [1610]). Ibid. fos 143r–4v (6 Dec. 1610). Ibid. fo. 144r–v; PRO, SP 14/58/41, fo. 87v. Proceedings, 1610, ii. 338.

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Whereupon he said to some of his counsellors, lo, how much a better treasurer I am than you, for I have safely kept my treasure in the hands of my friends. And I doubt not but his Majesty hath placed his gifts as well as Cyrus did and where he may, if he will be pleased, have the like answer that Cyrus had.29

James would hardly have appreciated Lewknor’s reading which turned the hearts of loving subjects into the clutching hands of personal friends, or that the lesson featured rivalry between a somewhat foolish-looking ruler and his counsellors. James undoubtedly disagreed with Lewknor and Neville, but he equally appreciated that parliament had little to offer until such sentiments changed. However, James showed little corresponding willingness to accept counsel on how to adapt his kingship accordingly. In the first months of 1611 James took refuge in his bedchamber, shielded by his Scottish kinsmen and first favourite in England, Robert Carr.30 This occurred at the very moment Salisbury most required James’s active engagement with fiscal policy. As he reminded James, any settlement must receive its ‘whole essence from your Majesty, (being the very soul thereof)’.31 Only James possessed the authority to decide on Caesar’s and Salisbury’s counsel, oversee the implementation of retrenchment and improvement and personally stem his bounty. Circumstances made James’s political engagement more urgent. Salisbury’s failure as parliamentary manager triggered efforts at court to undermine him.32 Henry Neville and the ‘Southampton group’ framed their claims to place and position against the failures of Salisbury. Neville presented James with the first of his proposals for parliament in 1611 – ‘so as my Lord Treasurer would not intermeddle’.33 It has been asserted by Neil Cuddy that James had ‘ditched’ Salisbury by 1610, thanks to the politicking of the Scots in the bedchamber and their associated allies among James’s English governors.34 However, the picture is more complex. If factions and individuals were poised to carve up ‘Cecil’s inheritance’ it was because his offices had become politicised for their patronage possibilities.35 No one sought Salisbury’s legacy to assume the responsibilities of governance and finance remained his domain. A focus on patronage politics and its conflation with governance also distorts the situation.36 There are significant indications of Salisbury’s undiminished importance. He managed the marriage negotiations for Princess Elizabeth, received the silk farm worth £7,000 and remained beset by suitors after 1610.37 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Ibid. ii. 334. Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 208–14. ‘Several speeches’, 314–16. HH, MS Salisbury 128, fos 78r–9v; Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 208–14. HMC, Buccleuch, i. 102. Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 208. Guy, Tudor England, 437–40. Eric Lindquist, ‘The last year of the first earl of Salisbury, 1610–1612’, Albion xviii (1986), 30–6. 37 Croft, ‘Jacobean court’, 145–6.

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The political dynamic was only partly driven by individuals ranged against Salisbury. It was also shaped by the Anglo-Scottish dimension of James’s alienation. Salisbury’s pre-eminence helped to make him a major target of James’s ire, but his English colleagues were likewise tainted. It was not Salisbury alone who pressed James to continue the session after the collapse of the Contract and to bargain for ordinary supply. Northampton, Suffolk and Worcester had joined him. Their counsel brought from James blistering replies: he did not have asinine patience, would not accept supply even if members voted it and believed there was ‘no other subiect of consultation to be left but how the parlement may end quietly and he and his subiectes part with fairest shew’.38 Efforts to prevent the imprisonment of Hoskyns and Wentworth only encouraged division. The council’s effective refusal to order them into custody without process of law brought an accusation from James that they were trying to throw the onus of punishment on him alone while he further demanded to know how much evidence Elizabeth had collected and what legal steps she had taken before committing ‘this Wentworths father and many others’.39 The avenue by which to re-establish ‘Anglo-Scottish’ credentials with the king logically became Carr, the new favourite. Northampton zealously curried favour with Carr throughout 1611 while Neville hoped to reach the king with his proposals via Carr and Thomas Overbury.40 The courting of Carr was substantial. At one point, Lake was willing to pass on to Salisbury a suit of Carr’s on behalf of William Bruncard; this despite the fact that James found it ‘not decent’ and refused to refer it to the commissioners for suits. Lake sympathised with Salisbury over Carr’s furtive approach, but he was also confident that ‘your lo[rdship] will discern from whom it commeth’ in accepting the suit.41 Carr actually pulled back when James learned of his actions.42 Salisbury’s terminal illness was another element in this political mix. George Carew handled much of the daily administrative work of the secretaryship and Caesar functioned as a co-treasurer.43 Salisbury increasingly alternated between illness and recovery. He and James met in early February 1612, after which Salisbury assured his master ‘that if he had bene now as sick as he is whole (some dreggs of paine in his arme excepted) . . . his roiall voice of visitation (like visitatio beatifica) would have given new life to those Spirits w[hi]ch are ready to expire for yo[u]r service’.44 However, both men anticipated changes in the future and Salisbury wrote that ‘I have receaved now ye dispatch from ye new secretary. . . . I find yo[u]r matters in him so well 38 39 40 41 42 43

PRO, SP 14/58/35, fos 76v–7v (25 Nov. 1610). PRO, SP 14/58/54, fo. 109r–v (2 Dec. 1610). PRO, SP 14/65/26, fos 44r–5v; Peck, Northampton, 30–3. PRO, SP 14/61/92, fos 139v–40r (20 Feb. 1611). PRO, SP 14/61/93, fo. 141r (20 Feb. 1611). Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 184; BL, MS Lansdowne 156, fos 446r–7v (14 Feb. 1611 [1612]). 44 PRO, SP 14/68/59, fo. 107r (9 Feb. 1612).

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disposed, as you shall have no cause to doubt mistakings betweene ye old and new Robin.’45 Finally, the libels generated against Salisbury, particularly after his death, suggest the level of envy at his dominance in patronage and policy. Bacon or Northampton had little to lose by watching Salisbury’s handling of fiscal policy (and governance generally) derided, particularly given its association with parliament and attacks on Scottish bounty.46 Playing to the popular sentiment which James did nothing to counter could not have harmed Northampton’s efforts to induce a fresh start in policy. The extent to which Neville and Bacon were at pains to frame their post mortem entreaties in opposition to Salisbury’s methods only reinforces how much would-be governors hoped to gain from the contrast.47 The decline of Salisbury, together with James’s anger towards the English over parliament and Carr’s ascendancy as a locus of patronage and influence, created substantial uncertainty in governance between 1611 and 1612. These elements effectively marked the close of the early Jacobean regime. They altered James’s kingship, but in a manner which did not signal clearly its new operative character. It required time for governors to answer crucial questions. Precisely what were the consequences in a personal monarchy when the king referred to his Commons assembled in parliament as the house of hell? How must the political behaviour of English governors change when their king was insulted for his Scottishness? What did it mean for governors who had served their apprenticeship under Elizabeth to encounter the favourite of a male ruler? Was the king’s favourite a powerful new avenue of counsel to the king or a screen behind which the king could alternately engage with and disengage from governance? Was it possible any longer to know the mind of their king? Without answers to these questions, fiscal policy became correspondingly stop-gap and episodic: procedures in the court of wards were reformed and new instructions printed; the book of bounty was printed in 1611 and the commission for suits was active on some level though without the success hoped for or needed; rectories, chantry lands and various woods were sold; £40,000 and £60,000 in debt repayments were negotiated with the Dutch and French respectively; the customs farm was renegotiated upward to £136,226; the City lent £100,000; a forced loan went forward at the end of 1611; and the sale of baronetcies emerged from the work of Cotton, Salisbury and Northampton.48 There was no question of parliament playing a role in finance during the eighteen months before Salisbury’s death. However, the

45

Ibid. Salisbury apparently meant Robert Naunton: Roy Schreiber, The political career of Sir Robert Naunton, London 1981, 4. 46 Pauline Croft, ‘The reputation of Robert Cecil: libels, political opinion and popular awareness in the early seventeenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society vi (1991), 54–66. 47 PRO, SP 14/74/44, fos 84r–7v; Letters and life of Francis Bacon, iv. 74, 280. 48 Dietz, Public finance, 147–9, offers a brief survey.

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complex political situation demanded an adjustment of kingship and political activism on James’s part which transcended his simple belief in a policy agenda without parliament. In its absence, Salisbury’s new building remained unbroken ground. Corporate fiscal policy: the first treasury commission The ‘death of the littele man for which so many reioise and so feawe doe so much as seem to be sory’ – the harshest of Northampton’s many unkind words on Salisbury in the months ahead – perhaps came at an opportune moment for all concerned. James undoubtedly lost his most able servant, the regime’s workhorse as Northampton admitted, but Salisbury’s demise removed him as a cause of the political tension and uncertainty which also worked to compromise governance. It freed James to construct his own regime and Salisbury’s ‘inheritance’ could be distributed to competitors whose outlook and methods were truly of the king’s making. The mad race for the secretaryship, depicted in the Chamberlain–Carleton letters, is the key, but, like much of the decade, it has often been viewed in terms of patronage and place. Once we filter out the clamour of would-be secretaries James’s agenda becomes clearer. Fiscal policy was entwined with the construction of the new regime. There were almost a dozen candidates for the secretaryship prior to Ralph Winwood’s appointment in March 1614. Before that, Chamberlain wrote that James ‘makes no haste to nominate any but sayes he is prettelie skilled in the craft himself and till he be thoroughly wearie will execute yt in person’.49 We have not entirely shaken off David Willson’s rebuke at James’s decision, that ‘instead of seeking for talent, the King resolved to assume a more direct and personal control of affairs . . . [wishing] to show the world he could play a more kingly role’.50 However, after Salisbury’s death, James was intent, not to become more hands-on, but to redistribute the responsibilities of governance, sans office, to his own ends. Thus Carew became nominal Master of the Wards, but James’s intent was to ‘be as it were Master of the Wards himself and those whom he useth are to be but his substitutes and move wholly by his impulsion and within the circle of his motion’.51 The same agenda was at work with the secretaryship and treasurership. James did not become his own secretary; Carr took over much of the diplomatic correspondence, mirroring its handling by James and Salisbury.52 Northampton lent his hand at times, but he and Carr, in their extensive correspondence, most often tended to the routine business with James that Lake and Salisbury had managed in their letters. James reconstituted governance around the two individuals with 49 50 51 52

PRO, SP 14/69/67, fo. 107v (11 June 1612). Willson, King James, 333; Lockyer, James, 167–8. Willson, King James, 333. Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 209; PRO, SP 14/69/67, fo. 107v.

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whom he had his most trusted personal and political relationships. The regime operated without a secretary or lord treasurer, but the responsibilities attached to those offices were met in a fashion defined by James which transcended a formal, bureaucratic identity. Carr held James’s personal favour and assumed the earl of Dunbar’s place as the leader of the Scots at court.53 Northampton prospered and faced no serious rivals in handling finance and the privy council before his own physical decline. If James preferred the informality of his arrangements, he was also determined ‘not to have a secretarie imposed on him by parlement’.54 This stance worked to the advantage of Northampton and Carr and against the throng of would-be secretaries offering cures for the king’s financial and parliamentary troubles, notably Neville. When Carr and Suffolk eventually persuaded James to summon parliament in 1614, the king acknowledged the need for a leading voice in the Commons and appointed Ralph Winwood to the secretaryship. Neville hoped that his parliamentary credentials would allow him to shift Winwood. However, Suffolk explained (to Carr) the impossibility of displacing him: ‘[Neville] would have persuaded me to have had it presently done, wherein I satisfied him fully, that there was no likelyhood that the King would be brought to that having often protested in many of our hearings that he and the rest should amend the fault they made last Parliament before he would set markes of favour upon them’.55 In contrast to Neville, only an insane alchemist would have attempted to mix parliament and Northampton after 1610.56 Northampton’s aversion to it reflected personal ambition, political philosophy and the degree to which he evaluated parliament like any other project, according to the likelihood of profit and the necessary instruments.57 Northampton astutely judged that parliament was problematic if not unworkable and in this he and James were of like mind. This shared thinking explains the course of fiscal policy and James’s indifference to replacing his partnership with Carr and Northampton by appointing a secretary or treasurer. Northampton was the logical successor to the treasurership, but he never attained it, not a little from his own hesitation: he would not consider it before the entire state of crown finance was thoroughly examined and then only if he were absolved of responsibility for anything prior to taking office.58 That such concerns came from a governor as well positioned as Northampton suggests the degree of political fear finance inspired. James borrowed from his experience in Scotland with the Octavians and reconstituted Salisbury’s

53 54 55 56

Cuddy, ‘Union’, 118–19. PRO, SP 14/69/71, fos 114v–15r (17 June 1612). BL, MS Lansdowne 487, fo. 235v. Northampton and parliament are discussed variously in Thomas Moir, The Addled Parliament of 1614, Oxford 1958, 26, 134–47, and Peck, Northampton, 168–212. 57 Peck, ‘The mentality of a Jacobean grandee’, in her Mental world, 160–1. 58 Idem, Northampton, 31, 95; PRO, SP 14/69/71, fo. 114r.

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authority in a treasury commission in June 1612. Northampton was joined by Caesar, Suffolk, Worcester, comptroller Wotton and Lord Zouch.59 In practice Northampton assumed Salisbury’s place in the old partnership with Caesar, but without the familiarity or consensus on parliament. The two guided finance in collaboration with fellow commissioners, other governors (Ellesmere, Bacon and Coke among them) and ‘experts’ like Robert Cotton, Lionel Cranfield, Arthur Ingram and Sir Thomas Smythe.60 James transformed the management of finance and the making of fiscal policy into a corporate endeavour. A corporate approach was not finally replaced until 1620 – despite the earl of Suffolk’s treasurership – when finances were on a much sounder footing. Caesar’s chronicle of the first year of the treasury commission suggests that the corporate approach was James’s chosen instrument for ensuring that his outlook on fiscal policy prevailed.61 James received Caesar’s report on the state of finances shortly after Salisbury’s death.62 The deficit and debt remained £160,000 and £500,000 respectively. Caesar repeated what he and Salisbury had counselled in 1611, that abatements, improvements and new revenues must address the deficit. However, Caesar opined that new projects alone would be insufficient to increase revenue and he advised resort to parliament in order to address the deficit and reduce the debt. Caesar crossed through an original suggestion that the present entail of lands be broken up and sold and further cautioned against too many new projects before an assembly.63 He examined timing, choice of members, demands to be made, reciprocal retribution, the stumbling blocks of the last session and their amendment, discussions with probable ‘principall members of yt[that] house’ to further James’s business (undertaking) and whether or not the feudal aid for Princess Elizabeth should be pursued in parliament. James rejected Caesar’s counsel and stamped his outlook on policy when he summoned before him the treasury commissioners, the privy council and Prince Henry. James put the council on notice that he expected its complete assistance with the commission: the locus of authority and policy resided with the commissioners and the council was subordinate. James then commanded Henry and the council to study the memorandum and Caesar was questioned at length ‘how hee could iustifie that state of expe[n]ses & debtes’.64 After Henry too had examined Caesar’s memorandum, James directed Caesar and his fellow commissioners to examine ‘the s[ai]d estate & to advise wherein his Ma[jes]ty might abridge his expe[n]ces or improve his revenewe or increase the same by newe p[ro]iectes & to acquaint hi[m] w[i]th their p[ro]ceadings at 59 60

PRO, SP 14/69/71, fo. 114r. Peck, Northampton, 84–167; Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 185–7; Cramsie, ‘Commercial projects’, 355–60. 61 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 223r–7v (1 June 1613). 62 Ibid. fos 211r–12v (1 June 1612). 63 Caesar was apparently blunter than this indicates: ibid. fo. 223r. 64 Ibid. fo. 223r–v.

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his retourne fro[m] his p[ro]gresse’. Parliamentary revenue was not on the agenda. James established a course in keeping with his political outlook and turned it over to a corporate body of his choosing outside the formal authority of a treasurer. Caesar and Northampton took up James’s injunction once they had met immediate demands by selling lands and pursuing Princess Elizabeth’s aid.65 Northampton adopted the posture of a fresh start and painstakingly sought to advance James’s agenda for a working policy without parliaments.66 The fullest exploitation of projects was Northampton’s first order of business and a subcommission headed by Caesar spent six weeks anatomising projects for new and improved revenues.67 The four categories evaluated were concealments (assarts, defective titles, surrounded grounds, tithes out of parishes, encroachments), unimproved revenues (estates entailed, wastes and commons, coppices and underwoods, old houses and castles), tenurial incidents and other casualties (by-rents and other obscure fees, perquisites of courts, outlawries, alienations, issues royal, the mint) and the all-too-familiar ‘newe’ projects (fishing busses, usury, apprentices, starchmaking).68 Salisbury would have found nothing original about the projects, but corporate governance produced an assessment qualitatively different from the great project lists of 1608–9. Where Salisbury and Caesar met together as two experts and evaluated projects, the subcommissioners needed a written instrument appropriate for informing and counselling their superiors in detail. Consequently each project was presented with an estimate of its potential profitability, the grounds of the estimate, advice for its execution or further study and reasons for the same.69 Particular attention was given to projects which were indisputably legal and deemed unlikely to cause political antagonism.70 Significantly, the commissioners judged that their projects needed time to bear fruit and admitted that the report only represented initial work. Further examinations of accounts and experts would be required and many projects contained no estimates of possible revenues.71 Northampton and his colleagues were constructing a course for fiscal policy that was not built on immediate solutions but on a measured overhaul. The efforts with projects have been used to argue that parliamentary

65 66 67

Ibid. fo. 223v. Peck, Northampton, 94–100. The commissioners included Attorney Hobart, Solicitor Bacon, Baron Sotherton, Chancellor of the Duchy Parry, George Carie, George More and Walter Cope: PRO, SP 14/70/38, fo. 83r. 68 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 71r–7v (18 Sept. 1612). Caesar’s draft is MS Lansdowne 165, fos 207r–10v, and the clean copy is MS Add. 10038, fos 6r–10v. Thirsk, ‘Crown as projector’, 299–316, is an effective summary of the report except for the absence of any discussion about the new projects. 69 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 71r. 70 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 224r–v. 71 Northampton to Carr, [Sept.?] 1612, PRO, SP 14/70/83, fo. 170r.

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revenue and projects were antithetical and represent an ideological conflict between parliament and prerogative; Northampton’s support only serves as confirmation because of his well-known antipathy to parliament.72 However, the longue dureé of early modern projects suggests that the potential for conflict rather than ideological pigeonholes was the issue. Northampton’s memo on the commissioners’ work in late 1612 reported only that individual projects, not projects as a whole, were deemed unfit ‘for improvement in the iudgement of the Lordes in comission befor the nexte Parlement’.73 Parliament offered a ready venue in which to air complaints about public good and private gain, the nature of James’s exactions and entanglements with patronage rivalries, not least concerning the Scots. These were the questions which exercised Salisbury and Caesar at the same time as they moved ahead with large numbers of projects. If Northampton’s zeal represents anything it was James’s unwillingness to face parliament again: an acknowledgment of how financially important the success of projects was to a fiscal policy without parliament and to accommodate Jacobean patronage. Northampton worked apace while the subcommissioners engaged with projects. His letters to Carr throughout show him burdened by the cloth dispute with the Netherlands, examining projects for copper farthing tokens and starch, working on the aid, bullion questions, trading matters, the French debt, Ireland and the customs farms.74 While he might abuse Salisbury as the ‘littell limiter’, Northampton soon came to appreciate Salisbury’s burdens.75 Management responsibilities and fiscal demands took time away from forward thinking for which Northampton came to rely upon Cotton. Northampton received Cotton’s long treatise on the crown finances late in September and his marginalia testify to the attention he gave to it, as well as to the many projects which Cotton compiled at this time.76 As we earlier used Cotton’s work to understand the financial system, so Northampton enhanced his own knowledge and studied the policies of his predecessors.77 Once the subcommissioners reported, Caesar and Northampton spent the ensuing weeks drawing together the treasury commission’s work and crafting their counsel for James.78 The commissioners’ formal presentation seems to have been overtaken by the arrival of the Elector Palatine (on 16 October) and the onset of Henry’s final illness and death (on 6 November), events from which James’s attention could not be drawn until after the burial of the prince early in December.79 72 73 74

Cuddy, ‘Southampton’, 134. BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 87r. See CSP, domestic, 1611–18, 140–52, for the sequences of letters with imperfect summaries. 75 Peck, Northampton, 84–100; BL, MS Cotton Titus C 6, fos 88r–146v. 76 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 41r–51r (25 Sept. 1612). 77 Peck, Northampton, 113–17. See also Sharpe, Cotton, 113–50. 78 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 224r–v. 79 Akrigg, Jacobean pageant, 133–56.

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Northampton drafted the treasury memorandum and, in the company of the commissioners, personally read it for James.80 With remarkable thoroughness, he detailed abatements and improvements, both those currently in progress or ‘to be verie shortlie’ and others ‘within a while but not for the present’. The retrenchments are not particularly noteworthy, little different from those in James’s first decade, with the exception of breaking up the households of the late prince and Elizabeth.81 Henry’s death robbed ministers of the opportunity to barter him in marriage and thereby pay James’s debts, but Northampton eventually estimated valuable savings of £43,100 from his demise and £10,000 once Elizabeth sailed for the Palatinate.82 The overall tenor of retrenchment reflected the perspectives of the commissioners. Caesar’s concern to provision the household with ready money and avoid costly credit purchases was prominent and subsequently found vocal champions in Cranfield and Ellesmere.83 Cranfield offered Northampton spending criteria for the wardrobe which demanded genuine consideration of purchase prices and quantities procured.84 Cranfield subsequently applied these strictures to the wardrobe (1618) and to general expenditure as treasurer. Northampton was eager to revisit his abortive 1608 naval investigation, avowing that £8,000 at least could be saved.85 Finally, the commissioners urged that the learned council vet all questionable grants. The many weeks of diversion since September provided time to complete the subcommissioners’ work on projects for new and improved revenues; firmer estimates were made for many previously uncertain projects. Improvements of wardship, recusancy fines and Irish customs were added, as were projects for a 3d. tax on strangers goods, pushed by Cranfield, sale of dotard trees and further creations of baronets.86 In the months following, these projects were refined, more added (disafforestation, dyed and dressed cloth, waterworks) and others rejected (fee-farming, revision of the book of rates, pre-emption of tobacco, pepper, salt and other commodities, selling offices, exemption from shrievalties, ecclesiastical seal profits to the king, licensing alehouses and inns, patents of legitimisation and naturalisation, copper monies, clerk of the markets, usury fines, licensing apprentices, fees for coats 80

Caesar’s chronicle of the treasury commission records this meeting: BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 224v. It appears that Northampton’s memoranda is MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 84r–7v. Though undated this document offers the first estimate of savings resulting from the breaking up of Henry’s household beginning in the new year, looked to savings in the works proceeding from Christmas and clearly stated that Princess Elizabeth remained unmarried (the wedding took place on 14 Feb. 1613). 81 For comparison see BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 310v (Caesar, 26 Sept. 1607), 327r–v (Dorset, 24 Sept. 1606). 82 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 93r. 83 BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 308r. 84 CKS, U269/1, OO188 [MS Cranfield 4704]. 85 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 85r; Peck, Northampton, 152–6. 86 CKS, U269/1, OEc23 [MS Cranfield 4137]; OEc26 [MSS Cranfield 4166–72]; OEc41 [MSS Cranfield 4138, 4180, 4337, 4339, 4340]; OEc42 [MSS Cranfield 4368, 4370–2].

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of arms and enforcement of statutes of employments).87 Caesar’s estimates put the net improvement of these retrenchments and the subcommission’s initial projects at £147,500 with hopes of improvements from customs and their first ‘newe’ projects.88 Caesar, Northampton and their fellow governors laboured intensively and, if paperwork were the measure of their accomplishments, we could credit them with much. However, by June 1613, Northampton and Caesar had cut only £19,276 from expenditures (works, Ireland, messengers, cofferer) and improved revenues by just £16,500, a far cry from their ambitions.89 More revealing was Caesar’s abstract of ready money from largely non-recurring projects which had been collected over the same period for ‘ordinary wa[n]tes’.90 Notes made by Northampton later in 1613 show the same dynamic.91 There was a serious financial and conceptual divide between improving revenues and raising ready money to pay the quarterly rush of bills. James’s debt further acted upon this divide, causing governors to tip their hats at grandiose measures: a plump dowry was never far from the minds of those who looked to barter the princes in marriage while others held out hopes of persuading parliament to clear the king’s debts and create a clean slate. Projects became entangled with these forces. It became increasingly difficult to decide whether a project’s purpose was to bring a new or improved stream of revenue into the king’s coffers, privatise a loss-making enterprise – to use modern jargon – such as court fees or the ordnance office, provide a short-term, at best episodic infusion of cash or, as ever, act as private gain for the ‘well-deserving’. Northampton’s report to the king in December 1612 brought together various projects for ready money, savings and improved revenues under the title of improvements.92 Among these, Fen drainage and enclosure of wastes and commons tended to involve establishing new leaseholds or renegotiating rents (i.e. revenue improvements), but both projects were subsequently shifted to ready money; it was proposed simply to sell the king’s title to specific fenlands for a flat £20,000 upon ‘an offer made’.93 Governors labouring over dozens of minor projects proved receptive to grand designs, specifically the fishing busses and Alderman Cockayne’s dyed and dressed cloth project. The first was a proposal to create a company of ships to wrest control of the profitable herring trade from the Dutch. Cockayne’s project posited a ban on the export of undyed cloth and promised that his company would finish the cloth in England and sell it abroad at a substantial increase in profits, customs and employment. Both were the

87 88 89 90 91 92 93

BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 225r–v, 240r–1v (17 Oct. 1613). Ibid. fo. 225r. Ibid. fo. 224v Ibid. fo. 226r. BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 94v. Ibid. fos 86r–7r. Ibid. fos 86r, 87r, 94v.

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subject of advocacy (in print and speech), expert hearings, testimony and debate between James, his governors and officers, projectors and other experts. It remains unclear whether Cockayne ever intended his new company to perform to his promises or simply used the project as a cover to take over the Merchant Adventurers’ trade in white cloth for private gain. But, when the busses stumbled against the combined opposition of half-a-dozen merchant companies, governors focused on Cockayne’s project and James approved it – despite many reservations – with hopes of realising hundreds of thousands of pounds in new revenues. The decision proved to be one of James’s most disastrous in light of the devastation of the English white cloth industry, wider economic and diplomatic complications and the taint of corruption, all of which drew political criticism upon the king and the regime.94 This spate of projects seems to epitomise the functional failings of crown finances. There is no doubt that the commissioners could have served themselves and James better had they not laboured under the weight of debt and pressing demands. Yet to emphasise the administrative side is to lose sight of the political failure of James’s new regime. Northampton and Caesar were talented governors, but they operated within a political milieu that raised £22,000 for Princess Elizabeth’s aid and spent £115,000 on her wedding and related festivities.95 The financial lure attached to projects had less to do with the system than with politics and James’s kingship. Projects made it possible for the king to avoid revisiting the parliamentary politics which so affected him. The partnership of Northampton and James over projects also realised, at least in theory, both sides of the Cyrus–Croesus debate in the Cyropaedia. Northampton too had read the Cyropaedia and during the debates on supply in 1606 suggested, indeed fairly warned, that ‘If the King should work by his Prerogative, as other Kings, he should be as rich as Crœsus.’ The public–private partnership at the centre of projects allowed James to sow and reap at once, to play the part of Cyrus and yet follow Croesus in likewise profiting from the work of projectors. Northampton, like his predecessors and eventual successors, faced familiar problems in guiding fiscal policy. Even after lengthy investigation and examination, he too was at the mercy of the ‘large promises & litle p[er]formans’ of projectors. James’s approval of Cockayne’s project is only the most striking example of how vibrant counsel offering both great promises and outspoken criticism still produced poor decisions. Northampton’s other problem was that he, not unlike Salisbury, wished to tip the balance of policy in favour of Croesus’ position, but depended upon James. Northampton’s efforts to do so often came up against the inflexibility of James’s kingship. For example, Caesar reported on the unspecified amounts of their £300,000 in ready 94

Astrid Friis, Alderman Cockayne’s project and the cloth trade: the commercial policy of England in its main aspects, 1603–1625, Copenhagen–London 1917. 95 The figures are BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 226r; Dietz, Public finance, 156.

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money which were diverted by James to non-essential expenses.96 Despite the commissioners’ rejection of the copper monies project, James granted Lord Harrington a three-year monopoly of the project’s profits in May and a proclamation to that effect was issued on 19 June.97 Decisions against counsel might have been familiar to Salisbury, but Northampton and his fellow governors had to adjust to a practice of kingship which included the royal favourite. Northampton’s correspondence with Carr is voluminous. This testifies not only to their working relationship but also to the interposition of Carr between governors and James. Princess Elizabeth’s aid is also revealing. The project was detailed to Ellesmere and Bacon, who worked it into shape quickly.98 They reported to the council that its profitability was not enticing and suggested procedures for collection.99 Northampton sent ‘a brefe abstracte’ of their report to Carr and a week later everything was ready, but Northampton had yet to learn James’s pleasure via the favourite.100 Further action was not forthcoming until the end of August. The commission was finally signed on 30 August after repeated explanations from Northampton.101 The contrast between Northampton’s partnership with James and that of Salisbury is striking. Abstracts, instructions and commissions were the staples of Salisbury’s packets, which, as he once commented, James habitually devoured before the next arrived; answers and comments were usually returned to Salisbury within a day.102 Bacon and Ellesmere worked quickly and Northampton had the matter ready for dispatch a week later, yet it took two full weeks and more abstracts for James and Carr before this was done. Northampton found James decidedly less responsive during the regime of kingship-by-favourite than had Salisbury during the previous decade. Lasting solutions did not emerge from such circumstances. James reconstituted Salisbury’s authority in a fashion more to his liking, but that did not necessarily produce more effective governance. The corporate handling of fiscal policy, and Northampton’s place in it, made it possible for James to ensure the dominance of his outlook on finance. However, it was not enough simply to establish a preferred agenda for policy as James did in June 1612. Corporate fiscal policy diffused responsibility, accountability and authority and this, in part, demanded that James replace the absent authority of a lord treasurer with his own as king. If James sought to avoid the ‘rotten reede of Egipte’ and demanded policies to that end, then Caesar had good 96 97 98 99 100 101

BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 226r. Proclamations: James I, 287–90. PRO, SP 14/70/25, fo. 54r; SP 14/70/30, fo. 65r (8 Aug. 1612). PRO, SP 14/70/30, fo. 65r. PRO, SP 14/70/49, fo. 100r (14 Aug. 1612). PRO, SP 14/70/60, fo. 121r ([27] Aug. 1612); CSP, domestic 1611–18, 146; BL, MS Harleian 298, fos 10r–12v; PRO, SP 14/70/60I, fos 123r–4v. 102 Salisbury remarked on James ‘being quicker at a l[ett]re then the posts are w[i]th the packetts’: PRO, SP 14/27/9, fo. 27r (16 Apr. 1607).

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grounds to complain of the £309,681 which ‘hath bene brought in or would have bene into the Receipt, if it had not bene otherwise disposed of by yo[u]r Ma[jes]ty together w[i]th that w[hi]ch is to come in before the end of Dece[m]ber next [1613]’.103 These extraordinary monies were apparently intended to cover ordinary charges during the time needed for the commissioners’ new projects and savings to materialise. Recourse to parliament in 1614 grew out of several factors, but financial need testifies to James’s failure to adapt his kingship in a manner which made a fiscal policy without parliament workable. Despite agreement that only parliament could pay James’s debts, Northampton opposed the meeting and had no faith in its prospects.104 He had already reported in 1612 that certain projects might generate political problems, though he was careful to distinguish himself from those anticipating a parliament by framing it as the ‘iudgment of the Lordes in comission’.105 The privy council postponed the question in July 1613 against Northampton’s support for the commission’s present course, despite Caesar’s dire report of the monies James had diverted.106 Northampton did so again in September, avowing that parliament ‘would censure the King’s modes of raising moneys’ and aware of James’s lingering opposition.107 Northampton’s judgement was shrewd. Among the projects defective titles, assarts, alienations and penal fines had elicited vocal opposition in the past, impositions remained and there was ‘infinit grudge upon the Baronettes’ and privy seals exacted in 1611–12.108 Nevertheless, the regime reached a crossroads of necessity and Northampton was unable to shift parliament from the agenda.109 Unsatisfactory progress in the negotiations for a French marriage for Prince Charles also worked against Northampton and James, while a curious collection of individuals pressed for an assembly: Protestant councillors hoping that successful recourse would end the marriage negotiations altogether found common cause with Carr and Suffolk, who may have hoped to shift the increasingly ill Northampton by using parliament to clear James’s debts finally.110 103 104

BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 226r. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/1; BL, MS Cotton Titus F 4, fos 329r–32v. See also Peck, Northampton, 207–8. 105 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fo. 87r. 106 PRO, SP 14/74/23, fo. 44v. 107 CSP, domestic 1611–18, 199 (John Digby’s report of Sarmiento’s dispatch to Phillip III, 22 Sept. 1613). 108 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 224v–6r; MS Cotton Titus F 4, fo. 331r–v. 109 PRO, SP 14/76/2, fo. 2v. 110 Andrew Thrush, ‘The French marriage and the origins of the 1614 parliament’, in Stephen Clucas and Rosalind Davies (eds), The crisis of 1614 and the ‘Addled Parliament’: literary and historical perspectives, Aldershot 2002, 27–38; Peck, Northampton, 206–8; HMC, Downshire, iv. 220 (10 Oct. 1613); PRO, SP 14/76/6, fo. 2v (20 Jan. 1614); SP 14/76/9, fo. 6v (27 Jan. 1614); SP 14/76/20, fo. 51r (10 Feb. 1614); Linda Levy Peck, ‘The earl of Northampton, merchant grievances and the Addled Parliament of 1614’, Historical Journal xxiv (1981), 547.

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James unenthusiastically agreed to summon parliament. The decision made, governors turned to preparation. In this they were assisted by the range of counsel proffered in the past two years by Neville and Bacon.111 Both seemingly called for a return to traditional managed parliaments and positive programmes of legislation – the ‘ancient form’ as Bacon called it – but what lay behind their rhetoric was little different from Salisbury’s bargaining. Neville offered a programme of concessions and Bacon focused on management and electioneering.112 James entered the fray with large parts of what both men had proposed.113 James’s addresses saw him playing a law-making, non-bargaining role and a vast plethora of graces nearly identical to those in Neville’s memorial were delivered to the Commons.114 Caesar had foreseen the need to remedy the previous parliament’s major grievances for which the rose-colored schemes of Bacon, Suffolk, Carr and Neville left James ill-prepared.115 Impositions contributed significantly to breakdown because no amendment was found before parliament. Confronted even more strongly by the Commons than in 1610, James defended his prerogative right.116 The implications were obvious to Edwin Sandys: ‘That makes us bondmen, gives us no propriety. May, by the same reasons make laws without parliament.’117 Supply and impositions were entwined and no voices to untangle them were allowed to prevail in the subsidy debates.118 Members like Sandys were willing to break the deadlock and he proposed the mediation of the Lords while others, including Lake, believed that a general conference should be held between the houses with James in attendance. However, impositions had become a question of right between members and James which precluded compromise.119 When James demanded supply and threatened members with dissolution, they answered that he had affirmed his prerogative right ‘in open parliament. . . . Therefore, before these impositions were laid down, if they should grant the King relief it might in after ages be accounted a real confir-

111 112

Cuddy, ‘Union’, 118, and ‘Southampton’, 140–1; HMC, Buccleuch, i. 101–2, 112–13. Bacon’s proposals are BL, MS Cotton Titus F 4, fos 334r–9v. For Neville see PRO, SP 14/74/44, fos 84r–9v; SP 14/74/45, fos 88r–91v; SP 14/74/45I, fos 92r–3v; SP 14/74/46, fos 94r–5v; SP 14/74/47, fos 96r–7v. There are many other extant copies, often fragmentary, including those in BL, MS Harleian 3787, fos 185r–7v, and CKS, U269/1, OO214 [MS Cranfield 4308]. 113 Proceedings, 1614, pp. xvii–xxxvi. 114 See Letters and life of Francis Bacon, v. 24–30, for Bacon’s memorial on the king’s speech, and Proceedings, 1614, 13–19, 43–6, for the actual speeches. See PRO, SP 14/74/44, fos 94r–5v, for Neville’s memorial and Proceedings, 1614, 45–52, for the actual points of grace delivered by the king. 115 BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 212r. 116 Proceedings, 1614, 141–2. 117 Ibid. 146–7; Clive Holmes, ‘Parliament, liberty, taxation and property’, in J. H. Hexter (ed.), Parliament and liberty from the reign of Elizabeth to the English civil war, Stanford 1992, 122. 118 Proceedings, 1614, 146–59. 119 Sommerville, Royalists and patriots, 133–4; Proceedings, 1614, pp. xx–xxii.

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mation of the King[’s] absolute power of imposing’.120 The conflict again showed itself insoluble: ‘A grant of supply might have guaranteed the continuation of the session, but it might also have confirmed James’s stance on impositions . . . [and] ultimately spell disaster for the institution of parliament’ and the liberties of the subject.121 Last-minute compromises proved abortive and James resolved upon dissolution.122 For all their activity since 1610, James and his governors had accomplished nothing fundamental for crown finance other than to further close off parliament as an option.123 Conciliar fiscal policy: the treasurership of the earl of Suffolk The earl of Suffolk’s treasurership is perhaps the worst-documented and least understood period of James’s reign. More than any other, it is read through the lens of scandal, corruption and patronage politics: kingship and governance virtually disappear from the scholarly map between 1614 and 1618 with perhaps the lone exceptions of James’s feud with Coke and his Star Chamber speech of 1616. This is not wholly unjustified. ‘Kingship-byfavourite’ put a premium on tracking the fortunes of the favourite and his affinity. The favourite could be conceived as an avenue of influence or as a disruptive, polarising force in the process of governance. Carr (and his father-in-law Suffolk) achieved pre-eminent standing with James, but was the favourite a Leicester, an Essex or a Gaveston? Governors like Archbishop Abbot, Lake and the earl of Pembroke saw Carr in one of the latter guises and they joined in the politicking which earned the court its salacious reputation.124 Their opposition to Carr precipitated the rise of George Villiers and culminated in the Overbury trial, while hostility to Suffolk found successful play against his patronage practices and failings as treasurer. By 1618 the regime had been effectively purged and kingship-by-favourite reconstituted around Villiers. What this framework of factional politics requires is a corresponding portrait of governance and fiscal policy. The regime underwent a dramatic change in governors as a result of the Addled Parliament. Winwood was appointed as secretary, Northampton died a week after parliament was dissolved and Carr assumed his major offices and Suffolk received the treasurer’s staff. James installed Suffolk with, according to Chamberlain, ‘many good wordes as that he had made choise of him not for his learning in Greek or Latin or for that he could make epigrams and orations, but for his approved fidelitie and integrite et ct.’. Following the reading of Suffolk’s patent in the exchequer, Ellesmere reminded him that he

120 121 122 123 124

Proceedings, 1614, 425. Ibid. pp. xxxiv; Holmes, ‘Liberty’, 143–4; Russell, Addled Parliament, 15–18. Proceedings, 1614, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv; Russell, Addled Parliament, 22–6. BL, MS Cotton Titus F 4, fo. 329v. Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 212–15.

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followed two Howard progenitors who ‘had left memorable names behind them for theyre provident care and integritie wishing and advising him to follow theyr steps, concluded that he shold not looke after the examples of later times’.125 What expectations James and other governors had of Suffolk’s appointment is unclear, though the dukes of Norfolk, unlike the notorious Empson and Dudley, offered a fair model of early Tudor financial government.126 At best their comments suggest that a return to first principles of finance may have been hoped for following the turmoil of the past five years. Suffolk has been badly served by archival losses. The evidence suggests that his rehabilitation is a fruitless endeavour, but we could wish that our conclusion had more to do with his actual work as lord treasurer.127 Very few of his treasury papers survive, but those that do among the Carte manuscripts in the Bodleian Library give us some window into his mind.128 One of the volumes is not unlike Salisbury’s book of projects. The devices most strongly represented are those to sell general pardons, expand the number of baronets and manage the alum business, an essential component of dyed and dressed cloth.129 A number of less ambitious projects found a home, including compositions for alienations, an imposition on logwood and fines for new buildings in London.130 There are several records of disbursements including monies allocated from the sale of the cautionary towns, the Dutch towns that the English had garrisoned as collateral until the Low Countries repaid, in this case bought out, their Elizabethan loans. Finally, there are a number of projects and proposals designed to stem maladministration in the exchequer, including procedural memoranda and the new office of examiner.131 The Carte manuscripts suggest several agendas at work in the appointment of Suffolk. If a return to first principles of tight management was indeed one of them, then documents detailing the ancient course of the receipt, the patent of the clerk of the pipe, sheriffs’ allowances on their accounts, pipe office revenues, explanations of lost revenues from perverted exchequer processes and a treatise on the exchequer itself certainly represent the bones of such an agenda.132 Suffolk was not an illogical choice from James’s standpoint. His connection to the favourite is an obvious point, but James and Suffolk had an established relationship. Suffolk prospered immediately on James’s accession, becoming Lord Chamberlain; he may even have been the well-regarded but 125 126 127 128

Both PRO, SP 14/77/64, fo. 122r–v (4 July 1614). I am grateful to Steven Gunn for pointing out this Tudor contrast. I am grateful to Linda Levy Peck and Pauline Croft for discussions of Suffolk. Bodl. Lib., MS Carte 121, 122, 123. This collection contains material which corresponds most significantly with Suffolk’s tenure as treasurer, but there are also papers from earlier in the reign and several Caroline documents. 129 Bod. Lib., MS Carte 121, fos 1r–20v, 21r–2v, 27r–30v, 73r–82v. 130 Ibid. fos 23r–6v, 95r–106v. 131 Ibid. fos 33r–48v. 132 Ibid. fo. 46r.

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unidentified ‘40’ for whom Cecil acted as conduit in the secret correspondence with James.133 Suffolk joined his friend Salisbury, Northampton and Worcester as one of the ‘four earls’ immediately following James’s accession and figured prominently both as a counsellor and administrator before Salisbury’s death.134 Suffolk (with Pembroke) handled the packets during and after Salisbury’s final illness while Cope and Suffolk were deputed to supervise Salisbury’s papers upon his death.135 By July 1612 Suffolk was a treasury commissioner and had moved to consolidate his position around James by displacing ‘the old messengers at court and put[ting] in new creatures’ supervised by two of his own servants.136 Suffolk’s Audley End became a regular venue for James where matters of importance were handled, including the decision to summon parliament in 1614.137 James apparently steered Carr into marriage with Suffolk’s daughter.138 Suffolk enjoyed James’s confidence and it must have appeared to the king that he had placed the course of fiscal policy into secure hands following the Addled Parliament. In particular, Suffolk showed no inclination between 1614 and 1618 to contest James’s agenda for a fiscal policy without parliament following the latest failure of the traditional course. While the king sometimes generalised his disaffection with parliament, he did not necessarily equate parliament itself or its vituperative speakers with his subjects as a whole. James and his governors appealed directly to his subjects in July 1614 for a benevolence, a ‘free gift’. This followed the exemplary contributions by Archbishop Abbot and the clergy, but may also have been considered earlier judging by the dozens of documents Cotton collected on contributions during his work for Northampton.139 The benevolence circumvented an apparently obstructive parliament while governors allowed rumours to run that James might enact by proclamation some of the redress of grievances offered in parliament.140 The same approach was behind Suffolk’s project to issue a proclamation and sell general pardons similar to those which usually came from the king at the end of a parliament.141 A document titled ‘Prerogative Regis’ among Suffolk’s papers, admittedly undated, is a ringing defence of the fiscal utility of the maxim ‘deficinte Lege, succurit Rex’. According to the writer, the crown could erect an office and charge a fee to redress matters not

133 134 135

Correspondence of King James, 15–16, 35–8. See, for instance HH, MS Salisbury 124, fo. 145r–v. The letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, Philadelphia 1939, i. 347; PRO, SP 14/69/57, fo. 71v; SP 14/69/71, fos 114v–15r. 136 PRO, SP 14/70/12, fo. 30v. 137 PRO, SP 14/71/42, fo. 71r; SP 14/76/2, fo. 2v. 138 Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 210. 139 HMC, Downshire, iv. 431 (17 June 1614); PRO, SP 14/77/53, fo. 107r (30 June 1614); BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 129r–313v. 140 APC, 1613–14, 492; PRO, SP 14/77/58, fo. 114r (7 July 1614). 141 Bodl. Lib., MS Carte, 121, fos 1r–20v.

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provided for by the law until the next parliament. Examples included staple projects like ulnage, court fines and a plethora of fee-charging offices like alienations, pawn shops, cards, tobacco, tin and pins among others.142 Suffolk’s papers suggest that he shared James’s financial outlook. Bishop Goodman related this tale of Suffolk’s treasurership in practice: [Some] men desirous of employment spake unto the King to have wars with Spain. The King answered, that he was poor and therefore would not. To whom one replied, that he could show him means to make the Spaniard as poor as himself; and that was, to recommend the Earl of Suffolk for his treasurer.143

It is difficult to disagree with Goodman’s pithy anecdote, but how did Suffolk operate as a governor? His correspondence with Caesar supplies some insight. While they were serving on the treasury commission, Suffolk wrote: ‘your letter reports the wants for many occasion wherin yf my coming up could geve any releefe I had bene with you before this tyme, but to pull me from many of my domestike businesses when we shall do no good but talk ydle were to lytle purpose’.144 Avoidance became a favoured tactic and Suffolk proved impressively obstructive when ridding himself of unwelcome business or individuals.145 When asked by Caesar to return to London, he hoped to be eased of coming, ‘the rather because yow knowe wee have as yet no money to satisfie the greedy calls and cryes of many that when I come will not suffer me to be quiett’.146 Despite initial signs of activity, most notably monitoring the sale of nutmeg from a prize ship, Suffolk provided little direction for translating James’s fiscal agenda into workable policy.147 He either accepted quickly that he was out of his depth or that his efforts would mirror the ‘success’ of his predecessors. Overall, the correspondence illuminates someone who managed – one is tempted to say, incredibly – to combine at the same time administrative activity, disinterest in the duties of office, a desire to avoid responsibility for policy and a sense of inadequacy. The contrast between Suffolk’s flights to Audley End and approving monies for spring gardening and repairs at Whitehall, including bread to feed cranes, is remarkable.148 Suffolk evidently found that the attainment of office was the end in itself.149 James recognised Suffolk’s sphere of activity as treasurer when he questioned Carr, ‘Do not all court graces and place come through your office as Chamberlain and rewards through your father-in-law’s that is Treasurer?’150 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150

Ibid. fos 63r–4v. Godfrey Goodman, The court of James I, ed. J. S. Brewer, London 1839, i. 290. BL, MS Add. 36767, fo. 346r (24 Oct. 1613). PRO, SP 14/89/67 fo. 122r (7 Dec. 1616); Upton, Ingram, 120–1. BL, MS Add. 36767, fo. 364r (15 Aug. 1614). Ibid. fo. 362r (14 Aug. 1614). FSL, MS Folger V.b.225 (1615). Peck, Court patronage, 182–3. Letters of King James VI and I, ed. G. P. V. Akrigg, Berkeley 1984, 339–40 ([1615]).

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Suffolk’s treasurership represents the ultimate triumph of patronage. He occupied the office and processed paperwork as required – usually for a fee collected through Lady Suffolk or John Bingley – but the treasurership as a focus for fiscal policy and governance slipped into near-total abeyance. If there is a key to understanding Suffolk, it comes in an exchange between Thomas Albery and William Trumbull in April 1615. The council met to discuss John Swinnerton’s sweet wine farm, but Albery tells us much about Suffolk’s approach to governance in explaining why they took up the matter: ‘ “For although the Lorde High Tresurer have of him selfe absolute power to determine suche causes, yet he wil not deale ex officio in any greate busines withoute the opinion of the Bourde, which is honorable for him and remarkable for his Majesties proffit.” ’151 This indicates that Suffolk chose a corporate approach, a continuation of the treasury commission under a different guise. His precise motives are not clear, but he exploited the treasurership for patronage and was content for policy itself to become a corporate endeavour, perhaps ultimately to avoid accountability for the consequences of his exploitation.152 Corporate fiscal policy after 1614 took on a conciliar bent, in some respects mimicking the ‘corporate management of “national” finance’ by the Elizabethan privy council.153 However, this was a decidedly Jacobean conciliarism which often resembled half-a-dozen cooks trying to make soup in the same pot. Chamberlain summarised the situation facing governors in December 1614: the providinge of monie, w[hi]ch is a maine worke and will hardly be compassed when the world is become so bare that there is litle superfluitie and that but in few handes; but yt is doubted we shall see strange proiects set on foote and yet all will not helpe . . . order is taken they say that all pensions shall cease, but for other abatements or deminishing of ordinarie or extraordinarie charge we heare of none.154

It was hoped that the pardon project would yield at least £400,000 while another promised to raise £300,000 by making fifty new barons.155 Governors had to cope with the underlying dynamic of pressing demands and the search for ready money as well as conceptually and practically grappling with the role of parliament: would James countenance another assembly for financial reasons. In what circumstances might it support the crown? What means of persuasion would be necessary? A cadre of governors also emerged which called for far-reaching and genuine reform (the subject of chapter 6). Parlia-

151 152 153 154 155

HMC, Downshire, v. 183 (4 Apr. 1615). For instance, some of Suffolk’s activities with Arthur Ingram: Upton, Ingram, 80–3. Guy, Tudor England, 312–13. PRO, SP 14/78/79, fo. 137v. PRO, SP 14/80/1, fo. 1r (5 Jan. 1615).

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mentary questions, projects and reform were the central strands of conciliar fiscal policy. The most active governors were Ellesmere, Edward Coke, Winwood, Lake, Bacon, Fulke Greville and Cranfield. Suffolk’s venality and retreat from leadership together with the effects of another inflammatory parliamentary session worked against consistent focus and authority in decisions. Confessional divides and patronage grievances among governors further compromised a sense of direction. By 1614 Caesar was content to become master of the rolls, though he remained active in fiscal policy because of his long experience and place at the council table.156 Greville succeeded Caesar thanks, it would seem, to Carr and Lady Suffolk, but almost immediately was in trouble with both of them.157 Yet Greville was more acceptable to Suffolk when Villiers tried to move Bacon and then Cranfield into the exchequer in 1616.158 There was no love lost between Ellesmere and Suffolk, and both of them feuded with Coke. The machinations of Lake were a source of consternation for Winwood’s partisans if not the secretary himself.159 Such vibrant rivalries combined with Suffolk’s ‘absence’ to allow contrasting policies and projects to find ready play. Governors co-operated and competed to hammer out a lasting direction for policy. Ellesmere’s greatest contribution before his death in 1617 was to champion fiscal reform as the answer to parliamentary difficulties.160 He fashioned a comprehensive programme for rehabilitating James’s estate, but he borrowed ideas from colleagues, including Coke, Caesar and Cranfield. Ellesmere was particularly dependent on Cranfield, whose ideas on trade and commerce he eagerly embraced161 Lake had been a councillor without office since early 1614 and became second secretary to Winwood in January 1616. His ambition is undoubted, reflected in his determination to swear an oath of service to James personally.162 The only surviving assessment of early conciliar plans for James’s estate born that summer was made by Lake.163 The major contributions to that effort were by Greville and Coke and, when the plans reached final form in early 1617, Lake mused on whether James would pursue them resolutely or whether Lake’s colleagues would remain focused on them while he attended the king on the progress to Scotland.164 Coke was regularly associated with finance and was rumoured for the treasurership in 1619, making a remarkable recovery after being removed as chief justice.165 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165

Hill, Bench and bureaucracy, 197–9. Ronald Rebholz, Sir Fulke Greville: first lord Brooke, Oxford 1979, 237–40. Ibid. 245. HMC, Downshire, v. 411, 453. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610; Knafla, Law and politics, 263–73. Knafla, Law and politics, 101–2. BL, MS Add. 64876, fo. 7r (18 Jan. 1615 [1616]). PRO, SP 14/87/63, fos 126r–7v (19 June 1616); SP 14/87/64, fo. 128r–v (29 June 1616). PRO, SP 14/90/70, fo. 128r–v (20 Feb. 1617). PRO, SP 14/105/2, fo. 2r–v (2 Jan. 1619).

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He returned to the council within a year, in September 1617, and was a leading member of the treasury commission which finally took over from Suffolk in July 1618.166 Coke had never been reticent in advancing his opinions on finance.167 He unveiled in March 1616 a plan to put Queen Anna’s estate in order which included a monthly budget, debt repayment schedules, demands for strict accounting in future and a series of projects to improve her revenues.168 It was a practical fiscal policy in microcosm. Two individuals outside the formal ranks of counsellors also contributed: Bacon and Cranfield. Initiatives requiring legal review, particularly projects, found their way to Bacon as solicitor- and attorney-general. His private memoranda of July 1608 reveal his often unseen involvement.169 Bacon planned to discuss tithes out of parishes with Salisbury; by no coincidence, the project found its way into the subcommission report of 1612 with Bacon a prominent member.170 He intended to impress upon Salisbury the expectations of his treasurership.171 Details of depopulations, outlaws’ goods, land sales, suits for servant informers, compositions for illegal building in London, Henry Spiller’s work with recusancy revenues and Stephen Proctor’s project were also ready.172 He offered projects himself or provided useful guidelines for their actual employment.173 Just this sort of involvement would ruin Bacon when the Commons – and Cranfield – in 1621 took aim at projects and those who had vetted them. Cranfield prospered through Northampton, Ellesmere and Lake. His expertise naturally focused on commerce and he gained as impositions, rhetorical poverty and trade issues in parliament focused attention upon it. Governors in July 1612 concluded that all manner of evils prevented free trade and the treasury commission followed with an examination of projects for revising impositions and the book of rates, enforcing statutes of employment, fishing busses and a 3d. tax on merchant strangers.174 Cranfield succeeded notably with the 3d. tax.175 Monies were delivered quarterly to his home, copies of James’s warrant and Cranfield’s instructions went out to 166 APC, 1616–17, 329 (24 Sept. 1617); BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fos 274r–5v (24 July 1618). 167 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fos 226v–7r. 168 PRO, SP 14/86/104, fos 173r–4v (24 Mar. 1616); SP 14/86/105, fo. 175r–v ([Mar?] 1616); SP 14/86/106, fos 176r–7v; SP 14/86/107, fos 178r–9v; SP 14/86/108, fos 180r–3v. 169 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, iv. 40–95. 170 Ibid. iv. 45. 171 Ibid. iv. 46. 172 Ibid. iv. 47, 50, 54, 56, 58. 173 BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 106r–13v, 312r–13v. 174 Peck, Northampton, 96–8; BL, MS Lansdowne 152, fo. 205r; MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 225v; MS Lansdowne 169, fos 57r–8v; CKS, U269/1, OEc41 [MSS Cranfield 4137, 4138, 4180, 4340]. 175 CKS, U269/1, OEc41 [MSS Cranfield 4180, 4020, 4843] (16 Oct. 1613); OEc41 [MS Cranfield 4339] (warrant), [MS Cranfield 4337] (instructions); OEc26 [MSS Cranfield 4166–72] (various acknowledgements of receipt of orders).

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every port and he demanded written confirmation. Cranfield’s authority was buttressed by his having been named surveyor-general of the customs in July 1613, while his agents and customers appear to have been particularly assiduous in policing the tax.176 Quarterly payment records were kept until 1616 when Cranfield surrendered the impost to his new patron, Villiers.177 The proceeds were £6,766, £7,329 and £6,825.178 The trade figures from 1618 estimated strangers’ traffic at £637,186, yielding a theoretical impost of £5,310.179 Commercial fluctuations and statistical imprecision are evident, but Cranfield’s collection appears impressive, while the takings after he yielded the impost never rose above £4,600.180 Such proven effectiveness made Cranfield a rising star. The conciliar strands are interesting to disentangle, if at times problematic, but it is James who presents the most difficult figure. James seemingly lost himself in the collapse of the relationship with Carr and the attraction of Villiers during 1615.181 The evidence seems to suggest that governance declined and he offered little specific direction for policy save for discounting parliament – or expending the sums raised by short-term windfalls and projects which he approved. However, this may reflect archival holes as much as reality for it is possible to find James taking a decisive hand in some aspects of governance. He never lost his interest in diplomacy and the letters reaching Trumbull in the first half of 1615 reported James’s close attention to the Habsburg attack on Juliers and Cleves.182 Out of this crisis James developed a working relationship with Winwood that served him during the growing estrangement from Carr. It transformed Winwood into a genuine secretary and, despite Winwood’s Protestant reputation, he displaced Carr as James’s partner in diplomatic causes.183 In part this was because James understood that the Spanish match was being dangled to keep him on the diplomatic and military sidelines.184 And it was James, Winwood and other governors who

176 See, for instance, William Greenwood to Cranfield, 21 Nov. 1613, CKS, U269/1, OEc41; Edmund Aspley and George Freeman to Cranfield, 4 Feb. 1613 [1614]), OEc42. For Cranfield’s work as surveyor-general see OEc43 [MS Cranfield 4321]; R. H. Tawney, Business and politics under James I: Lionel Cranfield as merchant and minister, Cambridge 1958, 124–34; Prestwich, Cranfield, 120–33. 177 CKS, U269/1, OEc42 [MSS Cranfield 4368, 4370–2]; OEc80 [MS Cranfield 4531]; Cb138 [MS Cranfield 2388]; OEc96 [MS Cranfield 4667] (25 Nov. 1616); Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: the life and political career of George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628, London 1981, 48. 178 CKS, U269/1, OEc59 [MS Cranfield 4348]. 179 BL, MS Lansdowne 152, fo. 172v (15 Nov. 1618). 180 F. C. Dietz, ‘The receipts and issues of the exchequer during the reigns of James I and Charles I’, Smith College Studies in History xiii (1928), 140–1. 181 Cuddy, ‘Entourage’, 213–17. 182 HMC, Downshire, v. 100, 120. 183 All the Trumbull correspondence relating to Winwood between 1615 and 1617 is revealing, but see in particular ibid. v. 29, 33, 107, 108, 120, 128–9, 257–8, 411; vi. 321. 184 Ibid. v. 120, 302–3.

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turned a keen eye to raising money in the event of military conflict in Juliers.185 Juliers may represent a spike in James’s attention at a time of confessional and diplomatic stress when we compare it to his retreat to Hampton Court in December 1614 after finding so little to his satisfaction.186 Yet James’s involvement with finance was greater perhaps than the evidence allows us to discover. The best evidence for his solid presence is the increased attention being paid to commercial revenues. The centre-piece project, one which consumed enormous effort and attention, including James’s, was the dyed and dressed cloth scheme.187 Hopes for addressing James’s debts attached themselves to Cockayne’s project and Suffolk poured supporting funds into the alum works of his long-standing colleague Arthur Ingram.188 The course of Cockayne’s efforts to export only finished and dressed cloth is a familiar one. The attention given to the project and its conceptual twin, the fishing busses, is more significant. James had a consistent interest in customs and commercial wealth and his commitment to customs as a new endowment has been established. His uncompromising stance on impositions was at least as much about finance as political thought. He exploited customs revenues and supported commercial projects in Scotland, particularly the fishing industry.189 James had been drawn to both dyed cloth and fishing after 1603, approved an abortive project to require fishing licences of all ships plying British waters and was the driving force during 1611–13 in the unsuccessful establishment of a chartered fishing company.190 The prominence of these projects argues for James and his governors together moving policy further toward commercial revenues in constructing a viable financial settlement without parliament. By 1615 there was a potent perception that, according to Cranfield, ‘in England all thinges . . . are happely and tollerably in good tune, savinge only Traffick’.191 The regime spent most of 1615 pursuing a study of the balance of trade.192 One product of this was the council’s authorisation for Cranfield to revise the book of rates.193 Cranfield devoted most of 1616 to this and presented the details by which ‘his Ma[jes]tie shall loose very litle in the 185 Ibid. v. 100, 109–10, 120; John Cramsie, ‘Crown finance and reform: the legacy of the Addled Parliament’, in Clucas and Davies, Crisis of 1614, 39–51. 186 PRO, SP 14/78/79, fo. 137v (22 Dec. 1614). 187 Friis, Cockayne’s project; Prestwich, Cranfield, 164–77. 188 Upton, Ingram, 32–9, 100–44; APC, 1615–16, 456–60, 477–9, 524–5, 623–6, 658–9; APC, 1616–17, 7–13, 21–9, 53–61, 67–9, 108–15. 189 Goodare, State and society, 113–15; Lee, Government by pen, 85–6, 131; W. R. Scott, The constitution and finance of English, Scottish, and Irish joint-stock companies, Cambridge 1912, i. 133. 190 Cramsie, ‘Commercial projects’, 354–5. 191 CKS, U269/1, OEc41 [MS Cranfield 4180]. 192 CKS, U269/1, OEc66 [MS Cranfield 4532]. 193 See, for instance, BL, MS Lansdowne 152, fo. 174r–v (14 Nov. 1615); CKS, U269/1, OO118 [MS Cranfield 4542] ([19 Dec. 1615]); MS Lansdowne 152, fos 179r–80v (13 Nov. 1618), 172r–v (15 Nov. 1618); PRO, SP 14/148/92, fo. 111r–v (13 July 1623).

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abatem[en]t that will be made of the impost’ by increasing the book of rates proper.194 Cranfield put the ‘businesse in the forme he meanes to publish it in and in al apparances it is like to p[ro]ve an excell[en]t worke’.195 Only three major export duties remained and import tariffs were adjusted against ‘dillicacyes and sup[er]fluityes w[hi]ch beggar the state’.196 Cranfield was confident that he had laid the basis for balanced trade and removed much of the political antagonism caused by impositions: ‘the king looseth as much in the necessarie thinges by undervaluing them as he gaynes by those fewe sup[er]flutyes . . . for the publique good and not for gayne as is surmised’.197 However, Cranfield emphasised parliamentary utility in drafting a revenueneutral reform. The political emphasis clashed with James’s agenda and he did not pursue a project without prospects for bringing more money to his coffers.198 The combined efforts of James and his councillors in 1615 did not produce lasting solutions and money was short as 1616 dawned. Governors debated the sale of the cautionary towns in council and eventually forced James to agree when no other projects for raising money emerged.199 Though quickly spent, the money did provide sufficient breathing space for councillors to fashion a more thorough-going programme.200 Their design harked back to Burghley’s days, when budget surpluses anticipated or paid debts.201 The programme was set out in a book in February 1617 and drew together work begun in June 1616.202 A central component was the rationalisation of accounts. The most stable ordinary revenue was assigned to the most important charges; anything not budgeted was treated as extraordinary and tacked to the debt. The maintenance of this ‘balance’ depended upon the offices being ‘kept w[i]thin the compasse delivered now by the Lo[rd] Threr. as a medium’.203 James’s councillors avowed that his debts could be paid by the posited surplus, future savings in offices, suspension of pensions, improved and casual revenues (including ‘proiectes of lawfull & convenient natures’) and borrowing. Ireland, the petty farm of customs, recusants, the court of wards, ‘leasinge of copps woodes’, disafforesting remote parts and turning to cultivation, fines in courts and ‘other increasementes upon discoverie by a

194 195 196

FSL, MS Folger G.b.10.84r (letterbook of Ralph Winwood); Prestwich, Cranfield, 188. FSL, MS Folger G.b.10.84r. PRO, SP 14/86/25, fos 39r–40v; CKS, U269/1, OEc92 [MS Cranfield 4543]; HHL, MS Ellesmere 2458. 197 PRO, SP 14/86/25, fo. 40r. 198 The project is evaluated in Tawney, Business and politics, 132–4, and Prestwich, Cranfield, 187–90. 199 HMC, Downshire, v. 457 (29 Mar. 1616); PRO, SP 14/86/134x, fos 242r–3v (14 Apr. 1616). 200 Bodl. Lib., MS Carte 123, fos 14r–17v. 201 Guy, Tudor England, 379–82. 202 PRO, SP 14/90/71, fos 131r–40v (20 Feb. 1617). 203 PRO, SP 14/90/44, fo. 79r.

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good survey’ constituted areas of improvement. Among projects were licences for exemption from juries, seacoals, alienations (in Wales), encroachments and assarts and ‘lycences for Badgers’.204 The prospect of this programme allowed Suffolk to claim ‘to have don a great peece of service in bringing the K[ing]s revenewes to surmount his ordinarie expences more then 1000li a year’. Greville knew better and gave ‘out that the reconing is mistaken for a very great summe’. There was ‘scant goode quarter between them’ for it.205 Borrowing was the real key and projects to raise two lump sums of £100,000 apiece were essential: ‘To maintain this equality . . . it was found necessary that 200,000l. of your Majesty’s most pregnant and pressing debts should be discharged.’206 The councillors first met for this purpose in June 1616, at which time Greville proposed the sale of burgages, mills, old castles and decayed houses, fee-farming more lands and asking 1,000 people to donate £100 a piece.207 Coke, sounding much like Lewknor discussing the Cyropaedia, suggested that people most favoured by James’s bounty should be asked to lend money on security of their land. Viscount Fenton’s respite of homage project was finally assigned for examination.208 New hunts for concealments and a project involving woods were added.209 As a result of these discussions it was decided to undertake three separate loans until ordinary surpluses materialised. The centre-piece was Giles Mompesson’s sale of wood from the royal forests worth £100,000 (£25,000 annually for four years).210 Councillors confidently contracted with the customs farmers to advance to James’s creditors directly that same £25,000 annually for four years; they would be repaid at the end of each year from Mompesson’s sales.211 The City and Merchant Strangers agreed to lend £120,000 in early 1617.212 These monies were to be answered from a project to convert remote lands and forests to cultivation.213 Councillors had embarked upon a policy of paying the king’s debt by borrowing upon ‘security’ of anticipated revenue from projects: ‘These thinges will yeald money with tyme. In the meane tyme to borrowe.’214 This fragile programme unravelled in 1617. James returned to Scotland 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211

PRO, SP 14/90/71, fos 134r–8r. PRO, SP 14/90/25, fo. 55r–v (18 Jan. 1617). Letters and life of Francis Bacon, v. 254. PRO, SP 14/87/63, fo. 126r (19 June 1616). Ibid. fo. 126r–v; SP 14/87/75, fo. 154r–v (30 June 1616). PRO, SP 14/87/64, fo. 128r (29 June 1616). APC, 1616–17, 137, 174, 209–10; PRO, SP 14/93/99, fo. 126r ([27 Sept.] 1617). PRO, SP 14/93/99, fo. 126r; Robert Ashton, The crown and the money market, 1603–1640, Oxford 1960, 88–92. 212 APC, 1616–17, 122; Ashton, Money market, 122–7; Dietz, Public finance, 166–7. 213 PRO, SP 14/93/99, fo. 129v; Richard Hoyle, ‘Disafforestation and drainage: the crown as entrepreneur?’, and Peter Large, ‘From swanimote to disafforestation: Feckenham forest in the early seventeenth century’, in Hoyle, Estates, 353–88, 389–417. 214 PRO, SP 14/87/64, fo. 128r.

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and the loan monies paid for the journey.215 However, it was the political failure of Suffolk and James himself that had the most lasting impact. Nothing could persuade James that his ‘wantes being so greate as they are, to have them increased by such an unnecessary chardge were not to be wished, but rather to be prevented’.216 James left London in March and finally returned on 15 September 1617.217 Lake was the link with the councillors remaining in London and his correspondence with Winwood and Suffolk illuminates the collapse of the programme.218 Things began to go awry in May when James reached Scotland. The exchequer was empty and Suffolk hoped to preempt the effects of complaints when he wrote to Lake: I prey yow to take notice that yt is noe fault of myne for yet we want 20000li w[hi]ch should come from the citty of the loane mony . . . I have but one principall caire w[hi]ch is to provyde mony to supply the necessary wantes of the tyme for although yo[u]r iourney hath drawne not more from us then stood with the necessity of the tyme to doe, yet out of our empty chestes yt could ill be spared.219

They were waiting on the £20,000 when Winwood informed Lake of bigger problems in the offing: ‘how we shall repay that w[hi]ch we have, I feare for the reconing wee made for the woods, I dowbt we made w[i]thowt our host’.220 Reality was setting in concerning Mompesson’s undertaking. James was always wary of plans involving the royal forests and Winwood was ordered to obtain an explanation from Suffolk.221 Suffolk already knew that the project was in trouble. Caesar had undertaken an investigation and found that trees, including those reserved for the navy, were being sold off at less than half their value.222 Suffolk was forced to admit that the project was a failure and reported that ‘for the present yt lyes upon us to make a supply untill his Ma[jes]tes retourne when we are to conceave his further pleasure what course shalbe taken’.223 He descended to impolitic ineptitude as matters worsened, rebuking James for asking after the book for the queen’s estate upon his death before promising to send much-needed monies to Carlisle for the return to London.224 The money was never dispatched and Lake’s query

215 216 217 218

PRO, SP 14/90/25, fo. 55r. PRO, SP 14/90/36, fo. 68r (21 Jan. 1617). Lee, Government by pen, 155–74. APC, 1616–17, 188–9, 216–329. The councillors remaining in London to attend to business in the king’s absence were principally Abbot, Bacon, Suffolk, Greville, Winwood, Caesar, Viscount Wallingford and Worcester. 219 PRO, SP 14/92/40, fo. 129r (23 May 1617). See also APC, 1616–17, 172–3, 256–7, 298–9. 220 PRO, SP 14/92/65, fo. 165r (10 June 1617). 221 PRO, SP 14/92/76, fo. 188r ([29 June] 1617); SP 14/92/69, fo. 170r. 222 BL, MS Lansdowne 161, fo. 343v (24 June 1617). 223 PRO, SP 14/92/90, fos 212v–13r (14 July 1617); Letters and life of Francis Bacon, v. 255. 224 PRO, SP 14/92/90, fo. 212r–v.

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must have seemed ominous to Winwood: ‘I have written alredy twice or thrise to my L[ord] Threr and Mr Chancellor . . . but there cometh no aunsweare . . . his Ma[jes]ty is much moved especially that he is so much neglected as not to have an aunsweare or a reason why.’225 Winwood forwarded the letter to Greville and stirred the waters, informing Lake that he had ‘often heard my L[ord] Tresorer say that he would send to Carlyle 3000li. Yf the wantes be so great in yo[u]r iorney, what will you find at yo[u]r returne’.226 Lake reported James’s increasing unhappiness and Greville set out in person to calm the king.227 What satisfaction James received has escaped record, but he was welcomed back at Hampton Court with a blunt accounting.228 Ordinary revenue had nearly drawn into balance when he left for Scotland, ‘w[hi]ch would accordinglie have held, if yo[u]r great extraordinaries had not interrupted it’.229 For the annual £25,000 advances of the farmers on the customs, ‘the same to be repaide againe out of the sale of woodes’, that course ‘doth not only fayle for the present, but is to be feared will fayle for the tyme coming’. They had no choice but to abandon the project. Further, the City loan was gone, expended on privy seals for bounty, provisions for the journey, enlarging Theobalds parks, ambassadors and diversion to ordinary needs, all of which amounted to £114,000. That was to be paid out of such forests as James would sacrifice to that debt, but it was still ‘a worke of tyme’.230 The whole of his debts amounted to £726,000, with only the dubious hopes of the woods to pay the City’s share due the following year.231 As for addressing the matter, ‘the wayes are yett in yo[u]r Ma[jes]tes best iudgement to be considered of’.232 James’s distemper must have contained prodigious measures of disappointment and exasperation, but the sudden death of Winwood prevented an immediate settlement.233 Winwood’s abrasive honesty had, in the end, earned him considerable respect: ‘seeing it was gods pleasure to call him, he could never go in a better time when he was in his highest favor with the king, Quene, Prince and principall favourite and was generally growne into so good opinion’.234 Once again James concluded that ‘he was never so well served as when he was his own secretarie’ and delivered the seals of office to Villiers.235

225 226 227 228 229 230 231

PRO, SP 14/93/25, fo. 36r (18 Aug. 1617). PRO, SP 14/93/31, fo. 51r (20 Aug. 1617). PRO, SP 14/93/69, fo. 90r (28 Aug. 1617); SP 14/93/73, fo. 94r (30 Aug. 1617). PRO, SP 14/93/98, fo. 125r (25 Sept. 1617). PRO, SP 14/93/99, fo. 126r–v ([27 Sep.] 1617). Ibid. fo. 129v. Ibid. The loan was not repaid until the 1630s and effectively destroyed royal credit with the City into the next reign: Ashton, Money market, 125–7. 232 PRO, SP 14/93/99, fo. 129v. 233 PRO, SP 14/93/148, fo. 254r–v. 234 PRO, SP 14/93/158, fo. 266r. 235 PRO, SP 14/94/12, fo. 14r (8 Nov. 1617).

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By the end of November James had resolutely begun the repair of his estate.236 Four months later Thomas Murray wrote to Carleton of its progress: his Ma[jes]ty labours verie much to redresse the disorders of the estate and now is much busied with the houshold by reformation of the w[hi]ch it is conceaved he shall saif yearlie thirtie thousand lib. . . . He is now preparing ane exact examination and censure of the abuses of the Excheker w[hi]ch in all mens opinions ar liklie to proove verie foule. The lyke is intended in the Navie and in Irland.237

James and Villiers had joined together to face the results of the crippling deficiency of governance between 1611 and 1617: the failure of fundamental reform and renewal in finance without James’s direct support. Murray knew what would determine the fate of their labours: ‘We all wishe a constance in this good resolution’.238

236 237 238

PRO, SP 14/94/23, fos 32r–3v. PRO, SP 14/96/91, fo. 151r (28 Mar. 1618). Ibid.

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6

Crown Finance and the Renewal of Jacobean Kingship, 1617–1621 The breakdown of fiscal policy at the time of James’s Scottish journey marks a watershed in both finance and kingship. Upon his return to England James engaged more intensively with policy and governance. Although this involved a return to the more active personal rule of the earlier period of the reign, paradoxically, within the next two years a distinctively new regime emerged. While the regime which lasted until 1610 took its character from the personal rule of a male monarch and its successor, kingship-by-favourite, the late Jacobean regime was unique in the rise of Villiers to ‘ministerfavourite’ and, eventually, to alter-rex.1 If there was a lesson to be learned from Villiers’s success in supplanting Carr, it was that Carr’s inconsequential profile in governance aided his enemies. Villiers and ambitious governors around him like Cranfield and Bacon used the collapse of fiscal policy and James’s resultant anger to their advantage. They and their colleagues took on the mantles of reformers, attacking mismanagement and failed policy in the cause of genuine reform and as a vehicle for political advantage. It became a political virtue to support and actually be seen to further – however imperfectly – good fiscal governance. Villiers enhanced his power and position by inserting himself as a governor in the reform process. As long as James and his governors proceeded from a workable consensus of what sound finance entailed, the policy was relatively effective, as was perhaps most strongly demonstrated when James successfully presented himself as a practitioner of good husbandry in the parliament of 1621. However, that session nevertheless revealed ongoing problems in the interaction of kingship and finance. Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and fiscal reform The Addled Parliament motivated Lord Chancellor Ellesmere’s reflections on crown finance and out of them emerged an agenda for effective reform. Preoccupation with preparation, management and bargaining demonstrate a belief that there was no unassailable case to make in parliament other than

1

The concept of minister-favourite in England is discussed in Pauline Croft, ‘Can a bureaucrat be a favourite? Robert Cecil and the strategies of power’, in J. H. Elliot (ed.), The world of the favourite, New Haven 1999, 81–95.

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that James’s necessities required supply. Governors requested supply for the costs of government, but members proved unwilling to underwrite continuing grievances and mismanagement. Whether it was Salisbury’s contract or Bacon’s ancient form, it was untenable to expect them to purchase graces consequent upon bad government. Thomas Crew was blunt: ‘If the country possessed with the King’s graces and that we are about them, the country will be willinger to grant.’2 Many members believed good government was James’s obligation, and purveyance, impositions and other grievances precipitated assertions that redress was due of right and not of grace.3 That members in 1610 had been willing to vote £200,000 annual support in exchange for reform questions Conrad Russell’s hypothesis that members would never have adequately assisted in funding governance.4 Rather, it seems James had to deliver reformed government in some form and then make the case for supporting it. The privy council debated options in July 1615 after James’s insistence that they settle his estate.5 Councillors concentrated on the traditional formula of abatements, improvements, new revenues and recourse to parliament, with Lake and Coke playing the major part in the discussions judging by the notes taken by Ellesmere.6 Lake suggested a variety of projects that would increase revenues and balance the books. On James’s debts, now totalling £700,000, Lake was ambivalent, proposing parliament or improvements of forest and parks. Winwood was blunt, convinced of the ‘confusion & dissolucion of the monarchy yf there be not a p[re]sent remedye’ and seconded Lake’s options for the debt. Ellesmere ‘agreed w[i]th Coke in toto; and w[i]th Zouch & Worcester’. They spoke to Ellesmere’s growing preoccupation with waste and mismanagement and shaped his reflections in the next two months. Coke targeted those who tasted James’s bounty, believing that all voluntary pensions should be suspended and asserting the maxim that ‘no subiect to lyve on the king untyll the king be hable to lyve by hymself’. Offensive or lucrative grants should be denied, thereby bringing revenues directly to James’s coffers rather than to private purses. The silk farm should be renegotiated, forests and parks improved, copyholds from £10 to £300 enfranchised and special privy seals issued. Zouche and Worcester also favoured wastes and copyholds and measures for addressing Irish expenses.7 Like Coke, Zouche approved the denial of suits, but further believed that an examination should be made of lavish grants and those made under false pretences.

2 3

Proceedings, 1614, 66–7 Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 19, 23; Debates, 1610, 127; Proceedings, 1610, ii. 398; Proceedings, 1614, pp. xxii–xxiii. 4 Russell, Addled Parliament, 13–18. 5 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fos 224v, 229v. 6 HHL, MS Ellesmere 441/1–4 (July 1615). 7 HHL, MS Ellesmere 441/3–4.

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According to J. D. Alsop, Ellesmere was particularly struck by two of Worcester’s points: ‘Abatements maye make his state equall’ and the oft-repeated sentiment ‘the leake in the cesterne to be stopped’.8 ‘Rightly or wrongly’, asserts Alsop, ‘this was the immovable centre of Ellesmere’s position on Crown finance in 1615’.9 He never accepted his colleagues’ opinion that James’s debts could only be paid by parliament; for Ellesmere ‘parliament was unnecessary’. Alsop discounts the far-reaching nature of Ellesmere’s proposals and imposes the false dichotomy of parliament/prerogative upon the matter. Among those of Coke’s opinions with which Ellesmere agreed ‘in toto’ was the the view that ‘the crowne was nev[er] maynteyned by the ordinarye but helped by p[ar]lem[en]t’.10 Earlier Ellesmere had defended parliamentary pardons and their utility for inviting supply against Suffolk’s project.11 Ellesmere’s private notes explicitly connect reform to parliament while the same perspective informed the conclusion to his formal programme: When all or some of the thinges before mencioned shall be begunne & in doinge, as namely the abatinge &c, the amendinge of the boke of Rates, the reforminge of the Imposicions &c, the putting in execucon of some of the statutes before mencioned, then yt wyll be requisite to calle a p[ar]lement and yt is not to be doubted, but his Ma[jes]tes good and lovinge subiectes, seinge this course taken by his Ma[jes]tie, wylle wyllingly & cherefullye yelde large contribucon & ayde, by subsidies, tenthes, fyftenes & otherwyse.12

After a summer spent crafting a thoroughgoing reform programme, there is no reason to discount Ellesmere’s statements of its relationship to parliament because the theme appears ‘in a second-from-last paragraph’.13 ‘Thinges to be considered of before a Parliament to be called’ were precisely that. Ellesmere took it upon himself to untie the Gordian knot of fiscal policy and parliament following the abject failures of 1610 and 1614. He ‘never lyked of novelties, espetially in Parlament as were ye new terms of Contribution & Retribution, w[hi]ch he thought had done muche hurt’. Like Bacon, Ellesmere was an Elizabethan and as lord chancellor harked back to the parliamentary past he understood: ‘yt[that] his Ma[jes]ty should grant them good laws, they give him convenient relliefe, as his occasions should requyre’.14 He was frustrated by directionless fiscal policy and mismanagement. He chastised colleagues in 1615 for putting forward nothing ‘w[hi]ch had not often been spoken of at yt[that] board’; more action and less

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

HHL, MS Ellesmere 441. Alsop, ‘Fiscal reform’, 199–200. HHL, MS Ellesmere 441/2. HHL, MS Ellesmere 445. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/11; MS Ellesmere 2507. Alsop, ‘Fiscal reform’, 198. BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 229v.

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rehashing would already have produced results.15 Policies of inaction and waste had eroded James’s estate and left him dependent upon parliament, a subversion of the proper balance between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy in the polity.16 For Ellesmere, a change in policy was crucial to the restoration of larger political relationships and to re-establishing parliament as an effective source of revenue and tool of governance.17 Ellesmere believed that a forthright diagnosis was the first order of business and he attacked the divide between public good and private gain in projects, the fluidity of James’s kingship which allowed them to prosper and the projecting mentality of governors.18 Salisbury had looked to a conciliar and procedural method with the commission for suits and book of bounty, but Ellesmere proposed using the law courts to redefine the operative character of kingship. He joined Coke and Zouch in arguing that the time had come to investigate all gifts, grants and superfluous new offices by which revenues had been diverted to private gain. He wished to turn the weight of the law against corrupt and incompetent officers.19 Grants could be legally voided, while individuals who had trafficked in James’s bounty should be pressed to surrender the value of their gains to James’s creditors.20 Similar steps had been taken by means of parliamentary acts of resumption, but Ellesmere preferred the equity courts. The attitude of previous parliaments made a politically charged course of resumption as unappealing to Ellesmere as it once had been to Northampton (at Cotton’s suggestion).21 Finally, extending rigorous accountability to officers, turning projects to public gain, delegating their execution to trustworthy individuals and enforcing a balance between receipts and issues would do much to prevent future grants and policies adversely affecting crown revenues – and parliamentary opinion.22 ‘And from hence furthe’, proclaimed Ellesmere, ‘the leakes in the Cisterne of the Treasurye to be stopped by his Ma[jes]tie.’23

15 16 17 18

Ibid. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2599; Knafla, Law and politics, 35, 81–2. Cramsie, ‘Legacy’, 43–5. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610 (18 Sept. 1615), supplemented by MS Ellesmere 1216, is the lord chancellor’s formal programme. Its evolution, in outline and content, can be followed in MSS Ellesmere 476, 465, 478 and 2507. For the inclusion of MS Ellesmere 1216 as a supplement see Alsop, ‘Fiscal reform’, 196 n. 22. 19 HHL, MSS Ellesmere 2610/3–4, 1216/1. 20 HHL, MSS Ellesmere 476, 1216/2. Cranfield made a similar proposal: CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. 21 HHL, MS Ellesmere 1216/2; BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F 6, fos 42v–3r. 22 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/1–3, 8–10; MS Ellesmere 216/3. Humphrey May, exhibiting much the same attitude as Ellesmere, composed a memorandum for the lord deputy of Ireland after the Addled Parliament, positing that every officer should cast about for ways to relieve the king’s necessities through new revenues and abatements: Bodl. Lib., Clarendon state papers 90 (16 Aug. 1614). 23 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/1.

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There is a striking similarity between these attitudes and those of Thomas Wentworth in the parliament of 1610: all theise courses would be to no purpose except it would please the king to resume his pencions granted to cortiers out of the exchecquer and to diminish his charge and expences. For (sayes he) to what purpose is it for us to drawe a silver streame out of the contry into the royall cesterne, if it shall dayly runne out thence by private cocks?24

Wentworth wished that ‘wee might joyne in humble petition to His Majestie that he would diminish his charge and live of his owne without exacting of his poore subjects’. Under Richard II, Wentworth avowed that an acte of parliament was made that because the revenues of the crowne were wasted and exhausted by the excessive guifts of the kinge and misgovernance of his officers, that therefore a Counsell appoynted should consider of the sayd guiffts and grants and enquire of the king’s receipts and expences to the end the king’s state might be mayntained without oppression of his subjects.

Wentworth would ‘never give his consent to take money from a poore frize jerkyn to trappe a courtier’s horse’, but, implicitly, he would for public necessities. The lord chancellor and the vocal member were speaking much the same language. Ellesmere’s plans included familiar projects, but he looked rather to economic forces, particularly commerce, to shape revenues. He defended James’s right to impose, but supported Cranfield’s advice for the book of rates which could make them both politically palatable and effective in balancing trade. Enforcement of the statutes of employment requiring merchant strangers and aliens to employ their proceeds before leaving England as well as other regulations, preceded by a proclamation and exemplary punishments, would encourage compositions for pardons and level the commercial playing field. Ellesmere’s projects included those for parks, chases, forests, copyholds, selling reversions and remainders of lands entailed to the crown, surrounded grounds, tithes out of parishes and fishing busses. A secondary group was designed ‘for the more spedye payment of his Ma[jes]tes debtes’. Ellesmere proposed to exploit the king’s own, joining governors like Dorset, Salisbury and Caesar, but he neither debated whether parliament had a role to play in financing the crown nor presented a contra position.25 The question was how parliament could be exploited effectively as part of his holistic programme for repairing James’s estate. James ordered Ellesmere and his colleagues to consider his estate again in September 1615, but his agenda meant that they were divided over parlia-

24 25

Debates, 1610, 11–12. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/4–10.

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ment.26 Initially, retrenchment was the focus, but some councillors concluded that it was inadequate when set against James’s debts. No ‘perfect subsistence’ was possible except by parliamentary supply, a motion which prompted argument among them ‘about the difficulties of having a Parl[iament]’. James’s resolution was two-fold: to consider alternatives to parliament, but if none emerged to examine the best course of preparation. James was obviously wary, refusing to sanction parliament until a programme had been debated and offered to him, a reversal of the situation in 1614 when he had acquiesced and then left his council to prepare for the session. That parliament haunted him: ‘he would not avoyd a Parl[iament] if he might see likelyhood of comfort by it . . . on the other side he would rather suffer any extremity then have another meeting w[i]th his people & take an affront’. The council resolved the following day that only parliament would suffice, but when the time came to debate preparation some ‘missconceaved the former days resolution & to press ye particular heads of abatements’. The previous debate was revisited until the dissidents submitted.27 The voices of Lake, Caesar, Coke and Winwood (four of the first six to speak) charged the debate in favour of reform and parliament.28 Lake framed the question by asserting that past impediments to success must be removed and new inducements provided. Offering an interpretation which Wentworth would have found agreeable, Lake argued that it was crucial to remove the taint of prodigality by persuading James to control patronage and pursue retrenchment. The other impediments were grievances which the learned council should examine, referring those fit for remedy by law to the judges, the rest to be dealt with by James with his councillors’ advice. Impositions were pre-eminent and Lake supported Cranfield’s project. Commonwealth matters fit to be handled before or during parliament were the incentives Lake would offer: fishing busses, balanced trade, statutes of employments, dyed cloth and the abolition of obsolete laws. Like Ellesmere, Lake concluded that ‘ye naturall kyndness of the people of England shall revyve agayn and shew itself in a liberall & free contribution towards ye relief of his Ma[jes]tes necessities’ when presented with such a programme. Caesar seconded Lake’s discourse concisely while Coke took a wider perspective which hinted at further contention among the councillors.29 Curing the king’s fiscal ills ‘was ye scope of this present consultation’. Balancing the books required abatements in offices and suspension of 26

BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 224v (24 Sept. 1615). The records of the meetings between 24 and 28 September are MS Harleian 4289, fos 224v–30v. Lake’s draft is PRO, SP 14/81/115, fos 184r–98r; Ellesmere’s notes, taken during debates on 28 September, are HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628 (transcribed in Alsop, ‘Fiscal reform’, at pp. 205–8). 27 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 224v–5r. 28 The first six speakers were Lake, Caesar, Parry, Coke, Greville and Winwood. Only Greville was equivocal about parliament, but agreed with Coke that it was the best option for paying the king’s debts. 29 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/1.

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pensions until James’s debts were paid while increased revenues were possible if the statutes of employment were executed, trade balanced and fraudulent grants examined and voided30 Parliament remained necessary for paying James’s debts despite a change in policy.31 Coke’s distinction between repairing James’s estate and preparing for parliament through staying gifts and pensions, abating, redressing grievances (especially impositions) and suspending offensive grants was blurred. For the management of parliament, Coke wanted an irrefutable case, fashioned for members like Wentworth, proving that James’s debts ‘proceeded not only out of facility & prodigality’, but from matters of state. Finally, Coke called for conciliar committees assisted by experts to settle these proposals and projects after which a report would be made to the whole council.32 Winwood approved the ideas for preparation, but actually reduced them to three dominant issues to be handled by committees: the removal of impositions, Coke’s justification of expenditure and an assurance for parliament that ‘what they would give might be converted to publik uses, & not otherwise employ[e]d’. The simplicity of Winwood’s programme is explained by his blunt assertion that ‘there was no way to redeem ye King out of his necessities really and substantially, but by ye good will of his people in Parlem[en]t & all other ways & means would prove frivolous, & time lost that should be spent in consideration of them’. Following the earlier contretemps over resolution for parliament, the agenda became that ‘ye point of preparation necessary to be speedily debated . . . yt[that] his Ma[jes]ty might have their Lo[rdshi]ps resolutions yt[that] afternoone’.33 This was the crux: not whether parliament, but how soon. Winwood rejected the ‘expedition & mature deliberation’ of Coke’s wider policies and Lake’s longer process of preparation. Ellesmere recorded the extent to which later speakers signalled their support – or acquiescence – for Lake and Coke rather than Winwood.34 They were at pains to emphasise ‘that before a Parliament must go a good and well-digested preparation’, in the words of Comptroller Wotton. In the opinions of Wotton, Knollys, Zouch and Fenton, the best preparation had been offered by Coke and Lake.35 Exeter discoursed on the ends of parliament, believing that redress of grievances was a preparation for supply. He supported Coke by arguing that ‘yf 4 subsidies be graunted, yt will not be sufficyent . . . if it were obtained, was but a rellief temporary; whereas abatement of expense was an easement both certayn and perpetuall’.36 Pembroke offered a defining opinion: ‘there was no reall way to rellieve ye King but by contribution of his 30

BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 226v; HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/2; cf. MS Ellesmere 2610/1–5. 31 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/2; BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 227r. 32 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 227r; cf. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/9. 33 BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 227v; HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/3. 34 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/3–5. 35 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/3–4. 36 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/4, and BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 228r respectively.

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people in Parlam[en]t w[hi]ch as he held for fundamental on ye one part, so did he hould it for no less fundamentall on ye other side yt[that] a Parlam[en]t was not to be attempted w[i]thout dew preparation’. Nottingham and Suffolk offered cautionaries about members’ potential demands for redress and the possibility that no plan of action on impositions would deter them from demanding that the point of right be settled in their favour.37 Ellesmere spoke at ‘good length’ and delivered much of his programme in approximate order after Suffolk. His conclusion reveals the complexity of the question before them: ‘These severall heads . . . had been formerly mooved but foreslowed. He wished they might now be quick[e]ned & pursued, as things wherof sum were good means to bring ye King rellief by themselves; sum others good preparations for a Parlament; and sum others fitt to be treated in a Parlem[en]t.’ Like Coke, he believed that it was time to get down to business and pushed for committees. Archbishop Abbot’s accustomed seniority left to him the task of summing up. He took great comfort from their proceedings and believed a ‘Parliament so prepared & ordered . . . might carry w[i]th it a likelyhood & probability of bringing good success.’ The council resolved on committees after Abbot’s speech and appointments were made the next day once James’s had reviewed their proposals.38 The committees emphasised reform. Ellesmere, Lake and Coke were rewarded with those for examining gifts and grants; balancing revenues and expenditures; impositions and trade; fishing busses; and statutes of employment. Lake was frustrated over obsolete laws, but he and Coke could take satisfaction from the review of past grievances by the learned council. No committees were appointed to justify James’s expenses, prevent electioneering, devise means to commit the king to spend subsidies on public expenses or secrecy in proceedings. Ellesmere crabbed that for ‘abatinge of pencions, anuityes, new fees & new offices there are no com[m]ittees, nor tyme appoynted’, while his projects for defective titles, assarts, the mint and coinage were ignored.39 A number of factors were at work in the omissions. Councillors were spread thin and the committees chosen reflected a prioritisation in favour of difficult problems, but ones likely to yield the greatest benefit. Ellesmere alone seems not to have heeded James’s cryptic warning that many difficulties would ensue from examining pensions. James was probably equally antipathetic to any direct preparations for an assembly. It was he who had originally assembled his councillors for the establishment of his estate by retrenchment.40 Parliament was forced onto the agenda by declaring James’s talk of abatement inadequate. At the conclusion of the meetings, James offered only his approval of their course with commit-

37 38 39 40

BL, MS Harleian 4289, fos 228v–9r; HHL, MS Ellesmere 2628/5. BL, MS Harleian 4289, fos 229v–30r; HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/1–7 HHL, MS Ellesmere 2614. BL, MS Harleian 4289, fo. 224v.

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tees and left them to their work.41 He probably agreed with Ellesmere that the proposals could ‘be very good for supplye and increasinge of his Maiesties yerely reuenewe and wyll in tyme helpe towarde the payment of his debtes’, but until their work was completed he would not face parliament – and not even then.42 Significantly, the committees amounted to little in practice.43 Sweeping reform of the kind envisaged by Ellesmere remained conceptually out of time because neither its strictures nor parliament were palatable to James. Reform and the emergence of the late Jacobean regime The Scottish journey created financial imperatives which forced James to embrace reform, although not in accordance with Ellesmere’s ideas, as a vehicle for restoring the viability of parliament. James met his councillors to examine the situation upon his return, but Bacon first advised James to scrutinise the failure of the conciliar plans in language that predisposed James to find deception and mismanagement.44 Bacon deliberately stoked James’s anger; his promptings were part of a concerted effort on his part, and that of Cranfield and Villiers, to wrest authority decisively from Suffolk by encouraging and then satisfying James’s demands for retrenchment. The triumvirate of Bacon, Cranfield and Villiers (with some like-minded colleagues) found common ground in 1616 by advocating reform for its own merits and in order to undermine Suffolk and Carr. Ingram’s alum works became a prime target, though the investigation never reported once it was clear that Suffolk remained immovable.45 Attempts in 1616 to shift Greville from the exchequer and replace him with Bacon and then Cranfield further signalled the coming together of the triumvirate.46 Cranfield supplied the intellectual basis for their reforms. His thinking and counsel for reform, if not parliament, were anchored in Ellesmere’s 1615 programme, a product of their intellectual partnership upon which Cranfield consistently drew.47 The triumvirate’s agenda was not simply reform. It included political power which transcended influence over patronage and place to embrace responsibility for policy and governance. That reform and power were simultaneously means and ends can best be seen in their attack on the privy council. No sooner had Villiers taken possession of the secretarial seals than James commanded his councillors to pursue a broad programme of retrench41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Ibid. fo. 230v. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/7. Alsop, ‘Fiscal reform’, 204–5. Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 255–6. Upton, Ingram, 120–1. Rebholz, Greville, 245. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610; CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MSS Cranfield 2330, 7906]; OO188 [MS Cranfield 4074]; OE1430 [MS Cranfield 6775].

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ment. Like its many predecessors, the effort embraced the household, wardrobe, navy, pensions, Ireland and the Berwick garrison. James and Villiers monitored the work closely, but in December 1617 James made a fundamental change. The programme was removed from the purview of the council and handed over to an interlocking group of commissions led by Cranfield and Bacon. This was done out of practical and political necessity. The council had turned to the very people responsible for mismanagement to put matters right. Lake’s report to Villiers at the start of the programme is telling: ‘my Ll[ordships] after debating and disputing, finding no other certain way, did command the officers in his Majesty[’s] name to take it in hande’ with orders to reduce household expenditures to £50,000. Lake was of the ‘opinion it shalbe to good purpose that his Majesty writt to them a lettre to that effect . . . for in truth they went very unwillingly about the business’; James’s intervention would spur their ‘project’.48 Villiers wrote to Bacon that James was pleased with the initial work, but wariness can be read between the lines.49 Bacon responded that the ‘liking which his Majesty hath of our proceeding concerning his Household, telleth me that his Majesty cannot but dislike the declining and tergiversation of the inferior officers; which by this time he understandeth’. Bacon ended, ‘methinks his Majesty, upon these tossings over of his business from one to others, hath an apt occasion to go on with sub-committees’.50 Together with a council report repeating the officers’ pleas of ‘incapacity’, Bacon’s letter had its desired effect.51 James was surprised by the officer’s stonewalling and Bacon disingenuously disavowed the council letter as one that had simply been passed to him for signature by the clerk. The king concluded that ‘it will be now a fit time to make use of Sir Lionel Cranfield’s propositions’.52 Villiers, Bacon and Cranfield took household retrenchment out of the officers’ hands and placed it into those of independent commissioners. Villiers persuaded James to write personally to the council of his decision, an action which would prepare the ground ‘as well as is possible’.53 Cranfield and Bacon drafted the commissioners’ instructions; the corrected draft in Cranfield’s hand would indicate that he played the lead role.54 Presented by Villiers with Bacon’s clean copy, James enthusiastically signed it as the final instrument and sent it to the council.55 The triumvirate checkmated the council by playing upon the household officers’ obstructions. The commission left no doubt as to why their work had been suspended: ‘we 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

The Fortescue papers, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, London 1871, 31. Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 274 (17 Nov. 1617). Ibid. vi. 275 (19 Nov. 1617). APC, 1616–17, 372. Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 276. Ibid. (20 Nov. 1617). CKS, U269/1, OW106 [MS Cranfield 881] (undated); Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 279–80 (27 Nov. 1617). 55 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 281 (2 Dec. 1617).

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do find what difficulties are made and what time is lost, in disputing and devising upon the manner of doing that whereof the matter must be and is so fully resolved’.56 James ordered his councillors to nominate subcommissioners for ‘the mechanic and labourious part of every business’, but Bacon and Cranfield actually selected their fellow commissioners.57 Bacon forwarded Villiers ‘the names (by his [Cranfield] advice and with mine own good allowance) of those which we wish his Majesty should select’.58 He cryptically added that he ‘had respect somewhat to form, more to the avoiding of opposition, but most to the service’ in the selection.59 They chose exchequer auditors, junior household officers and customs experts. The commissioners were to receive occasional directions from the council, but the instructions blamed the council for irresolution.60 Faced with the household’s calculated incapacity, the council had caved in. Earlier conciliar timidity had also plagued pensions.61 James demonstrated an unwillingness to accept the onus for suspending pensions and expected his council to effect the savings, but Lake wrote on behalf of his colleagues that ‘I feare there wilbe so much diversity of opinion as there will not be much don’.62 Lake had already been scolded for putting the matter back in the royal lap and this too must have contributed to James’s support for the triumvirate. The instructions bluntly asserted that it was ‘too tedious’ for the whole council and would only ‘draw the business itself into length’ while subcommittees would ‘impose that upon a few, which requireth to be carried indifferently as the act of you all’.63 The triumvirate’s gambit produced a sudden appearance of purposeful action. No longer pleading their own or the household’s incapacity, the council reported that the officers would soon ‘present some modules of retrenchmentes of divers kindes, all ayminge at your Majestie’s service’. As far as pensions were concerned, they had suspended some, reduced others by a third and would press on until James was satisfied. They asserted their place in the process when discussing the wardrobe: ‘although some doubt did arryse unto us, whether your Majestie’s letter intended a stay of our laboures . . . yet presuminge that such a course by sub-committee [commission] was purposed rather for a furtherance then lett to that worke, wee did resolve to goe on still’.64 Bacon persuaded James to leave his councillors with this impression. It remained politically important for the commissioners to maintain a pretence of conciliar authority, ‘without seeming they should have any immediate 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Ibid. vi. 280. Ibid. Ibid. vi. 280, 283 (6 Dec. 1617). Ibid. vi. 283. Ibid. vi. 280–1. APC, 1616–17, 372 (17 Nov. 1617); PRO, SP 14/123/79, fo. 109r ([Oct?] 1621). Fortescue papers, 33 (21 Nov. 1617). Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 280. APC, 1616–17, 399–400 (5 Dec. 1617).

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dependance upon his Majesty, but merely upon the table’. James should reassure the council that the commission was to ‘give help and not hinderance . . . and that he doth expect the propositions we [the council] have in hand, when they are finished’. But this was subterfuge; the commissioners’ authority was ‘to be kept in breast and to come forth by parts’, but come forth it did.65 The transformation of Villiers into minister-favourite and alter-rex was at work here. Villiers was the favourite, but seems to have concluded that the way to avoid his predecessor’s fate was to extend his pre-eminence to policy and governance, something Carr never achieved.66 Vested interests without obligation to Villiers were represented in the council. These included Suffolk, Nottingham and leading household officers. Cranfield held no major office; snobbery against ‘so base a fellowe, who hath no manner of learning, nor experience’ held him back.67 Bacon admitted that retrenchment was properly outside his Chancery remit.68 The influence of Greville, who converted to the cause of reform after attempts to move him in 1616, was muted while Suffolk remained treasurer. It was not without thought that Villiers pursued the office of lord admiral nor that the incumbent, Nottingham, was forced out in the name of reform.69 Reform presented – and was sustained by – the opportunity for Villiers to people the council and offices with his creatures. Subcommissions composed of Bacon, Cranfield and other reform-minded experts like Greville, John Coke, Richard Weston and John Wolstenholme could bring dangerous and useful scrutiny to bear on the household, wardrobe, navy and exchequer. Household expenses were slashed in a cutting war between the commissioners and the officers, moderated, in the end, by the council.70 Cranfield’s micromanagement of the wardrobe produced astonishing savings.71 The navy commissioners rendered so effective a reform plan that they were appointed to administer it.72 The exchequer was picked apart for abuse and Suffolk finally paid the price for presiding over such corruption and incompetence.73 In no small measure because of this work, there were new faces among James’s 65 66 67 68 69 70

Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 284; APC, 1616–17, 401–2. Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 13–56. PRO, SP 14/89/33, fo. 69r (18 Nov. 1616); SP 14/89/39, fo. 81r (23 Nov. 1616). Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 277 (22 Nov. 1617). Peck, Court patronage, 106–27. PRO, SP 14/95/12, fos 21r–2v (10 Jan. 1618); CKS, U269/1, OW151 [MSS Cranfield 4839, 4840] (10, 11 Apr. 1618 respectively); OW150 [MS Cranfield 4742] (undated); PRO, SP 14/103/64, fos 102r–3v (2 Nov. 1618). See also Tawney, Business and politics, 157–9; P. R. Seddon, ‘Household reforms in the reign of James I’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research liii (1980), 47–9; Prestwich, Cranfield, 206–18. 71 Seddon, ‘Household reforms’, 50–2; Prestwich, Cranfield, 228–32; CKS, U269/1, OW40 [MS Cranfield 6543] (undated). 72 Peck, Court patronage, 106–27; CKS, U269/1, ON8 [MS Cranfield 6156] (undated); Michael B. Young, Servility and service: the life and work of Sir John Coke, London 1986, 40–92; BL, MS Add. 64876, fos 69r–74v, 84r–5v, 96r–v, 120r–1v. 73 Tawney, Business and politics, 164–8.

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office-holders by 1620. Villiers was lord admiral. Robert Naunton and George Calvert were new secretaries. Cranfield was sworn to the council and installed in the court of wards. His preferment was cemented by his marriage to Anne Brett, although originally he had spurned the favourite’s matchmaking. Bacon was elevated from lord keeper to chancellor. The household officers were shuffled.74 Finally, the second treasury commission took the reins from Suffolk: Greville, Naunton and Bacon were joined by Archbishop Abbot, Caesar, Edward Coke and Cranfield (in 1619). Unlike their 1612 counterparts, these commissioners were acknowledged experts in finance or resolutely committed to reform.75 When Bacon and the treasury commissioners successfully balanced the ordinary accounts by means of stringent management, James puckishly willed them ‘to set it downe in wrighting, uppon the vouchees handes in the several places of abatements & increases, for our justification & theire charge hereafter, if it holde not’.76 Something of larger significance than a council facelift occurred in these years. The venues for counsel and governance also passed into the purview of Villiers and his clientage. The council became a more truly executive and administrative body. Real policy-making took place in a dynamic relationship between James, Villiers, the changeable body of men making up the favourite’s ‘privados’ and ‘creatures’ and, increasingly, Prince Charles.77 In the years before 1625 Villiers fashioned and refashioned the officers of state and household into ‘men of business’ for his own ends. At differing times Villiers’s instruments included Bacon, Cranfield, Greville, Naunton, Calvert and, later, Secretary Conway, Lord Treasurer Mandeville (later lord president of the council) and Weston at the exchequer.78 This clientage remained fluid, reflecting changing circumstances, not least when facing alterations in policy as happened with the war-policy in 1623–4.79 By then, the need to exert authority for the war against Spain had resulted in more remarkable changes: Conway was unchallenged as secretary, Calvert had been marginalised (later replaced by Villiers’s clients, Albertus Morton and John Coke) and Mandeville acted as more than a token lord president;80 Cranfield was impeached and the white staff given to James Ley; and officers like Weston and Lord Keeper Williams kept their places by keeping their peace.81 Villiers transcended his work as a minister-favourite to become alter-rex, an individual without whom the king, and later Prince Charles, seemingly did not govern. The process which became policy-making by inner circle under 74 75 76 77 78 79

PRO, SP 14/94/81, fo. 149r–v (26 Dec. 1617); SP 14/94/82, fos 150r–1v (27 Dec. 1617). Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 320 (25 July 1618). BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 302v (21 May 1619); Tawney, Business and politics, 168–73. Cust, Forced loan, 24; Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 80. For Villiers’s Caroline circle see Cust, Forced loan, 23–5. For instance, Calvert and Lord Keeper Williams were largely James’s choices over the candidates preferred by Villiers: Lockyer, Buckingham, 69–70. 80 Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 80–3, 88–9. 81 Ibid. 270–3.

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Charles I and culminated in the charged rhetoric of excluded counsel at Villiers’s assassination in 1628 began with the cause of reform. Projects, parliament and the politics of the late Jacobean regime The triumvirate succeeded against waste and convenient incompetence, but it did not settle the political–financial problems of projects inside the regime or in the country at large. Improved accounts did nothing to reduce the usefulness of projects for James and they remained central to his agenda. Further, projects now held out an even stronger lure to Villiers in pairing private gain and public good. Villiers pressed reform in the offices of state and against the profitable interests of individuals outside his orbit, but the alter-rex had to construct and patronise his own affinity. And he was expected by James to act as a clearing-house for suitors, in effect focusing the authority originally posited with the commission for suits and book of bounty onto a personal relationship of the king’s making (and unmaking).82 It is hardly surprising, given these circumstances, to find that 1617–20 emerges as a period when projects were most intensively exploited. However, this became a faultline within the regime as well as a source of conflict in parliament. Cranfield was the key figure. Cranfield had no love for projects, at least for the most venal schemes or those operating outside the circle of his colleagues like Ingram, and he continued to emphasise reforms of the kind undertaken between 1617 and 1618. Cranfield proved to be an unwilling collaborator in Villiers’s projecting and the favourite instead looked to Bacon and Mandeville, lord treasurer from 1620 to 1621. The tobacco monopoly occasioned an assessment by Chamberlain in 1620: ‘in truth the world doth ever growne under the burthen of these perpetuall patents, w[hi]ch are become so frequent, that whereas at the K[ing]s comming in there were complaints of some eight or nine monopolies then in beeing, they are now said to be multiplied to so many scores’.83 Numbers support his sense of the times.84 Thirty-eight patents were termed grievances or were the subject of extended complaint in the parliament of 1621. Thirty-three of them were granted or confirmed between 1617 and 1620, on average eight a year.85 Their preponderance in these years is put in perspective by a second list of seventy-nine similar grants. The period 1603–17 averaged less than four grants per year; in the three years following

82 83 84

Peck, Court patronage, 48–51. PRO, SP 14/116/13, fo. 20v (8 July 1620). PRO, SP 14/121/48, fos 106r–7v; SP 14/121/49, fos 108r–9v; SP 14/121/123, fo. 231r–v; SP 14/121/124, fo. 232r–v; SP 14/121/125, fos 234r–6v. 85 Where multiple grants were made, the most recent grant or confirmation was used for purposes of tabulation: PRO, SP 14/121/125, fo. 234r; dating from Debates, 1621, vii. 311–564 (Appendix B: grants).

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the median was more than nine. When both sets of figures are integrated the average number of annual grants made between 1615 and 1620 rises to nearly fourteen; the median is eighteen between 1618 and 1620; a remarkable nineteen and twenty-four grants were made in 1618 and 1619 alone.86 Chamberlain was entitled to think that projectors were belabouring the commonwealth as never before. Proclamations were also a touchstone for Chamberlain, in this case compositions for new buildings in London: ‘On Wensday, divers were censured in the starchamber for building contrarie to the K[ing]s proclamation, w[hi]ch was so farr inforced that the L[ord] Chiefe Iustice said that yt was in effect and had the nature of an act of parliament.’87 He later described the rise of an ominous partnership: indeed the world is now much terrified with the starchamber, there beeing not so little an offence against any proclamation but is liable and subiect to the censure of that court and for proclamations and patents they are become so ordinarie, that there is no end, every day bringing forth some new proiect or other.88

There was much truth in this assertion. In the previous eighteen years, proclamations had furthered numerous projects: the tin business, assarts, defective titles, depopulation and enclosure, starch, jurors, alienations, alehouses, the alum works, fishing licences, an imposition on pepper, silk, dyed and dressed cloth, farthing tokens, felts, whale-fins, glass, forest laws, gold and silver thread, pins, wine casks, dyeing with logwood, the hot press for finished cloth, tobacco pipe-makers and tobacco among them.89 86 87 88 89

PRO, SP 14/121/125, fos 234r–6r. PRO, SP 14/105/68, fo. 89r–v (30 Jan. 1619). PRO, SP 14/116/13, fo. 20r–v. Proclamations: James I, 28–9 (tin, 16 June 1603), 105–8 (leases and assarts, 17 Feb. 1605), 111–12 (buildings in London, 1 Mar. 1605), 113–14 (assarts, 8 July 1605), 154–8 (depopulation and enclosure, 28 June 1607), 161–2 (enclosures, 24 July 1607), 163–6 (starch, 23 Aug. 1607), 167–71 (jurors, 5 Oct. 1607), 171–5 (buildings, 12 Oct. 1607), 188–92 (starch, 5 July 1608), 193–5 (buildings, 25 July 1608), 197–200 (alienations, 1 Oct. 1608), 200–2 (alehouses, 12 Dec. 1608), 209–11 (alienations, 18 Feb. 1609), 213–17 (defective titles, 22 Apr. 1609), 217–19 (6 May 1609), 224–7 (alum, 19 June 1609), 233–6 (pepper, 30 Nov. 1609), 236–7 (defective titles, 30 Nov. 1609), 237–41 (starch, 10 Jan. 1610), 241–2 (defective titles, 11 Feb. 1610), 250–3 (starch, 22 Aug. 1610), 267–9 (buildings, 3 Aug. 1611), 269–71 (buildings, 10 Sept. 1611), 282–3 (silk, 17 July 1612), 287–90 (farthing tokens, 19 May 1613), 299–300 (felts, 2 Dec. 1613), 300–2 (dyeing cloth, 7 Dec. 1613), 308–10 (farthing tokens, 21 June 1614), 312–14 (whale fins, 11 Sept. 1614), 319–22 (alum, 10 Oct. 1614), 327–9 (dyeing and dressing cloth, 2 Dec. 1614), 342–3 (glass, 23 May 1615), 345–7 (buildings, 16 July 1615), 348 (forest laws, 16 Sept. 1615), 350–1 (farthing tokens, 26 Oct. 1615), 352–4 (tin, 26 Oct. 1615), 363–5 (farthing tokens, 17 Mar. 1617), 380–4 (alum, 16 Mar. 1618), 384–9 (gold and silver thread, 22 Mar. 1618), 398–400 (buildings, 20 July 1618), 401–2 (pins, 20 July 1618), 409–13 (alehouses, 19 Jan. 1619), 426–8 (defective titles, 13 Feb. 1619), 428–31 (buildings, 12 Mar. 1619), 441–6 (gold and silver thread, 10 Oct. 1619), 455–7 (wine casks, 9 Dec. 1619), 457–60 (tobacco, 30 Dec. 1619), 464–6 (glass,

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It was Bacon who truly promoted the exploitation of proclamations and Star Chamber for fiscal ends. Eight of fourteen proclamations served the turn of projects, a preponderance rivalled only in 1607–10 and 1614.90 This developed most directly out of conciliar plans in 1617 which gave serious attention to Star Chamber fines as a major revenue in their own right.91 However, the fiscal utility of proclamations and Star Chamber had been demonstrated by means of actions over new buildings in London. The first official prosecution under a proclamation against new building was argued the very day of its issue in October 1607 and intended to send a clear message to violators. Bacon delivered the information, that ‘one Louche, “a kooke, & Robert Hollande, a scryvener at temple barre” ’ confessed their contempts of the ‘common lawe & the kinge’s prerogative’ with their new buildings. Judgements against Holland and Louche were deliberately severe. Holland, ‘in respecte of his milde & modeste caryage’, was fined £100, imprisoned and ordered to rebuild the front of his house in brick or else see it demolished. Louche was fined £200, imprisoned, had his house ‘plucked down’ and was bound for good behaviour after trading ‘contempuous wordes’ with a JP.92 It was a small and familiar step to turn these tangible threats into compositions for relief from the law’s full rigour.93 The blatant financial opportunism of another building proclamation in 1614 was deeply unpopular: the inquirie after new erected buildings w[i]thin seven miles of this towne since the k[ing]s comming goes on amaine and the last week the whole counsaile from the highest to the lowest brought down a commission and sat at guild hall about yt; yf they should procede w[i]th rigour and extremitie, they might raise a great masse of monie as is thought, but yt will cause much murmur and complaint.94

Proclamations established the pitfalls of building while exemplary prosecutions in Star Chamber made the danger material. The proceeedings taken by the second treasury commission against the Dutch merchant community in 1619 for exporting bullion in contravention of numerous proclamations turned into the regime’s most lucrative use of Star Chamber.95 Bacon followed this in 1620 with a proposal that James proclaim

25 Feb. 1620), 467–9 (logwood, 29 Feb. 1620), 470–2 (hot press, 22 Mar. 1620), 473–5 (starch, 5 May 1620), 478–80 (tobacco pipe-makers, 27 May 1620), 481–4 (tobacco, 29 June 1620), 485–8 (buildings, 17 July 1620). 90 In 1607 of 11 proclamations 5 concerned projects; in 1608 4 out of 10; in 1609 7 out of 15; in 1610 4 out of 8; in 1614 5 out of 10: Proclamations: James I, pp. xv–xxvi. 91 PRO, SP 14/90/71, fo. 135r (20 Feb. 1617). 92 John Hawarde, Les reportes del cases in camera stellata, 1593–1609, ed. William P. Baildon, London 1894, 328–30, and Proclamations: James I, 171. 93 See also Hoyle ‘Reflections’, 426–7. 94 PRO, SP 14/80/115, fo. 181r–v. 95 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 374–5; PRO, SP 14/109/87, fos 160r–1v (11 June 1619); SP 14/109/112, fo. 203r–v (26 June 1619). The case can be followed in PRO, SP

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certain commonwealth commissions in Star Chamber.96 Bacon cited the standing commissions, navy and buildings, as examples, to which he added others, for the cloth trade, preserving coin and bullion, regulating imports and exports of grain, suppressing the grievances of informers, tightening Irish administration and expanding stocks of ordnance, powder, munitions and armour. James was persuaded and hoped Bacon would ‘keep the clock still going, his profit being so much interested therein’.97 Bacon apparently retreated from his initial enthusiasm, writing to Villiers that poor relief, suppressing vagabonds and informers alone were appropriate subjects for ‘the execution of any law, for which my speech was proper’.98 Yet William Hudson’s treatise on Star Chamber damned Bacon for miscarriages of justice in the merchants’ case and for establishing ‘many dangerous precedents . . . from an excess of a zeal for the court’s power and the king’s interest’.99 The handling of the tobacco projects reveal the underlying attitudes which approved the transformation of Star Chamber into a truncheon for profit. James loathed the ‘noysome and running Weede’, but the impost revenue was welcome.100 The growth of English tobacco was prohibited by proclamation in December 1619, part of a larger project whereby the Virginia Company agreed to pay an additional 6d. impost on tobacco sold in Britain.101 In effect, a monopoly was granted to traders in foreign tobacco. Bacon and Cranfield guided the project.102 Bacon wanted agreement on the impost and farming the tobacco customs before the proclamation, lest its motives be impugned. He pondered that there might ‘occur some doubt in law, because it restraineth the subject in employment of his freehold at his liberty’. But he brushed aside those concerns, it ‘being for so many reasons pro bono publico’. James agreed, ‘holding this the safest rule, Salus reipublicae suprema lex esto’.103 Another proclamation in June 1620 enforced a monopoly grant of the entire trade ‘to a group of merchants headed by Sir Thomas Roe, in exchange for an annual rent of £16,000’, a deal negotiated by Cranfield.104 The Virginia Company lost heavily because the patentees were allowed to traffic in cheaper Spanish tobacco. Members of the company, including its 14/109/90, fos 164r–5v; SP 14/109/96, fos 172r–5v; SP 14/109/101, fos 180r–1v; SP 14/109/102, fos 182r–3v; SP 14/109/103, fos 184r–5v; SP 14/111/66, fo. 106r–v (8 Dec. 1619); SP 14/112/29, fos 50r–1v (22 Jan. 1620); SP 14/116/121, fo. 172r (29 Sept. 1620); BL, MS Add. 64786, fos 154r–5v (8 Jan. 1620); CKS, U269/1, OE1424 [MS Cranfield 6279] (1 Mar. 1619 [1620]). 96 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 70–3. 97 Ibid. vii. 73 (19 Jan. 1619) and vii. 75 (22 Jan. 1619) respectively. 98 Ibid. vii. 81 (17 Feb. 1619). 99 Thomas G. Barnes, ‘Mr Hudson’s Star Chamber’, in Delloyd J. Guth and John W. McKenna (eds), Tudor rule and revolution, Cambridge 1982, 297–304. 100 Proclamations: James I, 458 (30 Dec. 1619). 101 Ibid. 459n.; Debates, 1621, vii. 454–5. 102 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 62 (22 Nov. 1619); Prestwich, Cranfield, 243–4. 103 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 64 (27 Nov. 1619). 104 Proclamations: James I, 482n. (29 June 1620); Prestwich, Cranfield, 244.

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outspoken director, Edwin Sandys, soon put Bacon’s definition of pro bono publico to the question. The regime’s seemingly contradictory pairing of reform and projects was tested in the parliament of 1621. James summoned parliament because of conflict in the Palatinate, to secure supply and thus establish the credibility of a hawkish stance vis à vis the Habsburgs in pressing for the restoration of Elizabeth and his son-in-law Frederick.105 More by accident than design, the regime tested Ellesmere’s original idea of using reform to encourage parliamentary funding. Reform contributed to members voting James supply for the first time in eleven years. This was as much a departure for James as his opening speech. The king drew attention to the conflict in the Palatinate, but took a decidedly candid and practical tack with supply. Two arguments had been used in the past ‘why I should not be relieved and succorred, the one was because of a subsidy granted me in a parliament before, the other was that, which some of the Lower House did boldy affirm that they would give all they had if they knew it should come to my purse’. James confessed that ‘I have looked as narrowly into my estate . . . and have found that there was not in it a whole piece without sores’, but he countered by reciting the regime’s reforms, praising Villiers’s diligence and ‘commissioners who by their skill and his own industry hath brought things to this good pass as they are’.106 James challenged members to gainsay reforms or use mismanagement as a pretext for denying him now. And he extended his new-found taste for reform to parliament, promising that redress of grievances and benefical legislation would be members’ reward for voting supply: he had ‘come to seek supply of you and to purge the house and not to sweep it’.107 Cranfield and Coke proved the most vocal governors in the session – at times unhelpfully – and they promoted James’s agenda that ‘supplies and grievances might go forward hand in hand’. Coke recommended that the 1610 grievances be re-examined and that ‘both grievances and subsidy end together. For they are like Hippocrates’ twins’.108 It took only an afternoon’s debate for members to agree upon supply.109 Discussions on the size of the grant followed until Sandys suggested they give two subsidies as ‘a present of love to the King . . . in regard that it is no proportion for the regaining of the Palatinate and therefore instead of terrifying our enemies it will hearten them’.110 Sandys’s motion carried the debate and Coke delivered James’s thanks that their ‘free and not merchant-like dealing’ would preserve his honour. His councillors promised that he would meet them ‘above half the way’ with grievances and members

105 106 107 108 109 110

Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 18–20. Debates, 1621, ii. 1–15. Ibid. ii. 9. Ibid. ii. 22–3 (5 Feb. 1621). Ibid. ii. 25–92. Ibid. ii. 91.

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should ‘strike while the iron is hot’. Thomas Crew reiterated that ‘there is nothing reasonable that we can ask but we shall have’.111 The recourse to parliament was problematic for governors who had guided the unprecedented expansion of projects since 1617.112 In joining Hippocrates’ twins, Cranfield and Coke put projects on the agenda along with religion, trade and justice.113 Governors, and the politically astute, understood that projects would be a major issue. Chamberlain observed: we are in suspense whether we shall have a parliament after Christmas or no, for mine owne part I cannot perceve any goode either way, for impositions and patents are growne so grievous that of necessitie they must be spoke of and the prerogative on the other side is become so tender that . . . yt cannot endure to be touched.114

He added that ‘many new patents have come foorth and more dayly expected’ and cited those for tobacco, saltpetre, scouring armour, hay, printed matter, stamping linen and probate of wills.115 All of them surfaced as grievances; members expressed their own concerns and those of the localities.116 The question of projects divided governors charged with preparing for the session. Bacon experienced a conversion of sorts and put his efforts behind persuading James to deal with patents beforehand. The contentious sort were old debts, concealed revenues and monopolies and forfeitures of penal laws.117 Old debts and concealments were legal and Bacon suggested that they use an ostensibly disinterested member to plant the idea of legislating relief, though in ‘no ways touching his Majesty’s regal power’; James should agree after a show of deliberation. As for monopolies, James should chose a number to be revoked, have them questioned in council as contrary to the book of bounty, abusive in execution or generally burdensome to his subjects. Finally, Bacon (and his colleagues in preparation, Hobart, Montagu, Crewe and Coke) was loath to suspend proclamations previously issued and thought it best if ‘they fell away by taking away the Patents’ attendant on them.118 Bacon likened his efforts to ‘Ovid’s mistress, that strove, but yet was as one that would be overcomen’.119 Villiers and those in council with a vested interest saw no reason to deliver up projects profitable to James, themselves

111 112 113

Ibid. ii. 92–4 (16 Feb.). Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 114, 145. Debates, 1621, ii. 89 (5 Feb.). For a different perspective see Russell, Parliaments, 98–100. 114 PRO, SP 14/117/37, fo. 83r (28 Oct. 1620). 115 Ibid. 116 PRO, SP 14/121/125, fo. 234r. 117 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 146. Bacon added that they ‘were somewhat more frequent since the session of 7mo [1610]’. 118 Ibid. vii. 147. A similar view was taken by Buckhurst as he and Cecil prepared for the 1601 parliament: Dean, Parliament, 1584–1601, 86–7. 119 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 152.

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or their clients, as well as countering that members would react badly to Bacon’s attempts at manipulation.120 Bacon remained undeterred, warning Villiers that his cronies’ projects were a threat to him while intervening with James.121 Three years earlier Villiers had persuaded James to sever the privy council’s authority when it proved unreceptive to reform. This time Villiers used the council to stop reforms designed to ease the forthcoming parliament because they threatened the patronage he wielded as James’s ministerfavourite and alter-rex. James and Villiers attempted, instead, to steer debate in the Commons through Cranfield and Coke, but each man was torn between serving the regime and his own ends. Cranfield shielded James and the prerogative by establishing the boundaries of acceptable debate on projects and proclamations as anything touching projects, undertakers or the referees who approved them.122 William Noy concurred: ‘All peticions begin with favourable shewes of proffit. The Kinge rests not in this but refers them all.’ Therefore the projects must be examined; some ‘are good in truth but abused, other[s] ill in their owne nature’. All projectors should be called to ‘geve an account of their good husbandrie; if they have done well, to be rewarded; if ill, to be punished’.123 Yet Cranfield seemingly allowed his distaste for the regime’s projecting to emerge when he encouraged the investigation of those of his colleagues who had acted as referees despite members’ apparent indifference. Coke truly opened the floodgates against projects when he challenged the alehouse proclamation.124 Following Coke’s lead, Edward Montagu drew attention to proclamations against dressing of flesh in Lent. The benefit of forfeitures from violators was granted to James’s servants and Montagu adjudged that the purpose of the proclamations had been to ‘increse new fees, which is a grievance’.125 They also drew ‘the punishment from the course of the Stattute and the penalties imposed by Lawe to a tryall in the Starchamber’.126 Secretary Calvert defended the project as the best means available to enforce the statutes, but Edward Alford intoned that their ancestors ‘made laws that we are governed by and not by proclamations, which are annexed to the monopolies which are grievous to the realm’.127 Cranfield successfully warned members off a course which would surely provoke James, but Coke then weighed in against projects in decisive

120 For instance, two of Mandeville’s servants held the much disputed patent for licensing inns: Russell, Parliaments, 101–4, 125n. 121 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 153–5. 122 Debates, 1621, ii. 121–2. 123 Ibid. iv. 78–9 (19 Feb.). 124 Ibid. iv. 90 (22 Feb.). 125 Ibid. ii. 119 (22 Feb.); Proclamations: James I, 450–4, 498. 126 Debates, 1621, iv. 90. 127 Ibid. ii. 119–20. BL, MS Harleian 7614 apparently contains Alford’s analysis of a whole range of Tudor and Jacobean proclamations.

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fashion.128 He placed himself among those who had opposed Bacon and ‘the callinge in of theis Pattents before the Parliament, because then they would have been kept in store for a newe suite. If they be questioned and punisht here, they must not speake for the same things againe’.129 By the conclusion of debate, inns and alehouses, patents which Bacon had advised Villiers to surrender, had become the primary targets.130 Coke employed criteria whereby projects were judged as abusive in conception, execution or both,131 thus stating of Giles Mompesson’s patent for inns, that ‘as it was ill in the project, so it was worse in the execution’.132 Such criteria were consistently used in the denunciation of projects and proclamations, their execution, the patentees and the governors who approved them, and in so doing the disjunction between public good and private gain was emphasised even more than monopolistic qualities.133 Heanage Finch condemned the gold and silver thread project: ‘the pattent is not a greevance in itselfe for that it grants but a priviledge for a tyme to a new invencion; but the Commission and execution of the Pattent are accompanied with proclamations, wherupon terrour and suits in the Starchamber are grievances’.134 John Glanville did not deny the ‘power to make proclamations in matters of state’, but binding victuallers during Lent was not such a case and their abuse ‘by these projectors to private ends’ was unacceptable.135 Projects were condemned in conception for being contrary to the book of bounty.136 Coke and Noy asserted that inns were a free trade allowed by the common law.137 The thread patentees correctly held the monopoly in production for twenty years as a new invention, but witnesses in fact testified that such thread had been in use for decades.138 Alehouse-keepers were bound by recognisance to maintain good order; patentees received the benefit of their forfeited bonds.139 Coke and his colleagues were uncertain about this, but knew that if they ‘branded it in the execution only, the commission might have start[ed] up again in a short time . . . we branded the very institution of it likewise’.140 Investigation uncovered remarkable abuses in execution.141 Subverting local government was behind the dispute over 128 129 130 131 132 133

Debates, 1621, ii. 121–2. Ibid. iv. 79; Letters and life of Frances Bacon, vii. 151–2. Debates, 1621, iv. 81. Ibid. vi. 257; iv. 84–5; ii. 112 (21 Feb.). Ibid. ii. 112. For examples of this language see ibid. ii. 118, 128, 145, 176, 184; iv. 84–5, 87; vi. 41, 262, 278. 134 Ibid. v. 32 (8 Mar. 1621). 135 Ibid. ii. 121. 136 Ibid. ii. 181 (8 Mar.); vi. 43–4 (15 Mar.). 137 Ibid. ii. 174–5 (7 Mar.), 181. 138 Ibid. ii. 184 (8 Mar.). 139 Ibid. ii. 118 (22 Feb.). 140 Ibid. ii. 118; vi. 265 (1 Mar.). 141 Ibid. iv. 86. For investigations in the Lords see Russell, Parliaments, 106–8.

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alehouses.142 Silver thread made under the patent was debased with lead; moreover the realm’s own scarce silver was used in production rather than imported bullion.143 Heanage Finch condemned every abuse of legal process in the case of thread: ‘To settle this project there have been patents, indentures, proclamations, commissions, informations both in the exchequer and Star Chamber. All which were grievances both in the frame and execution.’144 Members reserved their most fustian language for projectors. Mompesson fled abroad and was condemned in absentia as ‘one that would be loath there should be any ill in a commonwealth wherein he would not have a finger’, while Hamon L’Estrange retorted that ‘Mompesson said he was justice per excellentiam. I may say per pestilentiam.’145 Coke invoked the spectre of Empson and Dudley and declared them fools to Mompesson.146 Edward Giles was not alone when he hoped ‘that this parliament will take order with these blood suckers of the kingdom’.147 Noy protested that it was to James’s dishonour that projectors ‘fixed their bills upon posts like mountebanks and quack salvers . . . that those things which are the king’s royalties should be thus set to sale, it is a foul abuse’.148 The king’s prerogative turned to private gain is the subtext of these condemnations.149 It was a crucial consideration in placing alehouses in the petition of grievances in 1606.150 Coke believed that members in 1621 could ‘perceive that injustice and iniquity sit on the stool of wickedness and consult and set down instructions in the form of laws’.151 According to Dudley Digges, ‘when men will have to do with King’s prerogatives some monopolies, monsters, half men, half beasts, are produced’.152 Projects were also attacked for contributing to a crucial political impasse, one Ellesmere emphasised in his 1615 reform plans. Carvile must have struck a chord with advice to ‘show our grievances, which are such that out of every 1000li levied in the country scarce 200li come to his Majesty . . . the greatest part of the grievances go into private men’s purses and . . . is colored out upon the King’.153 Carvile was speaking of projects turned to private gain, just as Digges was to do a month later. Projectors were compared to harpies: they had a ‘virgin’s face but their hands and feet were like griping talons. They 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

Debates, 1621, ii. 118–19; Russell, Parliaments, 101. Debates, 1621, ii. 165 (5 Mar.). Ibid. ii. 184 (8 Mar.). Ibid. ii. 186 (8 Mar.) and 168 (5 Mar.) respectively. Ibid. ii. 161. Ibid. ii. 168. Ibid. ii. 125 (22 Feb.). See Russell, Parliaments, 100–3, though I disagree with the over-riding emphasis that Russell gives this question against larger policy issues. 150 Bowyer’s parliamentary diary, 113. 151 Debates, 1621, ii. 128 (23 Feb.); vi. 257. 152 Ibid. ii. 129 (23 Feb.). 153 Ibid. ii. 87.

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pretended the profit of the King and good of the kingdom, what more fair. But they intended only their own gain though procured by unjust vexation and oppression, what more cruel’.154 Members were convinced that projects offered only a pretence of profit to James.155 ‘The King hath not 400li. of them’ according to Cranfield’s rhetorical estimate.156 Coke mused that projectors would join alchemists, monopolists, promoters, concealers and depopulators in the pantheon of scraping villains who never thrived, but members had uncovered nothing to support that conclusion.157 It was not simply James’s bounty which deterred members, it was the distortion of public good and private gain in projects that had energised past unwillingness to support the regime. Members wanted a reckoning with the individuals who thus promoted, furthered or distorted projects in their execution. Initially the details of abuse were embarrassing for Villiers, his relatives and servants, but he disavowed his kin and remained untainted: ‘truly I thought the projects had been good for the King and commonwealth as was pretended’.158 The alter-rex escaped, but other referees were not so fortunate.159 Mompesson’s inns were home to notable figures. The legality of his patent had been approved by Bacon, Baron Tanfield and Justice Nicholls; Mandeville, Winwood, Lake and Finch had certified its value.160 Coke unavoidably condemned them in defending James: ‘If these did certify it, no king in Christendom but would have granted it.’161 Yet only Francis Seymour dissented from the House’s seeming indifference to referees.162 He was questioned for that intemperance and ‘licensed to go to the country for a few days’.163 Seymour recanted in the Commons but in the course of so doing pleaded ‘that there be set a day to hear what these referees will speak . . . and then if their fault be as great as others, I see no cause why they should not be punished’.164 That entreaty might have been weathered had not Cranfield backed Seymour.165 The projector ‘had had no patent if the referees had not certified both the lawfulness and conveniency . . . agree that the referees and the certificate be brought hither’.166 Coke was ambivalent.167 He attacked Francis Michel for asserting that ‘many of the most judicious

154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167

Ibid. ii. 180; vi. 40 (14 Mar.). Ibid. ii. 109; vi. 256. Ibid. ii. 90. Ibid. ii. 151 (2 Mar.). Ibid. ii. 161; Russell, Parliaments, 107–8. See also Russell, Parliaments, 108. Debates, 1621, ii. 108 (20 Feb.). Ibid. ii. 108. Ibid. ii. 112; iv. 99 (24 Feb.). Ibid. i. 146n. Ibid. ii. 147 (27 Feb.). Russell, Parliaments, 109. Debates, 1621, ii. 147. Cranfield was speaking of Mompesson. Ibid. vi. 47 (13 Feb.).

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eyes of the kingdome hath viewed’ his project.168 Yet he condemned Salisbury for instigating penal law grants over his objections and reminded members that Empson and Dudley had paid with their lives for such policies.169 Implicated governors were named at the urging of Cranfield.170 The thread project was especially damning: ‘Divers great men were put in the commission . . . [with] power to imprison men, which is contrary to the statute of Magna Charta . . . as the Lord Chancellor [Bacon], Treasurer [Mandeville], Attorney [Yelverton], together with Sir Francis Michell, Sir Giles Mompesson, Twittie and Fowle.’171 Bacon, Mandeville and Villiers defended themselves and submitted to James the same day.172 Bacon’s fall began with these conferences and was assured when members took up bribery and extortion in matters of justice.173 Cranfield was instrumental in spotlighting referees – in Prestwich’s view he was pursuing a private vendetta against Bacon – but in fact he almost certainly aimed at Mandeville and a fiscal policy infused with the projecting mentality.174 Mandeville was deeper in the mire of projects than Bacon and ‘the more strongly attacked of the two’.175 James thought members’ pursuit of referees indulgent, but there was no telling whether, having destroyed Bacon, Mandeville might not be next.176 Mandeville’s eventual removal served Cranfield’s political ambitions and principles; Bacon’s impeachment seems to have been incidental, even if Villiers found his estranged colleague a welcome scapegoat.177 The litany of abuses fired members and, just as Ellesmere had looked for a legal course in dealing with abusive projectors, so they determined to legislate on James’s practice of kingship in this sphere. Coke put forward the intention to frame a monopolies bill at a conference on 10 March.178 The idea sprang from fiercely impassioned speeches on 5 March in which Coke recited Magna Carta, Digges called for a bill through which projectors, suitors and certifiers ‘may be damned to posterity’, John Walter seconded him, Edward Giles thought ‘the more examples we make of great men, the more good we do’ and Hamon L’Estrange wanted those ‘Jezebels that whisper in the King’s ears’ to be made to hear Solomon’s righteous wisdom.179 Their work precipitated a

168 169 170 171 172

Ibid. ii. 127–8 (23 Feb.). Ibid. ii. 125; vi. 286 (10 Mar.). Ibid. ii. 183–98; vi. 52–3 (19 Mar.). Ibid. ii. 185. Ibid. vi. 52–3; ‘The Hastings journal of the parliament of 1621’, ed. Lady E. DeVilliers (Camden Miscellany xx, 1953), 29–31. 173 PRO, SP 14/120/38, fo. 57v (24 Mar. 1621); Peck, Court patronage, 186–7; Russell, Parliaments, 111–14. 174 Prestwich, Cranfield, 287–9. 175 Russell, Parliaments, 104–11, 125n. 176 Ibid. 119. 177 CKS, U269/1, OO188 [MS Cranfield 4074]; Russell, Parliaments, 111–13. 178 Debates, 1621, ii. 194. 179 Ibid. ii. 167–8. See also v. 25 (2 Mar.); vi. 31 (6 Mar.).

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collapse of the current pragmatism. Coke was torn between reverence for the law and longing for place.180 Principles drove him to overzealousness, ‘the sheer blundering force’ of which brought him to grief after the second session.181 By 10 March members wanted all patents revoked and commissions for the king’s revenue re-granted to ‘men of account’.182 In Coke’s words, it had become ‘necessary that some law be made for the time to come that no monopoly be granted and they that procure any such may incur some great punishment and this will kill the serpent in the egg’.183 In the Lords James publicly defended his actions with regard to projects and agreed that (as Sir Edward Coke moved) there should be a lawe made against theis thinges . . . [for] I have bene alwayes a hater of projects and projectors . . . soe troublesome to me that neither my selfe nor those about me could rest in their beddes quiet for projectors, as the greate backe gallery, if it had a voice, could tell.184

Conrad Russell has argued that James welcomed this prospective relief.185 However, if James supported a bill it was only to preserve the harmony of the session, and the act itself soon incurred his opposition.186 Coke claimed that the bill did not question the prerogative, asserting that there was an incontrovertible component (absolute prerogative) and a component bound by law which was disputable (ordinary prerogative).187 In Coke’s mind the latter clearly encompassed patents, but the final bill not only questioned the prerogative, but took it away.188 The original act derived its authority from James’s declaration against monopolies and penal law benefits in the book of bounty.189 Coke added a clause to the effect that those declarations were ‘consonant and agreable to the ancient and fundamentall lawes of this your realme’.190 Rather than cite precedents, Coke used the language of common law to reject James’s power to grant patents in the first place.191 Pragmatism required provision for future grants which might prove abusive in execution; 180 Stephen D. White, Sir Edward Coke and ‘the grievances of the commonwealth’, 1621–1628, Chapel Hill 1979, 3–23, 113–41. 181 Russell, Parliaments, 123. This is particularly well demonstrated in the minute book of the committee of grievances: Debates, 1621, vi. 249–78. 182 Ibid. ii. 194. 183 Ibid. 184 ‘Hastings journal’, 26. 185 Russell, Parliaments, 109–10. 186 Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vii. 146–7. 187 Debates, 1621, iv. 79. 188 Russell recognised the act as a ‘ “statutory invasion of the royal prerogative” ’, but maintained it had James’s sanction: Parliaments, 110. 189 Lords, 1621, 151; Robert Zaller, The parliament of 1621: a study in constitutional conflict, Berkeley 1971, 126–30. 190 Lords, 1621, 151. 191 Sommerville, Royalists and patriots, 90, 144–5. Coke had cited many precedents early in the debates: Debates, 1621, iv. 79–81. Zaller, Parliament, 127–8, has argued that Coke

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they were to be tested according to the common law.192 A subsequent change barred Chancery and conciliar adjudication.193 James was not unsympathetic, but he never accepted legislation on his prerogative in such fashion. His opposition is best seen in his own efforts to deal with projects. One day after the bill was engrossed, he ordered a proclamation drawn repealing the patents of inns, alehouses and thread.194 However, he almost precipitated a rupture when he asked that the 10 March conference be postponed lest the subsidy bill be neglected; members retorted that they would work late and accomplish both.195 ‘Baron-Tell-Clock’ wanted them to move on now that exemplary punishment had been effected.196 The same sentiment greeted members when they returned after Easter. Subtle intimidation was also aimed at the bill when James warned them against passing a law that the Lords would reject.197 This spurred members to a reconciliation conference with the Lords for the informers bill and a preventative agreement on the monopolies bill.198 The latter then received its final reading and was sent to the Lords.199 Edwin Sandys found that it had been tampered with, two clauses having been appended to the effect that it should lapse at the start of the next parliament and that it could be voided by a non obstante.200 The bill then suffered a lingering death in the Lords, finally being rejected in December.201 The monopolies bill did not fail in 1621 despite the king’s efforts. James was plain with members about his position: ‘For he conceived that a grievance to ten or twelve was not a public grievance, for if it were, he should not be able to reward his servants.’202 James pledged his devotion to the public good with the tobacco impost, but his weighing of private gain and public good mirrored Elizabeth’s stance in 1601 when she avowed that ‘did I nevere put my pene to any graunte, but uppon pretexte and semblance made to me for the good and availle of my subiectes generally, thoughe privat profet to some’.203 Provided the private gain of some did not become a general grievance to the people, the impact on individuals could stand, while it was rejected them because they had never challenged the legal basis of grants. See also Sacks, ‘Countervailing benefits’, 274–7. 192 Lords, 1621, 152. 193 Debates, 1621, iv. 197 (26 Mar.); Zaller, Parliament, 128–9. 194 Debates, 1621, iv. 202–3 (27 Mar.); Proclamations: James I, 503–5 (30 Mar. 1621). The bill was engrossed on 26 March: Zaller, Parliament, 129. 195 Debates, 1621, vi. 52 (19 Mar.); ii. 205 (10 Mar.). 196 Ibid. iv. 209 (27 Mar.); ii. 304 (20 Apr.). 197 Ibid. ii. 304–7. The informers bill was James’s case in point. 198 Ibid. ii. 324 (26 Apr.). 199 Ibid. ii. 360 (12 May). 200 Ibid. ii. 354 (8 May); Zaller, Parliament, 129. 201 The bill’s fate was not decided until December when the Lords rejected it in voting: Zaller, Parliament, 129–30. 202 Debates, 1621, ii. 318 (24 Apr.). 203 Hartley, Proceedings, iii. 295.

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ultimately up to governors to define how much private gain (or private loss) constituted a public grievance. Furthermore, James located the authority for patents within the absolute prerogative and his accession proclamation suspending Elizabethan patents specifically reserved the ‘Right justly appertaining to our Prerogative, for that we would not have it conceived, that in doing these things out of our Grace, we doe intend to renounce those ancient dueties and Priviledges.’204 James was true to his principles. He suspended the patents for inns, alehouses and thread by proclamation.205 Two weeks into the summer recess, fifteen patents were publicly condemned in Star Chamber. These included patents which had been found ‘matters of prerogative not fitt to be put into the dispensing of a subject’. Among patents to be examined by the council were all ‘proclamations for private endes’. The judges and council were to evaluate whether proclamations were appropriate means to address problems of bullion, export of ordnance, wool and fuller’s earth, out-port commerce, informers, writs of certiorari and supersedeas. Finally, the whole council were to examine all other patents, suspending those against the law and leaving doubtful ones to the courts.206 These judgements were buttressed by a proclamation on 10 July, touching matters ‘His Majestie needes no assistance of Parliament for reforming . . . and would have reformed them before the Parliament, if the true state of His Subjects greevances had beene then made knowne unto him.’207 James’s rhetoric denied his prior knowledge of the grievances and he took action independently of parliamentary demands for redress by legislation. James thus positioned himself as a ruler who entertained his people’s complaints, reformed abuses and saw no need for parliamentary legislation to replace his own vigilance.208 He preserved and renewed the settlement enshrined in Elizabeth’s Golden Speech.209 The defeat of the monopolies bill in 1621 was only a setback. It was revived immediately in 1624 and skilfully guided through both Houses.210 Political circumstances compelled James to assent.211 Coke’s common law 204 205 206

Proclamations: James I, 14 (7 May 1603). Ibid. 503–5. PRO, SP 14/121/123, fo. 231r–v; SP 14/121/124, fo. 232r–v (23 June 1621). The patents condemned in Star Chamber were inns, alehouses, lotteries, gold and silver thread, gold foliate, licensing of peddlers, the Statute of Apprentices, general patents for concealed lands, tolls and tithes, power to erect parks and warrens, patents for leets, markets and fairs, chancery fees, engrossing wills and the sole dressing of common arms. Those examined by the privy council were lobsters and salmon, lampreys, lists and shreds, Lepton’s patent, the lighthouses at Winterton and Dungeness and glassmaking. 207 Proclamations: James I, 512. 208 This very argument was advanced by Lord Keeper Williams when he wanted the Commons to turn their attention to a subsidy in November: Debates, 1621, iii. 416; iv. 424 (both 21 Nov.). On the end of the session see Russell, Parliaments, 132–44. 209 Sacks, ‘Countervailing benefits’, 277–82. 210 Russell, Parliaments, 156, 190–2. 211 Ibid. 115–16; Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 246–61.

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language and adjudication remained in the final act.212 But vital exemptions excluded any control over projects. Monopolies of inventions and new manufactures were permitted, although the case of gold and silver thread reminds us that the determination of ‘new’ was hardly clear-cut and possessed its own sort of inventiveness. Crucially, new offices and corporations were exempted. Projectors, undertakers and patentees became office-holders; their projects and patents, corporations.213 Projects carried straight through from the monopolies statute into Charles I’s first parliament and beyond.214 The statute also attempted to put an end to the relationship between projects, proclamations and Star Chamber for private gain, but that grievous partnership was given new strength when James’s definition of the public good and necessity gave way to his son’s. The course of reform from 1615 to 1621 suggests that James’s commitment could produce results, even in what were usually the safe havens of entrenched interests. It is ironic that Villiers’s efforts to fashion himself into a minister-favourite and alter-rex also played a fundamental role. The irony lies in the massive expansion under this regime of projects, an instrument of policy that is associated by revisionist historians not with successful reform but with the functional breakdown of finance. The explanation for this hey-day of projects lies in James’s practice of kingship. James favoured Villiers in part as a personal instrument for the management of patronage while Villiers faced his own patronage imperatives in building an affinity and securing his place. The contingent and personal relationships implicit in this kind of kingship did nothing to limit projects or projectors. A significant indication of this is that the Elizabethan formula no longer satisfied members in 1621.215 Their discontent is obvious from the decision to legislate and the continued investigation of patents in the autumn, despite James’s redress.216 The scale of debate and scrutiny in 1621 testifies to the pervasiveness of projects as instruments of policy, the powerful lure of the projecting mentality and the scope for political conflict. The relationship between Jacobean kingship – in its various guises – and projects ensured that any effort to reform them would involve fundamental political questions for James and Villiers. Debates about crown finance were truly debates about James’s practice of kingship. The challenge of reform, however, did not come from parliament after 1621. James broke parliament’s neck in 1621 when members launched into criticism of the Spanish match, seemingly at his behest, and then refused

212 213 214

William Hyde Price, The English patents of monopoly, Cambridge, Mass. 1906, 135–9. Sharpe, Personal rule, 257; Russell, Parliaments, 115–16. Peck, Court patronage, 138–9. For a slightly different perspective see Ronald G. Asch, ‘The revival of monopolies: court and patronage during the personal rule of Charles I, 1629–1640’, in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (eds), Princes, patronage and the nobility: the court at the beginning of the modern age, c. 1450–1540, Oxford 1991, 357–92. 215 Foster, ‘Patents and monopolies’, 60, 63, 77. 216 Russell, Parliaments, 122–5, 132–3.

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to be silenced on the subject.217 The conflict in the Palatinate ensured that parliamentary revenue was no longer a ‘simple’ question of fiscal policy and necessity. Foreign policy and its volatile religious implications were becoming the cause célèbre of parliamentary politics. The final challenge to projects and kingship in the late Jacobean regime came from inside, from the only individual who had profited handsomely from the months of parliamentary scrutiny: the new lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield.

217

Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 19.

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7

The Incomplete Reformation of Finance and Politics, 1621–1624 Lionel Cranfield stands out in a reign full of larger-than-life personalities. Menna Prestwich did much to spotlight his career while simultaneously pillorying most of his contemporaries, particularly James, Salisbury and Villiers.1 Our sense of the period has changed significantly since her study appeared in 1966, not least in the abandonment of Whig perspectives and hostile stereotypes. Alongside a more favourable historiography, we now seek to understand the dynamic interaction of political ideas and action. There is a great deal of Cranfield the sharp businessman and frustrated reformer in Prestwich’s work. However, her Cranfield is as much a boorish bureaucrat as Conyers Read’s dull, administrative, William Cecil. Describing Cranfield’s association with the Mitre Club and his book purchases, Prestwich wrote that he ‘was not a politician . . . but a technocrat concerned to get the Crown back on an even financial keel’.2 Yet crown finance was an element in an ongoing discussion about kingship to which Cranfield contributed as more than just a ‘technocrat’. Cranfield identified himself as the king’s governor, but one who acted quite explicitly for the best interests of the realm and invoked the public good in its own right. Cranfield thus initiated an uncompromising attack on the contingent politics of kingship by alter-rex and its impact on crown finance. However, this was only the continuation of Cranfield’s long-term assault on the failures of fiscal policy, particularly projects, which began with his work with Northampton and Ellesmere, was pursued in the 1617–18 reform drive, and pushed home in the attack on Mandeville and projectors in the parliament of 1621. The basis of Cranfield’s position was that when the financial interests of the crown collided with the practice of kingship, kingship must give way. He in effect attempted to hold James and Villiers accountable to an abstract public good in the exercise of their authority. Cranfield was finally undone in the parliament of 1624 for a variety of reasons; we now need to re-examine how much the intersection of political ideas and action, of finance and kingship, contributed to those events.

1 2

Prestwich, Cranfield, 1–48. Ibid. 105.

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Crown finance and the public good Lionel Cranfield did not follow the ‘career path’ of many governors, for he had been a successful ‘merchant and speculator’ before moving into political circles. He came from a family firmly established in City business. His father was a mercer and belonged to the Eastland Company and his widowed mother became a sharp businesswoman in her own right. Cranfield’s elder brother, Randall, was a ‘competent businessman’ while his younger sister, Martha, married John Suckling, who was to be Dorset’s secretary. At the age of twenty-six Cranfield became a Merchant Adventurer after learning his trade as an apprentice and agent abroad.3 He therefore grew to maturity outside the hothouse of the court or the world of governors and royal servants. It was not until Northampton tapped his expertise in 1612–13 that Cranfield began to make his way into the circles of governance, at the age of thirty-seven. His galaxy had not from the first rotated around that fixed point, the monarch, and he did not share the formative political education of governors like Salisbury, Caesar, Suffolk and their colleagues. Suffolk’s opposition to a mere merchant was just one point of friction between Cranfield and ‘traditional’ governors. The crabbed Anthony Weldon described him as ‘nothing but a pack of ignorance soldered together with impudence’ who raked his honour out of the gutter.4 Cranfield responded to such taunts with a sharp tongue, at times not unlike James’s own. Cranfield and Lord Digby sparred in council, where ‘there passed verie disgracefull wordes betwixt the[m] as marchant & insolent man on the one side, on th’other 3rd sonne of a yunger brother & a branch of a race tainted w[i]th treason’.5 It would be wrong, however, to type Cranfield as an uncouth outsider focused only on the practical world of business and commerce. He attended St Paul’s School until the age of fifteen at a time when the grammar school curriculum took a decidedly linguistic turn.6 The heavy emphasis on reading Latin should have led by the age of nine to works such as Cicero’s Letters, followed by ‘learning to speak and write Latin’ and engagement with ‘the best classical authors . . . Ovid, Virgil and Horace among the poets, Caesar among the historians and Cicero for moral philosophy’.7 Proficiency in the ars rhetorica followed. Leaving St Paul’s at fifteen meant that Cranfield experienced part of this curriculum and, while his path was directed towards business and greater emphasis was thus probably placed on practical skills, he would not have been uneducated in the content of the classical curriculum, including politics, history and moral precepts. Cranfield’s later ‘purchases of books show his taste for theology and history’ while Nicholas Fuller

3 4 5 6 7

Ibid. 49–50. Goodman, Court of James, i. 297. PRO, SP 14/128/9, fo. 9r–v (2 Mar. 1622). Skinner, Reason and rhetoric, 21–9. Ibid. 27.

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‘described the library at Copt Hall as “the treasure of a Lord Treasurer” ’.8 Further, Cranfield was one of a group of individuals who combined the literary with the political and legal as members of the Mitre Club. Its fourteen members included Cranfield, Ingram, Christopher Brooke, John Donne, Inigo Jones, Richard Martin and the notorious John Hoskyns.9 Prestwich argued, rightly, that ‘Cranfield had a wider vision than his ledgers’, but her eagerness to raise him above the corruption of James and Villiers left him the arch-administrator. Rather, Cranfield held a still wider vision than virtuous technocracy – a concept which resonates less with the 1610s and 1620s than with the 1960s. What Cranfield’s commercial experiences produced was not simply financial expertise, but a more abstract sense of the realm grounded in his engagement with a world beyond monarch, court and governors. His treatises and proposals concerning trade in the 1610s are the practical expression of such a perspective. The language of ‘king’, ‘people’, ‘kingdom’, ‘state’ and ‘publique good’ is freely mixed in Cranfield’s papers on trade and revenue. Unbalanced trade and the excessive importation of superfluous commodities beggared ‘the state’ while revision of the book of rates was designed to work ‘for the publique good and not for gayne as is surmised’.10 There is a strong sense that Cranfield was able to separate the sometimes contradictory financial interests of James and the realm. He later called upon James and the privy council to consider ‘the necessity of defrayinge his Ma[jes]tes owne chardg at home aswell for his honour as saffety of his kingdome’.11 Cranfield’s counsel on policy consistently addressed the specific financial condition of James’s ‘estate’ and its impact on the realm. None of this is to suggest that other governors did not possess an abstract sense of the realm or of the public good. Stephen Alford, Patrick Collinson and Markku Peltonen have argued that the humanist curriculum offered a sense of respublica which allowed Tudor governors to separate the welfare and person of the ruler from that of the realm or state.12 The ongoing discussion of ‘state’ and ‘estate’, an abstract versus a patrimonial entity, carried over from the Tudor polity to the Jacobean regime, though perhaps less pointedly. James argued that rulers were ordained to secure the good of their people and not vice versa. Caesar described measures ‘to supplie the necessity of the king or of the state’ in his brief on the Great Contract and Ellesmere employed ‘state’ in his reform programme.13 Lake aired the point in predictably ambitious fashion when he took the secretary’s oath in 1615. Samuel Hopton reported that ‘the like oathe was offered to him as was formerly to Sr Raphe Wynwood 8 9 10 11 12

Prestwich, Cranfield, 9 and 519 respectively. Ibid. 93–7. PRO, SP 14/86/25, fos 39r–40v. CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. Alford, Early Elizabethan polity, 111–19; Patrick Collinson, ‘The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, in Guy, Tudor monarchy, 110–34; Markku Peltonen, Classical humanism and republicanism in English political thought, 1570–1640, Cambridge 1995, 10–12. 13 BL, MS Lansdowne 151, fo. 131r; HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/1.

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(who was a principall secretary of state)’, Lake refused and ‘caused the ould forme to bee turned unto; w[hi]ch was principall secretary to the kinges Ma[jes]tie and not secretary of state’.14 It is perhaps suggestive of how personal and contingent kingship became during the 1610s that Lake looked to steal a march on his predecessor with the older version. Cranfield may even have gleaned some sense of these philosophical questions in his studies at St Paul’s. The argument is, therefore, that Cranfield’s experiences outside the immediate sphere of governance enhanced his capacity to conceptualise the public good in abstract fashion and, crucially, his willingness to apply it to his labours as a governor. Cranfield’s holistic conception of finance repeatedly drew him into conflicts between public good and private gain within the patronage culture. His ideas are a counterpoint to projects despite the fact that, like Salisbury, he did use them, however unwillingly, throughout his treasurership.15 On closer scrutiny Cranfield’s conception of himself as a governor sought to reconcile the demands of serving James and the realm within the patronage culture. In 1617 reform moved outside the council’s authority to escape vested interests – and to serve the personal political interests of Villiers. Cranfield grew to understand that patronage politics and the operation of James’s personal rule compromised policy-making and execution.16 Civil services, with their cultures of administrative professionalism, bureaucratic objectivity and government service – though imperfectly realised ideals – emerged in the ‘modern state’ out of the necessity to provide more effective government by separating politics and patronage from administration, particularly finance.17 However, Cranfield operated within a regime torn by conflicts between personal monarchy, the presence of a minister-favourite who operated as alterrex, office-holding in the patronage culture and the responsibility to govern for the common weal, for the state as an entity in its own right.18 Cranfield’s willingness to frame his policies in terms of the public good inevitably brought him into conflict with kingship by alter-rex. In the 1610s Cranfield and Ellesmere maintained that mismanagement was the plague of James’s estate.19 Cranfield believed that only proper management offered a lasting solution to his problems, despite the strides that had been made in retrenchment and concern for trade becoming commonplace in fiscal thought.20 Well-ordered finances were the grounds out of which revenues grew and the crown prospered. Cranfield sought to 14 15 16

BL, MS Add. 64876, fo. 7r (18 Jan. [1616]). CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MSS Cranfield 7489, 4488, 6775]. Letters and life of Francis Bacon, vi. 283–4; G. E. Aylmer, The king’s servants: the civil service of Charles I, 1625–1642, London 1961, 9–12. 17 Aylmer, King’s servants, 12. 18 Quentin Skinner, The foundations of modern political thought, Cambridge 1978, ii. 349–58. 19 CKS, U269/1, Oo88 [MS Cranfield 4074] ([c. Aug. 1614]); Tawney, Business and politics, 142–51, 196–204. 20 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6774] (Nov. 1619).

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replace the whole culture of policy between 1619 and 1624, putting himself forward as the instrument. His assessment of James’s estate scathingly attacked current policy-making and management, addressing James with a bluntness he respected.21 Defalcations (charges), anticipations (advances on the revenue) and interest were the cankers.22 The bane of James’s estate was his bounty and ‘the unfaithfullnes & ignorances of his mynisters’ – Cranfield here sounding much like Caesar and Salisbury in 1611.23 Cranfield believed that he alone was capable of employing the necessary policies: ‘neither the lords of his Ma[jes]tes councell in generale nor the comissioners for the thresury in p[ar]ticular can offer any means, but to conclude in their wordes do saye it is neither their p[ar]t nor in their power to creatt materials but faithfully to dispurse them’.24 Sufficient revenue existed to support James if it were properly managed: ‘To improve his Ma[jes]ties revennewe by reformacon . . . wilbe honorable, iuste and exceeding profitable . . . ffor all men well affected to there king and contrie greeve the king should be deceaved of his owne and be therby constrained for support of his royall estate to make supplye uppon his subiectes by p[ro]iectes &c.’25 Cranfield was dismissive of alternatives: ‘All meanes to helpe yo[u]r Ma[jes]tie are exhawsted, uncertayn or a work of tyme.’26 Cranfield had defended James’s bounty in 1614, but now argued that the ‘king must be releeved by holding his hand for a tyme’ and ‘by imploying faithfull and understanding mynisters’. Criticism was extended to James himself: ‘And so the care of that is left upon the king w[hi]ch is w[i]th a generale vote concluded to be impossable.’ Cranfield’s conception of finance and of parliament was a continuation of the programme he and Ellesmere had constructed in 1615. Royal extremity and mismanagement made the ‘subiectes to forbeare to releeve those necessetyes w[hi]ch him selffe voluntarely cawseth’. The lesson of 1614 needed repeating: ‘they will not beleave he wantes himsellfe that gives to supply other wantes, naye they will saye (untill he hold his hand from giving) that whatsoever they shall give is neither to supply his Ma[jes]ties actions forreyn nor domestick, but to give away’.27 Cranfield’s first address to parliament as lord treasurer, in November 1621, betrayed how, three years after retrenchment, the case for funding reformed government remained incomplete.28 Cranfield candidly admitted James’s misfortune with his officers and ‘exceeding bountye’, but countered these by reminding parliament of 21

CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MSS Cranfield 6773 and 6770] (1620, 1621) respectively; PRO, SP 14/164/53, fos 92r–3v (5 May 1624). 22 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. 23 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6773]; BL, MS Lansdowne 165, fo. 138r–v; ‘Several speeches’, 314–17. 24 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6773]. 25 CKS, U269/1, OO188 [MS Cranfield 4074]. 26 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6773]. 27 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. 28 PRO, SP 14/123/122, fo. 179v (24 Nov. 1621).

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expenses for the Palatinate which James had supplied himself and the lack of subsidies in comparison to his predecessors.29 Further he reminded members of recent reforms in justice – ‘we have had a greate Example in the Deposition of the Lord Chancellor’ – and the thirty-five patents ‘which have ben damned by the King and no Monopolies since that presented and no proiect but only one’.30 But Cranfield’s pleading for members to comport themselves ‘so as that the King may be in love with Parliaments’ and calls for faith in James’s intentions are indicative of his uncertain hand.31 Cranfield’s sense of failed policy infused his proposals, particularly his rejection of projects as they had been employed by Bacon, Mandeville and Villiers. For Cranfield, James must restrain bounty for a year and keep it in check thereafter according to Cranfield’s own criteria. Like Salisbury, he believed bounty must come from within existing revenues: patronage should not constitute a licence to extort monies from the populace.32 Bounty was best derived from fines of offices, felon’s goods and other casualties. Cranfield truly meant to enforce Salisbury’s book of bounty which had been re-issued in 1619.33 Pensions must be pruned by disallowing exchanges and preventing renewals by James while the creation of new offices must cease.34 Finally, in a change from 1614, Cranfield supported new ‘proiectes . . . w[hi]ch w[i]thowt grevance to the subiecte & losse or impayring his Ma[jes]tes revenew allredy settled maye rayse monye’. He was not averse to projects that worked principally to James’s benefit, but detested those which served private gain. ‘I doe generally mislike the using of the king’s name and power to serve a private mans turne’, he wrote.35 Pressure to restrain bounty was hardly an innovation: Bacon, with a strong lone voice, urged James in 1619 to replace the treasury commissioners, arguing that a faithfull treasurer would ‘stop suites, put back pencons, check allowances, question merites . . . in short to be a skreene to your Ma[jes]tie in thinges of this nature, such as was the L[or]d Burleighe for many yeares’.36 Mandeville, however, secured the post in 1620, not least because of his apparent willingness to pay Villiers for the position and employ his legal expertise as chief justice of king’s bench in furthering projects.37 His involve-

29 30 31 32 33

Debates 1621, iv. 428 (21 Nov. 1621). Ibid. iv. 429, and iii. 425 respectively. Ibid. iii. 424–5. CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. PRO, SP 14/97/19, fos 31r–2v (commission for suits, 14 Apr. 1618); BL, MS Add. 10038, fos 2r–3v (Caesar’s copy of the commission, 16 Apr. 1618); PRO, SP 14/97/20, fos 33r–7r (king’s declaration of limiting grants and memorial of suits grantable, [Apr.] 1618); A declaration of his Majesties royall pleasure, in what sort he thinketh fit to enlarge or reserve himselfe in matter of bountie, London 1619 (STC 9240.3, 9240.5). 34 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. See also Prestwich, Cranfield, 341–2. 35 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [uncatalogued note] (26 Feb. 1623[1624]). 36 BL, MS Harleian 3787, fo. 161v. 37 See the contents of BL, MS Hargrave 321, a notebook of projects, policies and accounts,

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ment in projects was anything but the realisation of Bacon’s rhetoric – one wonders just who Bacon had in mind – but Cranfield intended to assume just the sort of dominant position as lord treasurer which Bacon had advocated. He proposed that ‘uppon the first proposing I maye be made acquainted w[i]th them to see how they will stande w[i]th his Ma[jes]tes purse, whether they be fitt to goe on & how farre’, with freedom to challenge propositions before they became ‘resolutions’. Cranfield explained that by ‘this meanes all opposing & contestations wilbe avoyded . . . before resolution & declaration . . . [and] his Ma[jes]te shall not be deceived nor any man the nearer his suite by misinformations to the king & gayning his signature surreptitiously’.38 This marks a point of departure with Salisbury. Cranfield believed that it was politically impossible within the patronage culture for James or governors to vet suits. James’s determination to have the council handle pensions in 1617 and the need to pursue retrenchment outside established officers must have decisively influenced Cranfield’s thinking.39 James’s governors would not bear the political envy and Cranfield was sceptical about their effectiveness had they been willing.40 Mismanagement, poor government and hollow promises had undermined the authority of James and his governors: ‘The Kinges speeches & promises are not vallewed as is fitting for want of performances. The pryvy councells resolutions & orders not respected bycawse alltered upon privat informations & extraordinary directions from Cort.’41 Tricks of denial would no longer suffice. The whole culture of Jacobean governance had to change, particularly after what, in the last parliament, Cranfield had helped expose of the doings of Bacon and Mandeville. Cranfield called upon James and his governors to discharge their responsibility for the welfare of the state with policies to repair its dangerous fiscal condition: ‘to consider the necessity of defraying his Ma[jes]tes owne chardg at home aswell for his honor as saffety of his kingdome’.42 Cranfield struck at the patronage culture that he believed subordinated the public good to considerations of private financial and political gain. For the well-being of the realm James must preserve ‘his own settled revenew aswell by restrayning his bountye as by the frugale & trusty disposing & yssuing’. He charged that ‘to move the king to give now is to move the king to mack him selff miserable for the presant & to kepe him soe’. Condemning those who ‘move the king’ was an indictment of patronage in its entirety, not simply of suitors, but of their patrons and means of influence. Cranfield drove

and MS Add. 4147, a letterbook mostly of warrants for payments and other administrative matters. 38 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. 39 Peck, Court patronage, 211. 40 BL, MS Harleian 3787, fo. 161v. 41 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6774] ([c. Nov. 1619]). 42 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770].

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the point home when he offered the project that all beneficiaries of James’s bounty should by ‘waye of thankfulness’ give over the value of their grants for one year to pay his debts. Cranfield’s assumption of the king’s authority over suits would further the cultural change, provide practical benefits and give James great ease from suitors.43 Echoing Salisbury before him, Cranfield lectured James on the need for a new outlook: ‘that beinge lefte to yo[u]r selffe yow maye tacke care of yo[u]r selffe & not by pyteing and releeving other mens necessityes bring yo[u]r selffe into extremety’.44 Nothing Cranfield advocated could have been particularly popular, but James elevated him when Mandeville was abandoned before the autumn session of the 1621 parliament. Cranfield set the parliamentary hounds after Mandeville, but his support for dealing with monopolists and projectors had been a vote-winner in the first session.45 When it became apparent that more than two subsidies would be needed, a reforming treasurer was more attractive to the regime than one who was a projector’s friend.46 However, the personal relationship between Cranfield and James must not be overlooked. There is every indication that James appointed Cranfield because he trusted him and respected his forthrightness, something which he had also favoured in Cranfield’s first patrons, Northampton and Ellesmere.47 Cranfield’s devotion to James was indisputable. Thomas Wilson, attuned to the prevailing winds, recognised the support for Cranfield: ‘you have made knowne to ye world both your owne abilityes and the good services that you have done his Ma[jes]ty . . . a stepp to yo[u]r other worthyer preferm[en]ts’.48 Cranfield personally sent the bill for his appointment to James while Villiers hoped he would ‘as well deserve that title hereafter as you have alreadie this which our master hath sined’.49 When Cranfield feared the wrath of vested interests in 1618, Villiers reassured him that I will have so great care of you that you shall not count your labour & indeavo[ur]s in so good courses ill imployed And for the Lo[rd] of whome you write I . . . have allreadie fixed you so farre in his Ma[jes]tes good opinion that

43

Ibid. The project was not simply rhetorical, but taken seriously. See, for instance, PRO, SP 14/133/59, fo. 121r–v (26 Oct. 1622). 44 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6773]. 45 PRO, SP 14/119/90, fos 151r–2v (10 Feb. 1621); SP 14/119/123, fos 250r–1v (27 Feb. 1621). 46 Prestwich, Cranfield, 323–6; CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. 47 Knafla, Law and politics, 61. 48 CKS, U269/1, OL35 [MS Cranfield 279] (14 Jan. 1620). See also the praise in OE108 [MS Cranfield 169] (23 Feb. 1619); Villiers to Cranfield, 25 Oct. 1618, ON1 [MS Cranfield 1]; Villiers to Cranfield, 10 Dec. 1618, OE108 [MS Cranfield 167]. 49 CKS, U269/1, OE108 [MS Cranfield 6856] (4 July 1621); OE108 [MS Cranfield 174] (15 Aug. 1619).

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. . . you should not have anie cause to feare his Lo[rdshi]ps displeasure how much soever he should threaten against you.50

However, the positive relationship with Villiers signalled by this letter did not survive either Cranfield’s actions in parliament or his thrusting policies as lord treasurer. Cranfield was moved to great candour by the support of James and, initially, of the favourite. Condemning the fitness of ships guarding the channel, he wrote to Villiers, that ‘I have made bolde according to my accustomed freedome with yo[u]r Lo[rdship] for the kings service, to deliver mine opinion cleerlie & at large’.51 Cranfield offered his sense of being a governor: By this tyme yo[u]r Ma[jes]tie maye iudge me to be of the disposition of the schoolmen who bee no scholler, who propound[s] such questions as they are not able to answer. My intendment is to deale clerly w[i]th yo[u]r ma[jes]tie by shewinge yow the trewth of yo[u]r estate & humbly to offer that seinge the necesity of it, that beinge lefte to yo[u]r selff yo[u]r Ma[jes]tye tacke care of yo[u]r selffe.52

A draft letter to Villiers, reporting on work by Cranfield and Weston, now chancellor of the exchequer, on the project to improve forests and wastes, reflected the same principles. The project was undertaken for James’s ‘owne imediate use & service’, but encroachments were discovered in the process which spawned suitors clamouring for the right to compound with offenders. Cranfield was livid that they had laboured ‘to bring forth some fruit for the supply of his Ma[jes]tes manifold occasions’ only to have to have grants made ‘against our wills, to serve private mens turnes to his Ma[jes]tes preiudice & disadvantage’. His pointed conclusion was tetchy: it would have been better never to have embarked on the project, ‘then that the same should be diverted to any other course, then the advancement of the publique releme [realm]’.53 Cranfield defined himself over the affair of the woods. He fully believed in the royal mandate with which the treasurership seemingly endowed him. Henry Fane informed Cranfield that Villiers had taken notice of his labours and believed that James’s estate ‘wuld not prosper in any mans hand but your Lo[rdship]s’. Hitherto, James had succoured others, but now ‘hee muste make muche of his owne’ while Villiers ‘laboured to hold the kinge in that way to ye uttermost of his power’.54 Cranfield considered himself James’s governor, acting for the public good. When public good and private gain, when patronage and governance conflicted, Cranfield believed that the public good 50

CKS, U269/1, OE108 [MS Cranfield 167] (10 Dec. 1618). See also Lockyer, Buckingham,

74. 51 52 53 54

BL, MS Harleian 1581, fo. 87v (4 Sept. 1621). CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6773]. CKS, U269/1, OE1059 [MS Cranfield 305] ([30 Oct. 1622]). CKS, U269/1, OE256 [MS Cranfield 2415] (19 Oct. 1621).

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should be accommodated first. Salus populi suprema lex esto was James’s standard for himself and Cranfield intended to hold James and the regime to it as as far as fiscal policy was concerned. Cranfield’s mistakes as treasurer were in believing that he had won the rhetorical argument, in underestimating his ability to defeat the favourite and sway James when it became clear he had not and in ignoring the contradiction of advancing within – and profiting by – the culture of patronage at the same time as he pursued the cause of the public good against private gain. The treasurership of Lionel Cranfield Cranfield and Salisbury made the most sustained cases for looking further than projects in addressing the crown’s financial needs. Salisbury pursued parliamentary refoundation, but Cranfield came closer to the argument that the king should live of his own. He elevated frugality in everything to a guiding principle. However, what both Salisbury and Cranfield had in common was a fundamental redefinition of policy and finance. To Salisbury’s way of thinking, frugality was a virtue in two parts, ‘the one is to have, the other is to get’.55 The having and getting of money under Cranfield were one and the same: restraint of James’s bounty and amending the importunity, corruption and incompetence of James’s servants. Between 1617 and 1621 Cranfield was James’s expert instrument of retrenchment and, through Villiers, his pre-eminent financial counsellor. However, Cranfield’s acquisition of the white staff, his full admission to the circle of governors, marked the beginning of his decline. The gulf between Cranfield’s principles of public good and the Jacobean pursuit of private gain was too large. His policies attempted to give them effect, but, by early 1623, policy no longer centred on James’s estate. The Spanish match and ‘blessed revolution’ subsumed governance and Cranfield spent much of his time reacting to them.56 Finally, the logical extension of his policies posed too fundamental a challenge to the very nature of the late Jacobean regime. The principles and practices of Cranfield’s treasurership had much to do with his life outside governance, but he shared his predecessors’ interests in precedent and history. Cranfield critically examined the policies of past governors in finance, making full use of the king’s papers and Robert Cotton’s library. Thomas Wilson sent him precedents for retrenchment and manuscripts on Ireland, including a book of reforms once dedicated to Burghley.57

55 56

‘Several speeches’, 299. Cogswell, Blessed revolution. An indication of this process is the rapid decline in the number of weekly accounts which Cranfield received as treasurer. Between late September 1621 and mid-December 1622 there are some forty reports, whereas for the period from March 1623 to March 1624 there are only five sets of accounts: CKS, U269/1, OE1426. 57 CKS, U269/1, Hi257 [MS Cranfield 8758]; OE789 [MS Cranfield 9460].

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When Wilson ‘perceaved that your Lo[rdshi]p was not willing to meddle with such newe proiectes’, he sent details of revenue-raising since William the Conqueror, a work-in-progress Cranfield never voluntarily returned.58 Cranfield’s work on a general pardon in 1621 appropriated the same project from 1615.59 Despite triggering his removal, Cranfield borrowed Mandeville’s notebook of fiscal policies and projects from his short tenure as treasurer.60 Mandeville’s treasurership remains something of a scholarly cul-de-sac, but he took seriously his responsibilities for managing revenues and for preparing for parliament despite his strong support for projects. He borrowed Cotton’s parliamentary notebooks of Edward I, Edward III and James and the book of projects originally compiled for Northampton.61 Henry VII and Elizabeth were particular models for James’s governors. Manuscripts concerning Henry VII’s (and Henry VIII’s) fiscal practices were common among the papers of Caesar and of Salisbury.62 Cranfield received a critical analysis of Henry VII’s fiscal policies based on Bacon’s Life of the king. Its attention to grants of the subject, trade and profits of regalities reflected Jacobean norms as much as Henry’s real or supposed policies. This was particularly true of its veiled attack on projectors in criticisms of Empson and Dudley and ‘their working upon penall lawes’. They were bold men and careless of fame, that took toll of their masters grist, turning law and Iustice into wormwood and rapyne and by artifical devices and terrores extorting great fines and ransoms (w[hi]ch they termed compositions and mitigations) . . . praying upon the people, both like tame hawkes, for their mast[er] and like wild hawkes for themselfes.

Such judgements played to Cranfield’s sense of the imbalance of public good and private gain in Jacobean practice, yet he would have empathised with the defence of Henry’s rapacity as the product of ‘having ev[er]y day occasion to take notice of the necessities and shiftes for moneyes of other great princes abroad’, the better to enjoy the ‘felicity of full coffers’. Henry’s expenditures were virtually a Jacobean ideal: ‘he never spared charge which his affaires required and in his buildings was magnificent, but his rewards were very limitted, spending more upon his owne state and memory then upon the deserts of others’.63 Cranfield’s gaze, like that of Caesar and of Salisbury, rested longest on 58

CKS, U269/1, OE789 [MSS Cranfield 2320, 9460]. The portion which Cranfield retained may be OE1375 [MS Cranfield 6906], part of which is clearly in Wilson’s hand. 59 CKS U269/1, OE1689 [MSS Cranfield 4460, 7626]. 60 PRO, SP 14/123/79, fo. 109r–v; CKS, U269/1, OE1373 [MS Cranfield 6894]. See also BL, MS Hargrave 321; MS Add. 4147. 61 BL, MS Harleian 6018, fo. 148r. 62 For instance BL, MS Lansdowne 127; MS Lansdowne 123, fo. 72r; MS Lansdowne 168, fos 211r–14v. 63 CKS, U269/1, OE1482 [MS Cranfield 6902] (undated; [1623?]). Part of the manuscript is in Thomas Wilson’s hand.

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Gloriana. Elizabethan accounts were regarded as the most efficacious balancing of expenditure and revenue and Cranfield hoped to use them as a model for his own policies.64 The new treasurer’s intention was to see the expence of the late Queen in everye p[ar]ticular for one yeare. And to compare that w[i]th his Ma[jes]ties present annuall expence. By w[hi]ch cowrse the differens being found it maye bee tacken into consideracon what is fitt to bee continewed and what to bee retrenched. This cowrse will not only settle his Ma[jes]ties estate for the tyme to come, but discover the abuses of tyme paste and wyll give a good satisfaction to all well affected that his Ma[jes]ties debtes have not growen by his bounty only,

but by past misgovernance.65 Cranfield was experienced with such methods, having received on loan from Cotton ‘Dudley’s book of accomptes to Hen[ry] the Seventh’.66 Possessed also of an abstract of Tudor household expenses through Mary, he was armed with history-as-policy when he confronted the household officers and settled an affordable establishment in 1617–18.67 With the practical information provided by weekly accounts and annual assessments, Cranfield was the best informed mind at the treasury in a decade.68 Cranfield began his treasurership much as he had outlined it.69 Among his frequent remembrances, one dictated to John Osborne samples early work.70 He had a book made of all yearly payments in England and Ireland with a view to suspending as many as possible, necessity being his working criterion. Cranfield hoped to force James’s creditors to discharge his debts against the gifts they had received from the king. Savings from suspended payments were to be applied to debts and Cranfield wanted it known ‘how it shall be vayne for them to sue’ until there was money to pay them. He intended to tighten current projects for disafforestation, wastes, concealments and copyholds. James’s minor servants were to be put on notice that they would be replaced if found to be ethically-challenged. Anyone with responsibility for casual revenues was to be ‘warned to remember the kinges necessityes’. He answered with deeds the many words on Irish reform and shared initiatives between England and Ireland.71 Cranfield was beginning where he meant to end:

64 65

CKS, U269/1, OE1140 [MS Cranfield 541] (2 May 1622). CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 4488] (undated). The end of this memorandum is worn, but the fragments indicate that he concluded by condemning prior mismanagement. 66 BL MS Harleian 6018, fo. 150r. 67 CKS, U269/1, OW38 [MS Cranfield 4721] (1617). 68 CKS, U269/1, OE1426 [MS Cranfield various] (Sept. 1621 to Mar. 1624). 69 CKS, U269/1, OE1429 [MS Cranfield 6776]. 70 CKS, U269/1, OE540 [MS Cranfield 7503] (11 Oct. 1621). 71 CKS, U269/1, OE108 [MS Cranfield 2459]; OE1528 [MS Cranfield 8222]; OE1528 [unnumbered MS Cranfield; one folio of remembrances in Cranfield’s hand]; PRO, SP 14/123/79, fos 109r–10v; Prestwich, Cranfield, 348–56. For shared policies between England

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efficiency, accountability and serving the public good. In December 1621 Villiers relayed James’s great praise for his initial work, holding ‘it for a great mysterie that whereas at Hampton Court there was talking of pawning iewells only for his remove, now w[i]thout any such shift he is removed & his servants payed & yet money remayning’.72 Reform was Cranfield’s natural métier. His sympathy for James’s longsuffering and unpaid officers was lukewarm and became a convenient source of savings. The lot of ambassadors and diplomats declined when Cranfield and the council resolved on cutting or eliminating allowances for intelligence, travel and per diems.73 At one point, Cranfield left Westminster to survey newly-purchased property in Sussex, leaving Robert Pye with signed warrants for ambassadorial payments, but orders not to process them or any other payments until his return.74 Borrowing a tactic from Salisbury’s commission for suits, Cranfield persuaded James to issue a proclamation against composing and presenting ready-made suits and bills.75 There ‘ensueth a continuall vexation to his Majestie and many times exceeding danger and prejudice both in his revenue and otherwise’ which must be checked by reducing the process to its ‘ancient order and institution’. Those presuming to ‘intermeddle with the drawing, writing or preparing for his Majesties Signature, of any Bill, Warrant, Letter or other instrument’ would face James’s ‘indignation and displeasure and such imprisonment and other punishment as may justly be inflicted for their contempt’. The same applied to those who would intercede for others with such bills. Any of James’s servants who dared draw a bill without proper warrant would be suspended for ‘their default and abuse’. A central proposal of Cranfield’s was given royal voice and taken seriously.76 Lord Keeper Williams wrote to Villiers’s secretary for clarification: did it include himself, Cranfield, the judges and the council?77 The language of the proclamation remained in place, but the practical effects for the ‘eminent’ were probably minimal.78 Coupled with his demand that nothing pass which concerned James’s revenue before he had vetted it, Cranfield was putting in place a system whereby he might extend his authority over the regime’s patronage. Cranfield was always an imperfect clearing-house. His best intentions needed more than administrative channels. They required the political support of James and Villiers, to a degree neither of them was prepared to

and Ireland see CKS, U269/1, Hi28 [MS Cranfield 7521]; Hi209 [MS Cranfield 8128]; Hi210 [MS Cranfield 8544]; OE1059 [MS Cranfield 872] (11 Oct. 1622). 72 CKS, U269/1, OE108 [MS Cranfield 2459] (7 Dec. 1621). 73 PRO, SP 14/131/54, fos 71r–2v (22 June 1622). 74 CKS, U269/1, OE455 [MS Cranfield 17] (13 Aug. [1622?]). 75 Proclamations: James I, 524–5 (7 Oct. 1621). 76 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6770]. 77 Fortescue papers, 161 (17 Oct. 1621). 78 PRO, SP 14/133/41, fo. 95r–v.

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concede. They too must refrain from pressing a suit which was inappropriate and accept a refusal from Cranfield. Only then would others follow their lead. Cranfield had some success, but practice failed to live up to his ideal.79 He hectored Villiers within weeks of the proclamation when word reached him that James was about to grant a pension.80 How could he perform the services expected of him if there was royal back-sliding? He relied upon Villiers’s friendship to dissuade James.81 Such object lessons abound. Questions of bounty forwarded by James dominated a letter from Cranfield to Conway. With sugared words, he stonewalled on a grant to Lord Carlisle, but pledged James’s direction would be ‘preferred to the full’ as sensitivity to circumstances allowed.82 Yet he was forced to accept a pension for Carlisle.83 Cranfield’s approval of a knighthood for Carlisle’s son is revealing. James’s ‘losse by it is but casuall’ which accorded with Cranfield’s thinking, yet he wished ‘it might be donne as privately as may be & his Ma[jes]tie to be sparing in the like grace to others’; he dreaded it becoming a precedent.84 Even where bounty fitted Cranfield’s prescription he wanted it checked so that suitors were discouraged. Cranfield was a provocative figure to the private gain embodied in the patronage culture. While on embassy to Brussels, Weston tried to soothe Cranfield’s distemper over tensions at home: ‘I have now told yowr Lor[dship] our difficultyes abroad; I wold yow could tell me there were none at home. I am still of my old minde, that yow have wisedom, yow have power and purposes strong enough (there cann want but constancy and unity of minds) to overcome the worst accidents that cann happen heer or theare.’85 Cranfield’s ego was such that he agreed with Weston’s assessment of his strength. Thus he was not afraid to confront either Villiers or James. He blocked a grant for Christopher Villiers, ‘being restrained therein to lands improved, which must be supplied by the disafforestacons in hande, it cannot be the worke of a daie or weeke’.86 Robert Naunton’s ‘severance’ became an issue. Was he to receive a £1,000 pension (marketable at £5,000), £500 of improved lands (worth £7,500) or, the most recent overture for £500 in old fee-farm lands (worth £20,000)?87 Whether the last offer ‘may stande with his Ma[jes]ties service’ Cranfield left James to decide. James ordered that 79 80

Tawney, Business and politics, 213–20. CKS, U269/1, ZZ21 (transcript of Cranfield to Villiers, 21 Oct. 1621). This letter is in the form of a modern transcript preserved in the collection of Cranfield’s papers at CKS. No citation of its source was given, but it contents are sufficiently in keeping with similar letters to appear reliable. 81 CKS, U269/1, ZZ21. 82 PRO, SP 14/139/52, fo. 70r (7 Mar. 1623). 83 PRO, SP 14/140/38, fos 66r–7v (26 Mar. 1623). Carlisle was to receive the residue of the deceased Nottingham’s pension with an additional £316 to make it up to £2,000. 84 PRO, SP 14/139/52, fo. 70r. 85 CKS, U269/1, OE778 [MS Cranfield 2426] (May 1622). 86 PRO, SP 14/139/52, fo. 70r. 87 Ibid. fo. 70v.

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Naunton should receive the pension until £500 of improved lands were available.88 Villiers may actually have settled the issue while negotiating the Spanish match, having received word from Conway of Cranfield’s intransigence two months before James’s order.89 Cranfield resolved, as had Salisbury, that casual fines would be the chief stream of bounty, thereby protecting ordinary revenues.90 Cranfield helped ensure that his own clients obtained the farm of the greenwax monies, but James had signed petitions for numerous fines and recognisances out of them. He seems to have been desperate to find legal loopholes to void the grants, asking Attorney-General Coventry to peruse the patents, hear the farmers’ representative and then consult the exchequer barons. Cranfield was both defending his friends’ interests and attempting to reverse suits of ‘the cheif thinges set apart for his Ma[jes]ties bounty’ which he had not approved, an interesting mixture of power and principle. Legally voiding a block of James’s grants was delicate work and Coventry was to report his and the barons’ resolutions to Cranfield before acquainting anyone, including the farmers. Cranfield’s efforts with James’s bounty very soon became the studied practice of just this sort of obstruction and legal wrangling. David Murray and James Fullerton were ‘instant’ with Cranfield about a pension for Thomas Murray’s wife and son (£500), after ‘pressing his Ma[jes]tes pleasure for dispatch’.91 Cranfield refused it, arguing that Murray was Prince Charles’s servant and only he had a right to press James to dispense his son’s bounty. Charles was conveniently in Spain with Villiers. It is unlikely that the suitors went away ‘willingly contented to expect his Highnes retorne’ as Cranfield claimed. Cranfield engineered few successes in checking expenditure, although he largely kept the offices of state and household within their ordinary budgets.92 Accounts of spending by the cofferer are contradictory, indicating at one point reductions ranging from £48,000 (1619) to £26,300 (1622); at the least Cranfield kept that department under control. The same was true of long-running sink-holes like the wardrobe, works and chamber, while Ireland progressively began to pay for itself. Too often, however, these accomplishments simply masked failures in planned retrenchments and cloaked costs charged as extraordinaries. Cranfield had hoped to save £20,000 annually in the wardrobe, chamber and Ireland. The growing costs of diplomacy played havoc with budgets in the navy, ordnance, ambassadors and intelligence allowances, accounting for at least £120,000 in extraordinaries. Some of these were beyond Cranfield’s grasp, but he failed spectacularly with his favoured targets of wasteful expenditure and bounty. By 1622 consumption of

88 89 90 91 92

PRO, SP 14/146/74, fo. 87r–v (13 June 1623). PRO, SP 14/142/67, fos 129r–30v (12 Apr. 1623). CKS, U269/1, OE1096 [MS Cranfield 599] (20 Nov. 1622). PRO, SP 14/143/60, fos 86v (24 Apr. 1623). The ensuing discussion is drawn from four accounts covering 1619 and 1621–2: CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 7906–8]; OE1430 [MS Cranfield 6775].

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wines and fruits had reached gluttonous proportions when compared with the standards of 1619 (£8,989 over £4,304). The jewel house and presents skyrocketed from a budget of £5,000 to actual charges in excess of £24,000; hoped-for savings of £1,000 seem trivial by comparison. Finally, pensions, fees, annuities and rewards again climbed to worrisome levels, from £62,895 (1619) to £73,839 (1622), ominously at a time when Cranfield had hoped to pare them by £22,000. It was the familiar story of short-term financing of ever-increasing expenditures.93 By his own assessment, Cranfield had little to show for his labours. The parliament of 1624 The Spanish match was the most delicate diplomatic issue of James’s reign.94 The security of the religious settlement was brought into question while fears abounded of Romish influences being brought to bear on Charles if he married a Catholic princess and allowed her freedom of worship.95 James’s governors worried over the ramifications of the match, particularly about favours which might be demanded on behalf of English Catholics as a condition of the marriage.96 Talk of the match had oscillated for years and Charles sought a resolution by personally wooing the Infanta in Spain, travelling in secret with Villiers. It was a high-risk strategy of Charles’s making which Villiers supported in order to secure his favour.97 Against the tense, uncertain background of negotiations and princely politics, Cranfield alienated Villiers. Cranfield was not opposed to the match, but judged it chiefly upon financial gain from the Infanta’s dowry and monies saved by a peaceful restitution of the Palatinate. However, the match would entail substantial outlays before they ever saw Spanish gold.98 For Cranfield, it was crucial to get the dowry on the cheap; there was little point spending its equivalent in securing the marriage. Consequently, Cranfield hectored Villiers incessantly on all matters financial while he and Charles were in Spain. Cranfield’s immediate responsibility was to prepare an impressive fleet to bring home Charles and the Infanta. Cranfield moaned that he had never been ‘put to such a plunge for monye, the som beinge so greate’ and beseeched Villiers to hasten their return. For good measure he reminded Villiers not to ‘forgett the monye, [knowing] not whether the necessitye or the expectation of it are greater’.99 At one point, Cranfield ineptly warned of an ‘Excheq[ue]r so bare of monye’ and many men who were ‘desirous the 93

Expenditure for 1621 was £475,764 and that for 1622 stood at £608,114, an increase of £132,350. 94 Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 6–53. 95 See, for instance, PRO, SP 14/147/80, fo. 98r (28 June 1623). 96 PRO, SP 14/138/99, fo. 156r (27 Feb. 1623). 97 Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 59–62. 98 CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 6773]. 99 BL, MS Harleian 1581, fo. 93r (30 Mar. 1623).

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kinges wants maye force him to a Parlament which is not fytt shold bee in the Prynces absens considering how mens affections stand’.100 The Infanta’s jointure, the houses and properties from which she would support her court, was more important. Its size was material to negotiations and the Spanish expected satisfaction of her honour. Cranfield was instructed to send a list of properties and lands worth £50–£60,000 from which Villiers and Charles could make offers.101 He obliged, but concluded that it would be impossible to ‘furnish the full some spoken of’ unless it was made up out of the customs or casual revenues.102 This letter followed one to Conway in which Cranfield crabbed that, left unaware of what had already been discussed in Spain, he could not provide more than a provisional jointure.103 Cranfield was defended by Calvert over the jointure, but Villiers could only have concluded that he was being deliberately difficult.104 By the time Charles and Villiers returned empty-handed and disillusioned in October, Cranfield knew that he was in trouble with the favourite and persuaded Conway to intercede, but Villiers was furious.105 Cranfield blamed ‘those that have so busely and malitiously practized against us both’ for the rupture, but his own behaviour was as much to blame as the whispers of enemies. The breach was further illuminated when Conway presented for Cranfield’s vetting a petition delivered to James by Villiers. Conway left him under no illusions that it must be passed.106 Cranfield retorted that the petition was a monopoly like those which had been taken away in the last parliament and offered only that the petitioner could claim the specific benefits as they occurred without a general grant.107 The mutual antipathy of Villiers and Cranfield was apparent to all the day after Christmas. Thomas Locke reported that Cranfield ‘hath stayed the passing of some things granted to the D[uke] of Buck[ingham] w[hi]ch makes the[m] looke strange upo[n] each other’.108 Coupled with his activities in 1621, Cranfield had brought himself into direct conflict with kingship by alter-rex. The locus of political power began to change after Charles’s return from Spain, and continued to do so in the parliament of 1624.109 Charles and Villiers gradually replaced the familiar axis of James and his favourite. The conventional story was described by Chamberlain:

100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

Ibid. fo. 95r (8 Apr. 1623). See also PRO, SP 14/143/60, fo. 87v (24 Apr. 1623). PRO, SP 14/144/3, fo. 3r–v (2 May 1623). BL, MS Harleian 1581, fo. 99r–v. PRO, SP 14/144/4, fos 4r–5v (2 May 1623). PRO, SP 14/144/7, fo. 8r–v (3 May 1623). See also Prestwich, Cranfield, 425. PRO, SP 14/153/94, fo. 122r (25 Oct. 1623). PRO, SP 14/154/25, fo. 29r (11 Nov. 1623). PRO, SP 14/155/15, fos 23r–4v (4 Dec. 1623). PRO, SP 14/156/3, fo. 4r–v (26 Dec. 1623). Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 63. See also Russell, Parliaments, 145–203.

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yt seemes the D[uke] of Buckingham ingrosses the Princes favour so far as to exclude all others both from the father and sonne. This is thought to cause some heart burning and that they ayme to take downe his greatnes upon w[hi]ch apprehension (yt is saide) he stirres not from the king, but keepes close about him, to cut of[f] all accesse.110

James’s governors were divided over the war which Charles and Villiers were determined upon after their Spanish failure. The Spanish were culpable in the Palatinate mess and war cries of sullied honour would play well in parliament. Properly manipulated, an assembly could provide sanction and financing for the prince’s desires.111 Cranfield played his part in the drama: he and James found common ground in believing that the state could not afford a war and joined together to stop it.112 After an account ‘of the fowle delayes and abuses of Spayne in both the Treatyes of the matche and of the Palatinate’ delivered by Villiers, parliament petitioned James to renounce all dealings with Spain.113 James composed his response at Theobalds two days later in a set-speech for parliament astutely calculated to sow unrest and apprehension. James began with many stately professions of gratitude for parliament’s advice. He had sought it and would not dishonour it with rejection. ‘But lett mee acquaint you a little w[i]th the difficulties of this course’, he continued. First, ‘I omitt to speake of my owne necessities, they are to[o] well knowne’, but, James added, ‘this I am sure, I have had lesse helpe of you by p[ar]liam[en]t of any king yt[that] ever raigned over you.’ That rebuke delivered, James spoke a great deal of his necessities. He had incurred substantial charges in sending money to the Palatinate and dispatching peace-making embassies. To those must be added the expedition to Spain, reminding them of Charles’s ill-fated wooing of the Infanta which had precipitated the situation. Further charges beckoned. The poor princes of Germany looked to him for assistance, the Irish back door had to be secured and the navy prepared. Cranfield’s mind can be seen at work when James asserted that customs were his fiscal base and farmed on condition that the contracts were to be discharged in the event of war. Consequently, he would require large subsidies, but they would take time to collect which would necessitate costly borrowing. Without sufficient supply to enter into war was ‘but to shewe my teeth and doe noe more’.114 The king played upon his own parliamentary reputation to revive old doubts lost in the present goodwill. If he chose the path of war, he pledged parliament that its own ‘deputies shall have the disposing of the money’. It was no secret that members wondered whether the subsidies voted in 1621 110 111 112 113 114

PRO, SP 14/158/72, fo. 91r–v (31 Jan. 1624). Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 77–94, 133–49, 177–9. PRO, SP 14/160/62, fo. 100r (11 Mar. 1624); Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 72–5. PRO, SP 14/160/46, fo. 68r (9 Mar. 1624). PRO, SP 14/160/62, fo. 100r–v.

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had gone to the Palatinate. While reiterating this assurance, James, in off-hand fashion, slipped in what could surely destroy the session: ‘Give mee what you will for my owne meanes, but I p[ro]test none of the monyes w[hi]ch you shall give mee for those uses shall be issued but for those endes & by men elected by yourselves.’ He effectively asked parliament to supply his own necessity and the cost of war. Further, if they funded a war, he would not make a peace without consulting them. That James might do just the opposite was a regular fear.115 Finally, James expressed a heartfelt desire to end his days making good laws and remedying grievances with his subjects.116 Fully embraced, that task could side-track parliament – and Baron Tell-clock! – for months. It was also an invitation to re-enact the rancorous feuds over grievances and supply. James astutely raised enough issues to fire any number of agendas and bog down the session. Members received James’s words on 8 March and ‘Sir John Eliot then proposed that given the “manye strange Reports” of James’s speech, “all members may take Copies” ’ of James’s reply in order to prepare for ‘debating and treating of the Things herein propounded’.117 Cranfield entered the fray in the Lords on the same day, following James’s instructions to ‘informe you of these thinges yt[that] concerne my estate’.118 Cranfield was honest, deliberately so. The Infanta escapade and manoeuverings to recover the Palatinate had cost £661,670. Diplomacy consumed the king’s money at the rate of £145,763, postage ate up £14,836 more and £113,000 had been spent on Charles’s wooing. The defence of the Palatinate had cost another £172,888, while Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine were supported at a cost of £30,300. Finally, James owed another £106,508 to various creditors, including the king of Denmark, for Palatinate disbursements. James had taken in £371,640 in extraordinary receipts including the unpopular ‘contributions’ levied by benevolence.119 Cranfield thus provided a full account of the costs of failure in the Palatinate and the rough wooing for which members of parliament had had as little taste as the Infanta. Cranfield performed his task like his predecessors, spelling out James’s extraordinary charges and his estate’s necessity before asking parliament to make them good. Weston delivered Cranfield’s summary to the Commons on 10 August.120 Both Houses stuck upon the question of supply and Charles rushed ‘to give his owne sense therof’, a message Calvert dutifully outlined on 12 March. James did not intend that they should clear his debts; he only sought to illustrate the necessity of financing the war through parliament. Charles also

115 116 117 118 119

PRO, SP 14/163/16, fo. 29r (19 Apr. 1624). PRO, SP 14/160/62, fo. 101r. Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 187. PRO, SP 14/160/62, fo. 100v. CKS, U269/1, OE1413 (10 Mar. 1623[1624]). PRO, SP 14/160/62, fo. 101r is less accurate. 120 Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 187.

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promised that future sessions would be held to give them time to deal with commonwealth matters, after the war issue had been decided. He tried to rally his cause with a plea to consider how far matters had already gone and the need to continue with expedition. It was a matter which concerned both the king’s and prince’s honour, ‘this being his first action of his entrance into the world’. Finally, Charles slyly directed their thoughts toward his future reign. He ‘would acknowledge our cares & that when the tyme should serve heerafter we shall not thincke our labours ill bestowed’.121 This last point proved most soothing to members with lingering doubts.122 A joint resolution of Lords and Commons acknowledged that James’s intention had been to inform them that his estate could not sustain the cost of war. They pledged that upon the dissolution of the treaties ‘we wilbe reddy in a parliamentary manner w[i]th o[u]r p[er]son & abillities to assist’.123 James’s next address attacked Charles’s hard-won consensus. Members had proceeded from a false assumption: ‘I never yet declared my mynde upon’ the treaties and, as Jupiter’s thunder follows his words, so a ‘King should not speake except hee maintayne it by action.’ He thanked members of parliament for their pledge of assistance, but their general pledge was no basis on which to begin a war or to induce others to join him; ‘unlesse p[ar]ticuler meanes bee discovered it is little to the poynte . . . I will deale freely w[i]th yow and tell yow plainely what I thincke will doe the turne’. James undoubtedly intended to wreck the session when he asked parliament to ‘bestowe uppon this greate busines 5 subsidies and 2 fifteenes to every subsidie. And for my owne necessities my cryeing debtes are soe heavie that noe man can bear them . . . I desier yow would give mee one subsidie and 2 fifteenes yearely untill my debtes be paied’.124 What members thought of James’s request for something akin to a Great Contract to pay his debts can only be imagined. Thomas Cogswell is equivocal about James’s intentions with this speech, interpreting it more as forthrightness than mischief.125 Within the context of fiscal policy and his experiences of parliamentary supply, James’s request was provocative. Members had always resisted any obligation to pay James’s debts, and he had given no evidence that he could govern without accumulating them. Under this scheme, parliament might have been paying off his debts in perpetuity. Salisbury had asked for essentially the same deal in 1610. If the Great Contract was any precedent, argument and debate in fashioning such an agreement would have been endless – and fruitless. James fed parliament some final tasteless food for thought. Members must balance the immediacy of the sum with its burden, while he again pledged not to make a separate peace without advising them. Lastly, he promised sessions in the autumn and 121 122 123 124 125

PRO, SP 14/160/67, fo. 108r. Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 193–4. PRO, SP 14/160/76, fos 126v–7r (14 Mar. 1624). PRO, SP 14/160/78, fo. 130r–v ([15 Mar.] 1624). Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 195–8.

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the following spring and reminded them that he meant to make ‘this a session w[i]th the passing of as many good lawes as in convenient tyme may bee prepared’.126 Political confusion in his wake, James ‘putt off his hat to them and went his way’.127 Reaction to this comedy of errors was captured by Edward Nicholas (MP). James’s first speech was given ‘in such manner and w[i]th such wordes as that it was thought to contradict all that had either beene done or sayde before by the Pr[ince] or Buck[ingham] and the whole talke of the cyty and cuntry was that all yt[that] had been delivered in our house was now by the king disavowed’. Members who ‘were to take noates and report for us durst not avow theyr noates publiquely’ while the entire incident ‘gave greate incouragm[en]t to the papistes’.128 Charles and Villiers were left ‘to cleare the cloudes and to remove the obscuritie’.129 According to the evidence of Charles’s corrections, Villiers persuaded James to accept instead six subsidies and twelve fifteenths for the war and to drop supply for his debts.130 Significantly James refused to let the speech be amended to remove the contradictions; so it entered the parliamentary record.131 Not surprisingly these reassurances ‘did not settle the mindes of the house’.132 It required some of the hardest political manoeuverings of the reign by Villiers, Charles and like-minded allies to prevail with members.133 Parliament finally offered three subsidies and fifteenths to be collected in the first year after James formally broke the treaties.134 James did not refuse this offer, which fell well short of his demands, but there is division over the enthusiasm with which he accepted it.135 Parliamentary wrangling ensued for some weeks because of the slowness with which Jupiter prepared to loose his thunder and, if the ‘session never seemed to progress from suspicion to accord’ in Cogswell’s words, it was because members understood that there was a significant difference between Rex pacificus accepting subsidies for war and actually making good their bellicose desires.136 Neither Charles nor Villiers could have had any doubts about who had counselled James. Cranfield’s complicity in James’s first speech could be excused as the proper performance of his office, but he almost certainly focused James on demanding specific sums from parliament. When Cranfield, seconded by the earl of Arundel, pressed the point in the Lords, Charles

126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

PRO, SP 14/160/78, fo. 131r. PRO, SP 14/160/89, fo. 146v (17 Mar. 1624); Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 195–8. PRO, SP 14/160/81, fo. 135r ([15] Mar. 1624). PRO, SP 14/160/89, fo. 146v. PRO, SP 14/160/78, fo. 130v. Lords journal, iii. 265. PRO, SP 14/160/89, fos 146v–7r. Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 199–215. BL, MS Add. 64878, fos 82r–3v ([24 Mar. 1624]). Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 215–16; Russell, Parliaments, 187–90. Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 250, 266–81.

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countered that ‘all the rest of the Ll[or]ds were of a contrary opinion [and] it must not be their two voices that should hinder the common resolution’. Both men later made their excuses to Charles, but Cranfield had doomed himself: ‘it is well knowne, the Tresorer hath kept his chamber at Chelsey ever since, being sicke of the caquerelle’.137 Cranfield’s impeachment received remarkably little attention from Cogswell except to say that it was an unwanted distraction from the subsidy for Charles and Villiers.138 By contrast, Prestwich used it as a millstone on which to grind her many axes against James, Villiers and Cranfield’s corrupt contemporaries.139 Despite being unfashionable, R. H. Tawney’s remains the most unaffected judgement: ‘It is difficult, however, to resist the evidence that Villiers and Charles, if they did not prompt the plan, quickly made it their own and, once resolved on it, left little to chance.’140 Years of resentment and court politics finally called Cranfield to account. That it would be public destruction by impeachment was almost certainly occasioned by Cranfield’s being the only person with the stature to oppose the war in parliament or council on fiscal grounds, the one basis yet sufficient to frighten the faint-hearted.141 Conway’s son wrote gleefully to Carleton that ‘if you are any way enclined to mischeefe it will be as mutch pleasure to you to heare that he is ruined as it is delight to us to ruinne the Lord Treasurer’.142 The younger Carleton was more thoughtful: the Commons ‘have declared him most unworthy; and desired iustice of the Ll[or]ds; the particularities are not in themselves of so crying a heinousness, as might not be excused in these tymes’.143 The means of Cranfield’s destruction, ironically, were charges of corruption in the wardrobe, accepting bribes from customs farmers, ‘extorting double fees’ for livery as master of the wards and ‘mismanagement of the ordnance’, consummate charges of private gain.144 Prestwich’s analysis leaves no doubt that Cranfield made money from his offices, particularly from the wardrobe and wards.145 There exists an irreconcilable conflict between this behaviour and Cranfield’s carping about the mismanagement of James’s bounty and the unfaithfulness of officers. He was guilty of profiting from office, and the possibility always existed that, perhaps for political ends, Cranfield might be held to his own standards and found wanting.146 The

137 138 139 140

PRO, SP 14/160/89, fos 145v. Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 233. Prestwich, Cranfield, 440–61. Tawney, Business and politics, 238, 231–74. Despite its biases the discussion in Prestwich, Cranfield, 440–61, remains useful. See also Peck, Court patronage, 189–90. 141 Russell, Parliaments, 15, is correct in emphasising the importance of removing Cranfield’s influence from the privy council. 142 PRO, SP 14/163/1, fo. 1v (18 Apr. 1624). 143 PRO, SP 14/162/56, fo. 97r (15 Apr. 1624). 144 Prestwich, Cranfield, 448–53; Tawney, Business and politics, 238–62. 145 Prestwich, Cranfield, 375–422; CSP, domestic, 1620–1623, 335–6. 146 PRO, SP 14/162/56, fos 97r–8v; SP 14/163/2, fos 3r–4v (18 Apr. 1624).

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seminal contradiction is that, when that moment came, Cranfield believed James would rescue him. He expected to be absolved of the charges against him because of the favour in which James held him.147 In this sense, Cranfield’s wider sense of the public good and the state never escaped the contingent politics of patronage and alter-rex in which he operated. And to this fact must be attributed much of his failure to alter decisively the balance between the demands of public and private in crown finance. Cranfield once wrote, demonstrating his self-awareness: So as it now appears, that my dutie & care to doe his Ma[jes]tie right did begett this ill-affection . . . which notwithstanding must not, nor shall discourage or dishearten me, in discharging the faith & dutie I owe to His Ma[jes]tes service, who I doubt not, will as in this, so upon all occasions graciouslie stande by me in my so doing & believe that the like murmurs and & complaints which naturallie follow men in my place maie have the like unworthy foundacons.148

Cranfield’s blunt, candid, policies as treasurer, if taken at face value, are hardly novel, but from the standpoint of kingship and governance they constitute transformative counsel. A consistent element in policy was the attempt to address James’s Cyropaedian approach to finance and bounty. Salisbury and Caesar looked to the book of bounty and commission for suits. Salisbury and Northampton stayed grants while Northampton confronted waste in preference to bounty. The corporate regime during Suffolk’s tenure looked to the legal process and rehearsed reforming bromides which led, eventually, to effective retrenchment in offices and, for a time, in pensions. However, kingship by minister-favourite and alter-rex did nothing to change the patronage culture fundamentally. The late Jacobean regime ushered in a heyday of projects which cost Bacon and Mandeville their offices. Cranfield brought yet another wrinkle to this narrative. In 1619 Bacon offered Burghley as the model treasurer, while Cranfield was an avid student of Elizabethan (and Tudor) fiscal policy and approached Burghley’s accounts virtually as a financial template. Whether or not Cranfield saw himself as a Jacobean Burghley, he determined to exercise similarly strong leadership as lord treasurer and preached the virtues of frugality. And Cranfield was willing to accept the onus for fundamentally retrenching on patronage and waste. In Cranfield’s mind, he alone possessed sufficient expertise, courage and royal favour for the task. However, the practical authority Cranfield sought effectively demanded that James adapt his kingship to such a degree that he would become a cipher to Cranfield in matters of finance and patronage. Both Cranfield’s ideas and his policies challenged James’s kingship; James, however, consistently operated according to his own agenda, something which, in the end, his governors could not change. Cranfield’s efforts to modify James’s kingship in practice led him into inevitable conflict with the 147 148

PRO, SP 14/163/74, fos 110r–11v (30 Apr. 1624). PRO, SP 14/153/8, fo. 8r (2 Oct. 1623).

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alter-rex: Villiers already acted as James’s clearing-house for patronage and that ‘responsibility’ was fundamental to his position. The precise nature of Cranfield’s personal political designs is unclear, but the logical extension of his agenda was the subversion of kingship by alter-rex and an almost Elizabethan reorientation of Jacobean kingship toward rule by governors. Cranfield never accepted that he asked too much of James in thus taking on the patronage culture and kingship by alter-rex. In the suit of Captain Penyngton, Cranfield confessed that it [is] iust and honor[a]ble for his Ma[jes]tie to reward the petitio[n]ers faithfull service, to the incouragem[en]t of men of his meritt and profession; yet I doe not hold this request fitt for him to have, nor his Ma[jes]tie to graunt; the same being directly within one of the prohibited braunches of the Booke of Bounty.149

Cranfield was thus exacting and prickly, defending his axiom to ‘stand against all guiftes otherwise all undon[e]’, but he could not indefinitely oppose the resolution of James or of Villiers.150 Yet his downfall was not simply caused by questions of patronage and private gain, even if his provocative stances ensured that no one stood by him in the end. His relationship with Villiers had collapsed while the favourite was in Spain, but it was not until Cranfield conspired with James to wreck the parliament of 1624 that Villiers and Charles cast him to his jealous enemies. James did intervene on Cranfield’s behalf in the Lords: [Telling] the[m] he was a King of a facile & free dispositio[n] & readie to give & that the Lo[rd] Tre[asure]r had made staye of some things that he had given for w[hi]ch the king said he liked him the better & that he had perhaps for that contracted the envie of many against him. And for the matter of the impositio[n] upo[n] the wine, it was done for his service & he had the money & therefore that they might aswell arraigne him for it as his Tre[asure]r. And heere the Prince beeing spoken unto by one of the Ll[ord]s to tell the K[ing] that he had not bin questioned for that in the howse the Prince finding oportunitie did so, but the King told him he lyed & so did he that told him so, but in conclusion the K[ing] left him to the howse, to be proceeded w[i]th.151

Thomas Locke’s account is worthy melodrama, not least in the public rebuke issued to Charles, but it is potent testimony to the fate of Cranfield and James.152 Cranfield challenged both the agenda of Charles and Villiers and the process of governance which they embodied. He fell because of a commitment to the public good which far exceeded its application to fiscal policy.

149 150

CKS, U269/1, OE1493 [undated, uncalendared MS Cranfield]. CKS, U269/1, OE1528 [MS Cranfield 7489]; PRO, SP 14/138/51, fos 88r–9v (20 Feb. 1623); SP 14/138/99, fos 156r–7v (27 Feb. 1623). See also Peck, Court patronage, 214. 151 PRO, SP 14/164/53, fos 92v–3r (8 May 1624). 152 See Cogswell, Blessed revolution, 300–1, 314–15, for the events after parliament ended.

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That James could not stand by him in 1624 demonstrates that both men failed to serve the commonweal. By the 1620s James’s practice of kingship, the ascent of Villiers to the position of alter-rex, made it impossible for the king or Cranfield, each in his own way, to turn salus populi suprema lex esto into reality.

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Conclusion

Conclusion: The Failure of Kingship and Governance What is it about the management of Jacobean finance that constitutes a failure of kingship and governance rather than simply the functional breakdown of an obsolete and antiquated financial system? It is hardly surprising that a study which focuses on the intersection of politics and finance will conclude that responsibility lay with the individuals practising the art of governance. None of the regimes that James constructed was able to avoid failure in key aspects of kingship and governance which had little to do with administration: James and his governors did not make or sustain effective policy with the notable exceptions of impositions and the 1617–18 reform drive. This was certainly not for lack of trying. No one underestimates the amount of labour that went into the search for a financial settlement, nor was there ever a shortage of counsel on finance. Perhaps in making the case for political failure this is the crux of the matter. James’s receptivity to counsel and his correspondingly fluid policy-making process placed upon himself and his governors enormous demands to evaluate counsel in the course of making profitable decisions. This flexible, accessible, personal kingship had much to recommend it, but it served James badly in fiscal policy. This does not, however, replace one brand of functional breakdown with another. On the contrary, James’s kingship proved adaptable throughout his reign. What remained unchanged was James’s responsibility for the agenda of governance, his political reading of finance and the decisions made to serve those ends. This suggests that the failure of Jacobean finance ultimately centres on the failure of counsel: its content, articulation and use by the king and his governors in developing a workable consensus on policy. Reading finance as politics At some point in his life Lord Chancellor Ellesmere obtained and read the 1551 edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, printed in London by Abraham Vele.1 Ellesmere noted a number of passages in the margins of book i, which contains the dialogue on the challenges of serving and counselling a monarch.2 More, as author, employed three examples to illustrate the pitfalls 1

The Ellesmere copy is in the Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 18094 copy 2 (hereinafter cited as Utopia [STC 18904/2]). 2 The pages marked are C5r, E5r, E8v–F4r, F5r, F6r, F6v, F8r. The hands on C5r, E8v and F1r should be compared with that of Ellesmere on HHL, MS Ellesmere 478.

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of offering counsel: rehabilitation of thieves in lieu of peremptory execution; dissuading the king from territorial aggrandisement; and rulers who make war on their subjects through fiscal policy. Ellesmere noted the ironic congruity between the dispositions of soldier and thieves in the first example, but found nothing to note in the critique of imperial ambition.3 There are no marginalia by Ellesmere on book ii. Alone of all the subjects in Utopia, it was the examination of finance that occasioned Ellesmere’s repeated and sustained annotation, which ended when the discussion turned to the abolition of private property. Ellesmere’s sole actual comment is ‘Nota’ at the beginning of the discussion; further evidence of his hand is found in the numbering of points, the use of three dots, a configuration like ‘cc’, several dashes thus ///, summation brackets and, finally, a flower. It is difficult to establish consistent, specific meanings for these marks, which reflect Ellesmere’s engagement with the text, other than that they highlight points of particular interest.4 Nevertheless, items Ellesmere deemed worth noting offer a window into what one Jacobean governor believed constituted the political failure of crown finance, either in the abstract or from his own experience. Ellesmere read Utopia with particular attention to flawed dimensions of decision-making, the partnership of public good and private gain and conceptions of finance. The discussion Ellesmere annotated begins with the meeting of ‘some kyng and his counsell . . . whettinge their wittes and deuisinge what subtell crafte they myght inue[n]te to enryche the king with greate treasures of money’.5 Ellesmere numbered their five proposals. The first two appear decidedly Tudor: manipulate the value of the coinage, and feign war to obtain taxes. Another counsellor put ‘the kyng in remembraunce of certeyn olde and moughte-eaten lawes’. He proposed collecting the fines, particularly ‘because no man can remembre that they were made, euerie man hath transgressed’ while ‘there is no waye so proffytable, nor more honourable, as the whiche hath a shewe and coloure of iustice’. The next counsellor took this a step further and suggested establishing a wide range of prohibited activities, ‘specially suche thynges as is for the peoples profit not be vsed and afterward to dispence for money with the[m]’. The last proposal argued that the judges should be persuaded to interpret the law in the king’s favour. Ellesmere bracketed the section which argued that equity, the strict letter of the law or the prerogative ought to be sufficient grounds in any case to do so.6 A modern reader might be hard pressed not to read this material without thinking of Jacobean finance. The third and fourth proposals were the stuff of Jacobean and Caroline policy. Projects like defective titles, heriots, assarts, the statutes of employment, reimposition of the 3d. tax on merchant

3 4

Utopia (STC 18904/2), C5r. I am grateful to Stephen Zwicker for discussing these various marks and conventions for marginalia with me while we were fellowship holders at the Folger in 1999. 5 Utopia (STC 18904/2), E8v. 6 Ibid. E8v–F2r.

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strangers, enrolment of apprentices, fines for dressing flesh during Lent and tithes out of parishes, let alone the sale of general pardons, sumptuary laws or grants of naturalisation would all have found homes under one or the other proposal. Both James and his son were criticised for the manipulation of the law and of judges. Ellesmere marked two telling statements in his copy of Utopia, that ‘a kynge, thoughe he would, can do nothynge uniustly, ffor all that all men haue, yea also the men the[m] selfes be all his’, a conclusion which followed easily from the position that the argument ‘whiche with good and iust Iudges is of greater force then all lawes be, the kynges indisputable prerogatiue’.7 This is dramatic and deliberately ironic, but More’s abstract dialogue found eerie echoes in purveyance, wardship, naturalisation, impositions and, later under Charles I, imprisonment for non-payment of the forced loan and resistance to ship-money. The dialogue moved from specific proposals to an examination of the thinking behind them. The hypothetical counsellors answered their king’s need for money, but their policies, particularly the manipulation of the law and judges, served another end. Heavy exactions, especially those cloaked by justice, honour or the public welfare, served to impoverish the king’s subjects and make them incapable of resistance.8 For Aristotle, this was tyranny under the guise of kingship.9 Ellesmere noted several points in the ensuing attack on this agenda. The first response could have come from his own master, had it not contained elements of elected monarchy: ‘the cominaltie chuseth their king for their owne sake & not for his sake: for this intent that through his labour and studie they might al liue wealthily, sauffe from wronges and iniuries’. It continued in decidedly Cyropaedian style ‘that therfore the kynge ought to take more care for the wealthe of his people, then for his owne wealthe’ and provide for them like a shepherd. Ellesmere also noted that a beggarly people had nothing to lose in seeking change and that kings were kings in name only because they had lost all majesty by impoverishing their subjects.10 The proper financial behaviour of a king followed naturally from this critique and Ellesmere marked points which may either have reflected his thinking or shaped his counsel in 1615. Rather than impoverishing the people, a ruler should: Let him lyve of hys owne, hurtinge no man. Let him do coste not aboue his power. Let hym restreyne wyckednes. Let hym preuent vices and take awaye the occasions of offences by well orderyng hys subiectes, >and not by sufferyng wickednes to increase afterward to be punyshed. >Let hym not be hastie in callynge agayne lawes, whiche a custome hathe abrogated; speciallye suche as haue bene long forgotten and neuer lacked nor neaded. And let hym neuer 7 8 9 10

Ibid. F2r. Ibid. F2v. Aristotle, Politics 5.11.18–21. Utopia (STC 18904/2), F2v–F3v.

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under the cloke of pretence of transgression take suche fynes and forfaytes, as no Iudge wyll suffre a priuate persone to take, as uniuste and ful of gile.11

Taken in the context of the original five proposals, this was a call for conjoint financial and political reform. The king should live within his means, eschew idle luxuries and indolent pleasures and ease the unjust burden on his subjects. It particularly damned turning the law into a truncheon for profit – profiting from letting subjects slip into lawlessness, revival of old laws and customs which had, perhaps, died out for good reason and cynical manipulation of fines and forfeitures for the king’s personal gain. It is not surprising that Ellesmere noted points which concerned the profits of the law. He approached finance from a decidedly legal perspective, whether examining the financial utility of the prerogative, framing policy debates on grounds of precedent and law as he did with the Great Contract or general pardons or looking to use the law to attack corruption and financial deceit. A central tenet behind his critique of finance was the confusion of public good and private gain, even on the part of the ruler. The project for creating (by law) prohibited activities and then marketing dispensations would have given Ellesmere grist for that particular mill. Not only could a ruler collect forfeitures for statutory violations but, as these measures were ostensibly for the public good, he could sell dispensations at an especially dear rate ‘as one that is lothe to graunte to any priuate persone any thyng that is agaynste the proffyt of hys people’.12 Of course it was the subject who suffered as a result of the machinations of the ruler and dispensations granted to private persons to pursue activities against the public good. Further, these matters were unfit for private profit and it was thus especially dishonourable for the ruler to exploit them. The Elizabethan and Jacobean monopolies which Ellesmere put together in a number of lists were underpinned by just such a conception of public and private.13 Solicitor-General Thomas Fleming’s spirited demurrer in Darcy v. Allen (1601) not only affirmed that a privilege (dispensation) granted by the crown must entail loss to someone or that it was by definition not a privilege, but also asserted that such power constituted an inseparable part of the prerogative.14 The crown was empowered by letters patent to create its own division of public good and private gain in projects, including allowing monopolies. This was attacked in dynamic fashion in the parliaments of 1601 and 1621 and resulted in royal action, while a monopolies bill was finally passed in 1624. However, the public–private debate existed at all levels of kingship and governance. Ellesmere attacked the perversion of public and private with projects and joined in the criticism of governors like Salisbury and Caesar in

11 12 13 14

Ibid. F3v–F4r; marks of > indicate the points of Ellesmere’s marginalia. Ibid. F1v. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2290, 2423. PRO, SP 12/286/47, fo. 114r–v.

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doing so. The furtherance of suits and projects had diverted revenue from James’s coffers into private hands while the new offices created were often needless and offensive to the subject.15 In future yf p[er]son shall make any proiecte or offer of any sute wherby p[ro]fitt may be made, then the same to be converted to the increase of his Ma[jes]tes revenew, so farre forthe as maye stande w[i]th Iustice, honour & conscience and may be wythout inconvenience, grevance or offence to the people, ffor that is a poynt to be in all such sutes specially regarded.16

Ellesmere did not reject projects, but too many projectors had gained by ‘shyftes & bargaynes’.17 He demanded that special regard be had to the ‘Integritye & fidelitye of the Ministers, to whome so great a charge & truste shall be com[m]itted’, preferring always ‘industrious and apte p[er]sons’.18 And, if need be, the law should be employed to redress the balance between public good and private gain. James counselled Prince Henry that ‘Iustice should be blinde and friendlesse; it is not there ye should reward your friends or seeke to crosse your enemies’, but it was difficult for subjects or governors to discern these maxims in fiscal policy.19 More’s hypothetical counsellors hoped to raise a store of money for their master by means of their five proposals; Jacobean governors hoped to accomplish the same with projects. This was particularly true of areas where the crown’s ‘right’ to revenue had decayed or escaped the reach of the regime’s bureaucracy, most obviously in the case of crown lands. This study of projects and projectors therefore enhances the revisionist argument for the ‘functional breakdown’ of early Stuart finance.20 However, it also shows that wider conclusions may be drawn from investigating crown finance in its fullest political dimensions. The apprentices project is an example. It openly posited the privatisation of legal enforcement, yet the dynamic at work was more complex and decidedly more political than administrative failure. It is only in the rhetoric of the projectors that the suggestion arises that the crown was incapable of administering the statutory enrolment of apprentices. In fact James attempted to co-opt the project, employ his own undertakers and keep the proceeds, leaving the projectors adrift. It was only when Caesar concluded that the project was unprofitable in any guise that it was rejected. The functional breakdown model presumes too readily that projectors’ premises of administrative failure were true. Furthermore, did James or his governors believe that the crown needed to extend administration, regulation and record-keeping into such areas? How often did projectors respond to

15 16 17 18 19 20

HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/1, 3. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/2. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/8. HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/8 and 2610/9 respectively. James VI & I, Political writings, 24. Russell, Parliaments, 66–70.

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a genuine need instead of taking advantage of creative bureaucracy? It is easy – and correct – to advance functional breakdown in the matter of alehouses, but would anyone but Jonson’s Merecraft have been ready to decry the ineffectiveness of government because there was no office to seal toothpicks? – or enrol apprentices? Projectors thus exploited administrative openings under the guise of failure while the crown showed a willingness to exploit them in the process. James and his governors employed projects out of a conscious preference for a public–private partnership. They were only partly motivated by administrative issues and in many cases the perceived political benefits far outweighed them. Three political factors had at least as much influence on the conceptualisation of crown finance in terms of projects. The patronage culture played a significant role. It was to exploit a form of self-funding reward that Burghley and Elizabeth drew projects into the crown’s interests and they both accepted and pursued a concessionary stake in them. Early modern regimes of all shapes, sizes and liquidity responded to the siren-song of projectors. Projects also shifted – imperfectly – the onus for ‘taxation’. If early modern Britain and Ireland had become tax-weary by 1603 or evolved into a collection of congenital tax-cheats, persuading subjects to part with their own, or governors to collect the crown’s share, assumed onerous proportions. This was particularly true in a state whose capacity to press the populace financially depended upon political negotiation and the working relationships through which Westminster and local communities interacted. Projects made it possible to bypass some relationships, overcome the administrative failures – real or feigned – of others and reconfigure still others in a fashion characteristic of projectors with the incentive of private gain. Finally, projects dovetailed with James’s conception of finance, particularly the importance he attached to the political ends of bounty both from his reading of the Cyropaedia and as the inheritor of a new kingdom. None of this is meant to reject outright the revisionist project with its emphasis on structural failure in the financial system, but there is need for qualification. No one disputes that early modern states possessed uncertain powers of bureaucratic coercion or that turning policy into practice depended upon the effectiveness of local and central governors in doing their jobs. However, in this context, politics becomes the fundamental element. Telling governors what their duties are represents administration, but persuading them to actually do their jobs constitutes politics. Neither can it be doubted that there were technical weaknesses in the financial system, yet the sums collected by that system under Charles I would have met or exceeded James’s financial needs.21 The exchequer could demonstrate significant effectiveness with forfeitures and fines for recusancy when the political direction existed.22 21 22

Sharpe, Personal rule, 124–30. Michael Questier, Conversion, politics and religion in England, 1580–1625, Cambridge 1996, 135–48.

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Charles I and his governors provided such direction, but James did not because he tempered recusancy profits according to his own religious and political agenda.23 At the very least this example suggests that Caroline policy manipulated the system differently from its Jacobean counterpart. Indeed, Jonathan Scott has recently argued that Charles embarked upon nothing less than a fundamental reconstruction of the English state between 1625 and 1640, determined to create massive new fiscal–military tools and to restore ‘obedience to monarchy’.24 Charles may well have inherited his father’s life-long commitment to protecting his imperium and asserting subjects’ duty of obedience, but his ‘conviction that the time had come to abandon half measures for fundamental reform’ of the state was his own.25 The underlying issue seems to be that revisionist historians have read back into James’s reign far too much of Charles’s policies and the collapse of 1640–2. Parliamentary debates over supply and redress of grievances, for instance, did not possess unitary meanings between 1604 and 1642. Members may have been localist by nature, but they also understood their localities within a national perspective.26 Matters like financial management, the distortion of public good and private gain or potentially tyrannical exactions moved members as participants in a national event. This was true of the Great Contract, impositions and projects in 1621, while the tie between supply and grievances in these sessions was stated and, in the case of the Contract, explicit to the agendas of members, James and his governors. While Scott urges us to reject Charles’s personality as the key to his ‘troubles’, we must pause to acknowledge that James and his son were indeed very different rulers.27 James practised a unique form of personal rule which complemented his own agenda for governance. Consequently, he experienced quite different outcomes in ruling Britain and Ireland. Counsel was fundamental to the different kingships of James and Charles and it is to that aspect of Jacobean kingship and finance that we now turn. The Jacobean failure of counsel Political caveats add shades of gray to the monochrome picture of ‘feckless James’ and the misplaced emphasis on functional breakdown outside the Caroline regime. Why then did finance prove to be such an intractable problem for James and his governors? What makes Ellesmere’s engagement with More’s Utopia potentially so illuminating is that, just as in his critique of

23 24 25 26

Sharpe, Personal rule, 302–3. Scott, England’s troubles, 113–14. Ibid. 63, 114. Richard Cust, ‘News and politics in early seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present cxii (1986), 60–90. 27 Scott, England’s troubles, 52–4.

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Jacobean reality, Ellesmere noted that the failures of fiscal policy ultimately stemmed from the failure of counsel. This is not entirely surprising considering that book i was permeated by the question of counsel. Yet the only point in the dialogue about territorial aggrandisement that Ellesmere noted was the one dealing with counsel. Further, he was quick to note both the specific content of the financial dialogue and to engage with the ensuing philosophical discussion of counsel, and left off his marginalia altogether when discussion turned to communal property. This suggests that Ellesmere read Utopia at the level of fiscal policies and conceptions as well as at the level of counsel and that both readings reinforced each other. Ellesmere marked ‘Nota’ at what is perhaps the crux of Hythlodaeus’ position on counsel: ‘If I should propose to any kynge holsome decrees, doinge my endeuour to pluck out of hys mynde the pernitious originall causes of vice and noughtenes, thynke you not that I shoulde forthe with other be dryven awaye or elles made a laughyne stocke.’28 The dangers to this ‘good’ counsellor make an interesting contrast to the king and his counsellors ‘whettinge their wittes’ in scheming to make money from the subjects. Before commenting on their practices and ideas, Hythlodaeus wondered what would become of him if he offered an opinion much like that Cyrus offered to Croesus: ‘Here agayne if I shoulde ryse yp and boldelye affirme that all thies counsells be to the kyng dishonoure and reproche, whoes honoure and sauitie is more and rather supported and vpholden by the wealth and ryches of his people, then by his owne treasures.’29 Hythlodaeus’ critique of the policies and theories behind them followed. Such counsel, however just and profitable, would fall on deaf ears, the fictional More answered finally. More answered Hythlodaeus further with points that Ellesmere marked substantially. Not only would such counsel fall on deaf ears, but that very fact meant that Hythlodaeus should not offer it in the first place for I can not alowe that such communicatyon shall be vsed or suche cownsell geuen as you be suere shall neuer be regarded nor receaued, ffor how can so straunge informations be profitable or how can they be beate[n] into their heades, whose myndes are all reddye preuented with cleane contrarye persuasions.

There were distinct limits to counsel and proper venues for it, a point Ellesmere bracketed and noted with ‘cc’. ‘Thys schole philosophie is not unpleasaunte’, More argued, ‘emonge fryndes in famylier communication, but in the counselles of kynges where greate matters be debated and reasoned wyth great aucthorytye, thies thynges haue no place.’30 If a counsellor cannot cure the defects in a commonwealth with honest counsel, then the responsibility becomes not to ‘forsake ye shippe in a tempeste’ but with ‘a crafty wile 28 29 30

Utopia (STC 18904/2), E5r–E5v. Ibid. F2v. Ibid. F5r.

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& a subtell trayne [to] studye and endeuore your selfe asmuch as in yow lyethe to handle the matter wytteley and handsomelye for . . . that whyche yowe can not turne to good, so in ordre it that it be not very badde, ffor it is not possible for all thynges to be well unles all men were good’.31 Hythlodaeus found craft contestable and Ellesmere noted in particular the points that among rulers ‘there is no place to disse[m]ble in, nor wincke in. Noughtye cownselles muste be openlye allowed and verye pestylent decrees muste be approued’.32 One final point occasioned a mark, in this case a flower: ‘Plato by a goodlye simplitude declareth whie wise men refreyn to medle in the common wealth’, because they will only get wet by trying vainly to persuade fools to forsake a downpour for dry spaces.33 One wonders if any Jacobean – or Elizabethan – governor could have been unversed in the commonplaces of counsel. Counsel was the ‘end and doctrine of all study’ for Thomas Elyot and in a kingship as personal as James’s it was the point at which real governance took place, where ideas, information, attitudes and options came together and produced resolutions on policy. There are two respects in which counsel served James badly, as far as crown finance was concerned. With hindsight it is clear that there was too much of it. The quintessential moment must be the great project examination of 1609 when Caesar compiled a list, in his words, of ‘what newe p[ro]iectes of gaine may then bee thought on, not yet put in practise. These ensuinge picked out of 97 videl’.34 When we think of the original mass of projects from which the remaining forty were culled, how many reappeared in similar or the self-same form year after year and then the kind of detailed examination that individual projects underwent in 1612 with the treasury commissioners, it is a wonder that James and his governors did not collapse under the weight of such counsel. We do not need to doubt James’s relief when the monopolist-hunt in 1621 sent projectors scurrying and cleared the back stairs of Whitehall. Nevertheless, this dynamic suited James’s personality and the style of kingship he fashioned in Scotland and brought with him to England. It prevented (most) charges that he was unreceptive to his subjects’ concerns, albeit at the risk of appearing not to hear some above the chorus. At the same time, James’s kingship undermined the manipulation of counsel and attempts to ‘bounce’ the monarch into action, staple tactics of Elizabethan governors.35 For all its disastrous effects, James’s support for dyed and dressed cloth did not emerge without lengthy examination and debate. The fluidity and volume of counsel made demands on James and the governors he charged to process it on his behalf. The content of counsel was a more serious problem for the regime. It is in this respect that projects could 31 32 33 34 35

Ibid. F6v. Ibid. F7v–F8r. Ibid. F8r. BL, MS Add. 10038, fo. 29r. Guy, ‘Tudor monarchy’, 94–9.

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become a disastrous basis for crown finance. The defining appeal of projects, as instruments and as a process, was in the partnership of public good and private gain. This seemed to be a panacea for meeting the demands of the patronage culture, something to which James was responsive. It supported his political necessities as a foreign, Scottish heir, adjusting to the bitter politics of patronage that Elizabethan parsimony had engendered. It also reflected James’s own reading of finance from the curriculum, especially Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. Projects held out great potential for serving all these agendas as well as the crown’s financial needs by enterprise and recovery of ‘decayed’ revenues. Some projects, such as alienations, recusancy forfeitures and compositions for new buildings in London, served these turns effectively, while others proved utterly abortive or disastrous. If there was one thing that created vast problems for the regime in fiscal policy, both politically and financially, it was that very partnership of public and private in projects and the ease with which the relationship could be perverted in practice. However, private gain at public expense was not an issue for projects alone. Out of the cacophony of voices which critiqued Jacobean finance, from Thomas Wentworth to Ben Jonson to Ellesmere to Edward Alford, two species of complaints stand out. First, that James and his governors diverted to private hands ‘traditional’ revenues which ought to be supporting the regime, pensions being a ready example. Second, projects of all colours worked for private gain to the disadvantage of James’s subjects and the king himself. We can think of parliamentary calls for James to live of his own as subtle critiques. More pointed tactics were in play when the likes of Wentworth and Hoskyns bandied about comparisons with Richard II, ideas for parliamentary management of finance or suspending pensions to Scots. These were all forms of counsel, however disagreeably and tactlessly offered. At the same time, such counsel showed its ‘acceptable’ face when governors set strict budgets for the offices of state and household, composed books of bounty, toyed with acts of resumption, thought to sack time-serving officers for stealing nails or simply lectured the king that he was like to leave his crown a dotard tree if he continued his present course in finance. James was not an ‘uncounselled king’ in these matters. The activities of specific projectors were also readily attacked, as the infamous Mr Yewart learned at the hands of Dorset in 1607 and Giles Mompesson discovered in 1621 when he fled parliament’s monopoly hunt. There were local complaints at work in these critiques as well. However, the very partnership of public good and private gain as well as its perversion in practice was an issue or principle which united complaining ‘counsellors’. Salisbury lectured James on the inadvisability of letting the profits of law become a common pasture for hungry suitors while Cranfield defined himself and his treasurership by attempting to rebalance the scales between public good and private gain in fiscal policy. Dudley Digges created one among many indelible images in the parliament of 1621 when he ‘compared the projectors to harpies. . . . They pretended the profit of the King and good of the 214

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kingdom. . . . But they intended only their own gain though procured by unjust vexation and oppression, what more cruel’.36 Ellesmere made the unjust and fraudulent activities of projectors and their ilk a central part of his critique of finance in 1615, while the distortion of public and private was among the items he marked in Utopia. There is imbedded in all these critiques another issue of greater significance for the political failure of finance. How did these policies and projects come to pass? How were projectors able to pervert the public good for their personal gain? How is it that the king exacted from his subjects for politically undesirable ends? Ellesmere’s reading of Utopia held the answer. Rulers were susceptible to flattery under the guise of good counsel or simply too degenerate to want anything but counsel which produced the greatest – and most exacting – financial gain. Projects were the most public face of the failure of counsel in Jacobean finance. Almost anyone who has experienced first-hand the effects of railway privatisation in Britain can understand the invective of Dudley Digges or access the mind of those who criticised the partnership of public good and private gain. The crux is that projects, like privatisation, predefined the public good: a projector’s public good was indissolubly linked with his standards of private gain or was simply a cover for it. There was no other possible definition of the public good when the devices came from the hands of those who looked to their own gain in the process. Projects, projectors and the projecting mentality may have been the worst form of counsel by which to judge the good of the people, the king or the state in the making of fiscal policy. If the balance of public good and private gain in projects was to be viable at all, it depended upon counsel in two respects. In the first place it required governors to do precisely what Caesar, Northampton and their colleagues did in 1612: vet projects thoroughly and assess their financial and political utility. The renegotiations of the customs farm leases to reflect their increased value was another such act of oversight which adjusted the balance of public and private. However, the language of Ellesmere’s reform plans left no doubt that he believed that there had been a massive failure of counsel within the regime that affected all levels of Jacobean finance both in projects and in more routine activities: And too much waye hath bene gyven to these importune suitors, by those who had the charge & husbanding of the kinges treasure and therfore should have w[i]thstoode & stopped such sutes and have better informed his Ma[jes]tie. . . . And herin yt standeth w[i]th honour & Iustice to examyne what lavyshe gyfts and grauntes hauve bene obteyned from his Ma[jest]tie upon false suggestions, untrew consideracions and by fraude & deceipt and by whome & for whome. . . . And the same cowrse to be houlden for grauntes of new offices wyth new

36

Debates, 1621, ii. 180. See also vi. 40 (14 Mar.).

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fees, which for the moste parte are nedeles or inconvenient and chargeable to the kynge and offensive & grievous to the people.37

It might even be argued that counselling James to budget, have recourse to parliament or improve the balance of trade was an implicit critique of both projects and James’s predominant agenda for fiscal policy which placed such a great emphasis on them in the absence of other sources of new revenue. There was certainly an element of this is Salisbury’s refoundation of the monarchy in 1610; not an abandonment of projects, but, particularly given their potential to skew public and private, balancing them with other financial measures. Finally, the unrelentingly attack on ‘referees’ in the parliament of 1621 was at best a thinly veiled assault on the king’s counsellors, the advice they had offered over the years and, however implicitly, James’s acceptance of their work. The denunciation and punishment of evil counsellors long functioned as a convenient guise for attacks on the monarch in English political culture – even if the extent to which some were willing to criticise James and his Scottish brethren in public or private makes one wonder if anyone really felt compelled to disguise attacks on James or his policies. Nevertheless, the success of fiscal policy, especially the balancing of public and private, depended upon another crucial dimension of counsel: James’s ability to select from his counsellors’ positions and willingness to follow their advice. There are grounds to criticise James sharply – perhaps with hindsight – as well as to suggest that he was ‘not a bad king after all’ in this dark area of his reputation. The critical side of the ledger can be filled with examples of occasions when James was presented with good counsel and opted for a different course. Why did he not put his authority behind the commission for suits and book of bounty in such a manner as to make them workable, particularly after 1610 when his financial agenda excluded parliamentary revenue? Why did he pour money into Cockayne’s scheme and nothing into less grandiose designs? Why did he support Lord Harrington’s farthing tokens despite so much counsel against? Why did he demonstrate such loyalty to Suffolk in defiance of counsel to the contrary, partisan or otherwise? Perhaps it seems banal to argue that, for all his intelligence, James could prove as error-prone and fallible as the governors who in the first place counselled him to pursue policies which we know proved unpopular and unproductive. Yet it now seems more difficult to argue that James was simply the financial fool of long repute. Even in his anger, James astutely judged the utility of parliament from a financial standpoint although he was unwilling to modify his practice of kingship to make his financial straits less pressing without it or, as Ellesmere argued, employ reform as a vehicle to restore working relationships in parliament and obtain supply. James’s consistent support for exploiting commercial revenues, especially customs, in Scotland suggests that 37

HHL, MS Ellesmere 2610/1, 2.

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he needed no persuading in England when Dorset and Salisbury devised the regime’s one great revenue success, impositions. The political problems of impositions in 1610 and 1614 were decisive and damaging even if James prevailed in the end when members refused to resurrect the matter in 1621: his refusal to countenance parliament for seven years at least yielded that victory.38 James may also have judged, as his governors did not, that direct financial pressure upon his English subjects might create a storehouse of trouble in the context of war-weariness, particularly if the best case he could make was to support a bountiful regime. It is also significant that there may have been method to James’s financial madness once we recover his reading of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. Finally, James and his governors largely succeeded in cutting his coat according to his cloth, even if they stretched the material near to tearing. He remained solvent and did not embark upon ridiculous or costly wars like Henry VIII. In this James was driven by conviction and a sharp appraisal of the costs involved. His attempt with Lionel Cranfield to strangle the war-child in its parliamentary crib in 1624 stands as dramatic testimony to this. James possessed an intellect fired by debate, which meant that his practice of kingship necessarily involved taking counsel widely. However, it also meant that he faced political problems with finance consequent upon his kingship, conception of finance and normal fallibility in decision-making. At the same time it is important to note that his financial problems did not occur in a vacuum. There were functional difficulties, but the argument here is that Jacobean finance was a decidedly political business and responsibility must therefore rest with those who operated as political actors. With respect to crown finance, it was not easy to function as king after the model of Plato’s politicus, the one who presides over all crafts and fields of knowledge. There is in Utopia a rather striking passage on counsel which complements Plato: But ther is an other philsophye more cyvyle whyche knoweth as ye wolde saye hys owne stage and therafter orderynge and behauynge herselfe in the playe that she hathe in hand, playethe her parte accordynge wyth comlynes, utterynge nothynge owte of dewe order and fassyon. And thys ys the phylosophye that yowe must vse. Or elswhyles a commodye of Plautus is playinge . . . yf yowe shoulde sodenlye come vpon the stage in a philosophers apparrell and reherse owte of Octavia the place wherin Seneca dysputeth with Nero: had it not bene better for yowe to haue played the domme persone, then by rehersynge that, which serued nother for the tyme nor place to haue made suche a tragycall comedye.39

Ellesmere did not mark this passage, perhaps because James’s style of kingship did not require a governor to act as the ‘domme persone’. Indeed, despite the

38 39

PRO, SP, 15/42/44, fo. 79r [1621]. Utopia (STC 18904/2), F5v.

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most candid, even condescending, counsel, James and his governors never developed an agreed course for translating his reading of the Cyrus–Croesus debate into practice. Consensus did not elude them because they were not conversant with each others’ ideas, misunderstood them or ignored financial realities. It occurred because James adopted counsel only insofar as it advanced the political agenda for finance and governance which he had drawn out of the Cyropaedia. That was his prerogative as imperial monarch and politicus.

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Index Brett, Ann, 163 Brooke, Christopher, 113, 182 Bruncard, William, 124 Buchanan, George, 14, 15, 25, 45 Buckingham, earl/duke of, see Villiers, George Burghley, Lord, see Cecil, William

Abbot, George, archbishop of Canterbury, 35, 137, 139, 158 accession (1603), see James VI and I Addled Parliament, see parliament (1614) Aesop, 14, 18 Albery, Thomas, 141 alehouses, see projects Alford, Edward, 170, 214 Alford, Stephen, 182 Alsop, J. D., 153 alter-rex, see Villiers, George alum, see projects Anna, queen of Great Britain, 50, 56, 69, 143, 148 apprentices, see projects Apthonius, 15 Archer, Ian, 70 Aristophanes, 14 Aristotle, 16, 20–1; Ethics, 14–17; Oeconomica, 14–16; Politics, 14–16, 208; Rhetoric, 16; Topica, 16 Arundel, earl of, see Howard, Thomas Ascham, Roger, 13; The scholemaster, 13 assarts, see projects Aston, Roger, 57–8 Bacon, Francis, 48, 102, 151, 202; conciliar fiscal policy, 142–3; fiscal reform in 1617–18, 159–64; Life of Henry VII, 33, 190; parliament (1621), 168–71, 173–4, 185–6; projects and Star Chamber, 166–8; treasury commission (1612–14), 125, 128, 136 baronets, see projects Bate’s Case, 85, 96, 104–5 Beaulieu, Jean, 89, 106 Beaumont, Thomas, 114 bedchamber, see James VI and I benevolences, see crown finance Berkeley, Maurice, 98, 112–13 Bible, 14 Bingley, John, 141 Bodin, Jean, 14, 18–19, 21, 41; De republica, 15 book of bounty, see patronage Bowyer, Robert, 113 Braddick, Michael, 3–5, 64, 69

Caesar, Sir Julius, 3, 10, 92, 139, 142, 148, 202; education, 15–16, 109; financial assessments, 79, 81–2, 123–4; Great Contract brief, 85–6, 102, 108–12, 182; involvement with projects, 32, 34, 38, 86–8, 129, 213; library and papers, 29–30, 35–6, 54–5, 61, 63; parliament (1610), 97–8; partnership with Robert Cecil, 80–1, 86–7, 89, 108–9, 118–20, 129; treasury commission (1612–14), 128–35 Caesar, Julius, 14, 181 Calvert, George, 163, 170, 196 Calvert, Samuel, 113 Carew, George, 124, 126 Carleton, Dudley, 104, 118, 126, 201 Carr, Robert, 10, 53, 59, 151, 159; kingship by favourite, 117–18, 123–7, 130, 134–8, 140, 144 Castiglione, Baldasarre: The Courtier, 23 Castle, John, 121 Cecil, Robert, earl of Salisbury, 3, 9, 10, 22–3, 40, 92, 186, 202, 214; education, 15–16; financial treatises, 89–94; Great Contract and parliament (1610), 96–116, 122, 199; illness and death, 124–6, 139; library and papers, 30, 55–7, 67, 139; new impositions, 84–6, 99, 104–5, 217; partnership with Sir Julius Caesar, 80–1, 86–7, 89, 108–9, 118–20, 129; projects, 35, 37–8, 66, 130, 174; refoundation of the monarchy, 32, 67, 75–80, 85, 88–116, 189, 216; relationship with James, 22–3, 46, 49–50, 56, 123; resentment of, 123–6; Stuart succession, 67–9, 73–4 Cecil, Thomas, earl of Exeter 16, 157

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Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 40, 45, 49, 54, 180; projects, 28–9, 75; treasurership, 146, 185, 189, 202, 210. See also Elizabeth I, patronage and bounty Chamberlain, John, 126, 137, 141, 164–5, 169, 196 Charles, prince of Wales, and king of Great Britain, 10, 44, 86, 135, 163, 178, 207, 210–11; parliament (1624), 194–201, 203 Cicero, 15–16, 20, 27; De officiis, 14–18, 21, 42, 66; De oratore, 16; De partitione oratoria, 14; Letters to friends, 14, 181; Topica, 13 Cockayne, William, see projects, dyed and dressed cloth Cogswell, Thomas, 4, 64, 199–201 Coke, Edward, 34, 106, 128; conciliar fiscal policy, 137, 142, 147, 152–4, 156, 158; parliament (1621), 168–78 Coke, John, 162–3 Collinson, Patrick, 182 Conway, Edward, 163, 193–4, 196 Cope, Walter, 139 copper monies, see projects Cotton, Robert, 18, 125, 128, 130; library and papers, 30, 53–4, 60, 130, 189–91; projects, 30, 34–5, 125, 139, 154 counsel, see policy-making courts, see projects, courts and fees Coventry, Thomas, 194 Cowell, John, 103; The Interpreter, 103 Cranfield, Lionel, 10, 128, 151; background, 181–2; conception of crown finance, 31, 131, 180–91, 202; customs reform, 142–4; fiscal reform (1617–18), 159–64; impeachment, 201–3; library and papers, 30, 53, 59, 180–2, 189–91; parliament (1621), 168–70, 173–4, 179; parliament (1624), 197–204; projects, 36–7, 60–1; relationship with James VI and I, 187–8, 192–4, 197, 202; relationship with Villiers, 187–8, 196–7; Spanish match, 195–6; treasurership, 188–96 Crew, Thomas, 152, 169 Crewe, Ranulph, 169 Croft, Pauline, 3, 85 crown finance, 13, 30–5, 67, 73, 127, 146; administrative reform, 35, 73–5, 138, 154, 160, 162; benevolences, 34–5, 59–60, 139, 147, 198; crown lands/ estates, 3, 31, 73, 75, 82, 84–6, 112,

120, 129, 143; debt, 75, 120, 128, 132, 152, 191; household reform, 35, 58, 69, 83, 131–2, 159–62, 194–5; monopolies, 20, 65, 73–5, 164–5, 167, 169–78, 208; navy, 83, 131, 162, 167, 194; parliamentary revenue, 64, 68, 77–82, 86, 136; retrenchment, 35, 52–3, 69, 76, 81–3, 86, 119, 131–2, 159–64, 189; studies, 3–5. See also Elizabeth I, crown finance Cuddy, Neil, 123 customs and impositions, 9, 36, 130–1, 141, 145, 152, 197; new impositions, 84–6, 135, 138, 146, 153, 155–8, 217; projects, 31–2, 143, 197. See also parliament (1610) Dallington, Robert: Aphorismes civill and militarie, 17, 23 Darcy v. Allen, 208 defective titles, see projects Demosthenes, 16 Devereux, Robert, earl of Essex, 24, 49 Digby, John, 181 Digges, Dudley, 172, 174, 214–15 Donne, John, 182 Duncombe, Edward, 113 dyed and dressed cloth, see projects education, 44; humanist curriculum, 13–16, 20, 42, 45, 109, 181–2. See also Ascham, Roger; Elyot, Thomas; James VI and I; Vives, Jean Luis Egerton, Thomas, Baron Ellesmere, 31, 96, 99, 128, 131, 134, 137, 142, 187; education, 16; Great Contract, 96, 99, 115–16; library and papers, 30, 53, 59, 61, 152–3; More’s Utopia, 11, 205–8, 211–13, 217; 1615 reform programme, 151–9, 168, 172, 182, 215 Elizabeth, princess, daughter of James VI and I, 123, 128–9, 131, 133–4, 168, 198 Elizabeth I, queen of England, 7, 8, 9, 73, 125, 203, 213; crown finance, 28–9, 67–9, 141, 190–1, 202; patronage and bounty, 24, 28–9, 214; projects, 29, 32, 61, 83, 210; queenship, 20, 48–50, 62; Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 27 Eliot, John, 198 Ellesmere, baron, see Egerton, Thomas Elyot, Thomas, 17, 45, 63, 213; The boke named the governor, 1, 13–15, 27, 44, 46, 50, 62

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Hesiod, 14 Hindle, Steve, 64 Hobart, Henry, 87, 169 Homer, 14 Horace, 14, 181 Hoskyns, John, 63, 115, 120–1, 124, 182, 214 household, see crown finance Howard, Charles, earl of Nottingham, 158, 162 Howard, Henry, earl of Northampton, 3, 10, 47, 54, 92, 99, 105, 187, 202; letters and papers, 32 n. 111, 73 n.45, 58–9, 73, 80; projects, 30, 35, 139; Stuart succession, 73; treasury commission (1612–14), 124–35, 154, 181; Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 133 Howard, Thomas, earl of Arundel, 200 Howard, Thomas, earl of Suffolk, 10, 60, 80, 84, 124; letters and papers, 53, 59–60, 138–40, 181; treasurership, 137–50, 153, 159, 162, 202; treasury commission (1612–14), 127–8, 135–7 Hudson, William, 167 humanist curriculum, see education Hyde, Mr (unidentified MP), 113

Empson (Richard) and Dudley (Edmund), 75, 110, 138, 172, 174, 190–1 enfranchising copyholds, see projects Erasmus: Copia verborum et rerum, 14; Education of a Christian prince, 14 Erskine, Thomas, Viscount Fenton, 147, 157 Essex, earl of, see Devereux, Robert Exeter, earl of, see Cecil, Thomas Fane, Henry, 188 farthing tokens, see projects, copper monies Fen drainage, see projects feudal aids and incidents, see projects feudal tenures and incidents, see projects Fenton, Viscount, see Erskine, Thomas Ferrarius, Johannes, 14 feudal aids, see projects finance, see crown finance Finch, Heanage, 171–3 fishing fleets and licences, see projects Fleming, Thomas, 104, 208 Fletcher, Anthony, 64 Fortescue, Sir John, 86 France, 117, 125, 135 Frederick, Elector Palatine, 130, 198. See also Palatinate Fuller, Nicholas 102, 112, 181 Gainsford, Thomas: Rich cabinet, 23 Giles, Edward, 172, 174 Glanville, John, 171 Goodare, Julian, 70 governors: defined, 1, 6; role in policy-making, 42–3, 46, 49–51, 55–66, 125, 128, 186, 203, 213 Great Contract, 9, 75, 79, 122; failure, 106, 108–16, 118; negotiations, 95–102 Greville, Fulke, 142, 147, 149, 159, 162 Guicciardini, Francesco, 16 Guy, John, 49 Hakewill, William, 60 Hare, John, 77, 102 Hay, James, Lord Carlisle, 193 Henry VII, 33, 40, 44, 91, 190–1 Henry VIII, 48, 91, 190, 217 Henry, prince of Wales, son of James VI and I, 47, 86, 109–10, 128, 130–1, 209 Herbert, John, 78 Herbert, William, earl of Pembroke, 137, 157 Herodotus: Histories, 16 Hermogines, 14

imperium and imperial monarchy, 20 40–1, 45, 48, 61, 78 85, 93–4 101–8, 110–16, 130, 136–7, 155, 165–9, 172, 175–7, 207–8, 218; gender, 48–9 impositions, see customs and impositions inns, see projects Ingram, Arthur, 128, 145, 159, 164, 182 Ireland, 68–70, 73, 83, 121, 130–2, 146, 152, 160, 167, 189, 191, 194, 197 Isocrates, 14 James VI, king of Scotland/James I, king of Great Britain, 38, 46, 52, 72, 82, 84, 155, 158–9; accession, 24–6, 48–9, 66–8, 70, 72–3, 119, 138, 214; Basilicon doron, 14–16, 22, 26–8, 41–3, 45, 58–9, 107; bedchamber, 46, 49, 92, 121, 123; burning correspondence, 57–9; court, 42, 46, 49; education, 13–15, 41–2, 44; kingship, 7, 41–51, 58–61, 66, 73–4, 82–3, 101–16, 119–29, 133–5, 144–6, 160–1, 167, 175–6, 182, 202–4, 211, 213–18; kingship-by-favourite, 59, 123–7, 137; kingship in Scotland, 25, 40–2, 46, 49, 70–2, 145, 213; letters and papers, 51, 54–8, 73, 126, 139; political writings, 14, 19–21, 209;

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Mompesson, Giles, 65, 147–8, 171–2, 174, 214 monopolies, see crown finance Montagu, Edward, 169–70 Montagu, Henry, Viscount Mandeville, 163–4, 173–4, 185–7, 190, 202 More, Francis, 102 More, George, 97, 100, 112 More, John, 59 More, Thomas; Utopia (1551 edition), 1, 11, 205–8, 211–13, 217 Morton, Albertus, 163

progresses and hunting, 46, 56–9, 139; relationship with parliaments, 74, 77–80, 82, 97–101, 103, 107, 110–16, 118, 122–7, 133–7, 139–40, 144, 146, 151, 158–9, 168, 174–7, 197–200, 214, 217; reputation, 2, 4–5, 40, 51, 182, 216; Scottish counsellors and retinue, 70–2, 75, 93, 115, 120–1, 125, 127, 214; The true lawe of free monarchies, 25, 41–2, 45, 107; Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, 25–8, 83, 91–2, 133. See also imperium and imperial monarchy James, Mr (unidentified MP), 114 Jones, Inigo, 182 Jonson, Ben, 63; The devil is an ass, 38–9, 118, 210, 214; Volpone, 23

Naunton, Robert, 125 n.45, 163, 193–4 new offices, see projects ‘new political history’, 6 Neville, Henry, 88, 115, 122–5, 127, 136 Nicholas, Edward, 200 Nicholson, George, 46 Nicholson, Otto, 65 Nottingham, earl of, see Howard, Charles Noy, William, 170–2

Keymer, John, 61 Knollys, William, 157 Knyvet, Catherine, countess of Suffolk, 59, 141–2 Lake, Thomas, 124, 136; education, 16; letters and papers, 53, 57, 126; secretaryship, 59, 148, 152, 156, 158, 160–1, 173, 182–3 L’Estrange, Hamon, 172, 174 Leicestershire, 70 Levin, Carole, 48 Lewknor, Samuel, 122–3, 147 Ley, James, 163 Livy, 14 loans, 147–9; forced loan (1626), 207; privy seal loans, 34, 76, 125, 135, 152. See also crown finance; Low Countries localities, 63–6, 69, 166, 169; crown finance and taxation, 69–70, 73, 108, 114, 210–11 Locke, Thomas, 196, 203 London, new buildings in, see projects Low Countries, 68, 121, 130, 166–7; fishing industry, 31, 61, 132; loans and cautionary towns, 120, 125, 138, 146 Lucan, 14 Lucian, 14

Octavians, 71, 127 old debts, see projects Osborne, John, 191 Overbuy, Thomas, 124, 137 Ovid, 14, 181

Magna Carta, 114, 174 Mandeville, Viscount, see Montagu, Henry Martin, Richard, 99, 182 Mary I, queen of England, 191 Mary I, queen of Scotland, 14, 71 Merecraft, 38–9, 210 Michel, Francis, 173–4 Mitre Club, 180, 182

Palatinate, 168, 179, 195, 197–8. See also Frederick, Elector Palatine pardons, see projects parliament, 9, 49, 117, 196; as a revenue source, 52–3, 68, 82, 120, 127–32; redress of grievances, 78–80, 99, 110–16, 136, 151–2, 155–8, 168–78, 198–9. See also crown finance parliament (1593), 68–9, 89 parliament (1601), 20, 69, 176–7, 208 parliament (1604), 74–6, 115 parliament (1606), 78–80, 97–8, 116, 133 parliament (1610), 9, 28, 47, 63, 75, 79–80, 94, 122, 153, 155; assurance, 101, 108, 112; bargaining, 94–5; impositions, 96–99, 104–5, 107, 110, 112–16, 125, 217; redress of grievances, 96–8, 101, 110–16; supply, 95, 97–8, 112–14; support, 95–9, 110–11. See also purveyance; wardship parliament (1614) (Addled), 52, 98–9, 115, 135–7, 139, 153, 156, 217 parliament (1621), 9, 44, 65, 151, 164, 168–79, 184–5, 187, 197, 208, 213–14; monopolies bill, 174–8

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parliament (1624), 84, 177–8, 197–203, 208, 217 patronage and patronage culture, 3, 9, 17–20, 21–4, 28–9, 63, 81, 90–2, 118–23, 125, 130–1, 137, 141, 152, 157, 160–1, 170, 182, 186, 189, 193–6, 210; book of bounty and commissions of suits, 9, 28, 91, 94, 124–5, 154, 164, 171, 175, 185, 192, 202, 214 Peck, Linda Levy, 3, 5, 22, 92 Peltonen, Markku, 182 Pembroke, earl of, see Herbert, William Perne, Andrew, 15 Petrarch, 16 Phelips, Edward, 97, 114 Plato, 14–16, 20, 213; The laws, 14, 21; Politics, 18; Politicus, 14, 15, 43–4, 46, 48, 62, 217–18; Republic, 14, 16 policy-making, 43–66, 82–3, 119, 133, 140–50, 163, 182; corporate fiscal policy, 141–50, 202; in London, 51–6; role of counsel, 6–8, 11, 43–66, 80, 83, 116, 122, 125, 133, 211–18; royal progresses, 51, 56–9,139; studies, 5 political thought, 4, 41–6; crown finance, 16–20, 26, 68, 88, 95, 104–5, 139, 178; public good and salus populi, 41, 45, 93, 105–7, 116, 167, 180, 182–3, 204; public good versus private gain, 19–22, 36–9, 41–2, 44–5, 62–3, 64–6, 72, 76–7, 81, 83, 92–3, 112, 118, 120, 129, 133, 152–4, 164, 167–8, 171–3, 176, 184–91, 193, 201–4, 208–11, 214–16. See also imperium and imperial monarchy Popham, John, 102, 106 prerogative, see imperium and imperial monarchy Prestwich, Menna, 2, 180, 182, 201 private gain, see political thought privy council, 49, 121, 124, 159, 177, 202; meetings, 68, 87, 90–2, 127–8, 134–5, 161–3; 1615 meetings and committees, 52–3, 152, 155–9; operation, 52–7, 59–60; records, 52–3 proclamations, 33, 139, 177, 192–3. See also projects; Star Chamber Proctor, Stephen, 98, 143 projects: alehouses, 32, 87, 131, 165, 171–2, 177, 210; alum, 32, 138, 165; apprentices, 33, 37–8, 129, 131, 206, 209–10; assarts, 31, 65, 83, 86, 129, 135, 158, 165, 206; baronets, 34, 83, 87, 125, 131, 135, 138, 141;

conception of, 8, 29–39, 61–3, 189–90, 206–11, 213–15; copper monies, 34, 83, 87, 130–1, 134, 165; courts and fees, 33, 61, 83, 140; defective titles, 31, 36, 83, 86, 129, 135, 158, 165, 206; dyed and dressed cloth, 31, 36, 63, 131–3, 138, 145, 156, 165; enfranchising copyholds, 65, 83, 84 n. 109, 86, 152, 155; Fen drainage, 31, 36, 83, 86, 129, 132, 155; feudal aids, 35, 128–30, 133–4; feudal tenures and incidents, 31, 86, 129, 147; fishing fleets (busses) and licences, 31, 36, 61, 87, 129, 132–3, 143, 145, 155–6, 165; gold and silver thread, 165, 171–2, 177; inns, 64, 131, 171, 173, 177; London, new buildings in, 33, 84 n. 109, 87, 138, 143, 165–7; new offices, 34; old debts and fines, 33–4, 75, 81, 86–7, 169; pardons, 33, 60, 138–9, 141, 153, 190, 206; parliament (1621), 171–8; proclamations, 33, 134, 139, 155, 165–6, 169–72, 177–8; proposals for, 13, 29–39, 76–8, 81–8, 90, 92, 94, 112, 119, 129–35, 138, 146–7, 165 n. 89, 171–8, 182, 184–5, 190; recusancy fines, 86–7, 131, 143, 146, 210–11; statutes of employment, 31, 132, 143, 155–7, 206; 3d. tax on merchant strangers, 31, 131, 143–4, 206; tobacco, 84, 131, 140, 164–5, 167, 169, 176; waste grounds, 37, 129; woods, 83, 129, 146–9, 188. See also Scotland; Star Chamber projectors, 23, 29, 36–9, 64–6, 92, 132, 171–5, 187, 206–11, 213–15 Ptolemy: Tabulae, 14, public good, see political thought purveyance, 33, 73–80, 95, 99, 101–2, 105, 107 Pye, Robert, 192 Quintillian: Institutio oratoria, 13, 14 recusancy, see projects retrenchment, see crown finance revisionism, 2, 5, 115, 178, 209–11 Reynolds, James, 15 Richard II, 63, 155, 214 royal prerogative, see imperium and imperial monarchy Rufus, Quintus Curtius, 14, 15 Russell, Conrad, 4, 5, 95, 98, 115, 152, 175

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Sackville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst and earl of Dorset, 16, 214; letters and papers, 53, 55; new impositions, 84–6, 217; treasurership, 32, 35, 38, 65, 67, 69, 76, 78, 80–1, 83–4, 105 Salisbury, earl of, see Cecil, Robert Sallust, 14; Jugurthine war, 18 salus populi, see political thought Sandys, Edwin, 75, 78, 98, 100–2, 112, 136, 168, 176 Sandys, Samuel, 114 Scotland, 9, 25, 40–2, 45–9, 67; crown finance, 3, 70–2, 74, 79, 127, 216; English xenophobia, 115, 120–1, 124–5, 130, 214, 216; projects, 71–2, 145; 1617 progress, 59, 121, 142, 147–9, 159. See also James VI and I Scott, Jonathan, 211 Seneca, 16, 22; De beneficiis, 18 Seymour, Francis, 173 Shirley, Thomas, 66 Siculus, Diodorus, 16 Smythe, Thomas, 29, 128 Somerset, Edward, earl of Worcester, 57, 80, 128, 139, 152–3 Southampton, earl of, see Wriothesley, Henry Spain, 73, 117, 120, 163, 203; Spanish match, 144, 178–9, 189, 194–8 Spencer, Richard, 107 Star Chamber, court of, 55, 83, 137, 167; contempt of proclamations, 165–72, 177–8 statutes of employment, see projects Suffolk, earl of, see Howard, Thomas Suffolk, countess of, see Knyvet, Catherine suits, see patronage Swinnerton, John, 141 Tacitus: Agricola, 14; Annals, 14 Tawney, R. H., 201 Thirsk, Joan, 35 thread, gold and silver, see projects tax, 3d., see projects tobacco, see projects trade, 31, 36, 84–5, 130, 142, 145–6, 156–7, 166–7, 183 treasury commissions, 10, 61, 128–35, 139, 143, 163, 166, 185, 213; subcommission of 1612, 61, 129–32, 143, 214 Trumbull, William, 59, 106, 113, 118, 141, 144

union of Scotland and England, 9, 67, 74, 93–4, 116 Villiers, Christopher, 193 Villiers, George, earl/duke of Buckingham, 10, 59, 185; as alter-rex, 151, 162–4, 170, 173, 178, 180, 183, 196, 202–4; fiscal reform (1617–18), 159–64; parliament (1621), 167–71, 173–4, 178; parliament (1624), 195–7, 200; relationship with Lionel Cranfield, 187–8, 192–5; rise to prominence, 137, 142, 144, 149–50 Virgil, 14, 181; Bucolics, 16 Virginia Company, 167 Vives, Jean Luis: De tradendis disciplinis, 13–15 Wales, 70, 113 Walter, John, 174 wardship, 75, 119, 125–6, 131, 146; parliament (1610), 95–7, 99, 101, 103, 110, 114 Weldon, Anthony, 181 Wentworth, Thomas, 107, 113, 115, 120–1, 124, 155, 214 Weston, Richard, 162, 188, 193, 198 Wilbraham, Roger, 24, 114 Williams, John, 163, 192 Willson, David Harris, 51, 126 Wilson, Thomas, 189, 190 n.63; state papers, 30, 53–4, 59–60, 189–91 Winwood, Ralph, 15, 126–7, 137, 144, 148–9, 152, 156–7, 173, 182; letters and papers, 53, 59 Wolsthenholme, John, 162 woods, see projects Worcester, earl of, see Somerset, Edward Wormald, Jennifer, 3, 40–1 Wotton, Henry, 46–7, 128, 157 Wriothesley, Henry, earl of Southampton, 123 Wroth, Robert, 76 Xenophon, 15, 27, 46, 91–2; Cyropaedia, 7, 9, 14–17, 24–8, 44, 46, 48, 56, 83, 120, 122–3, 133, 147, 207, 210, 212, 214, 217–18 Young, Peter, 14 Zouch, Edward de la, 128, 152, 154, 157

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