The Reforms at the Exchequer, 1250-1270

RICHARD CASSIDY The Reforms at the Exchequer, 1250-1270

February 2012

 iBooks Author Introduction

This is a slightly expanded version of a paper I presented at the European History 1150-1550 seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London, on 17 November 2011. I have added references as endnotes, and a glossary of the more technical terms (shown in bold type).

It presents some new financial information, derived from unpublished records, particularly pipe rolls and memoranda rolls, to argue that: Henry III’s financial position, on the eve of the baronial coup of 1258, was healthier than is often assumed; Henry’s financial problems were largely of his own making, particularly his absurd commitment to the Sicilian venture; and the baronial reform regime of 1258-61 achieved some success in improving the administration of the Exchequer, and maintaining the flow of government income.

Richard Cassidy, King’s College London

 iBooks Author The Reforms at the Exchequer, 1250-1270

Richard Cassidy February 2012

 iBooks Author In 1927, Mabel Mills published a ground-breaking paper, ‘The reforms at the Exchequer (1232-1242)’.[1] Miss Mills was a pioneer in the study of the workings of the Exchequer, and her studies blazed a trail – a trail which very few have since followed. In particular, there has been little detailed study of government ﬁnances in the period of baronial reform and rebellion, in the 1250s and 1260s. Perhaps this is due to the fact that so few of the relevant records have been published, despite the survival of a wide range of Exchequer documents.

The dates in my title are really just nice round numbers, but 1250 makes a good starting point. In that year, Henry III addressed the sheriffs at the Exchequer; he told them to protect the tenants of the magnates, to prevent the unjust farming of hundreds, and to preserve the king’s rights.[2] Which is really my subject: the treatment of the people who provided the king’s revenue, and the attempts to raise more revenue and to administer it more efﬁciently.

Henry III, from a series of images of English kings, from about 1280-1300.

 iBooks Author Total government receipts 60,000

50,000 Local expenditure Cash 40,000

30,000 £

20,000

10,000

0 1241 1242 1243 1244 1245 1259

Year ending Michaelmas

To begin with the big picture, we can go back to the early 1240s, as of the Exchequer being run by John of Crakehall, the reformers’ our baseline. Robert Stacey showed that total government revenue treasurer. (Adrian Jobson recently drew attention to Crakehall’s was then around £33,000 a year. I have used his figures for the important role in the reform administration).[4] 1241-45 columns in the chart above.[3] I used the pipe rolls to calculate total revenue for the final column, 1258-59, the first year of government by the reforming council. It was also the first year

 iBooks Author Revenue for the year to Michaelmas 1259 was about £25,000, clearly rather less than in the 1240s. Incidentally, those ﬁgures help to indicate the meaning of the sums of money in this paper: in the 1250s, a labourer might earn 1½d. a day; £15 a year was enough for a knight. So, although we are now used to government budgets measured in billions of pounds, we have to think in terms of total revenues in the range from £20,000 to £50,000 a year.

Such figures also demonstrate just how absurd it was for Henry III to contemplate financing the invasion of Sicily. The Sicilian project would have been an impossible commitment – the Pope was asking for £90,000 even before Henry began to pay for the proposed campaign. Stacey believed that Crown finance was in a state of collapse by 1258:

Between 1236 and 1245, the king’s ﬁnances were fundamentally sound. It was only the coincidence of rising expenses and declining revenues from the late 1240s on, combined of course with the utter lunacy of the Sicilian obligations, which brought Crown ﬁnance to its 1258 state of collapse.[5]

Similarly, Nick Barratt suggested that the reformers achieved little by way of improving the situation:

But did John de Crakehall and the baronial reformers actually regenerate state ﬁnance? The short answer is no, and it could Westminster Abbey, as depicted by Matthew Paris – be argued that this made the situation far worse.[6] Henry III spent an average of some £3,000 a year on building projects, particularly the abbey.

 iBooks Author There has been little detailed study of ﬁnance in the last 25 years or Treasury – it provides an indication of the broad trends in so of Henry III’s reign. The chart below shows the Adventus government income. The chart shows the peaks in revenue payments recorded in the memoranda rolls – these are the cash associated with one-off events, such as the aid for knighting the payments brought to the Treasury twice a year by the sheriffs of king’s son in 1254. You can also see a tendency for revenue to fall the counties and the representatives of many boroughs.[7] So far as in the late 1250s, and to collapse in the mid-1260s, as you would I know, this is the only series of data yet calculated to cover the expect at a time of civil war, when the Exchequer brieﬂy ceased whole period. Although the Adventus represented only a part of working. total revenue – perhaps 30 per cent of all the cash received by the Adventus cash payments from counties and boroughs 8,000

6,000

4,000 £ per year year £ per

2,000

0 1240 1241 1242 1243 1244 1245 1246 1247 1248 1249 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266 1267 1268 1269 1270 Total for Adventus of Easter and Michaelmas each year

 iBooks Author The fall in revenue in the 1250s, compared to the 1240s, may seem odd. Henry’s government was notoriously squeezing the people hard throughout this period. The squeeze can be seen in many Revenue from the eyres areas of government activity, particularly the eyres (the judicial visitations to the counties), the exploitation of the royal demesne, £18,698 and the activities of the sheriffs in the counties. £17,859

The eyres were used as a money-raising device, imposing heavy penalties, particularly the collective ﬁnes such as murdrum and beaupleder ﬁnes. The eyres contributed up to £7,000 in just one year, 1257.[8]

The manors of the royal demesne were nearly all farmed out, mostly to their inhabitants, and there were repeated attempts to raise the level of the farm, with major surveys and revaluations in 1251 and 1255. In the 1251 survey by the abbot of Pershore, £10,153 fourteen manors and customary payments were assigned new values. The total farm, previously £670, was increased to £1,028, a substantial increase for the tenants of the royal manors to ﬁnd.[9]

The chart shows government revenue from the amercements imposed by the eyres, indicating the steep rise in their contribution to royal income (and thus in the amounts demanded from the of 1234-36 counties). 32 eyres, visitation 33 eyres, visitation of 1245-49 34 eyres, visitation of 1252-58 Figures for the 1230s and 1240s were calculated by C.A.F. Meekings. I have calculated ﬁgures for the 1250s on the same basis, using the lump sum payments recorded in the pipe rolls. 1230s 1240s 1250s

 iBooks Author Above all, there were continual increases in the revenue which sheriffs were expected to raise from the customary sources in the counties. This revenue might be labelled as farm, profit or Sheriffs’ profit targets increment, but it all came out of the same pot: the proceeds of 5,000 county and hundred courts, and the traditional impositions such £2,978 as view of frankpledge, hidage, wardpenny and sheriff’s aid. At £2,726 the beginning of the 1240s, after the demesne manors were farmed 4,000 out, the sheriffs were expected to produce £3,800 a year. By the £1,703 beginning of the 1250s, this had risen to £4,500. By 1257, just before the reform movement, it was £4,700.[10] 3,000 All this was bad enough for the people in the counties who had to Profit and attend the eyres and the county courts, and for the tenants of the £ increment demesne manors. In addition, it seems that some of the sheriffs, 2,000 bailiffs and other local officials were particularly cruel and £2,122 oppressive. The sheriffs were not only being pressed to deliver £1,727 £1,712 more to the Treasury; they were also enriching themselves. Net county 1,000 farm

0 1242 1251 1257

Year to Michaelmas

The sheriffs were usually appointed as farmers – that is, they were expected to produce a fixed annual sum, the farm of the county, plus additional amounts called profit or increment. Over the years, the levels of profit rose markedly.

The sheriffs kept for themselves any amounts they collected over and above the agreed levels of farm and proﬁt.

 iBooks Author Henry had expressed his good intentions to the sheriffs in 1250, and went through the ritual of conﬁrming Magna Carta in 1253. He should have known about the situation in the counties. Henry’s wife, Eleanor of Provence, and brother, Richard of Cornwall, wrote to him in 1254:

Many are complaining that the charters are not being observed by your sheriffs and other ofﬁcials, as they should be observed. [11]

The articles of the eyre and the ﬁrst hundred rolls inquiry of 1255 included relevant questions to be asked in the counties, meaning that the information about local extortion and malpractice was being collected. But Henry did nothing, and suffered the consequences in 1258.

Henry III marries Eleanor of Provence, by Matthew Paris

 iBooks Author Cash from the counties, 1240s and 1250s 25,000

20,000

15,000 £ 10,000

5,000

0 1241 1242 1243 1244 1245 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 Year ending Michaelmas

But if the government was pressing so hard for cash, why was the which government might receive. Above all, in 1254 he gave Exchequer getting less than in the 1240s? The chart above shows extensive holdings to his son Edward, including Cheshire and that the amount of cash coming from the counties had fallen quite Bristol. This led to a typical sneer from Matthew Paris, about a noticeably by the late 1250s.[12] Three reasons spring to mind. mutilated mini-king (regulus mutilatus).[13] These territories were Henry had given away a large chunk of his potential revenues; he intended to give Edward an income of £10,000 a year, so that is a was unable to raise taxes; and much revenue was diverted away big slice of revenue no longer available. Another slice of income from the Treasury. was lost to the king’s brother Richard of Cornwall; Richard ﬁnanced the recoinage of 1247-50, and took half the revenue of the Henry was notorious for his generosity to his relatives, and there mints and exchanges from 1247 to 1259 - some £11,000. are clear examples of this prodigality cutting the amount of income

 iBooks Author Richard and other royal relatives also benefited from Henry’s 1249 and 1252 tallage of demesne generosity with the demesne. I looked at a sample of fifteen 1253-54 aid for knighting the king’s son (3m. per fee) manors, the first ones to be farmed out to their inhabitants under 1254-57 crusading tenth from the clergy the new policy introduced in 1240. Over the period up to 1257, 1255 tallage three were granted to the king’s family, and three were farmed by 1257 scutage for Welsh campaign.[15] nuns and a bishop at reduced rates. Overall, the king’s grants had Henry raised considerable sums for his campaigns by tallaging the reduced the total income from this sample of manors from £682 to Jewish community, but the tallages effectively destroyed their £489. In all, about 50 manors were committed to farmers in the wealth. In the 1240s, Henry had a run of good luck, with earls and early 1240s, with farms set at £2,300 a year. By 1259, the granting bishops conveniently dying in quick succession, providing him away of manors had reduced this total to some £1,500.[14] with cash from wardships and vacancies. Unfortunately for him, Henry was unable to persuade parliaments to agree to taxation, the magnates remained annoyingly healthy in the 1250s. The aids after the thirtieth of 1237. He had to resort to expedients like of 1245 and 1253 were one-off boosts to income, but could not be scutages, linked to particular campaigns, and tallages to repeated – you can only knight your oldest son once. supplement the ordinary sources of income. There was a long The other factor reducing Exchequer income was the diversion of succession of such events: revenue into the Wardrobe, where it was under Henry’s control. 1242 scutage for Gascon campaign (3m. per fee) This is difficult to prove, because the Wardrobe did not produce 1245 aid for marriage of the king’s daughter (20s. per fee), audited accounts for several years in the 1250s. The evidence for and tallage this policy is in the fine rolls, which show large numbers of fines 1246 scutage of Gannoc (3m. per fee) which were to be paid to the Wardrobe, often in gold.[16]

Fines of gold recorded in the ﬁne roll for 1256-57, C 60/54 m. 13.

 iBooks Author These fines, particularly for respite from knighthood and for France, where he was able to obtain finance from the king of having charters, amounted to some £2,800 in just one year, 1256-57. France and from selling gold and jewels. He thus began the This stockpile of gold under his own control allowed Henry to process of restoring his authority.[17] launch his gold coinage. The gold penny flopped, but it does indicate that Henry was better off than it would appear if one looked only at the Exchequer records. Finance for the Wardrobe 25,000

20,000 Other

King of France 15,000

The reforming barons suspected that this diversion of income was £ Sales happening, and it was one of their demands, in the Provisions of Oxford, that all the revenues of the land should come to the 10,000 Ecclesiastical Exchequer and nowhere else. One of the ﬁrst steps the reformers vacancies took was to draw up a list of these ﬁnes of gold which remained unpaid, and to instruct the sheriffs to collect them and to submit Fines the proceeds, not to the Wardrobe but to the Exchequer. The 5,000 reformers continued to fund the Wardrobe at about the accustomed level, but they brought it under Exchequer control. In Treasury 1258-59, 75 per cent of Wardrobe income was provided by the Treasury. Only 6 per cent came from sources which were not 0 controlled and audited by the Exchequer. This didn’t last – in 1259-60, Henry escaped from Exchequer oversight by going to 1258-59 1259-60

 iBooks Author Over a few years, from 1258 to 1261, the reform government took Farmer sheriffs were set a fixed level of profit which they had to several initiatives to improve Exchequer efficiency, to try to bring produce each year, with no questions asked about where the in more money, and to combat unfairness and extortion in the money came from. They supported themselves and their staff from administration. These last two objectives were of course in conflict. any surplus they collected, and they helped themselves to supplies Henry’s sheriffs had been set high profit targets, which led them to and accommodation. Custodians, in contrast, were told to submit oppress the counties. Almost all the sheriffs were replaced in the all the revenue they collected, with details of its source, and were autumn of 1258, and in the reformers’ most radical measure, the to be paid an allowance to cover their expenses. new sheriffs were appointed, not as farmers but as custodians.

The beginning of the Surrey account in the 1259 pipe roll, E 372/103. It shows the sheriff accounting ut custos – as a custodian, rather than a farmer.

 iBooks Author The reduction in proﬁt from the counties 3,000

2,000 Custodian £ sheriffs

1,000

0 1242 1251 1257 1259 1260 1261

Year ending Michaelmas

This experiment with custodian sheriffs lasted for only one year. grain prices and famine.) The reformers appointed new sheriffs for The custodians may have been less oppressive, but they collected a 1259-60, reverting to farming the counties, but at notably lower lot less money. In 1256-57, the last full year before the reformers levels of profit than before the custodial experiment. The next set took over the government, farmer sheriffs were expected to of sheriffs were appointed in 1261, after Henry III had recovered produce some £4,700 from the farms and profits of the counties. control, with similar targets. The reformers had eased the burden The custodian sheriffs of 1258-59 produced only about £3,300 from on the counties, and the cut in government revenue continued farms and profit. (It is only fair to add that these were years of even after they had lost power.[18] exceptionally bad weather, with poor harvests, leading to high

 iBooks Author The reforms of Exchequer administration included a number of initiatives dealing with the regular routines of the department. The pipe rolls were large and cumbersome, cluttered with debts which were just copied from one year’s roll to the next, without any action being taken. This was nothing new – it was their normal condition, and you can see just the same problem in the 1230s and the 1290s. The reformers had a clear-out of obsolete pipe roll entries in 1259. Hundreds of entries were marked in pullo and coped to the rotuli pullorum – rolls of cuttings, pruned from the pipe rolls. This was done again with the 1260 and 1261 pipe rolls. The debts on the rotuli pullorum were not forgotten, and were occasionally pursued, but the pipe rolls were, at least temporarily, slightly slimmed down.[19]

Above: a pipe roll at The National Archives, unrolled to show how large and unwieldy the rolls had become.

Below: the 1257-58 pipe roll, with entries marked in pullo to indicate that these debts were not to be copied into future years’ rolls. (E 372/102 rot. 1d)

 iBooks Author The purpose of the pipe rolls was to record debts and their king’s debtors, sometimes successfully. In all, £61 had been payment, and the reformers seem to have managed to keep the collected and £20 pardoned (because the debt was owed by system working as well as it ever did – by our standards, that is, Westminster Abbey). The chart below shows that roughly half the not very effectively. As an example, I looked at the new debts from debt was collected in the course of seven years. The Exchequer’s Kent in 1258-59. There were 37 of them, totalling £118. Of this, £25 performance in debt collection was at least as good as it had been was collected in that same year, and another £25 the next year. twenty years previously, as can be seen by tracking the collection Payments then tailed off, to just a few pounds a year or less. By of similar debts in the 1239 pipe roll; then, initial debts of £292 had 1275, these debts produced just 7s. 6d. – but this shows that after produced £122 by 1246.[20] ﬁfteen years the Exchequer was still doing its job, and chasing the Collection of Kent debts from 1259 120

100 Remaining unpaid 80 Pardoned

£ 60

40 Paid 20

0 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266

Cumulative amount collected by Michaelmas

 iBooks Author The coverage of the counties in the pipe rolls was maintained bring the sheriff before the Exchequer to account, and to include pretty well. In normal times, in most years between 22 and 26 Cornwall in the 1260 pipe roll.[21] sheriffs came to the Exchequer to have their accounts audited. In The reformers also maintained their grip on the sheriffs’ the first year of the reform administration, 1258-59, only eighteen attendance at the twice-yearly Adventus, with no more than one or counties were audited, and the memoranda rolls show that the two absentees on each occasion. It was only in 1263-64 that the Exchequer had some difficulty in arranging these audits. The next routines collapsed, as the country fell into disorder. The Exchequer year, however, they caught up with the backlog, and dealt with 24 only managed to audit nine counties, and there was no Adventus counties. In addition, they brought Cornwall into the scope of the at Easter 1264. Attendance at both audit and Adventus remained audit for the first time since 1242. Cornwall had been treated as the below normal levels for the rest of the 1260s. The Easter 1267 private property of the king’s brother Richard of Cornwall – he Adventus was cancelled too, when the earl of Gloucester was appointed the sheriffs and took all the revenues, without occupying London. Exchequer involvement. It was thus a significant departure to Number of counties audited 30

25 Counties included in the pipe roll for the year to Michaelmas 20

0 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266 1267 1268 1269 1270 1271 1272

 iBooks Author The reformers took an early interest in the exchanges. They were a significant source of royal revenue, plagued by repeated scandals, where the king had long been receiving less than he was due. The staff were taking the profits arising from the coin production process. Senior members of the reform council investigated the exchanges in late 1258, and again in 1260. They uncovered evidence of exchange officials enriching themselves rather than the king, and new arrangements were set up to direct the profits of the mints to the king’s benefit. These new rules produced a worthwhile increase in royal revenue from the exchanges over the last ten years of the reign, from £6,500 to £8,100.[22] A note in the memoranda roll concerning reform, with a sketch of a penny.

2,000 Royal revenue from the exchanges

Additional revenue from foundry proﬁts, following

1,500 reform of the exchanges

1,000 £ per year year £ per Traditional royal revenue of 6d. in the pound from silver 500 exchanged and minted

0 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266 1267 1268 1269 1270 1271 1272

 iBooks Author The tallage (a tax imposed particularly on towns and cities) of 1260 is another example of the continued functioning of the ﬁnancial machinery. The reformers began to study the issue in October 1259 Floor tiles in the chapter house of Westminster and announced the tallage in June 1260. The assessment of Abbey, showing Henry III’s arms. liabilities was carried out over the summer, and collection began in the autumn. The results compare quite favourably with the proceeds of the preceding tallage in 1255, showing that the administrative machinery was still functioning effectively during the period when Henry was recovering control.[23]

Tallage of 1255 and 1260 4,000

Total 3,000 assessment Total £3,465 assessment 2,000 £3,019 £

Collected Collected 1,000 £1,557 £1,647

0 1255 1260-61

Receipts from first year of tallage

 iBooks Author The reformers thus maintained the ﬂow of revenue, but there was The charts on the following two pages show in more detail the way less pressure on the sheriffs and no eyre (the reformers’ special in which cash ﬂowed into the Treasury. The bulk of payments in eyre was intended to hear grievances rather than raise cash). Both cash tended to arrive to arrive at the beginning of the Michaelmas side of the Exchequer’s task can be traced in detail for a few years, and Easter terms, as can clearly be seen in the record of weekly when we have a run of both receipt and issue rolls to record cash cash receipts. The exception is in January 1259, when the revenue income and expenditure. Over this period, receipts and issues are from the vacant bishopric of Winchester provided a spectacular roughly in balance, with a tendency for the bulk of receipts to one-off bonus. arrive in the Michaelmas term. The chart below shows totals from the surviving records for this period.[24] Cash receipts and issues 10,000 Receipts Issues

7,500

£ 5,000

2,500

0 M 1256 E 1257 M 1257 E 1258 M 1258 E 1259 M 1259 E 1260

M = Michaelmas term, E = Easter term

 iBooks Author Weekly cash receipts, 1257-58 3,500 Total £13,569 3,000

2,500

2,000 £

1,500

1,000

500

0 1 Jun 1258 6 Oct 1257 6 Oct 9 Feb 1258 9 Feb 7 Sep 1258 1 Dec 1257 13 Jul 1258 27 Jul 1258 6 Apr 1258 9 Mar 1258 12 Jan 1258 26 Jan 1258 3 Nov 1257 4 May 1258 15 Jun 1258 29 Jun 1258 20 Oct 1257 20 Oct 23 Feb 1258 23 Feb 21 Sep 1258 15 Dec 1257 29 Dec 1257 20 Apr 1258 23 Mar 1258 10 Aug 1258 24 Aug 1258 17 Nov 1257 18 May 1258 Week ending Saturday

This chart shows the cash received at the Treasury, week by week, in the course of one year (the Exchequer’s year ended at Michaelmas, 29 September). Payments received were recorded in the receipt rolls – in this case, the sources are receipt rolls E 401/33 and E 401/36.

 iBooks Author Weekly cash receipts, 1258-59 3,500

£3,259 for week ending 18 Jan. Total £16,024 3,000 Includes £2,933 from Winchester, £300 from York 2,500

2,000 £ 1,500 Summer vacation

1,000

500

0 5 Oct 1258 5 Oct 1259 4 Oct 8 Feb 1259 8 Feb 6 Sep 1259 12 Jul 1259 26 Jul 1259 5 Apr 1259 8 Mar 1259 11 Jan 1259 9 Aug 1259 25 Jan 1259 2 Nov 1258 3 May 1259 14 Jun 1259 28 Jun 1259 19 Oct 1258 19 Oct 22 Feb 1259 22 Feb 20 Sep 1259 14 Dec 1258 28 Dec 1258 19 Apr 1259 22 Mar 1259 23 Aug 1259 16 Nov 1258 30 Nov 1258 17 May 1259 31 May 1259

Week ending Saturday

Sources: receipt rolls E 401/39 and E 401/40.

 iBooks Author These years saw some obvious changes in government cash which Henry had contracted. They even found the cash for an expenditure, as recorded in the issue rolls. As noted above, Henry instalment of the Pope’s annual 1,000 mark tribute. Unfortunately, was ﬁnancing the Wardrobe from outside the Exchequer in this sequence of records ends with the roll for Michaelmas term 1256-57, but the Wardrobe took a large share of total issues from 1259, so we only have details for expenditure for the ﬁrst half of Michaelmas 1257 onwards. The royal relatives, outside Henry’s 1259-60. This last term’s household expenditure includes large immediate family, received generous fees and gifts from the amounts of cash for Henry III’s visit to Paris at the end of 1259.[25] Exchequer – an expense which was quickly cut by the reformers in 1258-59. The reformers also managed to repay some major debts

Exchequer cash expenditure 15,000

Other 10,000 Loan repayment Pope £ Simon de Montfort Annual fees 5,000 Westminster Royal relatives Wardrobe & household

0 1256-57 1257-58 1258-59 1259 Mich term

 iBooks Author So much for the amount of spending. What about its timing? There using tally sticks like cheques to transfer payment to a government were often complaints from government debtors about the debtor, such as a sheriff. difficulties of getting the Exchequer to pay up. Surprisingly, it In addition to this central expenditure, other writs ordered the seems that most orders for payment by the Treasury, the liberate sheriffs to spend locally some of the cash they collected in the writs, were honoured quite promptly. The writs were recorded in counties. The chart below shows that the sheriffs maintained the the liberate rolls, and the corresponding payments can be traced in flow of cash to the Treasury, and this local expenditure, in the first the issue rolls. Up to three-quarters of writs were paid in the same few years of the reform period. Thereafter, we have the decline in term as they were issued.[26] There is just one indication of strain government authority, the temporary closure of the Exchequer, and in the system in the last few terms for which we have data, in the collapse in income in 1263. 1259-60: a few debts are being paid with tallies, rather than cash, Revenue and expenditure in the counties 35,000

30,000 Source: pipe roll county accounts, in rolls E 372/94 to 112 25,000

20,000 £ 15,000

10,000 Local expenditure Cash to Wardrobe 5,000 Cash to Treasury 0 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 Year ending Michaelmas

 iBooks Author I hope that this overdose of charts and numbers has helped to demonstrate a few key points. Contrary to the view that government finance was on the point of collapse in 1258, and that the reformers made matters worse, I think we can see that there were good reasons for the fall in revenues in the late 1250s, and that the reformers actually had some concrete achievements during their brief period in power. They reduced the financial burdens on the people of England. They kept the machinery of the administration functioning, if not efficiently, at least as effectively as it ever did. Everything fell apart in 1263, with growing conflict leading to civil war, and the temporary closures of the Exchequer. This was followed by a partial recovery, and a restoration of normality. This is demonstrated, rather oddly, by the need for the pipe roll order of 1270.[27] The pipe rolls were again cluttered with debts, and the Exchequer had again to find a way of cutting out the dead wood, to make them manageable in use. The fact that the pipe rolls were again becoming overloaded with entries is an indication that, after the years of rebellion and civil war, the normal bureaucratic routines had been resumed.

Henry III, captioned in Matthew Paris’s Historia Anglorum as the eighth king since the Norman conquest, shown holding his greatest achievement, Westminster Abbey.

 iBooks Author Glossary

A section of the issue roll for Michaelmas term 1258, E 403/17B, including payments to royal servants such as Alan the cook, Cecilia the washerwoman and Master Henry the versiﬁer.

 iBooks Author Adventus established a new baronial regime, which was defeated at Twice a year, at the beginning of the Michaelmas and Easter terms, Evesham in 1265. the sheriffs (or their clerks) were expected to appear at the Beaupleder Exchequer, bringing the cash they had collected in the previous Or ‘fair pleading’ – a collective fine, imposed on a community. half-year, and the writs they had received authorizing them to Restricted in 1259. spend money locally. Representatives of many boroughs were also expected to attend, bringing their payments. The proceeds of the Custodians Adventus were noted in the memoranda rolls. Unlike the usual farmer sheriffs, the sheriffs appointed by the Aid reformers in 1258 were custodians – they were not expected to deliver a fixed sum each year, and to support themselves from any Kings were traditionally entitled to impose an aid to pay for the surplus they extracted; instead, they were to collect whatever was knighting of the king’s son or for the marriage of the king’s owed to the king, and to deliver it in full to the Exchequer, in daughter. This was effectively a tax, assessed on the basis of a fixed return for a fixed allowance. sum for each knight’s fee.

Articles of the eyre Exchanges Except during the recoinage, there were only two royal exchanges, When the royal justices held the eyres in the counties, as well as at London and Canterbury, where foreign coins and silver could be hearing pleas, they were expected to ask representatives of the exchanged for English silver pennies. The king’s charge for community a long list of questions. These questions, the articles, exchanging silver, known as seignorage, was 6d. in the pound, and covered a wide range of issues, including the extent of royal rights a useful source of revenue. and attempts to encroach upon them, offences against regulations concerning weights and measures, etc. Exchequer Baronial reform The Exchequer was the government department which dealt with ﬁnance. It was divided into two parts: the Exchequer of Receipt, or A group of magnates seized control of the government in 1258, Treasury, dealt with the receipt and issue of cash; the upper setting up a council headed by a Justiciar to govern England in the Exchequer audited the accounts of sheriffs and other ofﬁcials, and king’s name. Henry III was able to recover control in 1261, but produced the pipe rolls. opposition continued, led by Simon de Montfort. Civil war broke out in 1264, and de Montfort’s victory at the battle of Lewes

 iBooks Author Eyres Issue rolls Justices were commissioned to travel to the counties to hear all The issue rolls recorded payments of cash from the Treasury to kinds of pleas, both civil and criminal. In principle, these eyres named individuals. Such payments included the cash paid to the were part of a visitation covering the whole country, at regular keepers of the Wardrobe. There were two rolls for each year, intervals. running from the beginning of Michaelmas and Easter terms.

Farm, farming Liberate Many sources of revenue – counties, manors, hundreds, official Orders for payments to be made were known as liberate writs. posts – were farmed out. That is, they were let for a fixed annual Such writs were copied into the liberate rolls, and sent to the sum, sometimes negotiated, sometimes traditional. The farmer was Treasury, instructing it to pay out cash to named individuals. allowed to keep revenue collected over and above this fixed sum. Similar writs were sent to sheriffs and other officials, instructing them to spend locally the revenue they had collected. Fine rolls Fines were offers of cash for all manner of royal favours and Memoranda rolls privileges – the right to hold a market, or to avoid the obligations Rolls compiled each year at the Exchequer, as a contemporaneous of knighthood, for example. They were recorded in the fine rolls, record of important events and decisions that needed to be together with administrative details such as the appointment of remembered. The rolls include the records of the Adventus, the sheriffs. schedules for the auditing of county accounts, and notes on the sums to be collected from each county. Hundred rolls An inquiry into royal rights and official behaviour, intended to Michaelmas cover the whole country hundred by hundred, was begun in 1255. The Exchequer’s year ended at Michaelmas – the feast of St. A similar, but larger, exercise was conducted in the 1270s. The Michael, 29 September. The year covered by each of the pipe rolls results were recorded in the hundred rolls. and memoranda rolls began on the morrow of Michaelmas, 30 September. Hundreds Many counties were divided into smaller administrative units, Murdrum called hundreds (or in the north, wapentakes), with their own Fine imposed on a village community if a dead body was found courts. Revenue from hundreds was often farmed out. which could not be identified as being English. The scope of this fine was restricted in 1259, so that it did not apply in cases of accidental death.

 iBooks Author Pipe rolls council representing both king and barons, and the agenda for Records of the audit process, carried out each year, to check the reform. collection of revenue and authorized expenditure of government Receipt rolls ofﬁcials, particularly the sheriffs who answered for the farms of the Cash payments into the Treasury were recorded in the receipt rolls. counties. So called because these large membranes of parchment, Each roll covered a half-year, from the beginning of Michaelmas or when rolled up, look like pipes: Easter term, and noted the dates on which payments were received, with weekly totals.

Recoinage The only coin produced for most of Henry III’s reign was the silver penny. The design of the penny had been unchanged since the twelfth century. In 1247-50, there was a general recoinage, with the introduction of a new design of penny, involving the melting down and re-minting of all the coins in circulation.

Royal demesne The monarchy’s own landed resources, organized into manors, which were traditionally a major source of royal revenue. In some contexts, includes many boroughs as well. Profit, increment Sheriffs who farmed the counties were expected to pay a fixed Scutage annual sum, known as profit or increment, over and above the A form of taxation, which was generally related to a particular farm (which had been unchanged since the late twelfth century). military campaign. It originated as a payment in place of actually Confusingly, the payment above the farm made by custodian serving on the campaign in question, but had become formalized sheriffs was also known as profit. as a fixed sum per knight’s fee.

Provisions of Oxford Sicilian project In June-July 1258, the Parliament held at Oxford at the beginning In the 1250s, the papacy was trying to establish its authority over of the reforming regime set out proposals for government by a the kingdom of Sicily, following the death of the emperor Frederick II. In 1254, Henry III accepted the throne of Sicily on behalf of his

 iBooks Author younger son, Edmund. Sicily was actually controlled by Frederick’s son Manfred, and the papacy demanded that Henry ﬁnance a campaign to conquer the kingdom.

Tallage A tax imposed on the royal demesne, particularly on the boroughs, and/or on the Jewish community.

View of frankpledge Payment collected by the sheriff from the localities within his county, related to the system of collective responsibility for preventing crime. Together with other impositions such as wardpenny and sheriff’s aid, which were determined by local custom, made up a part of the revenues constituting the county farm and proﬁt.

Wardrobe The administrative department concerned with the ﬁnance of the royal household, and of military campaigns. It was directly under the king’s control, and received and spent money without reference to the Exchequer (although Wardrobe accounts were supposed to be subject to audit after the event).

Wardship The royal right to administer the lands of under-age heirs of tenants-in-chief, who held land directly from the crown – this of course included the estates of the great magnates. Such wardships could provide income for the king, or, more often, be sold or granted to others.

 iBooks Author References

Receipt roll for Michaelmas term 1258, E 401/39, including a note of the day on which John of Crakehall became Treasurer.

All references to unpublished records are to catalogue numbers of documents in The National Archives: Public Record Ofﬁce.

 iBooks Author Photographs of the pipe rolls and memoranda rolls can be found [11] Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of on the Anglo-American Legal Tradition website. Henry III, ed. W.W. Shirley (Rolls Series, London 1866), II, 102.

[1]M.H. Mills, ‘The reforms at the Exchequer (1232-1242)’, TRHS [12]1240s data from Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance, table 6.4; 4th Series Vol. 10 (1927), 111-133. 1250s figures calculated from county accounts in pipe rolls E 372/94 to 104. [2]M.T. Clanchy, ‘Did Henry III have a policy?’, History Vol. 53 (1968), 203-216. [13]Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard (Rolls Series, London 1872-83), V, 540. [3]R.C. Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance under Henry III 1216-1245 (Oxford 1987), table 6.2 and 206-9. [14]Initial farms in Calendar of the Fine Rolls, 1240-41; then pipe rolls E 372/86, 101 and 103. [4]A. Jobson, ‘John of Crakehall: the “forgotten” baronial treasurer, 1258-60’, Thirteenth Century England XIII (2011), 83-99. [15]Details of each tax in S.K. Mitchell, Studies in Taxation under John and Henry III (New Haven and London 1914). [5]Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance, 258. [16]R. Cassidy, ‘The reforming council takes control of fines of [6]N. Barratt, ‘Finance on a shoestring: the Exchequer in the gold, 1258-59’, Fine of the Month October 2011, Henry III Fine Rolls thirteenth century’ in English Government in the Thirteenth Century, Project (with relevant references). ed. A. Jobson (Woodbridge 2004), 75. [17]B.L. Wild, The Wardrobe Accounts of King Henry III of England, [7]Adventus figures calculated from the Adventus sections in 1216-1272 (unpublished London University PhD thesis, 2008); each year’s memoranda rolls, in series E 159 and E 368. chart data from table 20. [8] The 1235 Surrey Eyre, Vol. I Introduction, ed. C.A.F. Meekings, [18]Profit figures from pipe rolls, E 372/86-87; E 372/95-96; Surrey Record Soc. Vol. XXI (1979), 135; Crown Pleas of the Wiltshire E 372/101-102; E 372/103; and from Calendar of the Fine Rolls, Eyre, 1249, ed. C.A.F. Meekings, Wiltshire Archaeological and 1240-41 nos. 800-27, 1259-60 nos. 754-774, 1260-61 nos. 1065-86. Natural History Society Vol. XVI (1961), 112; figures for the 1250s calculated from pipe rolls E 372/96 to E 372/105. [19]The rotuli pullorum have been sewn together as a single roll, E 370/2/20. [9] Calendar of the Fine Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1250-51, no. 1107 (online edition on the Henry III Fine Rolls Project website). [20]Initial debts in the Kent nova oblata for 1258-59, E 372/103 rot. 10d, and payments in the pipe rolls of the following years, [10]Pipe rolls E 372/86-87; E 372/95-96; E 372/101-102. E 372/104-119; 1239 debts and payments, E 372/83-90.

 iBooks Author [21]Cornwall account, E 372/104 rot. 16. [25]Issue rolls E 403/11, 13, 15A, 3114, 17B, 3115, 18; Exchequer liberate roll E 403/1217 to supplement E 403/17B, which is [22]Exchange data from exchange accounts in pipe rolls damaged and incomplete. E 372/98-116. Inquiries into the exchanges: memoranda rolls E 159/32 m. 6 and E 368/34 m. 5; E 159/34 m. 12-12d and E 159/35 [26]Liberate writs as recorded in Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, m. 10d-11. Henry III (London 1916-64), 1251-60, 323-529 and 1267-72, Appendix. Issue rolls as in note 25 above. [23]Pipe rolls E 372/99 and 105. [27]C.A.F. Meekings, ‘The pipe roll order of 12 February 1270’, in [24]Receipts and issues calculated from receipt rolls E 401/28-42, Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davies issue rolls E 403/11-18 (see following note). (London 1957), 222-53.

The beginning of the Exchequer liberate roll for Michaelmas term 1259, E 403/1217.

This iBook was produced as an experiment with a new form of publication. It recycles material used in a talk at the Institute of Historical Research, which was otherwise unpublished for the most part, with the addition of references and a glossary of the more technical terms. Comments and queries would be welcome; contact [email protected].

 iBooks Author