The Reforms at the Exchequer,

1250-1270

RICHARD CASSIDY

February 2012

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1

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It presents some new financial information, derived from unpublished records, particularly pipe rolls and memoranda rolls, to argue that: Henry III’s financial position, on the eve of the baronial coup of 1258, was healthier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

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Richard CassidyFebruary 2012

2

The Reforms at the Exchequer, 1250-1270

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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.

3

Henry III, from a series of images of English kings, from

about 1280-1300.

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To begin with the big picture, we can go back to the early 1240s, as our baseline. Robert Stacey showed that total government revenue was then around £33,000 a year. I have used his figures for the 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

of the Exchequer being run by John of Crakehall, the reformers’ treasurer. (Adrian Jobson recently drew attention to Crakehall’s important role in the reform administration).[4]

4

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

1241 1242 1243 1244 1245 1259

£

Year ending Michaelmas

CashLocal expenditure

Total government receipts

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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 be argued that this made the situation far worse.[6]

5

Westminster Abbey, as depicted by Matthew Paris – Henry III spent an average of some £3,000 a year on building projects, particularly the abbey.

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There has been little detailed study of finance in the last 25 years or so of Henry III’s reign. The chart below shows the Adventus payments recorded in the memoranda rolls – these are the cash payments brought to the Treasury twice a year by the sheriffs of the counties and the representatives of many boroughs.[7] So far as I know, this is the only series of data yet calculated to cover the whole period. Although the Adventus represented only a part of total revenue – perhaps 30 per cent of all the cash received by the

Treasury – it provides an indication of the broad trends in government income. The chart shows the peaks in revenue associated with one-off events, such as the aid for knighting the king’s son in 1254. You can also see a tendency for revenue to fall in the late 1250s, and to collapse in the mid-1260s, as you would expect at a time of civil war, when the Exchequer briefly ceased working.

6

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

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

£ p

er y

ear

Total for Adventus of Easter and Michaelmas each year

Adventus cash payments from counties and boroughs

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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 areas of government activity, particularly the eyres (the judicial visitations to the counties), the exploitation of the royal demesne, and the activities of the sheriffs in the counties.

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, 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]

7

1230s 1240s 1250s

£17,859£18,698

£10,153

32 e

yres

, vis

itatio

n of

123

4-36

33 e

yres

, vis

itatio

n of

124

5-49

34 e

yres

, vis

itatio

n of

125

2-58

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 counties).

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.

Revenue from the eyres

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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 increment, but it all came out of the same pot: the proceeds of county and hundred courts, and the traditional impositions such as view of frankpledge, hidage, wardpenny and sheriff’s aid. At the beginning of the 1240s, after the demesne manors were farmed out, the sheriffs were expected to produce £3,800 a year. By the beginning of the 1250s, this had risen to £4,500. By 1257, just before the reform movement, it was £4,700.[10]

All this was bad enough for the people in the counties who had to attend the eyres and the county courts, and for the tenants of the demesne manors. In addition, it seems that some of the sheriffs, bailiffs and other local officials were particularly cruel and oppressive. The sheriffs were not only being pressed to deliver more to the Treasury; they were also enriching themselves.

8

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

1242 1251 1257

£2,978£2,726

£1,703

£1,712£1,727

£2,122

£

Year to Michaelmas

Profit and increment

Net county farm

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.

Sheriffs’ profit targets

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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.

9

Henry III marries Eleanor of Provence, by Matthew Paris

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But if the government was pressing so hard for cash, why was the Exchequer getting less than in the 1240s? The chart above shows that the amount of cash coming from the counties had fallen quite noticeably by the late 1250s.[12] Three reasons spring to mind. Henry had given away a large chunk of his potential revenues; he was unable to raise taxes; and much revenue was diverted away from the Treasury.

Henry was notorious for his generosity to his relatives, and there are clear examples of this prodigality cutting the amount of income

which government might receive. Above all, in 1254 he gave extensive holdings to his son Edward, including Cheshire and Bristol. This led to a typical sneer from Matthew Paris, about a mutilated mini-king (regulus mutilatus).[13] These territories were intended to give Edward an income of £10,000 a year, so that is a big slice of revenue no longer available. Another slice of income was lost to the king’s brother Richard of Cornwall; Richard financed the recoinage of 1247-50, and took half the revenue of the mints and exchanges from 1247 to 1259 - some £11,000.

10

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

1241 1242 1243 1244 1245 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259

£

Year ending Michaelmas

Cash from the counties, 1240s and 1250s

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Richard and other royal relatives also benefited from Henry’s generosity with the demesne. I looked at a sample of fifteen manors, the first ones to be farmed out to their inhabitants under the new policy introduced in 1240. Over the period up to 1257, three were granted to the king’s family, and three were farmed by nuns and a bishop at reduced rates. Overall, the king’s grants had reduced the total income from this sample of manors from £682 to £489. In all, about 50 manors were committed to farmers in the early 1240s, with farms set at £2,300 a year. By 1259, the granting away of manors had reduced this total to some £1,500.[14]

Henry was unable to persuade parliaments to agree to taxation, after the thirtieth of 1237. He had to resort to expedients like scutages, linked to particular campaigns, and tallages to supplement the ordinary sources of income. There was a long succession of such events:

1242 scutage for Gascon campaign (3m. per fee)1245 aid for marriage of the king’s daughter (20s. per fee), and tallage1246 scutage of Gannoc (3m. per fee)

1249 and 1252 tallage of demesne1253-54 aid for knighting the king’s son (3m. per fee)1254-57 crusading tenth from the clergy1255 tallage1257 scutage for Welsh campaign.[15]

Henry raised considerable sums for his campaigns by tallaging the Jewish community, but the tallages effectively destroyed their wealth. In the 1240s, Henry had a run of good luck, with earls and bishops conveniently dying in quick succession, providing him with cash from wardships and vacancies. Unfortunately for him, the magnates remained annoyingly healthy in the 1250s. The aids of 1245 and 1253 were one-off boosts to income, but could not be repeated – you can only knight your oldest son once.

The other factor reducing Exchequer income was the diversion of revenue into the Wardrobe, where it was under Henry’s control. This is difficult to prove, because the Wardrobe did not produce audited accounts for several years in the 1250s. The evidence for this policy is in the fine rolls, which show large numbers of fines which were to be paid to the Wardrobe, often in gold.[16]

11

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 having charters, amounted to some £2,800 in just one year, 1256-57. This stockpile of gold under his own control allowed Henry to 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.

The reforming barons suspected that this diversion of income was happening, and it was one of their demands, in the Provisions of Oxford, that all the revenues of the land should come to the Exchequer and nowhere else. One of the first steps the reformers 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 the proceeds, not to the Wardrobe but to the Exchequer. The reformers continued to fund the Wardrobe at about the accustomed level, but they brought it under Exchequer control. In 1258-59, 75 per cent of Wardrobe income was provided by the Treasury. Only 6 per cent came from sources which were not controlled and audited by the Exchequer. This didn’t last – in 1259-60, Henry escaped from Exchequer oversight by going to

France, where he was able to obtain finance from the king of France and from selling gold and jewels. He thus began the process of restoring his authority.[17]

12

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

1258-59 1259-60

£

Other

King of France

Sales

Ecclesiastical vacancies

Fines

Treasury

Finance for the Wardrobe

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Over a few years, from 1258 to 1261, the reform government took several initiatives to improve Exchequer efficiency, to try to bring in more money, and to combat unfairness and extortion in the administration. These last two objectives were of course in conflict. Henry’s sheriffs had been set high profit targets, which led them to oppress the counties. Almost all the sheriffs were replaced in the autumn of 1258, and in the reformers’ most radical measure, the new sheriffs were appointed, not as farmers but as custodians.

Farmer sheriffs were set a fixed level of profit which they had to produce each year, with no questions asked about where the money came from. They supported themselves and their staff from any surplus they collected, and they helped themselves to supplies and accommodation. Custodians, in contrast, were told to submit all the revenue they collected, with details of its source, and were to be paid an allowance to cover their expenses.

13

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.

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This experiment with custodian sheriffs lasted for only one year. The custodians may have been less oppressive, but they collected a lot less money. In 1256-57, the last full year before the reformers took over the government, farmer sheriffs were expected to produce some £4,700 from the farms and profits of the counties. The custodian sheriffs of 1258-59 produced only about £3,300 from farms and profit. (It is only fair to add that these were years of exceptionally bad weather, with poor harvests, leading to high

grain prices and famine.) The reformers appointed new sheriffs for 1259-60, reverting to farming the counties, but at notably lower levels of profit than before the custodial experiment. The next set of sheriffs were appointed in 1261, after Henry III had recovered control, with similar targets. The reformers had eased the burden on the counties, and the cut in government revenue continued even after they had lost power.[18]

14

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

1242 1251 1257 1259 1260 1261

£

Year ending Michaelmas

Custodian sheriffs

The reduction in profit from the counties

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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]

15

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)

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The purpose of the pipe rolls was to record debts and their payment, and the reformers seem to have managed to keep the system working as well as it ever did – by our standards, that is, not very effectively. As an example, I looked at the new debts from Kent in 1258-59. There were 37 of them, totalling £118. Of this, £25 was collected in that same year, and another £25 the next year. Payments then tailed off, to just a few pounds a year or less. By 1275, these debts produced just 7s. 6d. – but this shows that after fifteen years the Exchequer was still doing its job, and chasing the

king’s debtors, sometimes successfully. In all, £61 had been collected and £20 pardoned (because the debt was owed by Westminster Abbey). The chart below shows that roughly half the debt was collected in the course of seven years. The Exchequer’s performance in debt collection was at least as good as it had been twenty years previously, as can be seen by tracking the collection of similar debts in the 1239 pipe roll; then, initial debts of £292 had produced £122 by 1246.[20]

16

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266

£

Cumulative amount collected by Michaelmas

Paid

Pardoned

Remaining unpaid

Collection of Kent debts from 1259

iBooks Author

The coverage of the counties in the pipe rolls was maintained pretty well. In normal times, in most years between 22 and 26 sheriffs came to the Exchequer to have their accounts audited. In the first year of the reform administration, 1258-59, only eighteen counties were audited, and the memoranda rolls show that the Exchequer had some difficulty in arranging these audits. The next year, however, they caught up with the backlog, and dealt with 24 counties. In addition, they brought Cornwall into the scope of the audit for the first time since 1242. Cornwall had been treated as the private property of the king’s brother Richard of Cornwall – he appointed the sheriffs and took all the revenues, without Exchequer involvement. It was thus a significant departure to

bring the sheriff before the Exchequer to account, and to include Cornwall in the 1260 pipe roll.[21]

The reformers also maintained their grip on the sheriffs’ attendance at the twice-yearly Adventus, with no more than one or two absentees on each occasion. It was only in 1263-64 that the routines collapsed, as the country fell into disorder. The Exchequer only managed to audit nine counties, and there was no Adventus at Easter 1264. Attendance at both audit and Adventus remained below normal levels for the rest of the 1260s. The Easter 1267 Adventus was cancelled too, when the earl of Gloucester was occupying London.

17

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1250

1251

1252

1253

1254

1255

1256

1257

1258

1259

1260

1261

1262

1263

1264

1265

1266

1267

1268

1269

1270

1271

1272

Counties included in the pipe roll for the year to Michaelmas

Number of counties audited

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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]

18

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

1252

1253

1254

1255

1256

1257

1258

1259

1260

1261

1262

1263

1264

1265

1266

1267

1268

1269

1270

1271

1272

£ p

er y

ear

Traditional royal revenue of 6d. in the pound from silver

exchanged and minted

Additional revenue from foundry profits, following reform of the exchanges

A note in the memoranda roll concerning reform, with a sketch of a penny.

Royal revenue from the exchanges

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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 and announced the tallage in June 1260. The assessment of 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]

19

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

1255 1260-61

£

Receipts from first year of tallage

Collected £1,557

Collected £1,647

Total assessment

£3,465 Total assessment

£3,019

Floor tiles in the chapter house of Westminster Abbey, showing Henry III’s arms.

Tallage of 1255 and 1260

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The reformers thus maintained the flow of revenue, but there was less pressure on the sheriffs and no eyre (the reformers’ special eyre was intended to hear grievances rather than raise cash). Both side of the Exchequer’s task can be traced in detail for a few years, when we have a run of both receipt and issue rolls to record cash income and expenditure. Over this period, receipts and issues are roughly in balance, with a tendency for the bulk of receipts to arrive in the Michaelmas term. The chart below shows totals from the surviving records for this period.[24]

The charts on the following two pages show in more detail the way in which cash flowed into the Treasury. The bulk of payments in cash tended to arrive to arrive at the beginning of the Michaelmas and Easter terms, as can clearly be seen in the record of weekly cash receipts. The exception is in January 1259, when the revenue from the vacant bishopric of Winchester provided a spectacular one-off bonus.

20

0

2,500

5,000

7,500

10,000

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

£

M = Michaelmas term, E = Easter term

Receipts Issues

Cash receipts and issues

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21

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

6 O

ct 1

257

20 O

ct 1

257

3 N

ov 1

257

17 N

ov 1

257

1 D

ec 1

257

15 D

ec 1

257

29 D

ec 1

257

12 Ja

n 12

58

26 Ja

n 12

58

9 Fe

b 12

58

23 F

eb 1

258

9 M

ar 1

258

23 M

ar 1

258

6 A

pr 1

258

20 A

pr 1

258

4 M

ay 1

258

18 M

ay 1

258

1 Ju

n 12

58

15 Ju

n 12

58

29 Ju

n 12

58

13 Ju

l 125

8

27 Ju

l 125

8

10 A

ug 1

258

24 A

ug 1

258

7 Se

p 12

58

21 S

ep 1

258

£

Week ending Saturday

Total £13,569

Weekly cash receipts, 1257-58

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.

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22

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

5 O

ct 1

258

19 O

ct 1

258

2 N

ov 1

258

16 N

ov 1

258

30 N

ov 1

258

14 D

ec 1

258

28 D

ec 1

258

11 Ja

n 12

59

25 Ja

n 12

59

8 Fe

b 12

59

22 F

eb 1

259

8 M

ar 1

259

22 M

ar 1

259

5 A

pr 1

259

19 A

pr 1

259

3 M

ay 1

259

17 M

ay 1

259

31 M

ay 1

259

14 Ju

n 12

59

28 Ju

n 12

59

12 Ju

l 125

9

26 Ju

l 125

9

9 A

ug 1

259

23 A

ug 1

259

6 Se

p 12

59

20 S

ep 1

259

4 O

ct 1

259

£

Week ending Saturday

Total £16,024

Summer vacation

£3,259 for week ending 18 Jan. Includes £2,933 from Winchester, £300 from York

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

Weekly cash receipts, 1258-59

iBooks Author

These years saw some obvious changes in government cash expenditure, as recorded in the issue rolls. As noted above, Henry was financing the Wardrobe from outside the Exchequer in 1256-57, but the Wardrobe took a large share of total issues from Michaelmas 1257 onwards. The royal relatives, outside Henry’s immediate family, received generous fees and gifts from the Exchequer – an expense which was quickly cut by the reformers in 1258-59. The reformers also managed to repay some major debts

which Henry had contracted. They even found the cash for an instalment of the Pope’s annual 1,000 mark tribute. Unfortunately, this sequence of records ends with the roll for Michaelmas term 1259, so we only have details for expenditure for the first half of 1259-60. This last term’s household expenditure includes large amounts of cash for Henry III’s visit to Paris at the end of 1259.[25]

23

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

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

£

Wardrobe & householdRoyal relativesWestminsterAnnual feesSimon de MontfortPopeLoan repaymentOther

Exchequer cash expenditure

iBooks Author

So much for the amount of spending. What about its timing? There were often complaints from government debtors about the difficulties of getting the Exchequer to pay up. Surprisingly, it seems that most orders for payment by the Treasury, the liberate writs, were honoured quite promptly. The writs were recorded in the liberate rolls, and the corresponding payments can be traced in the issue rolls. Up to three-quarters of writs were paid in the same term as they were issued.[26] There is just one indication of strain in the system in the last few terms for which we have data, in 1259-60: a few debts are being paid with tallies, rather than cash,

using tally sticks like cheques to transfer payment to a government debtor, such as a sheriff.

In addition to this central expenditure, other writs ordered the sheriffs to spend locally some of the cash they collected in the counties. The chart below shows that the sheriffs maintained the flow of cash to the Treasury, and this local expenditure, in the first few years of the reform period. Thereafter, we have the decline in government authority, the temporary closure of the Exchequer, and the collapse in income in 1263.

24

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263

£

Year ending Michaelmas

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

Local expenditure

Cash to Wardrobe

Cash to Treasury

Revenue and expenditure in the counties

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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.

25

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

26

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.

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AdventusTwice a year, at the beginning of the Michaelmas and Easter terms, the sheriffs (or their clerks) were expected to appear at the Exchequer, bringing the cash they had collected in the previous half-year, and the writs they had received authorizing them to spend money locally. Representatives of many boroughs were also expected to attend, bringing their payments. The proceeds of the Adventus were noted in the memoranda rolls.

AidKings were traditionally entitled to impose an aid to pay for the knighting of the king’s son or for the marriage of the king’s daughter. This was effectively a tax, assessed on the basis of a fixed sum for each knight’s fee.

Articles of the eyreWhen the royal justices held the eyres in the counties, as well as hearing pleas, they were expected to ask representatives of the community a long list of questions. These questions, the articles, covered a wide range of issues, including the extent of royal rights and attempts to encroach upon them, offences against regulations concerning weights and measures, etc.

Baronial reformA group of magnates seized control of the government in 1258, setting up a council headed by a Justiciar to govern England in the king’s name. Henry III was able to recover control in 1261, but opposition continued, led by Simon de Montfort. Civil war broke out in 1264, and de Montfort’s victory at the battle of Lewes

established a new baronial regime, which was defeated at Evesham in 1265.

BeauplederOr ‘fair pleading’ – a collective fine, imposed on a community. Restricted in 1259.

CustodiansUnlike the usual farmer sheriffs, the sheriffs appointed by the reformers in 1258 were custodians – they were not expected to deliver a fixed sum each year, and to support themselves from any surplus they extracted; instead, they were to collect whatever was owed to the king, and to deliver it in full to the Exchequer, in return for a fixed allowance.

ExchangesExcept during the recoinage, there were only two royal exchanges, at London and Canterbury, where foreign coins and silver could be exchanged for English silver pennies. The king’s charge for exchanging silver, known as seignorage, was 6d. in the pound, and a useful source of revenue.

ExchequerThe Exchequer was the government department which dealt with finance. It was divided into two parts: the Exchequer of Receipt, or Treasury, dealt with the receipt and issue of cash; the upper Exchequer audited the accounts of sheriffs and other officials, and produced the pipe rolls.

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EyresJustices were commissioned to travel to the counties to hear all kinds of pleas, both civil and criminal. In principle, these eyres were part of a visitation covering the whole country, at regular intervals.

Farm, farmingMany sources of revenue – counties, manors, hundreds, official posts – were farmed out. That is, they were let for a fixed annual sum, sometimes negotiated, sometimes traditional. The farmer was allowed to keep revenue collected over and above this fixed sum.

Fine rollsFines were offers of cash for all manner of royal favours and privileges – the right to hold a market, or to avoid the obligations of knighthood, for example. They were recorded in the fine rolls, together with administrative details such as the appointment of sheriffs.

Hundred rollsAn inquiry into royal rights and official behaviour, intended to cover the whole country hundred by hundred, was begun in 1255. A similar, but larger, exercise was conducted in the 1270s. The results were recorded in the hundred rolls.

HundredsMany counties were divided into smaller administrative units, called hundreds (or in the north, wapentakes), with their own courts. Revenue from hundreds was often farmed out.

Issue rollsThe issue rolls recorded payments of cash from the Treasury to named individuals. Such payments included the cash paid to the keepers of the Wardrobe. There were two rolls for each year, running from the beginning of Michaelmas and Easter terms.

LiberateOrders for payments to be made were known as liberate writs. Such writs were copied into the liberate rolls, and sent to the Treasury, instructing it to pay out cash to named individuals. Similar writs were sent to sheriffs and other officials, instructing them to spend locally the revenue they had collected.

Memoranda rollsRolls compiled each year at the Exchequer, as a contemporaneous record of important events and decisions that needed to be remembered. The rolls include the records of the Adventus, the schedules for the auditing of county accounts, and notes on the sums to be collected from each county.

MichaelmasThe Exchequer’s year ended at Michaelmas – the feast of St. Michael, 29 September. The year covered by each of the pipe rolls and memoranda rolls began on the morrow of Michaelmas, 30 September.

MurdrumFine imposed on a village community if a dead body was found 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.

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Pipe rollsRecords of the audit process, carried out each year, to check the collection of revenue and authorized expenditure of government officials, particularly the sheriffs who answered for the farms of the counties. So called because these large membranes of parchment, when rolled up, look like pipes:

Profit, incrementSheriffs who farmed the counties were expected to pay a fixed annual sum, known as profit or increment, over and above the farm (which had been unchanged since the late twelfth century). Confusingly, the payment above the farm made by custodian sheriffs was also known as profit.

Provisions of OxfordIn June-July 1258, the Parliament held at Oxford at the beginning of the reforming regime set out proposals for government by a

council representing both king and barons, and the agenda for reform.

Receipt rollsCash payments into the Treasury were recorded in the receipt rolls. Each roll covered a half-year, from the beginning of Michaelmas or Easter term, and noted the dates on which payments were received, with weekly totals.

RecoinageThe 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 demesneThe 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.

ScutageA form of taxation, which was generally related to a particular military campaign. It originated as a payment in place of actually serving on the campaign in question, but had become formalized as a fixed sum per knight’s fee.

Sicilian projectIn the 1250s, the papacy was trying to establish its authority over 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

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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.

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

View of frankpledgePayment 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.

WardrobeThe 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).

WardshipThe 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.

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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.

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References

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Photographs of the pipe rolls and memoranda rolls can be found on the Anglo-American Legal Tradition website.

[1]" M.H. Mills, ‘The reforms at the Exchequer (1232-1242)’, TRHS 4th Series Vol. 10 (1927), 111-133.

[2]" M.T. Clanchy, ‘Did Henry III have a policy?’, History Vol. 53 (1968), 203-216.

[3]" R.C. Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance under Henry III 1216-1245 (Oxford 1987), table 6.2 and 206-9.

[4]" A. Jobson, ‘John of Crakehall: the “forgotten” baronial treasurer, 1258-60’, Thirteenth Century England XIII (2011), 83-99.

[5]" Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance, 258.

[6]" N. Barratt, ‘Finance on a shoestring: the Exchequer in the thirteenth century’ in English Government in the Thirteenth Century, ed. A. Jobson (Woodbridge 2004), 75.

[7]" Adventus figures calculated from the Adventus sections in each year’s memoranda rolls, in series E 159 and E 368.

[8]" The 1235 Surrey Eyre, Vol. I Introduction, ed. C.A.F. Meekings, Surrey Record Soc. Vol. XXI (1979), 135; Crown Pleas of the Wiltshire Eyre, 1249, ed. C.A.F. Meekings, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Vol. XVI (1961), 112; figures for the 1250s calculated from pipe rolls E 372/96 to E 372/105.

[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).

[10]" Pipe rolls E 372/86-87; E 372/95-96; E 372/101-102.

[11]" Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. W.W. Shirley (Rolls Series, London 1866), II, 102.

[12]" 1240s data from Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance, table 6.4; 1250s figures calculated from county accounts in pipe rolls E 372/94 to 104.

[13]" Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard (Rolls Series, London 1872-83), V, 540.

[14]" Initial farms in Calendar of the Fine Rolls, 1240-41; then pipe rolls E 372/86, 101 and 103.

[15]" Details of each tax in S.K. Mitchell, Studies in Taxation under John and Henry III (New Haven and London 1914).

[16]" R. Cassidy, ‘The reforming council takes control of fines of gold, 1258-59’, Fine of the Month October 2011, Henry III Fine Rolls Project (with relevant references).

[17]" B.L. Wild, The Wardrobe Accounts of King Henry III of England, 1216-1272 (unpublished London University PhD thesis, 2008); chart data from table 20.

[18]" Profit figures from pipe rolls, E 372/86-87; E 372/95-96; E 372/101-102; E 372/103; and from Calendar of the Fine Rolls, 1240-41 nos. 800-27, 1259-60 nos. 754-774, 1260-61 nos. 1065-86.

[19]" The rotuli pullorum have been sewn together as a single roll, E 370/2/20.

[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, E 372/104-119; 1239 debts and payments, E 372/83-90.

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[21]" Cornwall account, E 372/104 rot. 16.

[22]" Exchange data from exchange accounts in pipe rolls 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 m. 10d-11.

[23]" Pipe rolls E 372/99 and 105.

[24]" Receipts and issues calculated from receipt rolls E 401/28-42, issue rolls E 403/11-18 (see following note).

[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 damaged and incomplete.

[26]" Liberate writs as recorded in Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, Henry III (London 1916-64), 1251-60, 323-529 and 1267-72, Appendix. Issue rolls as in note 25 above.

[27]" C.A.F. Meekings, ‘The pipe roll order of 12 February 1270’, in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davies (London 1957), 222-53.

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

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© Richard Cassidy, February 2012

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 cass_ibook@cmjk.com.

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