CHAPTER X

FINANCE

Finance plays as prominent a part in public as in private life, and the fortunes of a nation are as much built upon a money basis as those of an individual. This somewhat obvious truism is particularly applicable to the reign of Henry II., owing to the important share taken by hired mercenary soldiers in his numerous campaigns, the wealth at the king’s disposal frequently enabling him to dispense with the service of disaffected or untrustworthy vassals. And the main source of this wealth was England, or at least it was from England that were drawn those extra supplies that formed the critical margin of safety, for while we hear constantly of treasure sent from England to the king or his ministers in Normandy we find no trace of any surplus from Henry’s continental treasuries reaching the treasury at Winchester. Fortunately we possess the material for our examination in the series of revenue accounts known as the Pipe Rolls, complete from the second to the last year of the reign.

The treasury, with the controlling machinery of the exchequer, had been fully organised under Henry I., and an analysis by Sir James Ramsay of the one surviving Pipe Roll of that king’s reign, that for the thirty-first year (1130), shows the total royal revenue to have been about £27,000. During the anarchy that prevailed under Stephen’s nominal sovereignty the organisation of the exchequer virtually fell into abeyance. While there is no evidence of Stephen having been at any time in difficulties for lack of money, it is clear that his permanent and assured revenues must have been very small. The districts in which his power was sufficiently established to ensure the collection of the royal dues varied from time to time and at best were limited, while their yield was still further reduced by the lavish grants of crown demesnes with which he had been compelled to purchase the allegiance of powerful barons. Henry II., on coming to the throne, had, as we have seen, resumed possession of the royal demesnes thus alienated, and he also entrusted the re-organisation of the exchequer to Nigel, Bishop of Ely. Order was soon restored, though it was several years before we find the same elaboration of the financial network as was exhibited in 1130.

A careful analysis of the Pipe Roll for 1156, the first of the series, shows that the total amount of the revenues dealt with, which exclude the issues of the three northern counties, still at that time in the hands of the King of Scotland, was in round figures £21,650. But of this £6000 has to be deducted for portions of the royal demesnes which had been granted to various persons, and for payments pardoned or remitted by the king. Another £2250 had not been paid and was still owing, a certain proportion being bad debts. Of the remainder, £9120 was paid into the treasury in cash and £4260 had been spent by the sheriffs and other accountants on the king’s behalf in payment of alms, repairs to buildings, wages and miscellaneous purchases. The actual revenue of this year may therefore be taken as about £13,000, or rather less than half that of Henry I. in 1130.

Turning now to the consideration of the sources of revenue, the first is the farms (_firmæ_) of the various counties and honours, these being fixed sums at which the sheriffs of the counties or the farmers of the honours compounded for the issues of the lands under their control. Upon occasion a county might for some reason be without a sheriff, in which case one or more wardens (_custodes_) would be appointed, and they would answer in detail for the issues and receive payment in reward for their services. In some cases the totals of these issues amount, as we should expect, to more than the fixed farm, the difference between the two sums being what the sheriff would have for his labour. But occasionally, and notably in the case of London,[44] the yield under _custodes_ was considerably less than under a sheriff. It is hardly conceivable that the sheriff, in addition to the labour and responsibility of his official duties, should have been expected to make a loss over the render of his farm, but our knowledge of the methods by which the various moneys were collected before they reached the exchequer is too slight to enable us to explain this phenomenon. An incident which throws upon the question a light so uncertain as to render it almost more obscure occurred at the beginning of the Becket controversy. At a council held at Woodstock in 1163 the king demanded that a certain payment customarily made to the sheriffs from the lands of the counties under their control should in future be entered on the rolls and accounted for at the exchequer. Archbishop Becket rejected the demand, declaring that the payments in question were voluntary, that they depended upon the good conduct of the sheriffs, and that he would never consent to pay one penny on this account to the king. The chronicler who relates this incident at most length adds that the payment in question was two shillings from every hide, but this was almost certainly an error due to confusion with the Danegeld; the “sheriff’s aid,” about which the dispute arose, was not levied on any fixed basis but varied in different parts of the country.[45] So far as we can see, the object of King Henry was to make the sheriffs more entirely dependent upon himself, drawing them into the position of the _custodes_ as mere salaried officials of the exchequer; incidentally, no doubt, he hoped at the same time to obtain a substantial increase of revenue by appropriating the “aid.” The objection voiced by Becket seems to have been based precisely on the king’s wish to make the sheriffs responsible solely to himself; under the existing arrangement a sheriff who abused his authority ran the risk of losing the emoluments of his office, and even with this check these officials and their underlings not infrequently misused their power, extorting money from those under them and failing to account at the exchequer for money received. So notorious, indeed, did their maladministration become that, as we have seen, in 1170 Henry was driven to take summary action, removing all the sheriffs from office and appointing commissions to inquire into their conduct. Some of the officials thus removed were fined and very few were restored to their former position, but the new men appointed do not seem to have been greatly superior to their predecessors, and it is clear that whatever the sheriff lost or made over his farm he certainly possessed valuable perquisites, both legitimate and of doubtful legality.

The farms were the only fixed source of revenue, but an uncertain amount could always be relied upon from legal procedure (_placita_), fines inflicted for breaches of either the Common or Forest Law, amercements levied on hundreds, tithings, or townships for murders, payments made for leave to compound a suit begun in the king’s court, and penalties due from the defeated party in a judicial duel. For the most part the items under this head were small, though in the aggregate their amount was considerable, but not infrequently we find heavy fines inflicted upon men of wealth, for which no reason is given and which were in some cases, no doubt, arbitrary acts of extortion on the king’s part. In 1165 Earl Hugh of Norfolk paid half of a fine of 1000 marks, while the Abbot of St. Edmunds, William Cheyney, and two other East Anglican magnates were amerced 200 marks apiece. That same year Hugh de Mortimer was fined 500 marks, the Bishop of Lincoln 400 marks, Ivo de Harcourt 300 marks, Ralf de Cahaignes and Lefwin of York a like amount, the Abbot of Westminster £100, and Abraham, the Jew of London, £2000. The Jews, indeed, were a fruitful source of income: their financial genius had enabled them to concentrate most of the floating capital of the country in their hands. They had almost as much a monopoly of ready money as they had of the trade of usury. In this latter respect their monopoly was protected by the ban of the Church directed against Christian usurers, and, safe from competition, they lent their money at their own terms, usually about 60 per cent., to litigants, ambitious prelates, or impoverished monasteries, at one time financing an unauthorised expedition to Ireland and at another assisting the king with large advances.[46] Henry was too sensible of their value to persecute, or to permit his subjects to persecute, the Jews, but he had no scruples in fining them arbitrarily enormous sums, which might have been crippling if they had ever paid more than a fraction of them, and in 1188, when he ordered his other subjects to pay a tenth of their goods towards the crusade, he made the Jews contribute a quarter instead of a tenth. In this latter case one of the London Jews was allowed to compound for his share of the subsidy by a payment of £200, of which half was to be paid, perhaps by the grim humour of the king, on the Sunday on which the canticle “Rejoice, O Jerusalem” is sung. It was in the previous year that the wealthiest of all the English Jews, the famous Aaron of Lincoln, had died, and by the law relating to usurers, whether Jew or Christian, his immense possessions, equal apparently to more than the yearly revenues of the crown, had fallen to the king, only to perish in great part beneath the waves of the Channel.

If the death of a usurer brought grist to the king’s mill so did that of a prelate. However inexcusable from a moral point of view the seizure of the issues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys may have been, the temptation must have been strong. For example, the vacant abbey of Glastonbury in 1181 brought in £600 clear, and next year the see of Lincoln accounted for £1290 and that of York for £1260; Canterbury varied from £1100 to £1500. The farm of the bishopric of Winchester in 1172 was £1555; Ely produced nearly £900, and even Bath was worth £425 clear in 1167. Very few lay honours approached even the smallest of these sums, but with lay estates as with clerical the death of the tenant was made a source of profit to the king. If the heir were under age he and his lands would be taken under the royal protection and either managed directly for the king’s benefit or granted, for a consideration, to some person of position, who might or might not be a relation of the heir, while the tenant’s widow could be sold in marriage or made to pay heavily for the right of following her own choice. Even if the heir were of age and there were no widow to mulct, the new tenant would have to pay “relief,” or death duties, graduated on the simple lines of getting the utmost possible out of the landowner. For small estates the normal rate of “relief” was £5 for a knight’s fee, the average value of a fee being at most £20, but in the case of large estates the amount demanded seems, as we have said, to have been arbitrarily fixed by the king. In 1185 as much as 700 marks was demanded of the Countess of Warwick for the privilege of having her father’s land, her dower and liberty to remain single. To a certain extent these enormous fines, whether inflicted as succession duties or for other reasons, were _bruta fulmina_, defeating their own ends. Usually the debtor contented himself with paying yearly instalments, sometimes round sums and sometimes strangely complicated amounts which suggest a sudden demand from the sheriff satisfied by a prompt clearance of pockets. The first instalment was as a rule substantial; Fulk Paynel in 1180 paid 200 marks out of the 1000 marks demanded of him for the honour of Bampton; but in the same year Adam de Port only paid £40 out of a similar fine for possession of his lands and his wife’s inheritance in Normandy and for restoration to the king’s good favour. Fines might thus drag on literally for generations, the instalments often showing a tendency to dwindle away until they ceased, and either the king excused the payment of the rest or the sheriff wrote it off as a bad debt. Almost any payment on account seems to have been accepted, and in 1187 William Fitz-Ercenbald, who owed £2156 for arrears of farm of the silver mines of Carlisle, paid in the rather absurd amount of 13s. 4d.

Although all these sources could be counted upon to yield something every year the annual yield varied greatly. There were, however, means of raising extra occasional revenue, of which the amount could be foretold with some accuracy. In the first place there was the Danegeld, dating back to Saxon times. This was a tax of two shillings on every hide of land as rated in the Domesday Survey. It was levied in 1156, when the accounts show that if it had been collected in full it would have amounted to £4550, but owing to extensive remissions and exemptions, extending to a little over £2000, the total yield was only £2500. For some unknown reason this tax was only levied once more, in 1162, and was then allowed to fall into disuse. Of more doubtful legality but, as a rule, of greater profit were the “aids” (_auxilia_, _dona_) assessed upon the counties and boroughs from time to time, regulated apparently by the king’s need of money and the taxable capacities of the districts assessed. In 1156 these “aids” yielded £2100, with a further £100 still owing, while in 1159, according to Sir James Ramsay, the amount was well over £5000. On the latter occasion the “aids” were levied upon bishops, certain of the wealthier lords, clerical and lay, and Jews as well as upon the boroughs; amongst the biggest payments were those of the city of London £1000, Norwich £400, York, Lincoln, and Northampton 200 marks each, the Archbishop of York 500 marks, the Bishops of Durham, Winchester, and Lincoln a like amount, and the Abbot of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, 220 marks. Two years later York again paid 200 marks, but Lincoln had risen and Norwich fallen to £200, and London escaped with 1000 marks.

By feudal custom Henry was entitled to call for an “aid” from his military tenants on the occasion of his eldest daughter’s marriage, and in 1168 he availed himself of this right, stretching his demands to include many persons outside the military classes, to whose contributions he had no just claim. The similar feudal “aid” for the knighting of his eldest son was never raised, as the young king was knighted at the time that he was in opposition to his father. Finally, in time of war the king could call for Scutage, a monetary composition in lieu of personal service with the army. The amounts demanded for Scutage varied from one to two marks for the knight’s fee, the larger sum being exactly equivalent to the wages of a “knight,” or man-at-arms, for forty days, the period for which the tenant of a knight’s fee was bound to serve. Scutage was called for in 1156 for the war with Geoffrey of Anjou, in 1159 for the Toulouse fiasco, when £2440 is said to have been paid, implying the commutation of the personal service due from 1830 knights, in 1161 and 1162 for war with France, in 1172 for the Irish expedition, and, finally, in 1175 for the projected expedition to Galloway. Whether the “assessment for the army in Wales,” raised in 1165, should be considered as a scutage is questionable; it appears to have been more of an irregular “aid.”

How far the exchequer officials of the period indulged in anticipatory estimates of revenue, framing their simple and elastic budgets thereon, cannot be said. Possibly the half-yearly provisional accounts rendered by the sheriffs at Easter enabled them to foresee whether additional taxation would be required to bring the revenue up to the required amount by Michaelmas. Possibly, on the other hand, extra taxation was put on whenever the balance in the treasury seemed to be getting low. But however this may have been, the annual revenue was kept by one means or another at a pretty constant level. Sir James Ramsay gives the totals alike for 1159, in which year nearly £8000 were raised by scutage and “aids,” and for 1169, when no extra taxation was levied, as approximately £20,000. In 1176 the sum actually paid into the treasury was £14,250, while something like £1750 had been spent by the accountants on the king’s behalf, giving a total of £16,000. To this have to be added the enormous sums extorted for breach of the Forest Law. The total of the fines inflicted on this score was £13,450, the New Forest accounting for over £2000 and the forests of Yorkshire £1600, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset and Oxfordshire being all above £1000. But considerably less than half the sum demanded was paid at the time, and the total for the year may be estimated as between £5000 and £6000, bringing the revenue up to rather over £21,000.

The money collected by the sheriffs and other officials was accounted for every year at Michaelmas at the court of the exchequer. The exchequer (_scaccarium_) derived its name from the great table covered with a black chequered cloth on which the revenue accounts were set out by means of counters. It must be borne in mind that ability to read and write, though not yet considered as in itself entitling the possessor to “privilege of clergy,” was so far peculiar to the clergy that a large proportion of the lay sheriffs would have been unable to keep or to understand written accounts. Even for those more learned the difficulty of working out complicated sums in Roman numerals must have been considerable, and indeed it is comparatively rare to find any lengthy medieval account in which the sums of the items correspond throughout accurately with the totals given. At the treasury courts, therefore, of England and Normandy, and possibly elsewhere, an elaboration of the “abacus,” or calculating board, was introduced. This consisted of a table, ten feet long by five feet wide, covered with a black cloth on which were drawn seven vertical columns, representing, from right to left, pence, shillings, pounds, tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of pounds. These columns in turn were divided by horizontal lines, cutting the cloth into a series of squares like those on a chess-board. Within these squares the accounts were set out with counters. At the Michaelmas session the chancellor, treasurer, and other officials, with their clerks, sat round three sides of the table, while on the other side was the calculating clerk with his counters, and near him the sheriff, who may be regarded as his opponent in the game. Along one line the calculator set out the amounts due from the accounting sheriff, and below it he gradually built up the sheriff’s account, beginning with the money paid in in cash and adding item by item the sums, expended, for which the sheriff produced either the king’s writs or tallies,[47] the sheriff’s object being to make the two amounts balance. In this manner, by ocular demonstration, a long and complicated account could be easily followed, while for permanent record all the items were entered upon their rolls by the clerks of the chancellor and treasurer.

The only coin in circulation in England at this time was the silver penny, and although sums of 12, 160, and 240 pence were spoken of as shillings, marks, and pounds for convenience of calculation, such units had no tangible existence and all money payments were made in pence. Although the money issued during Stephen’s reign was poorly executed, such coins as have survived do not bear out the chroniclers’ assertions that it was debased; but it is probable that the total amount of coin in circulation was small and that a considerable proportion of it was forged. In any case Henry had issued a new coinage in 1156, but the moneyers appear to have not infrequently debased the silver or made illegal profits in other ways, and in 1158 many of them had to stand their trial by the ordeal of water and several only escaped mutilation by the payment of heavy fines. Twenty years later, in 1177, we find what looks like an organised conspiracy of fraud amongst the Canterbury moneyers, five of their number being fined between them 2500 marks. At last, in 1180, Henry entrusted the re-organisation of the coinage to a foreigner, Philip Aymary, who did his work very well, but so manipulated the business to his own profit that he was banished in disgrace. This coinage, although possessing no particular artistic merit, was technically a great advance on its predecessor, and was so well appreciated that it continued to be struck, with hardly noticeable variations, under Richard and John and well into the reign of Henry III. As a result of forgery, fraud, and the inevitable loss of weight during circulation the 240 pence which constituted the nominal pound “by tale,” or by number, rarely corresponded to the standard pound by weight, and as many of the sheriffs’ county forms were due in “blanched” money, that is to say, in pounds of standard fineness and weight, it was necessary to test the money paid in. To begin with, pence to the value of forty-four shillings were counted out from the mass of money

[Illustration: SILVER PENNIES

1. First coinage of Henry II 2. Type introduced in 1180 3. Penny of Henry II struck for Aquitaine 4. Penny of Eleanor as Duchesse of Aquitaine ]

paid in by the sheriff whose account was under examination. Twenty shillings of this was then melted down in a crucible and purified by fire; the resulting ingot was next weighed against the standard pound, and pence added from the selected money to bring it up to weight; the number of pence required for this purpose having been noted the sheriff was charged on all “blanch” sums due that number of pence in addition to each pound by tale.

When we pass to the consideration of the relative value and purchasing power of money in the middle of the twelfth century as compared with the present time we are met by many complications. The average price of an ox or cow during this reign was from three shillings to four shillings, occasionally rising as high as five shillings; farm horses fetched three shillings, but military chargers cost three pounds or more; sheep ranged from fourpence to sixpence and young pigs were about the same, but when full-grown they fetched as much as a shilling. A penny a day was the recognised wage for a sergeant or private soldier, and eightpence a day for a man-at-arms; the master of the royal yacht received a shilling, the clerk of the household two shillings, and the chancellor five shillings a day. Probably we may take the money of that date as roughly equivalent to twenty-five times the amount in modern currency.

So far as the expenditure of the Crown is concerned we labour under considerable difficulties, having no records of the nature of the Liberate and Issue Rolls of later reigns. The only items of expenditure which have come down to us are such as have been entered upon the Pipe Rolls as discharged by the sheriffs and other officers out of the issues of their offices. The heaviest of these expenses were incurred in connection with building, and especially in the repair and enlargement of the royal castles. The rebuilding of Scarborough has already been spoken of, and amongst the scores of entries of work done on castles may be mentioned the £1000 spent on Oxford in 1166 and 1167, a sum which is, however, insignificant beside the £4350 spent on Dover Castle between 1182 and 1187, as much as £1248 being spent in the one year 1185. Nottingham, which appears to have been one of the most habitable of the castles, accounted for £450 in 1172 and for over £300 in 1175; large sums were also spent on the king’s hunting seats such as Woodstock, Clipston, and especially Clarendon. For the adornment of Clarendon there were provided in 1177 “marble columns,” probably shafts of dark marble similar to those the introduction of which by St. Hugh in his new work at Lincoln so struck contemporary writers. But numerous as are the entries of building expenses, they can represent but part of the sums laid out by Henry on such operations, nor do we hear anything of the cost of the army or of the upkeep of the royal household, though we know from the existing list of salaries that this last item must have amounted to about £1500 a year. Whatever were his expenses Henry contrived to amass a great fortune, which his successor, Richard, found little difficulty in dissipating.