Henry IV (64 page)

This injection of cash to Calais meant, however, that less was available to distribute to others. This was the task of the great council which met in London in mid-April.
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Allocations were made in cash, thus reducing the risk that sources of revenue would become over-committed, leading to uncashable tallies and the creation of fictitious loans. In 1406, only 47 per cent of all issues were in cash; in 1407, the figure was 83 per cent. Control over the exchequer was also tightened by limiting the ability of regular spenders such as royal lieutenants or the household to use recurrent writs to secure funds: specific writs authorizing one-off issues and their sources were now more widely (though not exclusively) needed to secure payments, for the open-ended nature of recurrent writs created uncertainty about which revenues had been tapped. The most difficult task, however, was to decide on the order of priorities between spenders. Military and defence expenditure topped the list: £12,086 was allocated to Prince Henry for operations in Wales in addition to the £19,543 sent to Calais, but the decision to return to the system whereby half of the wool customs was reserved
for Calais left dangerously little for Scotland, Guyenne, Ireland or sea-defence; until the next crisis, they would simply have to make do.
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A further complication was the king's desire to lead his own campaign to Wales. Bowing to his wishes, the council allocated him over £10,000 from the lay subsidy; when the royal campaign was abandoned, some £5,000 of this was instead used to finance the royal household.

Although this use of the lay subsidy to fund the household was noted on the exchequer receipt roll, such had not been the intention of the council; misappropriation of taxation granted for defence was after all contrary to one of the commons' cherished principles, which the appointment of war-treasurers in 1404 had been explicitly intended to uphold and the thirty-one articles implicitly confirmed.
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On the other hand, it had been agreed in parliament that £6,000 from the wool subsidy would be given directly to the king to be spent as he wished, the expectation presumably being that at least part of this would be spent on the household, so the council in 1407 had already begun to retreat from the principle of using taxation only for purposes of defence. This retreat would not be confirmed for another year, but it is noteworthy that no complaint was heard in the Gloucester parliament about what would assuredly have been deemed misuse of taxes two or three years earlier.
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There were three main reasons for this. The first was that the king had been obliged to surrender his power to authorize payments from the exchequer: in other words, he had agreed that his right to make grants should be subject to conciliar supervision, something which the commons had been urging on him since the start of the reign.
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The second was because under the eye of its new treasurer, John Tiptoft, household spending was being brought under control. Between December 1406 and July 1408 (Tiptoft's period of office) the annual average expenditure of the wardrobe was £20,446, about four-fifths of what it had been between 1399 and 1406.
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There were doubtless many who still regarded this as
excessive, and the Gloucester parliament complained that the household was continuing to abuse its right of purveyance. Yet the combination of reduced expenditure (attributable in part to Henry's shrinking itinerary) and flexibility in the use of taxation meant that criticism regularly directed at the household during the first half of the reign now subsided. The third reason for satisfaction was the resumption of payment of annuities. After 1406 it was generally annuitants rather than household creditors who were given preference on non-taxative sources of revenue – another beneficial effect of the use of taxation to support the household, for it relieved the pressure on ordinary revenues.
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For the next two or three years, annuities were paid more regularly and many arrears were cleared, thereby rebuilding trust among the regime's supporters.

It was thus with both vigour and justification that Arundel defended the council's financial policy to the October 1407 parliament, and although the commons quibbled over procedure they granted the one-and-a-half lay subsidies which he requested, to be paid in three instalments between February 1408 and February 1409.
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In return, the king promised not to request any more lay subsidies until March 1410 and to step up annuity payments, at least ‘to those who have deserved it’, a refrain which now began to figure increasingly in government rhetoric.
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With the wool customs also renewed until Michaelmas 1410 and convocation voting one-and-a-half clerical tenths, the council had a clear idea of how much money it had to spend over the next three years, and detailed financial planning could begin. Broadly speaking, the policy of maintaining exchequer control of revenues was continued, although the percentage of cash it received was never as high again as it had been in 1407, with the year from Easter 1408 to Easter 1409 showing an almost exact balance between cash and revenues assigned by tallies.
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What really mattered, however, was whether tallies would translate into cash, and the fact that fictitious loans accounted for less than £800 during this year indicates that assignment was usually a successful operation and thus that the council was continuing to estimate and allocate resources with care.
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This is reflected in the orderliness of the issue rolls for these two terms: substantial arrears of annuities
and debts of the household from earlier years were cleared, and hardly any sources were overcommitted.
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As in the previous year, a review of resources was undertaken during a great council meeting in late January and early February 1408 (although this year there was no moratorium on issues during these months), and the decisions taken then acted upon in March.
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Naturally, priorities had changed. Under pressure from the staplers, the commons had asked that attention be paid to Calais and the security of the Channel, and their requests were heeded.
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The reservation of half of the wool subsidy for Calais was extended for another year, and £10,100 was given to the new admiral, the earl of Kent, to sweep the sea of pirates.
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Prince Henry was given a further £13,890 for Wales, while the Scottish marches and Ireland, having been neglected in 1407, were by now desperate for resources: Prince John and the earl of Westmorland were allocated £9,500 for the former and Prince Thomas £4,666 for the latter. The indenture agreed with Thomas in February 1408, which covered the next three years, specified the individual tax-collectors from whom his current allocations and outstanding debts were to be drawn, as well as his ranking in the order of priorities, an example of the attention to detail now underpinning global budgeting decisions at Westminster.
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However, the most radical decision taken by the council in early 1408 was that all sources might now be used to fund the household: £7,000 of its income was to come from the first instalment of the lay subsidy, £4,000 from the wool customs, and all the income from alien priories, episcopal and abbatial vacancies, wards, marriages and other feudal casualties was to be reserved exclusively for its use, existing annuitants excepted.
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The decision to use lay subsidies for the household seems not to have been controversial, and in November its projected income from this source was
raised to £10,000, although the council simultaneously resurrected the idea of a
certum
, set at £16,000 for the wardrobe and £4,000 for the king's chamber. This was not effective: wardrobe expenditure alone stood at £20,463 in 1408–9, while the chamber devoured another £8,000 and the great wardrobe over £1,500.
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Nevertheless, the freeing up of ordinary revenues allowed many annuitants' arrears to be cleared during the year and this, combined with the relative reduction of household expenditure, the clearing of some of its debts, the general reliability of assignments and the king's restraint in making grants, meant that, in the absence of military or other emergencies, the council was justified in believing its policy was working.

Early in 1409, therefore, another budget review was held. Calais, Ireland and the household had already been provided for, but following the last half lay subsidy (payable on 2 February) no further direct taxation was due from either laity or clergy during the year, and the mood was cautious. The allocations to Wales and the Scottish marches were reduced by half to around £5,000 each.
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Yet even these reduced payments soon strained the exchequer, and as revenue dried up during the spring and summer of 1409, fictitious loans once again became a problem, totalling around £12,700 between Easter 1409 and Easter 1410, and there was increased resort to borrowing, mainly from the Londoners.
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The council continued to try to allocate resources as rationally as possible: following his illness in the spring, Henry begged Arundel to ensure that provision was made for Queen Joan, who always had difficulty securing payment of her 10,000 marks a year dower, and by 1 July Arundel had made the necessary arrangements. The queen now surrendered the letters patent issued to her in 1403 and was instead given a mixed bag of assignments, mainly on the customs and alien priories, totalling some £2,800 (she also received around £1,000 a year from the duchy of Lancaster). Although promised less than in 1403, the strong likelihood is that she would actually receive more. The allocation to
her of revenues from the alien priories was a characteristically pragmatic step. Tiptoft had noted in the parliament of 1406 that the failure to pay her dower meant that Joan was unable to make her expected contribution to the income of the royal household; the alien priories had been reserved for the household, and the new arrangements made in July 1409 must have envisaged that that is what they would be used for. Her expenditure was also being more carefully monitored by now.
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Tiptoft's role in stabilizing royal finances in 1407–9 was as influential as Arundel's. For eight months in 1407 he served as both keeper of the wardrobe and chief butler to the king, thus simultaneously controlling the wardrobe's two main spending offices and enabling him to cut expenditure by 20 per cent.
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In July 1408 he was promoted to the treasurership of the realm, for which he was granted 200 marks a year on top of the usual fee for his ‘very good service’.
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Meanwhile, in late 1407, he married Philippa, widow of Sir Matthew Gournay, as a result of which he became seneschal of Les Landes and constable of Dax in Guyenne.
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These interests encouraged him to try to reform the exchequer at Bordeaux, for which task he chose Jean de Bourdieu (or Bordili), a Gascon doctor of laws and canon of Bordeaux cathedral. Bourdieu was already the king's procurator-fiscal in Guyenne and lieutenant to the constable of Bordeaux, William Farrington (the duchy's chief financial officer), and in August 1408, a month after Tiptoft became treasurer of England and almost certainly on his initiative, Bourdieu was granted the keepership of the seal of the superior court of Guyenne and asked to carry out an audit of the accounts of the constable and his former lieutenant, Sir John Mitford, sending his report to the exchequer at Westminster. At the same time, all royal officials in the duchy were told not to meddle with the raising of royal revenue but to ensure that it was delivered directly to the constable, who in turn was ordered to make sure these officials were paid first, followed by others with royal grants in accordance with the dates of their grants. What Tiptoft was trying to
establish in the duchy was a system of centralized revenue collection and rationalized priorities such as he and Arundel had implemented in England since early 1407.
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He faced opposition, however, for the constable's accounts had never been subject to local audit and Farrington and Mitford reacted angrily to this intrusion on their autonomy. Bourdieu had already crossed swords with Mitford, whom he had replaced as Farrington's lieutenant in January 1408, and whose unorthodox financial transactions were now subjected to close scrutiny, but Tiptoft backed Bourdieu strongly and on 21 August 1409 ordered Farrington to arrest Mitford and bring him to Westminster along with both men's accounts so that they could be properly audited. On the same day, Bourdieu was promoted to the chancellorship of the duchy with power to supervise all income and expenditure, submitting annual accounts to the exchequer at Westminster, and all officials in Guyenne, Farrington included, were ordered to obey him. He remained chancellor of the duchy until the end of the reign and beyond.
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Although the impact of these reforms on the finances of Guyenne is unknown, the thrust of the policy is clear. In Ireland too, where, as in Guyenne, there was a local exchequer, attempts were made from early 1407 to establish more control over the collection and disbursement of revenues, although again the effect is unknown.
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In England, at any rate, it is clear that the reforms introduced by Arundel and Tiptoft made 1408, financially speaking, the best year of the reign. By the autumn of 1409, however, they were running into the sand. Without new grants of direct taxation, competition for resources was creating rivalries and economies were needed: in November an attempt was made to reduce the wardrobe's annual expenditure to £13,333, but when the keeper tried to secure a down payment on this on 22 November, nearly a third of it had to be borrowed from the city of London.
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The decision in the same month to cut the proportion of the wool subsidy reservation for Calais from a half to a quarter pushed Prince Henry's patience to the limit, for he had assumed the role of champion of the garrison. Within the next fortnight matters came to a head. A council
meeting at Westminster led to a row over the allocation of resources, and on 11 December Tiptoft either resigned or was dismissed from the treasury. He had already sent letters to the customs collectors telling them to send their receipts to the exchequer rather than directly to Calais, but the king, probably urged on by the prince, rather than appointing a new treasurer, issued letters under his signet countermanding Tipftoft's instructions.
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Parliament had already been summoned to Bristol, perhaps to escape the pressure of the London mercantile and stapler communities, but on 18 December the venue was switched to Westminster. Three days later Arundel resigned the chancellorship. Once again the king did not appoint a replacement but kept the great seal with him for almost a month, during which writs were sealed at his oral instruction.
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Against the background of this unusual hiatus, a power struggle was played out for control of the crown's executive and resources. The first indication of its outcome came on 6 January 1410, with the appointment as treasurer of the prince's supporter Henry Lord Scrope of Masham, but not until 19 January was the prince's ascendancy confirmed when the king was obliged to countermand the signet letters he had sent to the customs collectors in early December and to place the great seal in the custody of John Wakering, keeper of the rolls of chancery.
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It took another twelve days for a new chancellor to be appointed, during which time parliament met (on 27 January). The choice of Thomas Beaufort as chancellor four days later marked the definitive collapse of Archbishop Arundel's administration, and the parliament that followed served as midwife to Prince Henry's assumption of power.