Does James I Deserve his Reputation as a Financially Inept Monarch?

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Noor Nanji L62PAM

Does James I Deserve his Reputation as a Financially Inept Monarch?

        James Is financial position within three years of coming to the throne was enough to secure his reputation as a financially inept monarch. The scale of his unbridled extravagance and generosity had accumulated him a debt of £816,000 by this point, and as royal spending continued to rise dramatically, one financial crisis gave way to another and it began to emerge that this ruinous lavishness would have serious implications both on the country’s economy as well as the King’s reputation. The annual expenditure incurred by Queen Elizabeth was immediately extended by James to cover his extremely conspicuous spending at court and on fees and pensions to courtiers, prompting Henry IV of France to hail him as ‘the wisest fool in Christendom’. There can be no doubt that James’ financial handlings opened up fundamental and permanent fractures in the already creaking structure of English public finances. Yet the truth in these charges implicit in the image of him as financially inept cannot be concluded without a closer examination of why exactly he failed in placing the Crown’s finances on a firmer footing and, for that matter, whether or not the financial problems encountered by James were indeed his own making, due to incompetence and extravagance.

        James’ carefree extravagance led him to have already accumulated a debt of £816,000 by 1606, despite the astute warning issued to him by the Archbishop of York, that ‘he would exhaust the treasure of the kingdom’, should this recklessness continue. On his arrival into England from Scotland, James recognised the country’s comparative wealth, and thus his ensuing spending spree, viewed particularly critically by contemporaries because much of his bounty was directed towards the hated Scots. Similarly, royal patronage, especially that extorted by his particular favourites, Robert Carr and George Villiers, swallowed up more royal revenue, as did expenditure on the royal household, which doubled by 1610. Attempts to restrain the King’s extravagance, such as Salisbury’s publication of the 1608 ‘Book of Bounty’ to prohibit the Crown’s major gifts such as land, hence lowering the expectations of courtiers, failed because James simply offered monetary endowments instead. Here, James’ financial incompetence is clear, as it contributed to the failure of attempts made in his reign to undertake the crucial reform of royal finances. These lavish grants of money, office and lands persisted thereafter for the most part of his reign, and although extravagance was not unusual for a European monarch at this time, Salisbury warned that James’ excessiveness would become a ‘major cause of royal indebtness’. Indeed, as these profligate habits became engrained in the Jacobean court, a burden of debt was soon established, and in this way we can see that with regards to reckless extravagance, James did deserve his reputation as a financially inept monarch.

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        The financial expedients introduced by James to ensure short-term gains for the royal income led to many of the constitutional crises of the early Stuart dynasty. The monarch was expected to ‘live of his own’, that is, on his ordinary revenue, and at the beginning of James’ reign, the most important source of obtaining this revenue was by the regal lands. However, James failed to maximise his income from the land because, as the financial situation intensified, successive Lord Treasurers saw the sale of land as being the quickest and easiest way to raise money, so that by the ...

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