To what extent was James I responsible for his financial problems?

James Collinson L6 12

James I was the first Stuart king of England. He came to England with no experience of running a country as big as England. He had not been brought up so he would be ready to rule a country like England. It could be said he would have very little idea about the finances of a country as large as England. When James came to the English throne he had a debt of just £2000 however in 1606 just 3 years after his accession he had amassed a debt of £700,000. Whichever way James is looked at, the conclusion can be drawn that he was extravagant with money and took a no expense spared policy on state occasions. For example he spent £20,000 on his coronation.

This was the first problem for James. He came to power in 1603 following Elizabeth’s death. As a result of this he had to organize her funeral, which would have cost any monarch a lot of money (but not as much as he spent on it). In the end this cost him £17,000. He then had to organize his coronation. James was in no mood to make this a cheap occasion. It was a once in lifetime celebration and it needed to be good. This cost him £20,000. He had inherited these ‘problems’ but made them more expensive by being extravagant and the fact he had over rated the English throne made him spend even more on them.

Although Elizabeth was dead she was still having an effect on the things James had to do. She had starved the nobles of patronage and they did not want to go another monarchs reign without getting patronage. Luckily James liked to give patronage, he took the policy of ‘if you accept me to be your King I must give you something in return i.e. patronage. It was understandable for James to give a certain amount of patronage but often he was giving away whole forests to certain nobles who became known as his favorites e.g. George Villiers. These were forests, which brought in a lot of extra revenue and when the King had given them away he was unlikely to get the revenue from them. Patronage needed to be given out in small does but James went overboard with it and gave out too much. It got to the stage where the value of his gifts went down and therefore he would have to give out bigger and better gifts.

The gifts would have become worth less because of the high rate of inflation in England at this time. Not only did this make the gifts worth less but it also made the subsidies by parliament worth less. Parliament had failed to alter the amount given in one subsidy and therefore James had to ask for two subsidies instead of one. Neither of these problems were James’ fault. They simply added to his financial problems and made them harder to deal with. For example if the subsidy’s value had been sorted out he would have got more money per subsidy ...

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He needed these subsidies to fight wars. However he also, without the permission of parliament, used them to look after his family. His family was much bigger than Elizabeth’s (she had no children or husband). He had three children – Henry, Charles and Elizabeth and also a wife. He, his wife and heir to the throne, Henry, all had to have a court. This was at great expense to him. What made it worse was that Henry was more demanding than James himself. He therefore wanted a court of the highest caliber. Elizabeth needed to be married off to a man. Money would be paid to the man to thank him for taking the lady. James spent £90,000 altogether on Elizabeth’s wedding. This included the actual ceremony and the money paid to her husband, Frederick of the Palatinate. The queen had to have a court so that she could entertain all her friends and set up marriages between nobles and ladies. It was not James’ fault for having a family but if he had been less extravagant on their wardrobes and their general expenses this could have been controlled.

However the very nobles the queen was entertaining were ripping off the king. They were under assessing the crown lands and therefore they could keep more of the money for themselves. For example one noble said that in 1560 in Elizabeth’s reign there lands were worth £48 and then in 1626 they were worth just £12. This was in a period of inflation! The system that meant this money came into James was very out of date. It was not fit for a time when there was inflation and when the crown was very short of money. The king had such things known as feudal rights. This gave him rights to wardship, purveyance, monopolies and impositions. They would have all brought money in but James failed to use them all properly. This was unfortunate, as they would have brought in some much needed money to the crown funds. It needed to be updated. However much it needed to be updated, it was hard. This was shown by the attempted introduction of the great contract. It said that James would give up his feudal dues in return for £200,000 per annum of parliamentary taxation. It failed because of many reasons: People thought that £200,000 was not going to be enough, Salisbury (Lord Treasurer) made no reference from where the money was going to come from and a whole host of other reasons. In conclusion to this the financial system could not be changed for the better because of the bone idleness of James and the disinterest of Parliament.

Parliament was disinterested in the James’ financial problems because they said the monarch should “live of his own”. They were ignorant of James’ problems and would not listen to the problems James had with inflation and that the value of the subsidies was dropping due to this inflation. If parliament had been more bothered about the problems James faced then it would have made James’ and their jobs easier. As shown with the great contract they were unwilling to even think about change. This was an unusual situation because they would have gained out of change as much as James would have done. For example the Great Contract would have benefited them if they had used the feudal rights to their full potential.

Although James was a peace lover he could not avoid wars that Elizabeth had started. As soon as he could he ended the war with Spain through the Treaty of London, which would, if carried on, have ‘wasted’ lots of money. He also became the mediator of Europe. This was because he was part catholic (through his mother) and part protestant (the way he was brought up). The wars James fought were not numerous and the most major was in Ireland. As a result this cannot really be thought of as a financial problem but more as a burden than he must always be ready for a war with Sapin i.e. have money available. This should have become less of a problem towards the end of his reign as he had a catholic daughter-in-law and a protestant son-in-law but it did not and at the conclusion of his reign he was a war with Span yet again.

James did his best to stop his financing getting in to a bad situation by employing Lord Treasurers and stopping wars, but in conclusion has to b said James was simply too extravagant for the English throne at this time. It did not help that he did not have the best relationship with parliament (although better than his son – Charles I) and therefore they were unwilling to bail him out when he was in financial trouble. The general problem with inflation did not help James as well but a good monarch would have learnt to deal with this in the best way possible something that James did not seem capable of doing.

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Natalie Stanley

8th of Jan 2013

** While the answer is certainly along the right lines, it needs much more detail and supporting evidence. Moreover, the answer needs to be further stretched from an analytical perspective. It needs to be more rigorous in its assessment and allow factors to lead the content of each paragraph. As no dates are provided in the question, the student needs to offer a broad overview with carefully selected specifics which are well supported with evidence as suggested above.

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