James came into England non-the wiser when it came to English systems and finance and he had the massive challenge of trying to repair all of the problems that Elizabeth had left to him.
In 1604, he ended the war with Spain and he should be able to financially handle the country. This should have been a big gain for James because war is a big cost for most countries because they have to pay for military, artillery and other expenses such as travel, food supplies etc. This should be a benefit because he has ended a war that had been going on for a few years and the amount of money that would have been spent during that period would have been significant.
To try to improve his income levels, he rented out his crownland (land he owned) and he imposed tax on importing and exporting goods. He increased tax on salt and liqueur. Salt especially was going to be increased because as this time everybody needed salt so that they could preserve meats such as pork, ham etc. This kept it eatable after a substantial amount of weeks and thus making it a frequent revenue earner. Salt was a substitute for our modern day fridge freezer.
England had very big produce of honey and milk; this was the main export in the country. Therefore, income would have been quite good and giving an adequate contribute to the country’s wealth.
To put everything into perspective, during the period of 1603 – 1608, James had more than doubled his debt from £400,000 up to £900,000. He had to put rent up in the country. Rent had gone up to £100,000 per year in the country and he sold a lot of his crownland, which made him a total of £445,000. After all of the money raising had came to a stand still, he was still £14,500 in debt because he was not paying rental tax. To also prosecute James of overspending, it had been clarified that he was spending at least £1,000,000 a year and the actual amount of debt bestowed to English crown in 1621 was £1,624,523 and even then it could not be acknowledged as a problem because the debtors resisted James’ requests. Moreover, the income was still falling short of the £1,000,000 mark, so it was getting no better for James and for the country. In 1610 it was declared that James I of England had the issue of compulsive expenditure. Nevertheless, in my opinion something should have been said to James at the very beginning of his reign by parliament that they were already in debt and he needed to try and get England back on their feet financially, instead of going around spending money as if it is going out of fashion.
The Great Contract was also created to try to establish a stable and social relationship between James and his parliament. James I came into England as a foreigner who had no idea on how England was being run and how anything was working financially and politically. James I, I think, under estimated his role as king of England because as said in a previous statement, he was after all James VI of Scotland as well and was new to England. Scotland was nothing more than a scrape on England financially and socially. Scotland was after all almost poverty stricken compared to England. James wanted to unite England Scotland and Ireland together. In 1603, it was the first time in 400 years that a Monarch has brought three kingdoms and fused them together into one political entity thus the United Kingdom was born. By 1606, James brought debate about the union between England and Scotland. James was being very ambitious and had a difficult project on his hands. Then by 1607, there were no borders between Ireland, Scotland, and England. All this was asking a bit much of the country and Parliament was not exactly thrilled about the idea. In addition, England was a very proud country and they did not want to have to combine with a new country. They wanted to be unique and be proud of their own nationality. Beside the point they were not fond at first about the idea of a Scotsman coming in as the new heir to throne, so they are definitely not going to welcome this idea with open arms. Moreover, because James is running the country to bankruptcy they are not going to be that thrilled with James himself never mind Scotland. Also, because he has debts to pay out, out of a possible £200,000 he has to give £120,000 to the government and he gets to keep £80,000. This will make the king more reliant on the government and this will then result in James having to work with parliament. This contract, I think will be more beneficial towards parliament because it will keep the money being spent by James down to a reasonable amount and not being forced to pay a fantastic amount of money back. There was also the fact that there was nothing for finance and the James wanted £300,000 instead of £200,000. All of these problems are going to drive the king and parliament further apart than they already are because they are not working together thus starting feuds and arguments between the two. A good quote said by James in S.J. Houston’s ‘James I’ is, “I know that this parliament hath been of great expectation, and so was that at my first coming. Then I knew not the laws and customs of this land. I was led by the old Counsellors that I found, which the old Queen had left; and, it may be, there was a misleading and misunderstanding between us, which bred an abruption.” This shows that James himself is admitting that may be there is a little bit of tension between himself and parliament and that they did not get off on the right foot but he is sort of blaming Queen Elizabeth I for his falling out with Parliament and England because he refers to her as “old Queen”, its almost as if he is saying that this whole situation had been bred due to the Queen not appointing a new set of Council members. This was said in 1621, so this could be an apology to parliament and that he is trying to get in good with parliament. It could also be because he has messed up and his popularity in Britain has significantly decreased he is trying to get Parliament back on his side so that he could possibly get his popularity starting to get up were it should be, quite high.
So from 1604 up until 1611, there has been problems from the word ‘go’. The Buckinghamshire Election Dispute with Sir Francis Goodwin caused a feud between parliament and the king because James did not handle the situation well enough and he could have resorted to a less serious method of dealing with it.
Barry Coward in his book, ‘The Stuart Age’ said, “James’ actions could have not caused a controversy. It could have been a less serious matter.” Coward believes that James could have handled the situation a lot smoother and not caused such an issue. The Union between Scotland and England, as said in a previous part of the essay, people and parliament were not that thrilled about a Scotsman coming onto the throne nevertheless combining the two countries. This was because England at this time was a very proud and stubborn country and they liked the idea of being in control. The Bates Case in 1606 caused a problem because James was trading spices and dried fruits with Turkey and John Bates challenged James because he thought it was unlawful. The problem was that because it was James’ court, King’s Court, it was full of his judges, and no one could challenge him until three years later. The Judges were in ruling with the king and James had an absolute rite and thus results in James beginning to rule as an Absolutist. James needed money to pay off debts bequeathed by Elizabeth I and so he could have a steady income. This caused a stir between parliament and the King. Finally, ‘The Great Contract’ was established, it did not work to the best it could of done because James was still wanting more money than he was getting and even more so he had to pay nearly three quarters of it to parliament to be put towards debts. But on the positive side, James and Parliament did come to some agreements like they came up with new titles such as Marquis and Baron and the nobles that were awarded these titles had to pay for the privilege of being a Baron or Marquis. Also they put up the rate of rent on crownlands because in the last 50 years the rate had stayed the same and this was not creating a satisfactory income for James, he also started to put a levvy on items that were being traded such as tobacco and potatoes, so this all meant that the taxes had been raised on economic activity.
In conclusion, the ‘Great Contract’ was significant in my opinion because it was established to create a solution to all the financial problems in England and also to create a stable and social relationship with the government and to raise James’ popularity with England. It did not work as planned because at the collapse of the contract England were in nearly twice as much debt as they were to start with and England’s estimation of James had declined because of his compulsive disorder of ecstatic expenditure nearly declaring England of bankruptcy. Moreover, I think that the most important aim of the contract was to unite parliament and James together but because of problems such as the Bates Case and uniting of England and Scotland and the fact that they could not come to any agreements financially or socially, this caused a ‘snapping’ between parliament and king, a push and pull between the two. So the Great contract was very significant and if it had worked it could have been successful but it did not work so therefore it was unsuccessful. Although a positive thing you could say was that it helped Parliament and James identify that James had a compulsive-spending problem and that parliament were not as to blame as they thought. They did after all warn him but did not tell him before it all started but because he was new to England he did not know England’s financial position and I think that they should have been more responsible and told him everything that was he needed to know about ruling such a powerful country as England and not let him find everything out for himself. In addition, the parliament was actually just as much to blame as James.
