God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [238]
Levels of formal taxation were by pre-war standards extraordinarily high. The proportion of national wealth taxed and spent by the government seems to have doubled. Many of the means by which governments had tapped wealth before the war had now gone, or went uncollected (wardship, monopolies, forest fines, impositions, ship money and so on), and so formal taxation loomed particularly large. By the late 1620s one subsidy produced about £55,000. The parliamentary assessment reached that as a monthly figure.26 In particular counties, towns and villages this transformation was dramatic. Sussex paid a total of about £16,000 for parliamentary subsidies during the 1620s, and ship money had come to about £4,600 per annum for six years. The county seems to have paid £36,000 per annum for seventeen years, for the assessment alone: seven times as much as for ship money and vastly more than had been paid in the 1620s. To that burden would have to be added the excise and, for some people, sequestration (£9,500 was raised in Chichester rape in 1643 alone). John Everenden, a minor gentleman who had paid £3 for five subsidies in 1628, had to stump up £163 between 1643 and 1652. The 308 taxpayers in Rye in 1644 included all but the poorest. Formal national taxation was hugely more significant than in the years before 1640.27
Where military control was weak the picture might be even worse. Taxes might be claimed by both sides. Where a garrison could not feed itself from formal taxation soldiers might be forced, or choose, to live off the land, plundering or claiming free quarter from the local population. In the Midlands, an area with a patchwork of garrisons, and field armies regularly passing through, these problems of double taxation and informal exaction were very pronounced.28 In Cheshire, a county which saw constant military activity and insecure control over territory, plunder and free quarter imposed greater costs than taxation. Chits given in return for free quarter could only be redeemed from victors, of course, and frequently went unpaid. Certainly there is ample qualitative evidence of the incidence of both plunder and free quarter.29 In Warwickshire quarter and plunder was rarely less than half the level of formal taxation.30 These experiences varied over time as well as between regions. South Warwickshire saw the battle of Edgehill, grave pits and horrors, but this gave way to more routine irritations – horse theft, quarter, taxation, the demands of garrisons or of royalist convoys moving through on their way to the west.31
For those on the receiving end these were terrible costs, but there were clear incentives for armies to be restrained. John Fettiplace, acting for the parliamentary garrison at Cirencester in 1642, where the soldiers ‘were driven to exceeding straits, and ready to mutiny for want of pay’, seems to have secured contributions by negotiation, albeit through agreements that broke down subsequently. Such disputes could be pursued at law several years later.32 In general royalist armies subsisted, and were not defeated because they were less well-fed or less well-supplied, but they do seem to have resorted more often to informal exactions. Those with a bad record of payment could hope for little voluntary help. Goring’s cavalry troops were active throughout the winter of 1644–5 because they were well-fed, but it was at the expense of ruthless plunder and widespread resentment, for which they paid a considerable price the following year. Certainly, the reputation of Prince Rupert as ‘Prince Robber’ did the royalist cause no