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By Root 1152 0

practical power to local officeholders, who were expected to be representatives as well as leaders of their local community and who, for practical reasons, had to respond to wider local opinion. Policies which were potentially unpopular, or not in the immediate interests of local elites, might not be vigorously enforced: on receipt of administrative instructions local officeholders took decisions about what to push and what to leave alone; and institutions such as the Grand Jury and quarter sessions offered a platform for the expression of these local preferences. Sanctions existed to discipline officeholders, and were effective on individuals who might be quite anxious to retain their position, but the crown could not dismiss all its volunteers. A powerful man like the Earl of Bridgewater could bully and cajole, but there were evidently limits there too. Policies that were widely unpopular, such as expensive militia reform, created a level of foot-dragging and evasion that was difficult to deal with.

Problems with reform of the militia reveal these features of political life, and they were not the only controversial aspects of Caroline government in England. During the 1630s Charles’s government responded imaginatively to its financial problems. Frustrated at the experience of the 1620s, when parliaments had been productive of political argument rather than cash, Charles raised money by other means during the 1630s. Prerogative rights were exploited for their revenue potential – for example, in a concerted campaign to raise fines for encroachments on the ancient bounds of the royal forests, or in the granting of monopolies in return for payments or loans. In 1629 the Council began to impose fines on men worth more than £40 per annum (not a large sum) who had failed to acknowledge their ancient duty of presenting themselves for knighting at the coronation – a wheeze known as distraint of knighthood. Of course, showing imagination about fiscal solutions is not an easy route to popularity and there were significant signs of dissatisfaction. In some localities the resurrection of forest jurisdictions caused considerable local conflict and in Leicestershire the fines for distraint of knighthood raised very large sums from a large number of people. By 1635 £174,000 had been raised from 10,000 landowners. Similarly, fines imposed for enclosures of common land that led to depopulation, while laudable for their concern for the victims of economic change, were widely seen as a revenue device. Once again, in Leicestershire, they raised considerable sums of money and again the hostility seems to have attached above all to the Earl of Huntingdon.91 These were useful sums, but not a long-term solution: as the Venetian ambassador noted, fines were ‘false mines for obtaining money, because they are good for once only, and states are not maintained by such devices’.92 And this money came at a high price.

The most unpopular of these non-parliamentary revenues was ship money.93 This transformed a duty on port towns to supply ships for royal service into a payment to build them, and the payment was soon imposed on the whole country, not just in the ports. Like the militia reforms, then, this was an attempt to commute an established duty of service into a cash payment. Although it did not cause a tax rebellion it did cause widespread disquiet and there was a very public dispute about whether or not ship money was legal. In 1637 Charles wrote to the judges asking whether the monarch had the power to command the provision of ships in times of danger, to enforce payment and act as the sole judge of the danger. Five days later all twelve judges replied affirmatively. Their ruling was entered in the courts and publicized at assizes. The danger, of course, is that this procedure gives publicity to the doubts rather than the certainties, and we know that it led to informed debate among the Kentish gentry.94 Elsewhere, refusals continued.95

In Buckinghamshire the doubts were pressed further by John Hampden, who went to court. This was almost certainly