The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [183]
Finally – and this was an urgent necessity – the King had to overhaul the royal finances. He began by passing several Acts of Resumption revoking grants and pensions made by Henry VI, though never without lists of exemptions in order to preserve his policy of conciliation. This, naturally, caused some hardship, but Edward had decided on his priorities. He then purged the royal household of numerous Lancastrian officials, replacing them with men of his own affinity. He even tried to close Eton College, but Bishop Wayneflete persuaded him not to.
At the beginning of Edward’s reign the Crown’s annual expenditure was £50,000. The royal income barely covered that, and the King was sometimes unable to cover his costs. Later in 1461 he gained possession of the estates of Henry VI, including the income from the duchy of Lancaster, which, together with the income from his own Yorkist inheritance and from a great number of confiscated Lancastrian properties, brought him an additional income of around £30,000 a year. Much of this, however, was swallowed up in 1461 by grants and rewards to his loyal supporters, and until 1465 Edward had to live carefully. In that year Parliament granted him the revenues from customs duties at English ports for life, which brought him an extra £25,000 a year, a figure that would later increase as the trade depression lifted.
Edward IV had some talent for business and finance, and could also be ruthless. As his position became more secure, he demanded of his wealthier subjects forced loans known as ‘benevolences’, and even outright gifts. These were, needless to say, unpopular measures, but their end result was that the Crown, for the first time in decades, became solvent, an extraordinary achievement in the Middle Ages.
One of the King’s priorities in his early years on the throne was to repay the debts owed by the Crown to London merchants and Italian banks. Henry VI’s reputation for not repaying loans had resulted in him being unable to obtain any further credit. Edward IV had no intention of allowing the same thing to happen again, and by the end of his reign had repaid debts totalling £97,000. To do this, he had tightened controls on royal expenditure, streamlined the administration of the Crown’s finances, and made corrupt practices difficult. He appointed professional receivers and surveyors to manage the Crown’s estates, abandoning the inefficient and unwieldy system by which they had been administered under his predecessor. Estate officials were made accountable to the Chamber, the financial department of the royal household, instead of to the Exchequer, which meant there was less delay before the King received the revenues due to him, while discrepancies could be spotted early. It was not long before the Chamber replaced the Exchequer as the chief financial department of state.
In 1467 the King promised in Parliament to ‘live of his own’ without borrowing, and not to levy burdensome taxes unless it was for ‘great and urgent causes’, such as the defence of the realm. During the 1460s Parliament voted the King a total of £93,000, and most of this was spent on putting down rebellions. From 1463 Edward became heavily involved in the wool trade for his own profit, exporting thousands of sacks of wool and woollen cloth; over the years the venture proved highly successful and enabled him to pay off his debts and also provide employment for many people.
Mancini commented that, ‘though not rapacious of other men’s goods, [Edward] was yet so eager