16 - Taxes and other Financial Impositions

Summary

As was shown above, John of Northwold’s abbacy began with severe financial difficulties. These were compounded by the burden of royal, papal and clerical taxation. His abbacy coincided with the steady and unrelenting increase in the financial demands made by the king on his subjects. Edward, besides being a great legislator and administrator, was a warrior, and his own resources were quite inadequate to meet the costs of his campaigns against the Welsh and Scots, and the French and their allies. Borrowing was his main resource, but to repay his debts he had to rely on his subjects. His demands for money fell especially heavily on the church, and St Edmunds, as an exceptionally wealthy institution, suffered accordingly. Moreover, the abbey, like many other important ecclesiastical bodies, was involved in public finance in other ways: occasionally it was used as a repository for the proceeds of taxation, and the prior and other monks sometimes served as deputy collectors.

The second continuator of the Bury chronicle had a close interest in taxation and other financial impositions, and especially with their effect on the abbey. Scarcely a year passes without a notice of some tax or imposition, usually with exact details and often accompanied by an indignant comment. But it is clear that the chronicler’s indignation was by no means only because of financial burdens placed on the abbey. He was at least equally angry at those intrusions by royal officials into the exempt Liberty of the banleuca which the exactions prompted. The chronicler’s anxiety about the financial burden that the abbey was made to bear and his zealous regard for its Liberty would have been typical of his fellow monks and, indeed, of all great property and franchise holders.

Unfortunately, St Edmunds’ financial history is obscure in this, as in other, periods. Its financial arrangements were extremely complicated. For example, we often know about only part of a fiscal transaction – its ramifications are hidden from view. While further research in the abbey’s registers and the public records may throw more light on the subject, a basic outline of the situation under Abbot John is given here, drawn from more easily accessible sources and set in the context of the relevant historical background.