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II A collection of several speeches and treatises of the late Lord Treasurer Cecil, and of several observations of the Lords of the Council given to King James concerning his estate and revenue in the years 1608, 1609 and 1610

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2009

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Camden Fourth Series , Volume 34: Camden Miscellany Vol. XXIX , July 1987 , pp. 245 - 317
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Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1987

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References

1 For a full description see the List of Manuscripts below pp. 269–72. For the Petyt MSS, Catalogue of MSS in the Library of the Honorable Society of the Inner Temple (Oxford, 1972), ed. Davies, J. Conway, i. 44–46, ii. 894–5.Google Scholar

2 British Library Add. MS 11402, fos. 103–104v; Add. MS 10038, fos. 23–25V.

3 ‘It only resteth now that you labour all you can do to do that you think best to the repairing of our estate’. HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 266–7.Google Scholar

4 Hatfield House, Cecil MS 140 fos. 226–227; HMC Portland ii. 22.Google Scholar

5 HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 182–4Google Scholar. The draft is dated ‘[1609]’ by the editor, but the reference to the customs farmers' loan of £120,000 suggests that it belongs to 1607. For the great loan of that year see Ashton, R., ‘Deficit Finance in the reign of James I’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., x (1957–8), 26Google Scholar, and Ashton, , ‘Revenue Farming under the Early Stuarts’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., viii (1956), 315n.Google Scholar, HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 267–8. See also the very similar draft letter to James I from the privy council, corrected by Salisbury, urging him to moderate his Christmas expenses in December 1604: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xvi. 388–9.Google Scholar

6 The Book of Bounty is printed in Commons Debates 1621, eds. Notestein, W., Relf, F. H. and Simpson, H. (7 vols., New Haven, 1935), vii. 491–6Google Scholar. Sir Julius Caesar's drafts, apparently with some corrections by Salisbury, are BL, Lansdowne MS 151, fos. 63–65: see also BL, Add. MS 10038, fo. 3, Add. MS 11402, fo. 146.

7 A selection of the many close parallels can be found in the footnotes to the texts themselves. For the inclusion of Salisbury's speech of 15 February 1610 amongst the documents of the ‘Collection’ see below p. 272. It is not reproduced here since it is printed in Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ed. Foster, Elizabeth Read (2 vols., New Haven, 1966), ii. 9–30.Google Scholar

8 The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. McClure, N. E. (2 vols., American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1939), i. 362.Google Scholar

9 Robert Johnson (described in the British Museum catalogue as ‘the romance writer’ to distinguish him from others of the same name) as R. J., ‘A remembrance of the Honors due to … Robert Earle of Salisbury, Lord Treasurer of England. Imprinted at London for John Wright and to be sold in his shop neere Christ Church doore.’

10 Lady Theodosia Cecil was the wife of Salisbury's nephew Sir Edward Cecil. The close friendship between his son William, the future second earl, and Sir Edward was a source of great pleasure to Salisbury, who took pains to foster it. Letters of John Chamberlain, i. 309Google Scholar. ‘The Character of Robart Earle of Salesburye’ was printed by Nicoll, Allardyce, The Works of Cyril Tourneur (1929), pp. 259–62Google Scholar. For a critical view of this attribution and a discussion of the surviving mss. see Tannenbaum, S. A., ‘A Tourneur Mystification’, Modern Language Notes, xlvii (1932), 141–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is also a laudatory poem ‘Upon the death of Robert Cecil’ by Benjamin Hinton of Trinity College, which praises his work as Chancellor of Cambridge. Ballads from Manuscripts, ed. Morfill, W. R. (2 vols., The Ballad Society, 1873), ii. 297–8.Google Scholar

11 For the close relationship between Salisbury and Cope, ironically christened ‘the Oracle in the Strand’, Letters of John Chamberlain, i. 177, 210–11, 215–6, 229, 258, 261, 336, 370–1Google Scholar. The copy of the ‘Apology’ presented to Sir Julius Caesar, endorsed ‘1 July 1612’ is BL, Lansdowne MS 151/38. It was printed by Gutch, J., Collectanea Curiosa (2 vols. Oxford, 1781), i. 119–33.Google Scholar

12 Levy, F. J., ‘How Information Spread among the Gentry, 1550–1640’, Journal of British Studies, xxi (1980), 20–24.Google Scholar

13 Shaaber, M. S., Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England 1476–1622 (Philadelphia, 1926), pp. 52–5, 110–12Google Scholar. For the team of scriveners employed by the collector Ralph Starkey see Cust, Richard, ‘News and Politics in Early 17th Century England’, p. 64Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Cust for his kindness in letting me see this article before its appearance in Past and Present (112) 1986.Google Scholar

14 For the manuscripts and text of Salisbury's speeches see Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 9–30, 273–4Google Scholar, and Parliamentary Debates in 1610, ed. Gardiner, S. R., (Camden Society 1st ser. lxxxi, 1862), 154–62Google Scholar. HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 218Google Scholar. Holmes, C., ‘The County Community in Stuart Historiography’, Jnl. of British Studies, xix (1980), 54–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Shaaber, , pp. 73–4Google Scholar. For the copy among the Petyt MSS see Davies, , Catalogue of Mss. in … the Inner Temple, i. 16.Google Scholar

16 Richard Cust has drawn attention to the deliberate leaking of confidential information by privy councillors between 1626 and 1628, in attempts to elicit support for their own views: ‘News and Politics’ p. 72. The circulation of the ‘Collection’ provides an earlier instance of the same process.

17 Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 153–4Google Scholar. Shaaber, , pp. 53–4Google Scholar: HMC Third Report p. 212Google Scholar, (original now in Osborn Collection Yale, available on B. L. microfilm RP 45).

18 HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 267.Google Scholar

19 Ashton, , ‘Deficit Finance in the Reign of James I’, pp. 19–20Google Scholar: Prestwich, Menna, Lionel Cranfield: Politics and profits under the Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1966), pp. 33–4.Google Scholar

20 See below p. 317. For the entails see below, fn. 69.

21 Letters of King James VI and I, ed. Akrigg, G. P. V. (Berkeley, 1984), 260–2, 360–1Google Scholar: Wormald, Jenny, ‘James VI and I: Two Kings or One?’, History, lxviii (1983), 198.Google Scholar

22 See below pp. 286, 291. Speaking in the Lords on 3 May 1610, on the bill prohibiting pluralism and non-residence, Salisbury observed ‘I love not to look upon anything that H.8 did, for he was the child of lust and man of iniquity’. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. 231–2.Google Scholar

23 See below p. 285. He had written in 1602, ‘All the receipts are so short of the issue, as my hairs stand upright to think of it’. Letters of Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew, ed. Maclean, J. (Camden 1st ser.lxxxviii, 1864), 147.Google Scholar

24 Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 4–7.Google Scholar

25 BL, Add. MS 22591: Cope's ‘Apology’ in Gutch, i. 132–133. ‘He lost the love of your people only for your sake and for your service … Finding your wants, he yielded up his office; and finding he could not relieve them, he yielded up his life’.

26 See below p. 305: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi, 23–4.Google Scholar

27 See below p. 288. Salisbury collapsed from exhaustion in January 1611 after the end of the parliamentary session. Sir Theodore Mayerne diagnosed the fatal tumour, already extensive, in August 1611. Akrigg, G. P. V., Jacobean Pageant, or the Court of King James I (1962), p. 103.Google Scholar

28 HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 170Google Scholar: The Letters of John Chamberlain, i. 293.Google Scholar

29 Allegra Woodworth, ‘Purveyance for the Royal Household in the reign of Queen Elizabeth’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society xxxv, (Philadephia, 1945), 16–17Google Scholar: Public Record Office Lord Steward's Department (hereafter L, S.) 280, fos. 82–82v.

30 See below pp. 316–17: Woodworth, p. 9.

31 PRO, LS 13/280, 194, 260: Hill, L. M., ‘Sir Julius Caesar's Journal of Salisbury's First Two Months and Twenty Days as Lord Treasurer, 1608’, BIHR, xlv (1972), 317.Google Scholar

32 See below p. 282. Graham Haslam, ‘An Administrative Study of the Duchy of Cornwall 1500–1650’, (Ph.D. Louisiana State University 1975) vii–xxi. I am grateful to Dr Haslam, archivist to the Duchy of Cornwall Office, for his kindness in making available to me both his thesis and the documents cited below.

33 HMC Third Report p. 196Google Scholar: Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 3rd ser. ed. SirEllis, Henry (4 vols., 1846), iv. 163–4Google Scholar: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 39, 84, 270–71Google Scholar: ibid. xxiv. 176: Sharpe, Kevin, Sir Robert Cotton (Oxford, 1979), p. 120.Google Scholar

34 For Henry's household, Duchy of Cornwall Office Bound Papers G/m/3, and his impressive patent roll, D.C.O. box 28 sections 1–2. The accounts of Henry's household are PRO, E 101 (Special Commissions of the Exchequer) 433, nos. 8–13, 15, 18, and E 351, 1797–1805, 1811. For Sir George More see HMC Seventh Report, pp. 669–70Google Scholar: for the regulations for the treasurer of Henry's household, The Loseley MSS, ed. Kempe, A. J. (1835), 365–8Google Scholar. For a general discussion see Seddon, P. R., ‘Household Reforms in the reign of James I’, BIHR, liii (1980), 49Google Scholar, and Strong, Roy, Henry Prince of Wales and England's Lost Renaissance (1986) pp. 26–42Google Scholar. HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 300, 326.Google Scholar

35 See below pp. 287, 300, 305–6. A dotard tree was too old to yield useful timber. For the woods, see Cope's ‘Apology’ pp. 123, 129–30: PRO, CREST (Crown Estates) 40/19A (a vol. of Caesar's papers), 10: PRO.E 178 (Special Commissions and Returns of the Exchequer arranged by county), esp, Hants (2097) Oxon (4326) Herefordshire (3888). The best survey for one county is Pettit, P.A.J., The Royal Forests of Northamptonshire 1558–1714, (Northants. Record Society, 1968), 131–135Google Scholar. For Salisbury's anger with ‘those that have destroyed his majesty's woods’, BL Add. MS 36767, fo. 196v.

36 The Rates of Marchandise as they are set down … section 2 pp. 1–2, 28 07 6 JasGoogle Scholar. I, (STC 7691). See below p. 286: Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 105Google Scholar, Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 36, 54, 157–8Google Scholar. Cope's ‘Apology’, 131–2: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 284.Google Scholar

37 Hill, , ‘Sir Julius Caesar's Journal of Salisbury's First Two Months and Twenty Days as Lord Treasurer 1608’, p. 313Google Scholar. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 301Google Scholar. Salisbury later groups many of these devices under the title of casualties, listing them as concealments, defective titles, old debts, escheats of land or goods upon attainder (for treason, murder, manslaughter or felony), treasure trove, lands purchased by aliens, benefits of recusants, fines and seizures. See below pp. 305–7.

38 See below pp. 290–91. Salisbury's attitude was influenced by the fact that the judges had reported to the privy council in November 1604 that it was probably unlawful to delegate the execution of the penal statutes to individuals; PRO, State Papers Domestic Jas I 1016.

39 Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. p. xiGoogle Scholar: Harriss, G. L., ‘Medieval Doctrines in the Debates on Supply, 1610–1629’, in Faction and Parliament, ed. Sharpe, Kevin (Oxford, 1978), p. 81.Google Scholar

40 Commons Journals i, 242, 245, 995Google Scholar: CSP Venetian 1603–1607, p. 165Google Scholar. The grounds put forward were ‘In no time any subsidy but in time of wars’, and the fact that the subsidies of 1601 were still being collected.

41 See below pp. 275–77.

42 The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, ed. Willson, D. H., (New York, reprinted 1961), p. 84.Google Scholar

43 See below pp. 280, 290.

44 For Dorset's speech, Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 371–5.Google Scholar

45 For James' frustration with the English parliament, Wormald ‘James VI and I’, pp. 194–7, 201. There is a very marked difference of tone between James' speech to parliament on 22 March 1604, with its reference to ‘this so famous and honorable an Assembly’ and that of 7 July 1604, ‘I will not thank where I think no thanks are due’. (Cms. Jnl. i. 144, PRO, SP Dom. Jas. I 8/93).

46 See below, pp. 312–13.

47 See below p. 280.

48 See below pp. 286, 288. Salisbury had already expounded this view in his preface to the new impositions of 1608, PRO, Patent Roll 6 Jas. I, printed in Select Statutes and other Constitutional Documents … Elizabeth and James I, ed. Prothero, G. W. (reprinted Oxford, 1954) 353–5Google Scholar. Harriss, , ‘Medieval Doctrines in the debates on Supply 1610–1629’, pp. 83–4.Google Scholar

49 See below p. 293. The emergence of this list may be traced through the papers of Sir Julius Caesar, esp. BL, Lansdowne MS 165, fos. in, (23 projects), 119, (35 projects), BL, Add. MS 10038, fos. 15, 19, (a draft catalogue of 105 new projects) fo. 29 (a further catalogue of 40 ‘projects of gain’ endorsed ‘A breviat of my vacation care’), fos. 309–310 (a list of projects), fo. 327 (a list of 22 projects). These documents all fall between 1607 and 1609.

50 See below pp. 295–96 and footnote 55. The lack of support by privy councillors is evident in their minimal participation in the 1610 debates, especially in the Lords: Proceedings in Parliament 1610, vol. i. passim.

51 Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 32, ‘To pray another conference for farther light in particulars’.

52 BL, Lansdowne MS 165, fos. 292–93: Stuart Royal Proclamations 1603–1625, eds. James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), 232–3. The 1609 plague is noticeable in the plague deaths recorded in the parish of St Margaret's Westminster; the figures for the months July to November amounted to 41, in contrast to 22 over the same period in 1608 and only 10 in 1610. Memorials of St. Margaret's Westminster comprising the Parish Registers 1539–1660, ed. Burke, A. M. (1914).Google Scholar

53 Letters of John Chamberlain, i. 294.Google Scholar

54 See below pp. 309–10.

55 For two rather different views of Northampton's role in 1610, see Peck, Linda Levy, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the court of James I (1982), pp. 200–201Google Scholar, and Sharpe, , Sir Robert Cotton, pp. 120–2, 159–61Google Scholar. For Ellesmere see Jones, W.J., ‘Ellesmerein Polities’, in Early Stuart Studies, ed. Reinmuth, H. S. (Minneapolis, 1970), pp. 35–7Google Scholar: Knafla, L. A., Law and Politics in Early Jacobean England: The Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 89–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 The Works of Francis Bacon: The Life and Letters, ed. Spedding, J. (14 vols., 1857–74), xi. 313, 370–71.Google Scholar

57 See above p. 266: fn. 49 and fn. 82. See above, p. 266: fn. 49 and fn. 82. BL, Add. MS 10038, fos. 308–11, ‘The present state of the Exchequer … 15 September 1608’, is a remarkable draft by Caesar covering the enhancement of revenue and abatement of expenses with many points identical to those in the treatises.

58 HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 265–6.Google Scholar

59 This volume appears to have been part of the collection of Sir Richard Tichborne, 2nd baronet (d. 1657): Catalogue of the Stowe MSS in the British Museum (2 vols., 1895), i. 111.Google Scholar

60 These volumes formed part of the extensive collection of the Cheshire M.P. Sir Richard Grosvenor, which included copies of Cope's ‘Apology’ and of his tract on the Merchant Adventurers. HMC Third Report pp. 212–4Google Scholar: Cust, Richard and Lake, Peter G., ‘Sir Richard Grosvenor and the Rhetoric of Magistracy’, BIHR, liv (1981), 41–51.Google Scholar

61 Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 9–27.Google Scholar

62 Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 153–4.Google Scholar

63 ibid. pp. 154–62.

64 For the correct date of 16 July 1605 see p. 247.

65 The reference is to Solomon, one of Salisbury's favourite sources of quotation and by implication a flattering reference to James himself. Probably Proverbs 28 v. 16 (Bishops Bible translation).

66 The king's ‘present disposition to moderate his giving’ is confirmed by Salisbury's letter of 20 April 1605 to Windebanke, PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 13/75. Early in July 1605 the king was aware of the tenor of the forthcoming letter from the privy council, writing to Salisbury in his own hand that ‘it were high time that the council's request were sent unto me for staying the current of suits’. Hatfield, Cecil MS 134/132: Letters of King James VI and I, p. 259.Google Scholar

67 Five interlocking commissions, each headed by the same group of senior privy councillors, were appointed early in 1605 to compound with lessees of woods to supply the king's household with wood and charcoal; to let recusants' lands; to let leases of exchequer and duchy lands; to compound for defective titles; and for assart lands. Observing that they would ‘bring treasure to his majesty's coffers’ Coke prepared the five commissions for the king's signature in April 1605. PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 12/82: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xvii. 145Google Scholar. For a preliminary investigation of the numerous commissions issued under I, James, Aylmer, G. E., ‘Commissions for Crown Revenues and Land Sales in the early tyth century’, BIHR, xlvi (1973), 208–9.Google Scholar

68 Papers attempting to arrive at an overview of the king's financial situation between Michaelmas 1604 and summer 1605 are in BL, Lansdowne MS 171, fos. 208–216 and PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 14/59–60.

69 On 4 July 1604 a bill ‘proceeding from the king's majesty's wisdom, and care of his royal progeny, for the perpetual and indissoluble annexing of certain of his majesty's possessions inseparably to him and his royal posterity kings and queens of England’, was introduced into the Lords. It was disputed in the Commons and left to sleep, but by 25 March 1605 the privy council had prepared a new entail, which was delivered to Lord Treasurer Dorset. In July 1605 Salisbury wrote that the new book of entail was to be ‘annexed to the crown at the next parliament’, but nothing was done until May 1609, when a full enrolment of all the crown lands was written out. House of Lords Record Office, Main Papers (Supplementary), 1 Dec. 1601–13 May 1606, fo. 29: BL, Add. MS 11402, fo. 98: HMC Salisbury xvii. 296Google Scholar: PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 45/25–31, and PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 46, (A book of lands annexed to the crown 8 May 1609).

70 Parliament assembled on ig March 1604 and was prorogued on 7 July 1604, then re-assembled on 5 November 1605, after two further prorogations in December 1604 and July 1605, agreed on by the privy council because of the embarrassment of ‘empty coffers’. Stuart Royal Proclamations 1603–1625, pp. 103–4: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xvii. 340, 345.Google Scholar

71 Searches for defective titles began in Elizabeth's reign and the activities of the patentees William Typper and his partner Sir Edward Dyer were probably the ‘great distraction and scandal’. There were repeated complaints against Typper in the Commons between 1604 and 1606; Bishop Goodman in retrospect singled out his activities as the greatest single abuse of James' reign. See Commons Debates in 1621, vii. 350–5Google Scholar: Dmary oj Robert Bouyer, pp. 106–7, 132–4, 147–8Google Scholar: Goodman, G., The Court of King James I, ed. J.S. Brewer, (2 vols. 1839), ii. 33Google Scholar. Another patentee who was to become notorious was just increasing his efforts on behalf of the commissioners for assart lands. Otho Nicholson was granted his receivership of moneys arising from compositions on 26 June 1605 and the first payments into the exchequer arc dated 1 July. CSPD 1603–10, p. 226Google Scholar: PRO, E 351/404. Assarts were particularly sensitive, for in spring 1604 a bill to confirm assart lands in the possessors and owners thereof, forestalling attempts to reclaim them for the crown, had gone through the Commons, though not without dispute. The king still resented this move in 1610: Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. 88n, ii. 102Google Scholar. For the resentment aroused by increasingly heavy purveyance see Croft, Pauline, ‘Parliament, Purveyance and the City of London 1589–1608’, Parliamentary History, iv (1985), 9–34Google Scholar. For woods see pp. 259–60.

72 For examples of the incessant attempts of individuals to profit in these ways see HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xvii. 190, 194–5, 218, 259, 266, 273, 280, 298, 348.Google Scholar

73 Among the ‘just creditors’ were those who had lent money on privy seals in 1604, and probably more worrying because more influential, the city of London. Chamberlain in November 1606 noted the contrast between the king's attitude to London, whose loan was repaid only in part, and his willingness ‘though monie go low in the exchequer’ to take on the considerable private debts of Montgomery, Hay and Haddington: Letters of John Chamberlain, i. 238Google Scholar. PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 17/86, ‘The Book of Loan’, and Ashton, R., The Crown and the Money Market 1603–1640 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 114–7.Google Scholar

74 ‘Honour’ was a genuine preoccupation of James I and his privy councillors were always conscious of his sensitivities on the subject: Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 20–21Google Scholar. For a general discussion see Mervyn James, ‘English Politics and the Concept of Honour 1485–1642’, Past and Present supplement 3, (1978).Google Scholar

75 For the resentment of Elizabeth's niggardliness and the political dangers thereof see Richard Martin's speech to the king in May 1603, printed in The Progresses … of King James I, ed. J. Nichols (4 vols., 1828), i * 128–132Google Scholar. Salisbury on 15 February 1610 said of bounty, ‘It is a disease that few complained of in the late queen's days … bounty is inseparable from a king’. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 23n.Google Scholar

76 See pp. 262–63.

77 cf. James' message to the Commons on 19 March 1606, ‘Lastlie he letteth you know that you have enabled him to keepe his woorde which is and ever shalbe to him most deare, namely you have given him meanes to repay such greate sommes as uppon his Missives … he was constrained to borrow’. Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 86.Google Scholar

78 The following is a list of names, not signatures. For the presence among them of Northumberland, see p. 247.

79 For the need to persuade the king not to prorogue again, and for the significance of the prince's creation, see pp. 266–67.

80 For Salisbury's desire to account to parliament for his stewardship, following Dorset's example, see p. 263.

81 Dorset died on 19 April 1608. For his account of the revenues in. 1606, Diary of Robert Bouyer, pp. 371–5.Google Scholar

82 On Salisbury's accession to the lord treasurership, the exchequer was galvanized into action, a process vividly portrayed in Sir Julius Caesar's journal (Hill, pp. 311–327). At the same time, the computation of debts, revenues, ordinary and extraordinary expenses and the compilation of balance sheets was attended to with much greater energy than previously. The papers of Sir Julius Caesar in BL, Lansdowne MS 151, fos. 66–434 provide a detailed series of balances from 1608 onwards and all the points mentioned here are covered. Particularly notable is BL, Lansdowne MS 151, fos. 66–70, endorsed ‘A copy of my lord treasurer's note of the present estate of the king's receipt 14 September 1608’. BL, Lansdowne MS 164, fo. 391 is the balance taken after Dorset's death, with a note by Caesar that it was subscribed by all the members of the privy council and delivered into the hands of the earl of Salisbury on 3 May 1608. BL, Lansdowne MS 164, fos. 424–426, endorsed by Caesar ‘My lord treasurer's questions 14 Sept. 1608 touching the state of the king's receipt’ gives instructions for Salisbury's preferred methods of setting out the issues and receipts, ‘For otherwise all these collections keep us in blindness and uncertainty’. A further collection of balances and financial settlements for 1608 is in PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 38/31–50. Gardiner printed PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 40/48 (Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. xix–xxGoogle Scholar), a full balance giving estimates, but it is not a fair copy, being scribbled over with corrections. PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 52/6, an account of the king's debts, annual ordinary issues and extraordinaries, 8 Jan. 1608/9, is a fair copy and may have been the one shown to James I. For other household expenses, A Declaration of the Diet and Particular Fare of King Charles I when Duke of York, Society of Antiquaries, 1802, (printed from a ms. in the possession of Sir William Foulis of Ingleby, a descendant of Prince Henry's cofferer.)

83 There is some variation between the manuscripts here, with Inner Temple, Petyt MS 538/151 and BL. Harley MS 2207 reading ‘The lands sold in Queen Mary's time’.

84 Working papers drawn up by Caesar covering these points are in BL, Lansdowne MS 165, fo. 126 endorsed ‘A memorial of notes, 15 Jan 1609’ [10]. The points set out here are also covered in some financial detail by Salisbury in his speech of 15 February 1610: Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 4–7Google Scholar, and Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 16–23Google Scholar. Salisbury told the Lords that he saw the balance of the king's receipts every Saturday in the exchequer: Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. 7.Google Scholar

85 Salisbury tactfully uses the style proclaimed by James on 20 Oct. 1604, despite the judges' ruling against the adoption of the name of Great Britain. Stuart Royal Proclamations 1603–25, pp. 94–98Google Scholar: Lords Journal ii. 287–8.Google Scholar

86 For the traditional dualism between ordinary and extraordinary revenues, Ashton, ‘Deficit Finance in the Reign of James I’, p. 17.Google Scholar

87 The blanks, which are present in all the manuscripts, suggest that the original from which the first copies were made was Salisbury's own, with the blanks left to be filled in when he had the final totals from Caesar and other exchequer officials. The presentation copy made for James himself must have been complete, but inaccessible to Cope or whoever compiled the ‘Collection’. I owe this illuminating suggestion to Conrad Russell.

88 PRO, SP Dom. Jas I 52/6a (a balance of 9 January 1609–10) shows the total extraordinary revenues of the crown since 1606 falling short of the debts still owing.

89 cf. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 15Google Scholar. ‘Nor any prince can be safe and happy that is not able to offend his enemy upon just cause … foreign amity depends upon treaties and … all treaties arc subject to contingent causes’. For the precarious European situation in 1609–10 see Gardiner, S. R., A History of England … 1603–1642 (10 vols., 1884), ii. 92–8.Google Scholar

90 cf. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 23Google Scholar, ‘For … bounty is unseparable from this King, who as he is a man, cannot live without desires … so as he is a king if he did not give, I should think his subjects lived in a miserable climate’.

91 In the Lords conference with the Commons on 20 February 1606, it was remarked ‘This the most golden time … at the death of queen Elizabeth most men would have given half they had’. Cms. Jnl. i. 271.Google Scholar

92 The English crown had long been the poorest of the three great monarchies of Europe. Lander, J.R., Government and Community: England 1450–1509 (1980), p. 101Google Scholar. Salisbury here mirrors the increasing envy of Dutch prosperity, expressed in the Commons in 1604, which was beginning to permeate English economic thought and is most strikingly expressed by the merchant pamphleteerist John Keymer, who badgered the privy council on such issues. HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 229Google Scholar: Cms Jnl. i. 218–20Google Scholar: Original Papers regarding trade in England and abroad drawn up by John Keymer, ed. Prichard, M. F. Lloyd, (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

93 The gentlemen of the privy chamber had risen from 18 to 48 shortly after James' accession and he had two hundred gentlemen extraordinary. Willson, D. H., King James VI and I (1956), p. 190.Google Scholar

94 See p. 255, For Elizabeth's debts at her death, Thomas, David, ‘Financial and Administrative developments’, in Before the English Civil War, ed. Howard Tomlinson (1983). pp. i 103–4.Google Scholar

95 For Salisbury's awareness that only James' direct intervention, rather than that of ‘second hands’, would be effective in curbing expenditure, cf. his letter to Caesar in Sept. 1608: ‘How miserable a case it is, if he expect help from us who have no power without his own absolute resolution to discourage all hopes for a while from all men, of taking anything from him until he is in better estate’. PRO, LS 13/280, fo. 100.

96 Comitia (assembly) is meaningless here, but castella (reservoir) is used in Vitruvius bk. 8 as the opposite of canalis (canal) and fits the sense.

97 See pp. 260–261.

98 The wisdom of this conclusion is underlined by the ‘clamour’ aroused by Cranfield's efforts: Prestwich, 204–11, 228–32.

99 ‘In a dry place’. NRO, Finch Hatton MS 44, Bodleian Rawlinson MS D 922 and BL, Hargrave MS 225 all read ‘four million and a half pounds’. For the myth of Henry VII's great treasure, Wolffe, B. P., ‘Henry VII's Land Revenues and Chamber Finance’, EHR, lxxix (1964), 253–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100 Inhesive, ‘with the quality of inhering’—obsolete and rare, OED.

101 The works in particular attracted the attention of both Caesar and Salisbury. Since Elizabeth's death, expenditure had trebled: Seddon, ‘Household reforms in the reign of James I’, p. 52. Sending Salisbury a paper in August 1609, Caesar wrote, ‘You may see … herewith that the works for July amount to £3,000 within less than 40s. God be merciful unto us’. HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 116Google Scholar. For Salisbury's defence of James' lavish welcome to visiting princes and ambassadors see Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 21–2Google Scholar. Caesar estimated in 1608 that James had given away £60,000 to them: BL, Lansdowne 151, fo. 86.

102 See p. 260.

103 cf. ‘And for my particular I may say thus much that if sitting so near the storm and seeing it coming in the air, I should have suffered it to break … I were not worthy to carry this staff in my hand’. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 17–8.Google Scholar

104 ‘As the marigold turns to the sun’ and ‘Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace’.

105 NRO, Finch Hatton MS 44 and BL, Hargrave MS 225 insert here, ‘The next porcion of this treatise contains the arguments against .straining of your prerogative too far for levy of treasure and proves the necessity of calling a parliament’.

106 Ecclesiastes 3 vv. 1–3.

107 See p. 264.

108 ‘This nature itself denies, as the law forbids’.

109 ‘Mean and end’, and ‘Rather than suffer a vacuum, which Nature herself universally abhors’, cf. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. 71Google Scholar, ‘Water poured down softly, if infinitely be filled will last infinitely. If hastily, nothing will come out, because nature doth abhor that which she disliketh’.

110 cf. Richard Martin's 1603 Speech in Progresses … of King James I, i. pp. * 131–2.Google Scholar

111 In her last parliament Mary believed that in addition to the single subsidy voted to her, she had the assurance of a further one the following autumn, but after Elizabeth's accession, only one subsidy was voted to the new queen, with no mention of the one ‘owing’ to Mary. Loades, D. M., The Reign of Mary Tudor (1979), pp. 408–9Google Scholar. This seems to have entered parliamentary folklore: as one member remarked in the subsidy debate of 1604, ‘Never any subsidy in the beginning of a prince's reign but in queen Elizabeth's time, and that half forgiven’. Cms. Jnl. i. 242Google Scholar. The two subsidies voted to Elizabeth in 1601 were not completely collected until 1604, and the three subsidies of 1606 were regarded by Salisbury himself as unprecedented in time of peace. PRO, SP Dom. Jas 1 19/59.

112 Money had been raised on privy seals in summer 1604 as soon as it was evident that no supply would be forthcoming from parliament. On impositions, cf. Salisbury's comment, ‘Where the king hath imposed but a penny to his own necessary use, the shopkeeper will raise a shilling.’ Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 26. In 1608 he had been acutely aware of the possibility of foreign retaliation over impositions: Memorials of Affairs of Stale … from the original papers of … Sir Ralph Winwood, (3 vols., 1725), ii. 438, 473.Google Scholar

113 ‘Not an injury, but a loss’.

114 ‘Feel fearful without some cause of fear’, cf. In. 71. Speaking in the Lords of Sir John Swynnerton's project for farming the alienations office, Salisbury expressed his distaste for such ‘new projects’: ‘I never liked that the king should rent these things that are points of honour … I never liked to have such things farmed, no more than to have my daughter's virginity’. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. 59–60.Google Scholar

115 Salisbury departs from the usual Tudor view in taking so critical a view of Henry VIII. Wolsey is blamed in Hall's Chronicle and the king exonerated of all responsibility.

116 In the imaginary dialogue on the great contract, written by Sir Julius Caesar in August 1610, the character ‘A’ who expresses what appear to be Salisbury's views, stresses the possibilities of insurrection resulting from excessive taxation in very similar terms: Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 165, 172.Google Scholar

117 Cf. the Book of Bounty in Commons Debates 1621, vii. 495Google Scholar: and for Salisbury's distaste for the penal laws, Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 8, 16nGoogle Scholar. On 19 August 1610 the privy council established a commission of lawyers to reduce the penal laws into ‘one body of law that so the subject might as in one view distinctly see and know his duty in every several point’. BL, Add. MS 11402, fo. 160.

118 The unwillingness of the Commons to admit this distinction had been the crux of the debates over purveyance in 1606. Diary of Robert Bowyer, 122–4.Google Scholar

119 Once again this looks forward to the issues of 1621: see above p. 261.

120 ‘In an envious state there is greater room for suspicion than for debate’. For landowners' slowness and suspicion in compounding for unlicensed alienations, defective and concealed titles, thereby necessitating repeated government offers, Stuart Royal Proclamations 1603–25, pp. 197, 209, 213, 236.Google Scholar

121 See pp. 260–61.

122 See pp. 267–68.

123 7With a concern about one's own property’.

124 Probably a reference to Bate's case in 1606.

125 ‘A king whose understanding is not of metal but of crystal’, and ‘As little flowers they fell’, cf. ‘So great a scholar is the king … as he hath ingenium crystallinum and I but ingenium metallinum’. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i, 20Google Scholar. The long quotation is from Tacitus, Annals i .5, and should read correctly, Profferi libellum recitariquc iussit. Opes publicae continebantur, quantum civium sociorumque in armis, quot classes, regna, provinciae, tributa aut vectigalia, et necessitates ac largitiones. Quae cuncta sua manu perscripserat Augustus. ‘Tiberius ordered the document to be brought forward and read out. The resources of the state were in it, how many citizens and allies were under arms, and the register of fleets, dependent kingdoms, provinces, tribute or revenues, and of regular and bonus payments. All these Augustus had written out in his own hand’.

126 ‘It is a grave matter to be harmed by those of whom it is not legitimate to complain’. For a similar expression of frustration see Salisbury's letter to Caesar, 6 October 1609, ‘Having disbursed all we have, I am here only a bear baited, for that we have not’. BL, Add. MS 36767, fo. 266.

127 Cf. Salisbury's letter to James of 9 December 1610, ‘Your Majesty knows how often I have made my complaint that my tongue doth ever fail my heart when it is affected by joy or grief. HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 267.Google Scholar

128 Luke 10 vv. 38–42.

129 See p. 265.

130 ‘As often as we speak, so we are judged’.

131 Salisbury to the Lords, 14 February 1610, ‘live under his Majesty, tuto et commode’, and to the Commons on 15 February, ‘We to live under him, tuto et commode’, Proceedings in Parliament 1610, i. 8, ii. 27Google Scholar. The ‘other things’ may be those noted below, pp. 303–305.

132 There is a very full and elaborate balance showing the king's financial situation, dated 12 January 1609–10, in Hatfield Cecil MS 212 unfoliated, endorsed, ‘The King's estate at the parliament Anno 3 and what it now is’.

133 James' sincerity on the latter point is borne out by his refusal to defend Bacon and Mandeville in 1621: C. G. C. The, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (1974), pp. 103, 114–15.Google Scholar

134 ‘That is the task, this the labour’. Virgil, Aeneid VI. 129.Google Scholar

135 Correctly, Nee minor est virtus, quam quaerere, parta tueri. Ovid, Ars Amatoria ii. 13. ‘It is no less a virtue to guard your gains than to acquire them’.

136 ‘Outside the dice’.

137 This passage deliberately echoes James' own earlier views on bounty as set out in his Basilikon Doron: McIlwain, C. H., The Political Works of James I, (Harvard Political Classics, 1918) p. 42.Google Scholar

138 ‘Parsimony is too late, in the case of an estate’. See above p. 256.

139 See below pp. 303–307.

140 James made an initial effort to follow Salisbury's advice and was commended for his thrift later in January 1610: HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 196.Google Scholar

141 See pp. 24–5.

142 ‘Caesar ought to be feared, but loved more’: cf. ‘the King … may always walk between the fear and love of his subjects, nam decet Caesarem timeri at plus diligi’. Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 27Google Scholar. Salisbury explicitly contradicts Macchiavelli, The Prince ch. 17.

143 ‘With one accord’.

144 The same system was urged on James I by Raleigh, in ‘The Prerogative of Parliaments’, (The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh kt. ed. Thos. Birch, 2 vols., 1751), ii. 217Google Scholar, and implemented in the 1630's: Russell, Conrad, ‘Charles I's Financial Estimates for 1642’, BIHR, lviii (1985), 110.Google Scholar

145 The tactful allusion to those with less ‘means and abilities’ is to the Scots. A plan to allocate official pensions to the similarly impoverished Irish aristocracy formed part of ‘the Graces’ offered in 1628: Clarke, Aidan, The Old English in Ireland 1625–1642 (1966), pp. 52, 58.Google Scholar

146 ‘Our happiness was born and given to us at the same time’: cf. ‘such a king, in whom, beatitudo natura et nata et data est’, Proceedings in Parliament 1610, ii. 25.Google Scholar

147 Sec pp. 98–9.

148 ‘He ought to have it, but let no-one enquire from whence it comes’. Salisbury intended to set up a commission to deal with casualties: Cope's ‘Apology’, p. 124.Google Scholar

149 Numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 of the ten points offered on 24 Feb. 1610 attempt to combat these abuses: Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

150 ‘From another's loss’.

151 ‘Accordingly more or less’.

152 ‘So that sometimes even the people are left wondering that such a thing has been done, as if they themselves had not done it’. Cicero, Pro Murena 35.

153 ‘On constant men’.

154 ‘From the mouth’, i.e. verbally.

155 Salisbury pleads here for direct intervention by James on insinuations of corruption. The king on occasion was present at judicial or public discussion; in 1604 he participated in the judges' discussion on the jurisdiction of the council in the marches of Wales, and in May 1611 he took Prince Henry with him to hear a dispute between the officers of the Mint and the goldsmiths over accusations of the culling out of heavier gold coins. The Works of Francis Bacon vii, 569–611; Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History 3rd ser., iv. 165–6Google Scholar. The passage can be seen as looking forward to the revival of impeachment, in which the king played a critical role.

156 ‘That self-interested man’ the Greek adjective Latinized into a proper name.

157 See p. 267.

158 Correctly, Inveni earn latericiam relinquo marmoream, ‘I found [Rome] made of brick and left it marble’.

159 The suggestion follows Salisbury's own procedure when consulting merchants over the new impositions of 1608, and his consultations with them over the undervaluing of English currency. Parliamentary Debates in 1610, pp. 157–8Google Scholar: BL, Add. MS 11402, fo. 144v.

160 The two ambassadors recently recalled home were Sir Thomas Edmondes from Brussels in August 1609 and Sir George Carew from Paris in October 1609. Carew, an old friend of Salisbury's who had consulted with him extensively before leaving for France, had witnessed Sully's reconstruction of the finances of the French monarchy and on his return composed ‘A Relation of the State of France’, which he presented to James I. Sully's success in raising the royal revenues had been very great, but Carew's anxieties over the possible political consequences of ‘immoderate exactions’ exactly echoed Salisbury's own fears over fiscal feudalism. Birch, Thomas, An Historical View of the Negotiations between the Courts of England, France and Brussels from 1592 to 1617 (1749)Google Scholar, which prints Carew's ‘Relation’, pp. 415–528.

161 See fn. 131.

162 See p. 263.

163 BL, Lansdowne MS 165, fo. 125, ‘Debts owing by his Majesty 8 December 1610’, is endorsed with a large A. BL, Lansdowne MS 165, fo. 129, ‘Titles extraordinary not unlike to charge his Majesty's receipt 18 December 1610’, is endorsed D. Hatfield Cecil MS vol. 212 unfoliated, 17 December 1610, endorsed ‘C, this was the paper shewed the king’ by Salisbury. ‘B’ is written on the dorse of a document entitled ‘21 December 1610 What the prince had and what he now hath’. Hatfield, Cecil MS vol. 212 unfoliated.

164 For the barons of the exchequer, W. H. Bryson, The Equity Side of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 175–86. Caesar and Salisbury were respectively chancellor and treasurer of the exchequer.

165 Salisbury's despairing request for a binding and final Book of Bounty reflects the problems already visible earlier, see p. 249. Nothing could illustrate his problem more vividly than his own draft minute of 1609 authorizing grants contrary to the book, in tacit acknowledgment of James' refusal to abide by it; HMC Salisbury (Cecil) xxi. 60.Google Scholar

166 ‘As if permeating [everything]’.

167 ‘It is not the duty of a man who is falling to bring others to their feet’.

168 James' ignorance of the extent of his gifts is illustrated by the famous story of the heap of treasure displayed by Salisbury to the king, to bring home to him the value of a grant of £20,000 made to Carr: SirScott, Walter, The Secret History of the Court of James I (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1811) i. 233Google Scholar. Sir Thomas Lake, writing to Salisbury in January 1609, confirmed that the king had been unaware of the value of his grants of old debts. PRO, SP Dom Jas I 43/31.

169 Such balances had been drawn up regularly since James' accession. PRO, LS 13/280, fos. 1–26, fo. too. Caesar on 20 Dec. 1610 compared the financial year ending Michaelmas 44 Eliz. with Michaelmas 1609–1610, costing the difference as £156,542. BL, Lansdowne MS 165, fos. 149–50.

170 Luke 14 v.31.

171 ‘With its whole weight’.

172 ‘Both undertaking and carrying out the task’.

173 ‘Accordingly more or less’.

174 The principal officers of the household were Knollysand Wootton. Their slackness was notorious: in 1606 Caesar made an irritated note often superfluous household officials preferred by them. BL, Add. MS 10038, fo. 352.

175 ‘Who having eyes see from experience the origin itself’.