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Problems in Jacobean Administration: Was Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, A Reformer?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Linda Levy Peck
Linda Levy Peck
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Extract

Complaints about corrupt administrative practices were endemic to the Tudor-Stuart state. During the reign of James I, however, the issue of corruption was transformed from a staple of political discourse to an issue which not only aggravated administrative problems but also undermined the crown's very legitimacy. With the impeachment in 1621 of James' lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, for accepting bribes while holding judicial office, parliament forged for itself a weapon capable not only of rooting out corruption but unpopular government ministers as well. When administrative reform was successfully undertaken by Charles I, it came too late to resurrect the credit of the court or to restore that identification of monarch and subjects which Elizabeth had brought to its apogee only decades before. Yet the problem posed by Jacobean corruption is complex. Many of the practices for which the Jacobean court stood condemned were characteristic of the early modern state, and energetic attempts to reform the administrative apparatus were, in fact, undertaken throughout the reign. What then differentiates Jacobean administration from that of Elizabeth or the Georges and what caused the critical failure of reform? Answers to these questions may be suggested by taking a close look at the findings and fate of several investigations undertaken by one reform-minded official.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1976 , pp. 831 - 858
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 I should like to thank Professors J. H. Hexter and Joel Hurstfield, Peter Clark, Duncan Foley, Robert Hajdu, and Lamar Hill who read this article at earlier stages of revision and gave me the benefit of their very helpful comments.

2 Hurstfield, Joel, ‘Political Corruption in Modern England: The Historian's Problem’, History LII (1967), 16–34Google Scholar; For an analysis of early modern government cf. Aylmer, G. E., The King's Servants: The Civil Servants of Charles I, 1625–1642 (New York, 1961).Google Scholar Cf. also Hoselitz, Bert F., ‘Performance Levels and Bureaucratic Structures’ in Heidenheimer, Arnold (ed.), Political Corruption (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

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4 Neale, Sir John, ‘The Elizabethan Political Scene’, Essays in Elizabethan History (London, 1958), p. 84.Google Scholar

5 Kenny, R. W., Elizabeth's Admiral: The Political Career of Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, 1536–1624 (Baltimore, 1970), p. 302Google Scholar. The Protectorate tracts which have shaped 7 Northampton's reputation include Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (London, 1650)Google Scholar and Wilson, Arthur, The History of Great Britain being the life and reign of King James the first (London, 1653).Google Scholar

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9 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fos. 123V-124, Northampton to Robert Carr, Viscount, Rochester. Carr was created earl of Somerset in November 1613, but for convenience will be referred to here as Rochester, his title during most of the period that Northampton was in correspondence with him.

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11 I have more fully described Northampton's patronage of experts in Chapter III, ‘The Scholars’, and Chapter IV, ‘The Merchants’, of’ Patronage, Policy and Reform at the Court of James I: The Career of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1973).

12 HMC Mar and Kellie, I, 58–9Google Scholar, Northampton to the earl of Mar, 1 Jan 1609.

13 Foster, Elizabeth Read (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament, 1610 (2 vols. New Haven, 1966), II, 42.Google Scholar

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15 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fos. 2–3. Jul. F III contains the testimony given before the 1608 naval commission. These depositions have now been published in McGowan, A. P., The Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 1608 and 1618, Navy Records Society, CXVI (London, 1971).Google Scholar

16 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 2v.

17 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 2v.

18 Cf. B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 2.

19 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 1.

20 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 1. Northampton directed that Captain [Thomas] Norris, Hugh Merritt, one of the master attendants, and John Clyfton, purser, serve as advisors to Cotton during the inquiry. Prof. Joel Hurstfield has made the significant suggestion that factional struggle within the naval administration may also have contributed to the movement for naval reform during James’ reign. Certainly accusations of corruption against the chief naval officers, particularly Sir John Trevor and Sir Robert Mansell, by lower officers and ex-navy personnel remained constant throughout the period. Yet whatever role faction did play in prompting the investigations, the findings of the commission of 1618 confirmed those of Northampton's commission ten years before. For an analysis of the work of the 1618commission cf. Michael Young, ‘Sir John Coke (1563–1644)’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation Harvard, 1971). Thomas Norris (transcribed incorrectly by McGowan as Harris), who had served both as a captain and purser in the navy, later became surveyor of the navy and served on the naval commission of 1618. A friend of Sir John Coke, he had written to him in 1603 to complain about the state of the navy: ‘To say truth the whole body is so corrupted as there is no sound part almost from the head to the foot; the great men feed on the less and enforce them to steal both for themselves and their commanders.’ Quoted in Oppenheim, Royal Navy, pp. 195, 193. Oppenheim dates the navy's decline from 1596, p. 189.

21 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 148.

22 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fos. 15, 26; Mansell wrote to Northampton trying to explain away this testimony by claiming it was all a misunderstanding, fos. 219–219V.

23 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 98.

24 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 84.

25 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 298V

26 Northampton's introduction, B.M. Royal MSS 18 xxxiv, contains his marginal corrections and signature. P.R.O. S.P. 14, XLI, I, the formal report of the commission, is bound together with an analytical draft of the report in Cotton's hand: S.P. 14, XLI, 2. B.M. Add. MSS 9334 contains a draft of Cotton's report corrected by Northampton.

27 B.M. Royal MSS 18A xxxiv, fo. 4; B.M. Add. MSS 9334, fo. 24. Although Cotton drew up the formal report of the commission, it is clear that he and Northampton worked closely together on it. Cotton referred to the report as the ‘Lord Privy Seal's Large Book’, P.R.O. S.P. 14, XLI, 2, fo. I; B.M. Add. MSS 9334 contains Northampton's corrections of the commissions's report: in the section ‘ Government’, Northampton has inserted ‘no office to be sold henceforth for money’, fo. 20.

28 B.M. Add. MSS 9334, fo. 33.

29 B.M. Add. MSS 9334.

30 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 113, Northampton to Rochester (1613); P.R.O.S.P. 14, LXXIV, 36, Northampton to Rochester (24 July 1613).

31 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXX, 55, Northampton to Rochester (20 Aug.), 1612. He also pointed out that the profits of the office were small because the subjects clamoured against these exactions.

32 B.M. Add. MSS 9334; P.R.O. S.P. 14, XLI, 2. This same distinction was made by a later royal reformer, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who would have limited purchase to routine offices and barred it completely from the departments of justice, finance, administration and defence. Aylmer, , The King's Servants, p. 238Google Scholar. Cotton made clear the importance of merit in choosing men for naval offices:’ The charge is great requiring skill, and… cannot be discharged (by persons ignorant) by formality or bravery.’ He urged the king to prefer ‘men of moderate affections, and mature judgement, before other threadbare fortunes utterly unable to maintain their part without spoil of the king's treasure…’. While emphasizing merit and disapproving of purchase as a means of gaining office, Cotton nonetheless stressed the importance of men of property holding office to prevent peculation. B.M. Add. MSS 9334, fo. 20.

33 For a discussion of the sale of offices in this period, cf. Swart, K. W., Sale of Offices in the Seventeenth Century (The Hague, 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Aylmer, , The King's Servants, pp. 225–39.Google Scholar

34 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus B IV, fo. 100v.

35 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fos. 154–155V.

36 MacLagen, Michael, ‘Genealogy and Heraldry in in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, English Historical Scholarship, ed. Fox, Levi (London, 1956), pp. 31–48Google Scholar; Wager, Sir Anthony, Heralds of England (London, 1967), pp. 199–262.Google Scholar

37 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C 1, fo. 428, written by Northampton (undated).

38 Sir John Dodderidge, ‘A consideration of the office and duty of an herald in England drawn out of sundry observations by John Dodderidge the King's Solicitor-General at the instance of Henry Earl of Northampton in August, 1605.’ Cam. Univ. Lib. MSS Dd. 3. 86; Dodderidge's tract exists in part in Hearne, Thomas, A Collection of Curious Discourses (London, 1775), I, 163–7Google Scholar: Bolton, Edmund, Elements of Armories (London, 1610)Google Scholar, cf. also Bolton's letter to Cotton, 19 July 1610, B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. C III, fo. 28; William Smith, ‘A brief discourse of the causes of discord among the officers of arms and of the great abuses committed by painters’, Folger Library MSS v. a. 157, composed for Northampton about 1606. Francis Thynne,’ A Discourse of the Duty and Office of an Herald of Arms’, in Hearne, , A Collection of Curious Discourses, I, 139–62Google Scholar. Although Thynne's patron is not directly identified, reference to ‘your honourable brother, the Duke of Norfolk’, points conclusively to Northampton, 1, 147: Thynne was asked by Northampton to draw up a paper on heraldry on Christmas Eve 1604, but, troubled by gout, was unable to write his discourse until 3 Mar. 1605. I, 139. He had already provided Northampton with information no other subjects, particularly the Lord Wardenship of the Cinq Ports. 1, 162; B.M. Add. MSS 12514, fos. 46–47V.

39 Thynne, , ‘Herald’, Curious Discourses, I, 141, 148Google Scholar. The table Thynne refers to is probably S.P. 14, XLIV, 76, 77. It is described in Cal. S.P. Dom. 1603–1610, p. 505 (April ? 1609), as ‘Synoptical table prepared for the Earl of Northampton, one of the Commissioners exercising the office of Earl Marshall, showing the reasons of decay of officers-at-arms, and offering suggestions for their remedy’. If it is by Thynne, it is mistakenly calandared, since it must predate 3 Mar. 1605.

40 Thynne, , ‘Herald’, Curious Discourses, I, 150Google Scholar; Wagner, , Heralds of England, pp. 99, 236.Google Scholar

41 Thynne, , ‘Herald’, Curious Discourses, I, 148.Google Scholar

42 P.R.O. S.P. 14, XLIV, 77. Northampton was attentive to these suggestions for reform - next to the suggestion that the grant of Edward VI for the privileges of the heralds be renewed, he reminded himself to ‘inquire for this grant of Edward VI’.

43 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C I, fo. 432V; fos. 428–449; ‘Certain rules to be prescribed and ever observed for the reformation of all abuses and corruptions that have crept into the office of Arms and for prevention of all means which may bring in the like hereafter’ written entirely in Northampton's own hand.

44 B.M. Cotton Titus C I, fo. 432V.

45 B.M. Cotton Titus C I, fo. 433.

46 Northampton uses an image in this passage that is similar to that of the Augean stables but somewhat more esoteric. Caci stabulum refers to the stable of Cacus, the giant who stole Hercules’ cattle and stabled them in his cave, which, reeking with blood and untouched by the sun, was decorated with the decaying heads of his victims. Aeneid, Book 8, lines 190ff. I am grateful to Professor Ruth Passweg of the Brooklyn College Classics Department for this reference.

47 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C I, fo. 428V, fo. 430V. This idea of withdrawing all grants of gentility bestowed since 1568 was put forward in 1615 as a money-making proposal. Unless the arms had belonged to the family, the recipient was to be charged for them, the sum to be dependent on his reputation and means: ‘for some will be by this means drawn to £100 or £200 a piece, whereas others not to £40 which would be to his Majesty's loss if a constant rate were ascertained to all’. B.M. Add. MSS 12453, fo. 3.

48 B.M. Cotton Titus C I, fo. 430V.

49 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXI, 97.

50 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXIII, 65.

51 Dietz, Frederick C., English Public Finance, 1558–1641 (New York, 1932), p. 148Google Scholar. Van Erde, Katherine S., ‘The Jacobean Baronets: An Issue Between King and Parliament’, Journal of Modern History, XXXIII (1961), 139.Google Scholar

52 Newton, A. P., ‘The Establishment of the Great Farm of the English Customs’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., I (1918), 129–56. Hereafter cited as Newton, ‘Great Farm’.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Newton, , ‘Great Farm’, TRHS, 4th ser., I (1918), 146.Google Scholar

54 Newton, , ‘Great Farm’, TRHS, 4th ser., I (1918), 155.Google Scholar

55 Newton, , ‘Great Farm’, TRHS, 4th ser., I (1918), 155Google Scholar; Ashton, Robert, ‘Revenue Farming under the Early Stuarts’, Economic History Revue, 2nd ser., VIII (1955–1956), 310–22Google Scholar. ‘The chief utility of the system of customs farming soon ceased to be… the real or imaginary advantages of certainty in the revenue, and was rather to be found in the regularity and efficiency with which the farmers were able to meet the royal demands for loans, p. 311.

56 Dietz, , English Public Finance, 1558–1641, p. 332.Google Scholar

57 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXI, 3, Northampton to the king, 8 Oct. 1612; Dietz, , English Public Finance, 1558–1641, p. 154Google Scholar, errs in citing Dorset as the ‘late Lord Treasurer’, who berated Swinnerton. In the context of the letter it is apparent that Northampton is referring to the end of the second patent in December 1611, when the rent was raised from £120,000 to £136,000, and his reference within the same paragraph to the ‘little Lord’ makes it certainly Salisbury. Northampton went on to note that Salisbury mitigated the increase by newly including within the Great Farm the Scottish custom and license of beer.

58 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fos. 84–84.V. Northampton to the king (June 1612-Aug. 1612), Arthur Ingram received £200 as did John Wolstonholme and Richard Carmarthan; Sir William Ryder received £140, the rest was divided among the waiters and searchers in London and the outports.

59 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 84.

60 Newton, , ‘Great Farm’, TRHS, 4th ser., I (1918), 153.Google Scholar

61 Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune (Oxford, 1973), p. 15.Google Scholar

62 HMC Sackville, I, 283.Google Scholar

63 HMC Sackville, I, 288.Google Scholar

64 HMC Sackville, I, 288–289.Google Scholar

65 HMC Sackville, I, 291–293.Google Scholar

66 HMC Sackville, I, 293.Google Scholar

67 HMC Sackville, I, 294Google Scholar. Cranfield claimed they also wished to prevent the king from securing the loan from the City because the customs would be used as collateral and the farmers’ practices might be discovered.

68 HMC Sackville, I, 295Google Scholar; Quoted in Prestwich, Cranfield: Politics and Profits under the Early Stuarts, p. 117.Google Scholar

69 HMC Sackville, I, 296.Google Scholar Cranfield calculated Swinnerton's offer of a £100,000 fine as good as £105,000 because it was to be paid before hand.

70 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXI, 3, 8 Oct. 1612.

71 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXI, 3, 8 Oct. 1612. Three days later, Northampton and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere wrote a more formal letter to the king, in a less hyperbolic style, in which the defects of the medium were set forth.

72 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXI, 5 Northampton to Rochester (8 Oct. 1612).

73 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXI, 18, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and Northampton to the king, 11 Oct. 1612. Spedding, James, The Works of Francis Bacon (New York, 1968), IV, 337Google Scholar, says that this letter was composed by Bacon, the solicitor-general who had been appointed to inquire into the legal aspects of the customs farms. This opinion was upheld in Chancery in June 1613, and the profits of the wine farm then sequestered. HMC Sackville, I, 306.Google Scholar

74 Dietz, , English Public Finance, 1558–1641, p. 346.Google Scholar

75 In several different papers. Cranfield gave the profit variously as £15,194, and £15,224; the farmers claimed their yearly profit was £9,473, but the addition of several omitted items brought that up to £12,310. HMC Sackville, I, 301Google Scholar. Figures have been rounded off to the nearest £.

76 HMC Sackville, I, 301–303Google Scholar. Cranfield gathered information from an employee of the wine farmers as to the management charges of the farm when Swinnerton held it. These had come to £471.

77 HMC Sackville, I, 305–306.Google Scholar

78 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 134 (undated; before April 1613).

79 Elton, G. R., The Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge, 1962), p. 261.Google Scholar

80 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXI, 43, 1 Feb. 1610–11, ‘To the Lord Privy Seal, Notes touching our office.’ Reynolds to Francis Mills; S.P. 14, XXXII, 38, 5 May 1608.

81 Jones, W.J., ‘Ellesmere and Politics, 1603–1607’, Early Stuart Studies, ed. Reinmuth, Howard S. Jr., (Minneapolis, 1970), pp. 57–9Google Scholar. Ellesmere believed, according to Jones, that the Lord Chancellor had a duty which justified refusal to apply the Great Seal. When Bacon took on the post, he rejected this view.

82 P.R.O. P.S.O. 3, Ind. 6744, no. 44, Nov. 1607.

83 P.R.O. P.S.O. 3, Ind. 6745, May 1615.

84 P.R.O. P.S.O. 3, Ind. 6745, Jan, 1614, Apr. 1614, Apr. 1612; May 1612.

85 P.R.O. P.S.O. 3, Ind. 6745, Apr. 1611, Sept. 1613, Mar. 1610.

86 B.M. Royal MSS 18A xxxiv, fo. 5V.

87 Ibid., fo. 7V.

88 B.M. Add. MSS 9334, fo. 19.

89 Oppenheim, , Royal Navy, p. 190.Google Scholar

90 Ibid. p. 203.

91 Ibid. p. 204.

92 Goodman, Godfrey, The Court of James I (2 vols. London, 1839), I, 53.Google Scholar

93 B.M. Cotton MSS Jul. F III, fo. 1.

94 Cat. S.P. Venetian, 1607–1610, p. 290. (Marc Antonio Carrer to the Doge, 25 June 1609.)

95 Oppenheim, , Royal Navy, p. 194Google Scholar. HMC Downshire, IV, 31Google Scholar, Sir John Throckmorton to William Trumbull, 2 Feb. 1613:’ There is a new commission for the reformation of all deceits and abuses of the navy.’

96 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXV, 13, 18 Nov. 1613.

97 Wagner, , Heralds of England, pp. 232, 236, 238–9.Google Scholar

98 ‘Advertisements of a Loyal Subject to his Gracious Sovereign drawn from the Observation of the People's Speeches’, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts…, ed. Scott, Walter (13 vols. London, 1809–1815), II, 144–8.Google Scholar

99 Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965), pp. 72–6.Google Scholar

100 Ibid. Quoted p. 76.

101 Ibid. pp. 92–3.

102 Mayes, C. R.. ‘The Sale of Peerages in Early Stuart England’, Journal of Modern History, XXIX, no. 1 (03. 1957), pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

103 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXIV, 36, Northampton to Rochester (24 July 1613).

104 HMC Sackville, I, 308Google Scholar. Swinnerton did receive the sweet wine farm as consolation, and he sold the sweet wine farm in the outports to Cranfield. Dietz, , English Public Finance, 1558–1641, p. 347Google Scholar. Cranfield's profit from his investigation of the customs farm is not evidence of collusion with Swinnerton, but of the combination of profit and reform typical of the early modern minister who in the absence of salary supported himself by living off the royal bounty.

105 In 1621 Cranfield estimated that even this lease gave the farmers a profit of £9288. Prestwich, , Cranfield, p. 118.Google Scholar

106 Dietz, , English Public Finance, 7558–7641, p. 333.Google Scholar

107 Prestwich, , Cranfield, p. 120.Google Scholar

108 P.R.O. S.P. 14, LXXIV, 36, Northampton to Rochester (24 July 1613). Northampton told Rochester that Cranfield would discuss the office with him in person. In the same letter, referring to the final details still being resolved on the wine farm he noted:’ No man can put it into a better trim than Sir Lionel Cranfield’

109 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 84V.

110 MacCaffrey, Wallace, ‘Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Polities’, Elizabethan Government and Society, Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, ed. Bindoff, S. T., Hurstfield, J., and Williams, C.H. (London, 1961), pp. 95–126.Google Scholar Other important works on Tudor-Stuart patronage are Sir John Neale, ‘The Elizabethan Political Scene’, Essays in Elizabethan History; Aylmer, The King's Servants.

111 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 155.

112 For a recent description of Frances Howard's divorce and the Overbury murder scandal, see White, Beatrice, Cast of Ravens (London, 1965).Google Scholar

113 Cf. for instance his comment to Rochester about a minor office in the Duchy of Lancaster: ‘For my part I know neither of the competitors, but finding that the world expected grace to one of them from you which is a kind of engagement and that the matter in your absence is laid in sleep, I presume to tell your Lordship’ to stir in it again… But this to yourself alone whose beams I would not have to be eclipsed…’ B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 88 (1612–13).

114 HMC, Salisbury, XXI, 280–1. Although this is marked (1610?), it is more likely to date from before 14 Mar. 1608, when Northampton was granted the farm with a rent to the king of one-quarter the revenue.

115 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fo. 77V. The ‘old treasurer’ referred to in this letter, in which Northampton also cites his eight years of service, is the earl of Dorset.

116 B.M. Cotton MSS Titus C VI, fos. 122–122V, Northampton to Rochester