Introduction Part 1

Introduction

The present instalment of Calendar carries the story of the financial administration of England up to the death of Charles II. In order to a final summary a few words of recapitulation are necessary.

The Commonwealth bequeathed to Restoration England a heavy legacy of debt. In the last year of the Commonwealth the income of the country, including the Army assessments of 70,000l. a month, amounted to only 1,118,539l. 13s. 1½d., that of Scotland to 143,682l. 11s. 11d. and that of Ireland to 207,790l.—or in all 1,536,841l. 5s. 0½d. for the three kingdoms, England, Scotland and Ireland.

As against this the expenditure (even after drastic retrenchments to the extent of over 137,493l. 11s. 6½d.) amounted to 2,161,054l. 13s. 9¾d. for England alone, and to 381,868l. 6s. 9d. for Scotland and 342,616l. 8s. 6d. for Ireland. There was thus a deficit on the English budget of 975,656l. 6s. 8¼d.; on the Scotch budget 238,215l. 14s. 10d. and on the Irish budget 134,826l. 8s. 8d. The total deficit for all three countries therefore was, nominally, 1,348,698l. 10s. 2¼d., but England contributed 11,400l. monthly to the pay of the English forces in Scotland and 8,000l. per month to the pay of the forces in Ireland. The total of these contributions (252,200l. per an.) is to be deducted from the total expenditure (as appearing twice over) and this deduction leaves a final total yearly deficit of 1,096,498l. 10s. 2¼d. on the complete Commonwealth budget.

This deficit was not characteristic of the last year merely of the Commonwealth period. It had become a normal feature of Commonwealth finance from the moment that the extraordinary sources of revenue (the sales of Crown and Church lands, Royalist sequestrations etc.) had come to an end. Through the closing days of Cromwell's life, therefore, and steadily onwards to the Restoration, there was a progressive accumulation of debt. By the middle of Feb., 1660, this debt had reached the total of 2,051,722l. 4s. 8½d., of which sum 690,112l. represented the debt to the Navy (in C.J., VIII, 243–4, the Navy debt is set out in full: its total is there stated at 699,720l. 8s. 9d.) and 865,651l. 12s. 10d. the debt to the Army in England, Scotland, Ireland, Jamaica and Flanders. The remainder of the debt represented anticipations (loans and advances etc.) on the Excise and so on.

The first task of the Restoration Government was to tackle this enormous annual deficit and this crushing debt—for such it was. The means to such an end were perfectly obvious. The bulk of the Army and a good portion of the Navy had to be reduced. This was at once taken in hand. But as a condition precedent to the disbandment the arrears had first to be paid, for the Commonwealth soldiers would have refused to be disbanded without such payment, and Monck told the City plainly that if the men were not paid their arrears they would take them by force. In order to provide for the disbandment the Convention Parliament voted:

(1) A three months' assessment of 70,000l. a month (12 Car. II, c. 2), out of which 90,000l. was assigned for the disbandment.

(2) A Poll Act (12 Car. II, c. 9 and 10) estimated to yield 210,000l.

(3) A two months' assessment of 70,000l. a month (12 Car. II, c. 20).

(4) Arrears of two Commonwealth assessments (12 Car. II, c. 26).

(5) A six months' assessment of 70,000l. per month (12 Car. II, c. 27 and 28).

No statement of the receipts from this series of taxes is at present possible for the simple reason that the money was not paid into the Exchequer, but into the Chamber of London and was thence issued not by the ordinary Exchequer officials, but by special Commissioners. No account, therefore, of the transaction was ever declared. (fn. 1) But the earlier half of the course of the payment of the arrears concurrently with the disbandment can be traced in the Commons' Journals (VIII, 176, 189, 196) and the newspapers (Mercurius Politicus, Nos. 41–48, 50, 54, and Baker's Chronicle, p. 750). By the 6th Nov., 1660, there had been disbanded in England 22 garrisons, 15 Regiments of Foot, and four Regiments of Horse, and six ships had been paid off; and in Scotland one garrison, two Regiments of Foot, one Regiment of Horse, the total arrears paid being 250,402l. 18s. 5¼d. On that date there still remained to be disbanded and paid off in England eleven garrisons, three Regiments of Foot, nine Regiments of Horse and the Life Guard and 19 ships, and in Scotland four Regiments of Foot and one Regiment and one Troop of Horse: and the arrears still owing to them amounted to 435,416l. 10s. 4d. By the 3rd of Dec., 1660, the total arrears paid (for land and sea) was 325,544l. 1s. 6d. and the arrears then still pending and unpaid were 325,389l. 7s. 10d. It was to meet this balance that the Parliament voted the lastnamed of the above series of assessments, viz. the Six Months' assessment, estimated to produce 420,000l. There is no further statement extant in the shape of a declared account referring to the remainder of the transaction or to the transaction as a whole. But the inference is a safe one that the remainder of the arrear standing out as unpaid on the 3rd Dec., 1660 (viz. 325,389l. 7s. 10d.), was fairly liquidated by the Six Months' Assessment.

Putting the most favourable conclusion possible on this transaction, we may say that by the end of 1661 the payment of arrears to the land and sea Forces amounted to about 650,000l.

It will at once strike the reader that this disbandment and this liquidation of arrears had only been partial. At the Restoration the debt to the Army was 690,112l., and the debt to the Navy was 865,651l. 12s. 10d., or together 1,555,763l. 12s. 10d. Towards this joint total only 650,000l. was paid in the course of the disbandment transaction. The remainder, a matter of 900,000l., was continued as a departmental debt, mostly on the Navy. Such a procedure (in itself merely a confession of financial impotence) was only rendered possible by arresting the disbandment at a certain point and continuing the establishment of the remaining undisbanded land and sea forces. The strength, therefore, of the standing Army and of the Navy at the Restoration was determined not by the political needs of the country or by the determinate prevision of the Restoration Government, but solely by the financial weakness of England. Exhausted and overstrained by years of the Commonwealth's ambitious sea and land policy, the country at the close of that period could not pay off the soldiers and the ships and therefore had to retain in service all whose arrears were left unpaid when the disbandment funds came at an end.

On the first item, therefore, the net result is that Charles's government started on its ill-starred financial career loaded with a debt of 900,000l. of Cromwell's unpaid Army and Navy arrears, and further that in consequence of being unable to pay these arears Charles had to keep as a standing Army a portion of Cromwell's Regiments, which otherwise he did not require at all, and as a standing Navy a larger force of ships than either he or Parliament might have been disposed to keep.

(b) The Civil debt of the Commonwealth at the time of the Restoration (included in the already stated total debt) amounted to 395,958l., viz. 304,547l. charged on [and thus secured on] the Excise, 79,734l. to individual creditors and 11,676l. due to the Board of Works. References to portions of these debts are contained in the Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, pp. 124, 188–9, 199–200, 212–3, 234.

Briefly stated, the position which the Convention Parliament took up with regard to these items was that they were debts of public honour and that it would undertake their discharge. Not only so, but it entertained the ambitious purpose of discharging all debts charged upon the Excise by the Lords and Commons before 1648, Dec, 7. The portentously long list of these debts is set out in the Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, pp. 238–243. Their total is 319,968l. 8s. 6½d. Finally, from the time of the sitting of the secluded members, and up to 1660, Dec. 7, a further sum of 75,010l. 13s. 5½d. had been charged upon the Excise by the Convention Parliament itself. But this item I omit. The Civil debt therefore stood as follows:—

With regard to the bulk of this debt, as I have said, the attitude which the Convention Parliament adopted was that they were debts of public honour and should be discharged. But what the Convention Parliament proposed, the Pensionary Parliament did not dispose. If the idea of charging this civil debt on the Excise had been carried out Charles would not have drawn a penny from the Excise for the first five years of his reign. But that idea was dropped and with it all idea of liquidating this debt was dropped with it. The Excise was finally granted to Charles for revenue purposes and whatever debt he paid out of it was his own affair as far as Parliament was concerned. The whole subject was simply dropped by the faithful Commons.

(c) Charles' own private pre-Restoration debt and private Royalists' losses. Briefly stated the fate of these debts was the same as that of the Civil debt just discussed. In the finish Charles was left to face his own exile debts as he could and the only provision for indigent royalist officers was the 60,000l. which by the Act of 14 Car. II, c. 8, was enacted to be distributed among them. This sum was not a fresh supply. It was taken out of the Eighteen Months' supply of 13 Car. II, St. 2, c. 3, that is to say, after voting general supply for Charles's government, the Parliament took 60,000l. thereof to be distributed to indigent Royalist officers. This was a polite Parliamentary way of saying to the King, "You are to give us a penny out of the income we have given you and we will bestow it upon a beggar."

In the introduction to Vol. I, pp. xv, seq. of this Calendar I have discoursed Charles's attitude towards this question of his father's debt and his own exile debts. He honestly and generously did what little he could and the shame of defaulting on the bulk, practically on the whole, of those debts as well as on the Civil debt just enumerated, lies not at his door but at the door of his Parliament. But apart from the money which Charles actually paid out of his own pocket towards these debts of (Parliamentary) honour their undischarged legacy had a very prejudicial effect on his finances all through his reign. Charles was good-natured, careless and very accessible. The petitions which poured in from necessitous royalists who had lost their all in the Civil war were legion. All that Charles could do in response to them was to give grants of office, or pensions or farms of petty branches of the revenue. All these grants practically acted as deductions from his (his Governmental) income and slight as they were in comparison to the total losses and ruin which the Royalists had suffered they were in their total sufficiently large enough to seriously diminish his income.

To recapitulate. On the first head of liquidation of the national debt outstanding at the Restoration the Parliament provided about 650,000l. towards the arrears due to the Army and Navy. It left a further 900,000l. of those arrears as a debt on Charles's shoulders coupled with the consequent necessity of keeping standing a portion of the Cromwellian Army and a larger Navy than would otherwise have been retained. It made no provision whatever for the Commonwealth Civil debt of 395,958l. and 96,551l., nor for the Long Parliament debt of 319,968l., nor for Charles I's debt of 529,600l., nor for Charles II's exile debts nor for the losses of indigent Royalists. If at any time subsequently in his reign Charles II paid any portion whatever of these debts he paid that portion out of his own pocket.

(2)The Parliamentary provision of revenue for Charles's Government.

From the first the Parliament contemplated a normal peace expenditure of 1,200,000l., i.e. for every branch of the national service, the Royal State, Army, Navy, Civil Service, Ambassadorial service and so on. To this estimate no serious objection can be taken. It may be roughly accepted as the average normal national expenditure all through the reign. But when it came to the question of ways and means for the supply of this annual sum the Parliamentary Committee of Supply made many most fatal mistakes, some of which at least were totally unjustifiable. The basis of its calculation of revenue is set out in the Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, p. 498, and it is instructive to compare that estimate with the known figures of actual income both in previous years under the Commonwealth and in the successive years of Charles's reign. In the Parliamentary estimate the Customs are anticipated to produce 390,000l., rising to 400,000l. During the last year of the Commonwealth they had produced only 302,622l. 16s. 10½d.; and for the first 6¾ years of Charles's reign they produced only an average of 285,181l. 13s. 2d. per an. Defalcations for the plague reduced them to 135,814l. 11s. 7½d. in 1667 and to 233,499l. 0s. 1d. in 1668. In succeeding years their yield was as follows:—

The significance of these figures is perfectly plain and simple. The Parliamentary Committee of Ways and Means was either misled in its estimate at the outset of the reign or else it simply stated the gross in place of the net yield of the Customs. In the first eleven years of the reign the money Charles II received from this branch of the revenue fell short of the Parliamentary estimate by over 800,000l. This single item therefore of revenue deficit accounted for nearly half the Governmental or national debt at the time of the Stop of the Exchequer.

From 1671 onwards Charles received a very material increase in his Customs from two sources, viz. (1) from the wine and vinegar duties which were granted by the series of Wine Acts 19 and 20 Car. II, c. 6, 22 Car. II, c. 3, and 30 Car. II, c. 2, which duties continued till August, 1681. (2) From the tobacco and other duties imposed by the Plantation Trade Act of 25 Car. II, c. 7, see infra, p. xxvi.

The effect of these increments is instantly visible in the table of the yield of the Customs stated above. For ten of the last fourteen years of his reign Charles enjoyed from the Customs about 160,000l. a year over and above the 400,000l. which the Parliamentary estimate at the beginning of the reign had forecast as the probable yield. The effect of this excess can be stated as succinctly as before. Just as the deficiency up to 1671 had produced the national bankruptcy in the Stop of the Exchequer, just so the excess after 1671 helped to make up for other deficiencies and kept Charles so far solvent for the remainder of his reign that he was enabled to avoid a second declaration of bankruptcy.

The Excise.

In the Parliamentary estimate (Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, p. 498) the Committee valued the Excise at 274,950l. per an. without any expectation of increase. In the last year of the Commonwealth the Excise yielded, or was estimated to yield, 370,000l. I suggest therefore that there is a mistake in the Parliamentary Committee's estimate. Anyway, this is immaterial for the simple reason that Parliament pledged itself (Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, p. 309) to raise the Excise to 400,000l. a year.

The amounts which the Excise actually yielded to the King throughout his reign are as follows:—

The accounts of the Excise are most extraordinarily complicated. During the period that this branch of the revenue was in farm (and that meant up to 1683, June 24, nearly the whole of the reign) there were three different groups of Farms—(1) London Excise, (2) the five counties near London, (3) the Country Excise, in which again the Excise of Wales and the four northern counties constituted a separate entity. The separate accounts for these groups run from different dates in the year and it is impossible to strike an exact total. But in the main the above figures are roundly reliable. They may understate the yield of the Excise to the King in one year and by consequence may overstate it in the next. I do not, therefore, attempt to average this branch of the revenue. But it is evident at a glance that up to 1671 (up to the Stop of the Exchequer) there was a serious deficit in the yield of the Excise and that from 1672 onwards (from the grant of the additional Excise by the Act of 22–3 Car. II, c. 5) for the last ten years of the reign it yielded the King appreciably more than the original Parliamentary vote of 400,000l. per an. The extra gain on the Excise for a portion of the latter part of the reign (i.e. up to 1680, June 24, when the grant of the additional Excise expired) may be held to have done something to balance the dificit in the earlier years. If so, we may say that the Parliament kept faith with the King in this particular of the revenue, i.e. up to 1680, when the grant of the Additional Excise expired and was not renewed.

(3) The Crown lands.

In the Parliamentary estimate (Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, p. 498) the Crown lands are estimated to be capable of producing 100,000l. a year. How the Parliament could make such a wild estimate is an inscrutable mystery. The Crown lands had all been sold during the Civil war and Commonwealth, their recovery or reassumption to the Crown was a question of time and it was problematical whether they would be recovered to the Crown in anything like their entirety. The average annual yield (i.e. payments into the Exchequer) from this branch of the revenue for the first eleven years of the reign was under 12,000l. In this connexion it must be borne in mind that the fee farms of the Crown were worth over 52,000l. per an. But more than half of this yield was arrested before it came into the Exchequer and always had been, even in pre-Commonwealth times. The sum was absorbed by the so-called fixed county charges, being local charges for upkeep of roads, harbours, schools and so on. These deductions had been a standing charge on the fee farms since the days of Edward VI—of course in varying amounts. Up to the Stop of the Exchequer, therefore, there was an annual shortage of over 88,000l. on this branch alone. Then, when the crash of national bankruptcy came the Parliament condescendingly gave Charles permission to sell the fee farms of the Crown. He was to sell his private estate to discharge national debt. That sale (of which a summary account is given in the introduction to the third volume of this Calendar, pp. viii–xv) completely extinguished this branch of Charles's revenue and for the rest of his reign the Crown lands produced practically nothing. On this branch of revenue alone there was a total shortage over the whole of the reign of over two millions.

(4) Hearthmoney.

The Parliamentary estimate for the yield of the Hearthmoney (Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, p. 498) was 170,603l. 12s. 0d. This was a new form of taxation and the Parliamentary Committee had nothing more to go upon in forming this estimate than the first hastily made survey of hearths and chimneys. Throughout the reign the executive had the greatest trouble over the tax. It was unpopular and the Justices were lukewarm in enforcing it. Their conduct at times even savoured of actual disloyalty to the central Government. They connived at all forms of evasion in the certificates of exemption and the Treasury showed how impotent it felt itself by the restrained moderation of the letters which were sent repeatedly to the Justices to support the revenue (see this subject in the index to these vols. of Calendar under the head of Treasury, writing letters). The actual net yield of the tax to the Exchequer fluctuated enormously.

If we allow roughly that for the latter half of the reign the tax produced the amount anticipated by the Parliamentary estimate it still remains true that for the first half of the reign there was a very heavy shortage—probably over a million in the eight years 1673–80. I state the matter rather vaguely because of the difficulty of the figures of the yield of this tax.

(5) After the elimination of these four great sources of revenue (Customs, Excise, Crown Lands and Hearthmoney) the rest of the Parliamentary estimate in Commons' Journals, Vol. VIII, p. 498, contains merely odds and ends of revenue. The Cornwall Duchy tin coinage and pre-emption is estimated to produce 12,000l. a year. Throughout the reign it hardly ever produced more than 4,000l. a year. The Post Office is estimated at 21,500l. per an., rising to 26,000l., and the wine licences at 20,000l. per an. Both these branches of the revenue were conferred on the Duke of York. The Post Office continued in the Duke's possession until Charles's death and never contributed a penny to the Exchequer, or in other words to the needs of Charles's Government. The wine licences were only recovered to the Crown by the Act of 22 and 23 Car. II, c. 6, and from that date (1673) onwards their gross yield was under 12,000l. and the actual net yield into the Exchequer was about 8,000l. per an. But I do not here attempt to summarise the total loss to Charles's Government from the over-estimation of these odds and ends of revenue. The subject is so enormously complicated and involves such a mass of figures. I attempted a summary of this loss in a paper on the beginnings of the National Debt (Owens College Historical Essays, 1902, pp. 391–422) and I hope shortly to return to the subject with complete detail. In the present introduction I am only desiring to outline a broad, hasty résumé of the general trend of the finances of Charles's reign.

Peace Expenditure in Relation to Peace Revenue.

If the task of making out a reliable account of Charles's income is a difficult one, it is slight by the side of the difficulty of stating his normal average peace expenditure. This is due to the fact that ordinary or peace expenditure and extraordinary or war expenditure are never kept separate, either in the departmental accounts or in the Exchequer declarations. This will be clear from a glance at the successive tables of expenditure which I have given year by year in the introduction to each volume of this Calendar.

For the moment I take the Parliamentary forecast of 1,200,000l. a year for the whole service of the country in time of peace (Army, Navy, Royal State, Civil Service, Ambassadorial Service etc.) as reasonable and approximately correct. Taking this estimate as a basis it will be clear to any intelligence that for the first half of his reign on the mere peace revenue and expenditure Charles, or the nation, was drifting headlong into bankruptcy.

In the first 6¾ years of this period, 1660–1667, the sources of revenue which were allocated and granted to him to produce 1,200,000l. a year actually only produced 4,741,000l. or thereabouts, an average of under 800,000l. per an.

Of course the truth was quickly known and for a time Parliament acted loyally by coming to the assistance of the executive. A series of grants of supply was passed in aid of or to reinforce and make up the deficit in the ordinary revenue. These were as follows:—

One month's assessment of 70,000l. (12 Car. II, c. 21).

One month's assessment of 70,000l. (12 Car. II, c. 29).

Free and voluntary present (13 Car. II, c. 4).

Eighteen months' assessment of 70,000l. a month or 1,260,000l. in all (13 Car. II, st. 2, c. 3).

Hearthmoney (14 Car. II, c. 10. The grant of Hearthmoney was in the nature of a reinforcement of the ordinary revenue. In the above calculations I have throughout included it in the ordinary revenue.)

Four subsidies (15 Car. II, c. 9 and 10).

The last of these Acts closes the first chapter of the financial history of the reign—a chapter which was marked by comparative harmony between the King and the Parliament. But though well conceived and well intentioned these grants in aid of the ordinary revenue did not suffice to clear the deficit in the yield of that revenue. In the introduction to Vol. III of this Calendar, pp. xii–xiii, I have shown that there was a deficit of over 2,000,000l. at the time of Stop of the Exchequer. This deficit is to be placed to the head of the ordinary revenue deficit almost entirely. It represents roughly the total of the Bankers' debt—our first acknowledged national debt. But it must not be forgotten what a touch of irony there is in this word acknowledged. The national debt of England to-day is acknowledged by Parliament, and Parliamentary provision is made for the payment of interest. The Bankers' debt of Charles II's day was acknowledged only by the executive—the King's executive—but never by the Parliament, and Parliament never made provision for the payment of a penny of interest on it. The debt rested on the shoulders of the executive, on Charles's shoulders, and he was left to stagger under it for the rest of his reign and to pay the interest on it out of his own pocket. And he did it manfully, out of a straitened purse. He never defaulted on the interest. It was left to the Revolutian Parliament to dishonour itself by defaulting.

And whilst speaking of this subject of interest it is necessary to bear in mind another very important consideration. The working of any nation's departmental services necessitates cash in hand. If there is no cash in hand (if revenue comes in late and slow) a Department, or the Treasury as representing all the Departments, has to borrow. If it borrows, interest must be paid. On the day before Charles's return to the throne there was a sum of 11l. 2s. 10d. in the National Exchequer. Therefore the executive had to borrow, simply to keep the departmental services running. Ergo the executive had to pay interest, and when ordinary borrowing became difficult it had to put itself in the hands of farmers. Practically for two-thirds of his reign every one of the great branches of revenue was in the hands of farmers and the result was that Charles had to pay a good deal more than interest, a good deal more than even 10 per cent . interest. He had to pay farmers' expenses and allow farmers' profits and defalcations. It is the most ruinous expedient that any State can adopt. To-day we think of it only as applicable to States like Turkey. But to Charles II it was an absolute necessity. He could not borrow in the ordinary way sufficient cash to keep the departmental services running, to tide over the gap between the in-coming of revenue and the out-going of expenditure. I have treated this subject at large in the introduction to Vol. III of the present Calendar, pp. xxxv. seq., and also in the essay already quoted above and in a paper in the Economic Journal for March, 1906. My only object in referring to it here is to emphasise the point of the carelessness of Parliament in overlooking the subject of these borrowings and the consequent necessary provision of interest for them. From the outset Parliament ought to have recognised that the executive would need at least 30,000l. a year for interest on Treasury borrowings and it ought to have made provision for it. As a matter of fact, throughout his reign, Charles paid for interest in this way at least double or treble that sum and sometimes more than five times that sum annually. Yet plain as this consideration must seem to the merest tiro in finance it remains miserably true that until the year 1667 Parliament never considered the question at all and that throughout the long Acts of Supply covering the whole reign only in two other specific instances did they provide for interest, and in one of the two cases they defaulted, and as Charles did not default he had to take their debt of honour on his own shoulders. In this instance Parliament deliberately cheated the King (see Introduction to this Calendar, Vol. V, p. 1xii).

Still pursuing the thread of Charles's ordinary revenue and expenditure (to the exclusion of the extraordinary or war revenue and expenditure, to which I shall refer below), it may be stated in broad outline that ten of the last fourteen years of the reign showed a marked increase in income. This was due, indirectly, to an increase in the prosperity of the country and in the yield of taxes, and, directly, it was due to the following series of grants in aid of the ordinary revenue:—

22 Car. II, c. 3. The second Wine Act granted for eight years (1670–1678), but extended by an Act of 30 Car. II, c. 2, for three years to 1681, August.

22 Car. II, c. 4. Act for settling the imposition on brandy.

22 and 23 Car. II, c. 5. Act for an additional Excise on beer, ale and other liquors, granted for six years and extended for a further three years by the Act of 29 Car. II, c. 2; expired 1680, June.

22 and 23 Car. II, c. 9. Act for laying an imposition on proceedings at law: granted for nine years only; expired 1680, May 1.

25 Car. II, c. 7. Act for encouragement of the Greenland trade and for better securing the Plantation trade. The Plantation duties imposed by this Act continued till the end of the reign.

The effect of these on the revenue in the two main branches of Customs and Excise has been already detailed. So long as they remained in force (i.e. up to 1680–1, the date of their expiry, see p. 1663 infra) they made Charles's ordinary income about or a little over the 1,200,000. per an l., which was the estimated peace requirement of the country in 1660.

When they ceased the revenue again drooped. Unfortunately, I cannot give the complete figures for the years 1680–5, as only two declarations have survived, one for the half-year Easter to Michaelmas, 1680, the other for the half-year Michaelmas, 1684, to Easter, 1685. They are printed infra, pp. xli.–ii. These accounts show after deduction of loan money, assessment money, and collection money for captives in Barbary that the ordinary revenue of the kingdom in the first of those half-years was only 433,026l. 6s. 9d. and in the second of them 488,987l. 8s. 8½d. If these are fair average half-years then we may conclude that from 1680 (when these extra grants of revenue expired) the ordinary or peace revenue of the country was about 900,000l. a year.

But whilst the revenue thus stood normal during the years 1670–80, that is for 10 out of 14 of the last years of the reign, the expenditure had not stood still. In the introduction to Vol. V of this Calendar, pp. xxxix.–xli., I have shown how the departmental expenditure, especially on the Army, Navy and Ambassadorial service, and in connection with Tangiers, had increased in the course of the reign—quite naturally and automatically and unavoidably. This latter item alone, the occupation of Tangiers, the special expeditionary forces and the construction of the mole cost Charles over 1,600,000l. in the course of his reign. He spent over a quarter of a million alone on the construction of the mole. For all this the Parliament never provided a penny. If 1,200,000l. was the normal expenditure in 1660 this natural process of automatic expansion had driven it up to at least 1,600,000l. in 1678. In spite, however, of the insufficiency of the revenue to meet this expenditure there was no second defaulting, there was no second Stop of the Exchequer. The reign closed without any second declared act of bankruptcy. Instead of this various schemes of retrenchment were adopted. Three of these schemes are printed in the present volume, pp. 1645–1665. The scheme on p. 1653 is to be understood as a proposed scheme of retrenchment in 1679, not as a computation of the actual expenditure of that year, for none of the items correspond to the actual expenditure then current. In addition there were three periods of suspensions (1675, 1676–7 and 1681) of payment of pensions and certain salaries, particularly those of the Royal Household (see this subject brought together in the index under the head Suspension). At Charles's death, for instance, his servants were years in arrears on their salaries. James II made a composition with them and honourably tried to pay them on the reduced scale of that composition. But the effect of these retrenchments and suspensions were more nominal than real. Paper schemes of reduction were easy to draft but difficult to enforce. For instance, although the scheme of 1679 proposed a Navy expenditure of 400,000l. per an., the actual expenditure on the Navy in the succeeding five years averaged about 440,000l. per an. The inevitable result was a steady accumulation of departmental debts. In 1679 the overcharge on the Excise was 688,769l., on the Customs 160,469l., on the Hearthmoney 157,512l. and so on up to a full total of 1,311,359l. In addition to these items, which may be styled secured debts, 566,985l. was owing to the Navy, 242,217l. to the Ordnance, 14,293l. to the Privy Purse, 32,978l. to the Works, 35,000l. to the Cofferer of the Household, 200,000l. to the King's Household and other servants and to pensioners and so on. The total debt at interest and departmental debt in 1679 (quite exclusive of the funded Bankers' debt) reached the alarming figure of 2,720,194l., a sum larger than that involved in the Stop of the Exchequer. With the Bankers' debt added, the total public debt of England in 1679 was about 4,800,000l. Five years later, in Sept., 1684, the debt at interest (the debts charged on or the overcharge of the Customs, Excise, Hearthmoney and Wine Licences) had been reduced by nearly three-quarters of a million, viz. to 609,198l. But how this had been achieved and whether or not it was a genuine extinguishment of debt or merely a transfer of debt from one class (debts at interest) to another class (departmental debts) I regret that it is at present impossible to determine. As already explained, there are only two half-yearly declarations surviving for these last five years and the departmental accounts do not reveal this item of debt at all. I still hope, however, to be able to clear up this subject and to be able to give complete and detailed figures for the last years of the reign. Meanwhile for the moment we have to be content with the tables and accounts printed infra, pp. xli. seq.

Charles's Extraordinary (or War) Income and Expenditure.

In attempting to estimate Charles's war income and expenditure we are not confronted with the appalling confusion and difficulty which attends the exposition of his peace or ordinary income and expenditure. This chapter or portion of the subject comprises three clearly marked and delimited episodes, viz. the two Dutch wars and the intended war with the French King. For each of these episodes Parliament made separate, distinct and specific provision.

For the first Dutch war the Parliament granted:—

(1) The Royal Aid (16 and 17 Car. II, c. 1, for 36 monthly assessments of 68,819l. 9s. 0d. per month; estimated to produce in all 2,477,500l.).

(2) The Additional Aid (17 Car. II, c. 1, for 24 monthly assessments of 52,083l. 6s. 8d. per month; estimated to produce in all 1,250,000l.).

(3) The Poll (18 and 19 Car. II, c. 1, c. 6).

(4) The Eleven Months' tax (18 and 19 Car. II, c. 13, for 11 monthly assessments of 114,213l. 8s. 5½d. per month; estimated to produce in all 1,256,347l. 13s. 0d.).

The One Month's tax for the Duke of York (17 Car. II, c. 9) does not come into this category. It was purely a personal or private grant to the Duke of York and was not intended as a war supply at all.

If we put the Poll down at an estimate of 400,000l., this would make the total Parliamentary vote for the first Dutch war of 5,283,847l. 13s. 0d. In this particular case we are saved the trouble of calculation, as a report on the finance of the war was drawn up by the Parliamentary Committee of Accounts. See the whole of this subject treated in the Introduction to Vol. II of this Calendar, pp. xxxiv. seq. and the report itself, ibid. pp. lv.–lxii. From this it appears that Charles's executive expended 5,813,841l. 10s. 11½d. on the war, i.e. more than half a million in excess of the gross, outside or total sum voted by Parliament for the war. And on p. lxiv. of the same Introduction I have shown that the taxes voted by Parliament did not produce the anticipated sum by a long way. Up to the end of 1668 instead of 5,283,847l. 13s. 0d. they had only brought into the Exchequer 4,355,047l. 6s. 10½d. The excess therefore of the expenditure of the war over the Parliamentary supply for the war was as near as possible 1½ millions. This excess was met by Charles out of his peace or ordinary revenue; out of Customs, out of Excise, out of Hearthmoney, out of Dunkirk money, out of prizes, out of militia money, out of the Eighteen Months' (peace or ordinary) assessment (see ut supra, pp. lxii.–lxiii.).

On the most favourable construction Parliament cheated the King out of between a million and a million and a half sterling over the first Dutch war.

(2) For the second Dutch war the matter of accountancy is a little more difficult, because no contemporary account of the war was ever compiled. I have treated of this matter in the Introduction to Vol. IV of the present Calendar, pp. xxxix. seq. and a brief recapitulation here will suffice. For this war the only Parliamentary Supply granted was the Eighteen Months' assessment, 25 Car. II, c. 1, estimated to produce 1,238,750l. This assessment actually produced only 1,166,238l. 3s. 4½d. up to 1676. The minimum demonstrable expenditure on the war was 1,500,000l. and the actual expenditure was undoubtedly more. Taking it at the minimum there was a deficit of Parliamentary supply to the extent of over 330,000l. towards the actual cost of the war.

(3) The intended war against the French King with the consequent episode of the New Raised Expeditionary Forces and their disbandment is a long drawn out financial operation, but is rather simple to investigate because the executive itself, Charles himself, drew up a clear statement of the deficit (see the whole of this subject treated in the Introduction to Vol. V of the present Calendar, pp. xliv. seq.).

The extraordinary taxes granted by Parliament for this intended war with the French King were as follows:—

The Seventeen Months' tax for building the thirty ships (29 Car. II, c. 1, estimated to raise 584,978l. 2s. 2½d.).

The Poll, 29–30, Car. II., c. 1 (supposed to be capable of yielding 1,000,000l.).

The Eighteen Months' tax (30 Car. II, c. 1, estimated to yield 619,388l. 11s. 9d., but of which only the first six months' yield, estimated at 206,462l. 17s. 3d., was to be devoted to the Disbandment).

The Six Months' assessment (31 Car. II, c. 1; estimated to yield 206,462l. 17s. 3d. and to be devoted entirely to the Disbandment).

The episode of the building of the thirty ships stands apart from that of the intended war with Louis. As against a Parliamentary supply of nominally 584,978l. Charles authorised and the executive carried out an expenditure of 654,676l. on this shipbuilding programme. The transaction went on all through the remainder of the reign and even into the reign of James II. Even as late as 1688, the year of the Revolution, the yearly accounts of the Treasurer of the Navy contain items of expenditure on the concluding portions of this programme. I estimate that on this item the Parliamentary supply fell short of the expenditure by about 100,000l. (see ut supra, pp. xlvii. seq.). The actual transaction of the intended war with Louis and the subsequent disbandment of the Forces (see ut supra, pp. lii. seq. and the Index to the present instalment of Calendar under the heads Army Disbandment and Assessments) ended in a deficit of 110,000l. on the Navy expenditure and 69,000l. on the Ordnance expenditure. These sums, as he could not meet them, Charles funded: he charged them on the Hearthmoney as a perpetual debt and faithfully paid interest on them for the rest of his life, as did his brother, James II, after him.

I have thus run through in brief survey Charles's ordinary or peace revenue and expenditure and his extraordinary or war revenue and expenditure. It is therefore possible at last to draw a balance sheet as between him and his people, or rather his Parliament. In doing so I deliberately use the word cheating to characterise the conduct of his Parliament. On this point it must be borne in mind that in 17th century constitutional theory and practice in England financial transactions between the King and Parliament were of the nature of a treaty, implicit or explicit. For the ordinary revenue the Parliament at the outset of the reign fixed a normal estimate of expenditure, and then voted sources of supply which (including or together with the King's own private revenue) they thought would produce the required sum. Then in effect they said to the King, "There you are. Go your way. Run the country on this and don't bother us further at all about the matter." Similarly in war time or for an extraordinary shipbuilding programme they formed their own estimate, voted sources of supply which they thought sufficient and then once more said in effect to the King, "We have voted this. It is sufficient for the transaction. Carry out the war and don't bother us further." And when Charles was obliged to have recourse to them again, and when he had demonstrated to them ad nauseam the insufficiency of the supply, whether for ordinary or extraordinary expenditure, Parliament grumblingly at first did its duty and reinforced the ordinary supply or voted additional extraordinary supply; then it grew obstinate and finally suspicious and in the end turned its back on the whole matter and left the King in the lurch to procure or meet the deficit as best he could.

With our modern system of annual budgets, estimates and supplementary estimates we are so far removed from this 17th century practice and theory that we cannot conceive it possible. It is this want of proper sense of historical perspective that has produced the accepted Whig view of Charles II's reign—a view which is as mean in its psychology as it is gross and palpable in its ignorance.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THIS REIGN.

At various points in the successive Introductions to the present Calendar I have touched upon the constitutional aspect of the question of financial administration and upon its extremely important bearing on the political history of the time. The briefest résumé therefore for the whole reign may here suffice. Firstly, as to the constitutional aspect. It must never be forgotten that until the revolution of 1688 the governmental system of England was in all essentials that of the Tudor personal monarchy. The mere accident or intrusion of the Civil War and the Commonwealth made not the least difference to the continuance of that system. Indeed, the Commonwealth system of government was a further exemplification of it. The core and centre of the personal monarchy, Tudor and Stuart alike, lay in the King's absolute control of the Executive. The Executive was the King's Executive; the ministers were the King's; the ambassadorial service was his; the Forces, land and sea, were his; the Judges and judicial system, central and provincial alike, were his; the civil service, if we may call it such, was his down to the lowest item of it. In his hands lay the direction of the entire administrative machine, whether internal (as relating to revenue, law, organisation for war) or external (as relating to foreign affairs, treaties and declaration of war). That he exercised his directing control through his Privy Council made no difference. His personal control was there, as much in the time of Charles II as in the time of Elizabeth. As against this kingly direction of the Executive Parliament was dumb, as dumb under Charles II as it was under Elizabeth. At no time up to 1688 did it challenge such kingly control of Executive; at no time did it demand to have a share in that control. The function of Parliament (in its own eyes as well as in the King's), was, firstly, at the outset of the reign to see that the King had enough revenue to run the whole Executive machinery of the country, and, secondly, to vote extraordinary aid when war or imminent bankruptcy made it absolutely imperative. If the war (the foreign policy) were popular such aid would be given without a murmur, otherwise with grumbling and stint. If the monarch were popular his Parliament would save him from bankruptcy without a murmur, otherwise halfheartedly, or possibly it would bluntly refuse any aid and would leave the King to face the Executive's bankruptcy in any way he should please or could devise. But out of this second function of extraordinary aiding there grew the derivative Parliamentary function of criticism of the Executive. This criticism generally took the form of an attack upon a person, some member of the King's Executive. Sometimes the King would yield and would throw over such obnoxious member. Sometimes not. But even when he yielded, Parliament never laid claim to the right of nominating the fallen minister's successor. That was the King's right and his alone and was not challenged by Parliament. Constitutionally there is no importance to be attached to the impeachment of Buckingham or Danby. If the Parliament had demanded the right of nominating Danby's successor the Revolution of 1688 would have been unnecessary. For by that one stroke Parliamentary control of the Executive would have been achieved and the development in constitutional practice, which began in 1688, would have been anticipated, and would have been attained without a revolution. But on this one point of constitutional theory the Parliament under Charles II was more blind and unforeseeing than even the King himself. It felt instinctively that if it should pass behind the screen which hid the Executive from the Legislature it would share in an irksome, unwelcome responsibility and it would desert its historic accepted function of petitioning, addressing and criticising and grumbling. Nay more, again and again it explicitly proclaimed its own unfitness for such responsibility and disclaimed any wish to trench on the prerogative on this vital point. The most conspicuous instance of the exercise of the Parliamentary function of criticism was the appointment of the Parliamentary Commission to inquire into the accounts of the Dutch war. This episode is treated at length in the Introduction to Vol. II. of this Calendar, pp. xxxiv.–lxxxvii. It marks the high-water mark of constitutional advance during the reign and is most illuminating as to the then mutually and commonly accepted view of the kingly prerogative.

Such being the constitutional theory of the time it is easy to see how the break, the barrier, between the Executive and the Legislature should end in deadlock. The estimates, whether annual or not, for the various services were drawn in the departments and were submitted to the King in Council and were there fixed or decided upon. They were not submitted to Parliament. The accounts, whether yearly or not, were drawn up in the departments, audited in the King's Exchequer and declared in the King's Treasury. Thence if necessary the Lord Treasurer took the gist of them with him to the King personally or to the King in Council. They were not submitted to Parliament. If the King desired to take the Parliament into his confidence on the subject of estimates and accounts he would himself address the two Houses or he would leave the matter to be put forward by those members of his Executive (heads of departments rather than ministers) who had seats in the one House or the other. According to the ability and influence of these, his representative officers, so the affair of negotiating with the Parliament would prosper or not. If perchance at any time the Houses should distrust the figures and statements put before them by the King's officers they would proceed to inquire independently by their own Committees. In such inquiries they invariably went astray simply because they had not access to the full official figures (see the abovesaid Introduction, p. 34). One such instance I have traversed in the present Introduction, viz. the absurd estimate which Parliament made in 1662–3 of the King's revenue. Another instance is the Parliament's amateur attempt to estimate the cost of building the thirty ships in 1677. See this case detailed in the Introduction to Vol. V. of this Calendar, pp. xlviii.–li.

It thus becomes possible to understand how Parliament should form a wrong estimate of the revenue; how it should remain in ignorance of the actual figures of the shortage of the revenue; how it should be in still greater ignorance of the actual expenditure. The device of appropriation of supply (which is looked upon as an advance in constitutional practice) is simply an outcome of the confusion and suspicion which arose out of this ignorance on the part of the Parliament. As a matter of fact, the device of appropriation had been adopted by Charles's Executive before Parliament dreamed of it. Almost from the outset of his reign he allocated the Customs to the Navy and Ambassadorial service; and the Excise to the Forces and Household and he formally offered to the House to make this a hard and fast written undertaking. And the various schemes which Charles subsequently took in hand, e.g. with Sir J. James and R. Huntingdon relating to the Excise and with the Earl of Ranelagh et al. relating to the Irish revenue, all hinged on this one preoccupation of the Executive of how to provide money first and foremost for the greater services—the Navy and Army. When Parliament in the middle of the reign adopted the device of appropriation clauses in bills of supply it reflected only upon its own suspicious ignorance, not upon the Executive's untarnished honour. Again and again throughout his reign Charles postponed the payments of the Household and the Privy Purse in deference to the needs and claims of the Navy. It is due to this suspicious ignorance that Charles's pressing appeals in his addresses to his faithful Commons at the opening of Session after Session fell on deaf ears. The Parliament did not believe his figures and his executive officers in the House—his party—could not dispel the suspicion by the production of full and final estimates of accounts.

With regard to both ordinary and extraordinary grants of supply I have already repeatedly pointed out that Parliament never dreamed of exercising supervision of the expenditure and that only once, in the case of the Dutch war, did it consider it was entitled or obliged to call for accounts of the expenditure. Once the money was voted the King was left to do his own with it and if there was a shortage either on ordinary peace expenditure or on extraordinary war expenditure he was left to face it himself as if it were a purely private matter of his own concern merely—unless, that is, he could persuade them to take up the consideration of the whole matter again. And the crisis of the reign hinges upon the fact that from the middle of it he was absolutely unable to bring them to this reasonable, patriotic and honourable standpoint of reconsidering his general financial condition.

The value of the detailed study of the financial history of Charles's administration therefore lies in the fact that we are therein enabled to see the working of the personal monarchy from the inside and to estimate the constitutional advance which was achieved when in 1688 the Parliament seized the control of the Executive and made itself directly responsible for supply and for the keeping up of the national services. In previous reigns, those of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, James I or Charles, this detailed study is impossible because the Treasury as a department distinct from the Exchequer was non-existent. We have therefore no uniform body of records covering the total financial administration of those reigns. We have only Exchequer records, Privy Council records and the scattered personal papers of this or that particular Lord Treasurer; and out of such disjecta membra it is impossible to construct a complete and detailed account of the national finance. It is fortunate that the case is different for the reigns of Charles II and James II. From 1660 the Treasury established itself as a department outside the Exchequer. It kept its own records and those records enable us to view the working of the King's Executive from behind the screen which hid it from the eyes of the Parliament of the day. The result to me individually as an editor has been a complete revolution in my conception of the problem of English Constitutional history and so it would be to every historian if they would consent to sit down with me patiently year after year watching the machinery of the personal monarchy's Executive at work. The problem of English Constitutional history is the problem of the Executive in all its ramifications. It is not the problem of Parliamentary growth.

Secondly, with regard to the political influence exercised by the financial conditions under which Charles's Executive laboured, I have already in the various preceding Introductions written with such heat and passion that I hesitate to do more here than briefly summarise. Even if Charles's foreign policy had been throughout as popular as Elizabeth's had been, still the constitutional system and practice of the time was such and the financial embarrassment resulting therefrom was such as to open a door to the intrigue of his enemies in his own land. Charles's foreign policy was frustrated and he was disarmed and made powerless in Europe by the simple device of the enemy's intrigues with the Parliamentary Opposition at home. First the Dutch in the second Dutch war, and then Louis XIV throughout the remainder of the reign used the Opposition as a spear with which to pierce not merely Charles's but the English nation's side. This disaffected Parliamentary Opposition was a creation of that financial embarrassment the reasons for which have been already detailed. The irony of it, and the pity of it ! Firstly the Parliament bound the King's hands behind his back by starving the Executive and by refusing to come to its aid; thereby secondly Parliament delivered him into the hands of Louis XIV as a pensioner; thereby thirdly Louis XIV got Charles into his power and made treaties with him which he revealed to the Parliamentary Opposition in England in order to discredit him in the eyes of his own people; thereby fourthly the estrangement between King and people became complete, the New Raised Forces were disbanded, all danger of England warring with France passed away, the myth of the Popish Plot became a blind fury for years and the Exclusion Bill nearly became a legislative reality. And all the while this Parliamentary Opposition which had so bound and betrayed its King was itself a greedy exigent pensioner of Louis XIV.

In accordance with the uniform practice of these Introductions I append hereto accounts of Income and Expenditure and the various departmental accounts for the period covered by the present instalment of Calendar—so far that is as such accounts have survived. Without such accounts the merely administrative side of the Treasury work would be comparatively meaningless, or certainly difficult to follow.

Table I.—Statement of Accounts, etc.

Table II.—Customs, etc.

Table III.—Excise Accounts.

Table IV.—Hearthmoney.

Table V.—Wine Licences.

Table VI.—Navy Accounts.