James and Parliament
James I and his Parliaments - AQA History AS level
- Created by: Clodagh
- Created on: 05-05-13 12:10
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- James and Parliament
- First Parliament, 1604-1611
- Buckinghamshire Election, 1604
- Fortesque was a royal councillor whom the King had wanted in the House of Commons. Goodwin was the opposing candidate
- Goodwin won the election but was forbidden to take his place as an MP for not paying off debts
- There was friction between James and Parliament as both believed they had deciding rights over disputed elections
- James and Parliament compromised that a new election would be run and agreed that Parliament would have deciding rights
- The Case of Thomas Shirley, 1604
- Shirley was an MP who had been arrested for not paying off debts and so was to be sent to the debtor's prison
- Because of Parliamentary privileges, Parliament sent the Governor of the debtor's prison to the tower until Shirley's release
- The case established that members of Parliament had freedom from arrest, except in cases of treason, serious crime or breach of the peace
- Union between England and Scotland, 1603-7
- The House of Commons was not enthusiastic about a union as there was much prejudice against the Scots being a backward nation
- Scottish and English laws were also very different
- In October 1604, James issued a proclamation announcing that he would take the title of 'King of Great Britain'
- The union was blocked on legal issues in 1607
- Grievances over purveyance,1604, 1606-7
- Purveyance was the subject of a petition from Parliament to James, so he replied promising to look into cases of corruption
- The Commons were divided regarding the proposal to end the whole system and give the crown £50,000 per annum in compensation
- Instead, £20,000 per annum was suggested by the Commons
- Robert Cecil realised that there was inadequate compensation so he hoped to introduce a scheme to deal with purveyance
- Both schemes failed to be accepted because of complaints about the King's extravagance and proposed union
- Grievances over Wardship
- If a landowner died before his children reached the age of twenty-one, they became wards of the Crown, so the Crown would look after them and run the estate
- Usually relatives would buy the right to wardship to prevent the estate from falling into the hands of someone who didn't have the family's interest at heart
- Wardship was worth about £60,000 to the Crown per year
- Impositions and the Bates' Case, 1606
- Impositions were extra customs duties and the collection of customs contributed to the King's revenue
- John Bates was a London merchant who refused to pay duty on an import of currants and lost his case
- A new set of impositions could be set on imports, however Parliament objected as they saw impositions as a tax that they had no control over
- The Apology of the House of Commons, 1604
- They asserted that their privileges were under threat, quoting problems over free speech and disputed elections
- They declared that free speech, free election and freedom from arrest were their 'right and due inheritance'
- They asserted that the King could not make changes in religion without the consent of Parliament
- Purveyance and wardship were also mentioned
- James' Spending Problems
- In the first ten years of his reign, James was giving away between £60,000 and £80,000 a year on gifts and pensions to courtiers
- Tonnage and Poundage
- Cecil was behind the increase in revenue of the court wards and the sale of crown land
- The collection of customs became privatised so London merchants formed groups to bid the right to collect the customs duties and then these customs farmers would pay the crown a fixed sum of money
- The Great Contract, 1610
- Salisbury came up with the idea of the contract
- The Crown would give up the right to feudal dues such as wardship and purveyance in exchange for a fixed sum per annum to be raised in taxation
- Buckinghamshire Election, 1604
- Addled Parliament, 1614
- Parliament was ended in June 1614 and was not called again until 7 years later during the years without Parliament, 1611-1621
- It got off to a bad start because MPs thought that the Crown had been interfering with elections through 'undertakers'
- James was in need of money to pay for the funeral of his eldest son, Henry, who had died in 1612 and to fund the costs of his daughter's wedding to Frederick of the Palatinate
- He required a subsidy of £65,000 from Parliament
- The House of Commons presented petitions regarding impositions
- Debates between the Commons and Lords became disorganised attacks on the court an still no subsidies were voted
- Because no subsidies were voted, Parliament was dissolved
- 'Addled' means rotten or gone off
- The Years Without Parliament, 1611-1621
- Financial Corruption
- The Cockayne Project and the City of London, 1615-17
- One of the ways to increase revenue would be to increase trade. A project involving the cloth trade was thought up by William Cockayne, a London merchant
- The country's largest export was unfinished cloth that was sent to the Netherlands
- Cockayne suggested to James that they should have their monopoly taken away and it should be given to a new company that would export more finished cloth
- James gave Cockayne £10,000 to get the project started
- His associates didn't have enough money to buy wool or have the expertise to make finished cloth
- In late 1616, exports through London were a third down on their 1614 level
- By 1618 the cloth trade had collapsed. The City of London blames James for this
- During the years of the Howard influence at court (1611-16) corruption was rife
- Suffolk, the Lord Treasurer, was dishonest and unable to stop James from spending above his income
- By 1616 the deficit on ordinary revenue had reached £160,000
- There was widespread selling of offices
- James gave much of the proceeds away in ill-judged generosity
- The Cockayne Project and the City of London, 1615-17
- Finance
- The financial reform was between 1618 and 1620 when Suffolk fell from power and when the Howards lost their grip at court to the rising favourite, Buckingham
- Sir Francis Bacon, the Lord Chancellor, tried to cut back pensions by giving patents of monopoly instead
- Lionel Cranfield dominated royal finances. By 1620 he had reduced the King's household expenses by over 50%
- Robert Carr
- A French-educated Scot that became a royal favourite in 1606 after breaking his leg jousting
- He was showered with offices and titles by James
- In 1613 he married Frances Howard after a scandalous divorce case. They started the affair in 1607-9
- In 1616, Carr and his wife were found guilty of involvement in the murder of his secretary Thomas Overbury
- Both were imprisoned in the Tower before being pardoned by James
- Thomas Overbury
- He was a friend of Carr and knew the details of his affair and helped hide it
- He tried to persuade Carr to not marry Frances Howard (Lady Essex) after her annulment after having helped arrange the affair
- James had tried to get rid of Overbury by offering him an ambassadorship abroad but he refused
- Lady Essex sent Overbury a poisoned pie in 1615 when he had been imprisoned in the tower
- Carr was replaced by George Villiers in James' affections
- Villiers
- He was Duke of Buckingham and was introduced to the King in 1613 in an attempt to undermine Robert Carr
- Between 1618 and his assassination in 1628, Villiers was chief minister. He became Duke of Buckingham in 1623
- He increased the sale of titles and honours until it became a public scandal
- He was largely responsible for foreign policy
- He was a close associate of Charles, James' son. He accompanied him on the Madrid trip and led the expedition to Cadiz in 1625
- Villiers
- Court Factions (Rivalry)
- The rise of Buckingham was the result of the divisions at court. As Carr lost influence with James, rival factions at court tried to interest James in a new favourite
- The Howard faction, led by the Earl of Nottingham were pro-Catholic and pro-Spanish
- The anti-Howard faction, which included Abbot, wanted to stop James' increasingly pro-Spanish policy
- By 1618, all the court had to defer to Villiers, who targeted the Howard faction
- Financial Corruption
- Third Parliament, 1621-1622
- They met in difficult times as it was a time of economic depression caused by the Thirty Year's War, a bad harvest in 1621 and wide support for an anti-Spanish foreign policy
- The Commons turned on Sir Francis Bacon, encouraged by Coke - they had been rivals at court
- The Commons saw Bacon as a symbol of court corruption and mismanagement because of his gifts of monopolies, and actually impeached him for taking bribes as Lord Chancellor
- Bacon was fined £40,000 and was briefly imprisoned
- Coke had been dismissed by James in 1616 for supporting the independence of judges and the importance of common law (law made by Parliament)
- The Commons saw Bacon as a symbol of court corruption and mismanagement because of his gifts of monopolies, and actually impeached him for taking bribes as Lord Chancellor
- James had got on well with the Commons until he proposed adjournment as the MPs were reminded about the failure of the Addled Parliament
- When they reassembled, a discussion regarding foreign policy was made. Parliament wanted Charles to marry one of his own faith
- Cranfield was aware that England could not afford war with Spain and so was in favour of a peaceful policy
- As James ignored the agreement of lower expenditure, Cranfield refused to pay out pensions, making him unpopular
- Fourth Parliament, 1624-1625
- James was ill by 1624 and so Charles and Buckingham were virtually in control. He was too weak to oppose their policy of war with Spain
- Cranfield was the only Lord Treasurer that could deal with royal finances, but he had made many enemies and James was not strong enough to defend him
- Cranfield was impeached for pocketing money from the cuts in expenditure
- Parliament was only willing to vote money to recover the Palatinate. They were not in favour of a direct military attack on Spain
- James required subsidies for war but also needed £1million to pay off his debts
- The Commons voted subsidies of £300,000 but this was not enough for attacks on Spain
- James was still reluctant to start war with Spain, but he died on 27th March
- First Parliament, 1604-1611
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