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| The relationship Charles I had with Parliament started badly in 1625 and, of course, got a lot worse. Charles believed the money from custom farms was his right as king. Charles decided that he would collect tonnage and poundage from the start of his reign. Traditionally a new monarch was granted this by Parliament. This gave the new monarch a financially sound start to his/her reign. But it also set the mark that it was Parliament that granted it – a sign of the authority Parliament believed it had in 1625 to curb financial royal excesses. Charles ordered the collection of tonnage and poundage and assumed that Parliament’s support for this would naturally follow. Right from the start of his reign he misunderstood the relationship Parliament believed it had with the king. It was to end disastrously for Charles.
In 1621, a syndicate had agreed to buy the great farm of customs for £160,000. This was a huge sum of money in Stuart England but a sign of the value of custom farms and the willingness of some to pay for them.
The principal men in the syndicate were Sir John Wolstenholme, Abraham Jacob and Sir Maurice Abbott. However, the economic depression affecting the country hit even these wealthy men. In 1625, the syndicate surrendered its lease and then tried to re-secure it at a lower rate. They were beaten to this by a group led by Sir William Cockayne and Sir Paul Pinder. It is said that the Cockayne and Pinder syndicate had the support of the Duke of Buckingham, a royal favourite. The syndicate was joined by Wolstenholme and Jacob. However, a number in the former syndicate did not get the chance to join the new one. While it is difficult to quantify how influential these men were, it was said at the time that their support in the Commons was extensive and it was their supporters that voted not to make a lifetime grant of tonnage and poundage to Charles.
The new custom farms lease was set to last for five years (1625 to 1630) and it cost £150,000. If this price proved to be too much of a burden, Charles promised to reimburse farmers if their rent became too excessive. The financier John Harrison believed that the only proper way ahead for the Crown was to have a wholesale reform of the complete system of royal revenue collection. Harrison believed that if the system was suitably modernised it would provide the royal family with all that it needed but would not place a burden on the people. In 1628 there was a glimmer of hope that such reform would take place when annual rents were discussed - but it came to nothing and the Crown’s finances stumbled from once issue to another without the most basic of needs being tackled – the inherent weakness of the system as it stood. Why was this?
First, the Crown did not want to take any risks with its finances by chancing reform. Would reform leave Charles worse off? It was a risk he was not prepared to take. Secondly, those who benefited from the whole financial system as it stood gave Charles generous loans that ensured that his mind stayed in tune with theirs – to maintain a system that very much benefited them. In 1625, the Custom farmers made an advance loan to Charles of £25,000. They advanced the same sum of money in 1627. In 1633 and 1635, they advanced Charles £30,000. On any average year in the Personal Rule of Charles, they advanced between £20,000 and £30,000. Such sums kept the Crown financially afloat but this approach never dealt with the long term problems of the system. However, the system as it stood kept both parties content – the Crown and the Custom farmers.
In 1638, the lease came up for sale again. A syndicate led by Sir George Goring made an initial offer of £165,000 for a three-year lease. They eventually had to pay £172,500. The new rent cut into the profits made by the syndicate and they had to reduce the amount they could afford to lend Charles. This occurred at the time of the Scottish Crisis – a time when Charles needed as much cash as he could muster. He pleaded with Sir Paul Pindar to join the syndicate. Pindar was a very rich man who had made his fortune from commercial interests in Italy and the Levant. Pindar did join the syndicate and it advanced the Crown £100,000. Pindar and the other syndicate members fell foul of Parliament, however, who charged them with being implicit in the imposition of prerogative rule.
In 1641, Parliament passed a bill that set in motion the confiscation of their estates – harsh treatment for men who argued that they were loyally helping out the Crown, and therefore the people, in the king’s and country’s time of need. Parliament did ‘soften’ its sentence to a fine of £150,000 for the whole syndicate – a very high sum even for wealthy men. It is no surprise that there were those in the City of London who sided with Charles as the crisis between the Crown and Parliament escalated as to them Parliament had shown its true views on wealthy merchants whose seemingly sole ‘crime’ had been to be successful.
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