The Crown's ecclesiastical creditors: State loans from the English Church, 1307-77

"As the Crown pursued an expansionist foreign policy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, so its traditional sources of income were unable to meet the costs of its wars. The three Edwards thus resorted to borrowing money from native and alien creditors to finance the defence of the kingdom. When the Italian banks collapsed in the 1340s, Edward III turned to his subjects for state loans to fund the Hundred Years War. These loans were a substitute form of parliamentary taxation, which the Crown requested from its subjects when the realm was under attack. By basing its pleas on necessitas, the Crown imposed an obligation upon the subject to meet the royal request. State loans were advanced with the subject’s full consent; of a value in accordance to their standing in society; and interest-free. This paper traces the origins of state loans from the clergy; explores when and why they became a regular demand; how they were negotiated and repaid; and reveals the identities of the Crown’s main ecclesiastical creditors. In financial terms, state loans were a minor source of Crown revenue. Their combined value equated to around 10% of the total royal expenditure on the defence of the kingdom during the reign of Edward III, and even less under his father. When viewed in isolation, the clergy lent around £50,000 between 1307 and 1377, a sum equivalent to 1-2% of the total costs of the military campaigns. But to judge clerical loans simply in terms of their negligible monetary value fundamentally misinterprets their significance, which can be measured by their impact on the political relationship between the Crown and the clergy. State loans afforded ecclesiastics the opportunity of wielding greater political influence; acquiring new charters; resolving grievances; and protecting the interests of their abbey. For many ecclesiastics, the short-term financial risks associated with lending were substantially outweighed by these potential rewards."