ELIZABETH THE FIRST

HOW SUCCESSFUL WAS ELIZABETH’S FINANCIAL POLICIES?

Success can be measured on three fronts :

Were people financially better off, or at least not worse off?

Did the Queen solve the problem of royal finance?

Were any reforms or measures taken merely short-term or did they tackle the deep-rooted problems?

If she failed to do the first two and her measures were merely short-term, then failure seems to be the case.

If a mixture of success and failure, then say so.

Point out that traditional view was that Elizabeth was successful for following reasons:

(1)   By 1580 had paid off Mary’s enormous and burdensome debts

(2)   Elizabeth cut the dependence on foreign loans that had plagued her Tudor predecessors

(3)   She was able to find the money to finance major wars against Spain and in Ireland without imposing too heavy a burden on her country

(4)   Despite ruling for 44 years she left a smaller debt than had Mary

However, historians like MacCaffrey argue that in reality Elizabeth was not a success:

(1)   She was far too cautious and conservative and turned away from the idea of radically reforming the financial situation

(2)   There were no major reforms or initiatives under Elizabeth to deal with the deep-rooted problems

(3)   Elizabeth resorted to short-term measures to deal with immediate problems and left problems for her successors as a result

(4)   Although most of her people were generally well-off during most of her reign, the whole edifice collapsed after the 1590s as problems reared their heads and this led to financial, social and political unrest.

There are 5 main criticisms of Elizabeth

(1)   She did nothing to overhaul ordinary finance, but allowed the system to stagnate. She failed to rasie essential sources of income, like custom duties, to take into account the effects of inflation. As a result these fell in value. As she sold more and more Crown lands, so there was less rent coming in from these lands, causing the annual income of the Crown to fall in the long-term. She often allowed her favourites to keep money that should have gone to the treasury, eg Leicester owed £70,000. Inflation destroyed the revenue gained from ordinary taxation and Elizabeth and her ministers did nothing to overcome this problem.

(2)   There was no attempt to reform parliamentary taxes. Taxes were the lowest in Europe and she made no attempt to radically increase them or to make the richer members of society pay more. Elizabeth was always worried about rebellion. Nor was there any problem attempt to improve tax collection through reducing corruption.

(3)   She made the mistake of appointing Cecil in charge. He was a brilliant administrator but had no knowledge about finance. As a result he never attempted any reforms but followed a careful, conservative approach. Instead of improving financial administration or collection , he resorted to economy and kept public expenditure low. It was not until his son took over, as AGR Smith shows, that reforms were introduced in the 1590s.

(4)   The 1590s brought all the problems home. By ignoring the problems and making no effort to place the finances on a sounder footing, the crises of the 1590s saw the whole economy fall into turmoil. This led to social and political unrest in her last years. The question of monopolies shows Elizabeth’s inability to deal with such measures.

(5)   Elizabeth tried to keep costs low by using unpaid officials to deal with finance. This kept costs low but most were inexperienced and this created financial problems.

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