Explain Why James Had Problems with Parliament over Finance During

760 Words4 Pages
Explain why James had problems with parliament over finance during 1604-1610? (12) The problems with finance go back throughout previous monarchs and following this James was left with Elizabeth’s debt from the many wars she had waged and problems that had arisen. However this isn’t to say that it was entirely down to the debt he had come into, as he had some spending habits of his own which will be explained later on and show why parliament were always reluctant to give financial aid to help the matter. One of the reasons for disagreements over finance is that the King or Queen was supposed to be able to live from his or her own means, meaning that he should live from revenue the crown generates. However the outdated tax system and James’s spending habits didn't allow him to do so and from this problems arose, the King would often spend extraordinary amounts of money on many things such as jewellery, the royal wardrobe and gifts for his favourite courtiers, the royal wardrobe alone was said to be £36,000 per annum. As the king could not live off his own means this meant that he would often ask parliament for financial aid however parliament were always hesitant because of such royal expenditure, this obviously caused hostility between both parties and with that problems between the two. Linked to this is the Great contract, an idea proposed by Lord salisbury to possibly solve the financial problems that the King and country had. The contract was composed of terms that supposedly would both benefit the crown and benefit parliament, those were that the crown would give up its feudal rights, that parliament would pay a sum per annum to the crown and that also parliament would pay a lump sum initially. In theory this sounds great however the lump sum would only amount to £200,000 and the crown happened to be in £280,000’s worth of debt at the time, so the
Open Document