Finances, Parliament and the Expulsion of Jews
Edward I's frequent military campaigns put a great financial strain on the nation.[137] There were several ways through which the king could raise money for war, including customs duties, money lending and lay subsidies. In 1275, Edward I negotiated an agreement with the domestic merchant community that secured a permanent duty on wool. In 1303, a similar agreement was reached with foreign merchants, in return for certain rights and privileges.[138] The revenues from the customs duty were handled by the Riccardi, a group of bankers from Lucca in Italy.[139] This was in return for their service as money lenders to the crown, which helped finance the Welsh Wars. When the war with France broke out, the French king confiscated the Riccardi's assets, and the bank went bankrupt.[140] After this, the Frescobaldi of Florence took over the role as money lenders to the English crown.[141]
Below a piece of text is seen a king on a throne on a podium. On either side is seen a king and a bishop in front of the podium and clerks behind it. In front of this sit a number of lay and ecclesiastical lords, and more clerks, in a square on a chequered floor.
16th-century illustration of Edward I presiding over Parliament. The scene shows Alexander III of Scotland and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd of Wales on either side of Edward; an episode that never actually occurred.[142]
Another source of crown income was represented by England's Jews. The Jews were the king's personal property, and he was free to tax them at will.[143] By 1280, the Jews had been exploited to a level at which they were no longer of much financial use to the crown, but they could still be used in political bargaining.[144] Their usury business – a practice forbidden to Christians – had made many people indebted to them and caused general popular resentment.[145] In 1275, Edward had issued the Statute of the Jewry, which outlawed usury and encouraged the Jews to take up other professions;[146] in 1279, in the context of a crack-down on coin-clippers, he arrested all the heads of Jewish households in England and had around 300 of them executed.[147] In 1280, he ordered all Jews to attend special sermons, preached by Dominican friars, with the hope of persuading them to convert, but these exhortations were not followed.[148] The final attack on the Jews in England came in the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, whereby Edward formally expelled all Jews from England.[149] This not only generated revenues through royal appropriation of Jewish loans and property, but it also gave Edward the political capital to negotiate a substantial lay subsidy in the 1290 Parliament.[150] The expulsion, which was not reversed until 1656,[151] followed a precedent set by other European territorial princes: Philip II of France had expelled all Jews from his own lands in 1182; John I, Duke of Brittany, drove them out of his duchy in 1239; and in the late 1240s Louis IX of France had expelled the Jews from the royal demesne before his first passage to the East.[152]
Among the main achievements of the reign of Edward I were the reforms of the institution of the English Parliament and its transformation into a source for generating revenues.[3] Edward held Parliament on a reasonably regular basis throughout his reign.[153] In 1295, however, a significant change occurred. For this Parliament, in addition to the secular and ecclesiastical lords, two knights from each county and two representatives from each borough were summoned.[154] The representation of commons in Parliament was nothing new; what was new was the authority under which these representatives were summoned. Whereas previously the commons had been expected simply to assent to decisions already made by the magnates, it was now proclaimed that they should meet with the full authority (plena potestas) of their communities, to give assent to decisions made in Parliament.[155] The king now had full backing for collecting lay subsidies from the entire population. Lay subsidies were taxes collected at a certain fraction of the moveable property of all laymen.[156] Whereas Henry III had only collected four of these in his reign, Edward I collected nine.[157] This format eventually became the standard for later Parliaments, and historians have named the assembly the "Model Parliament".[158]
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