Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Making of a Prince: The Finances of ‘the young lord Henry’, 1386–1400
- 2 Henry V's Establishment: Service, Loyalty and Reward in 1413
- 3 Henry V, Lancastrian Kingship and the Far North of England
- 4 Henry V's Suppression of the Oldcastle Revolt
- 5 Religion, Court Culture and Propaganda: The Chapel Royal in the Reign of Henry V
- 6 ‘Par le special commandement du roy’. Jewels and Plate Pledged for the Agincourt Expedition
- 7 Henry V and the Cheshire Tax Revolt of 1416
- 8 Henry V and the English Taxpayer
- 9 Henry V, Flower of Chivalry
- 10 War, Government and Commerce: The Towns of Lancastrian France under Henry V's Rule, 1417–22
- 11 Writing History in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Goodwin's The History of the Reign of Henry the Fifth (1704)
- Index
- York Medieval Press: Publications
8 - Henry V and the English Taxpayer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Making of a Prince: The Finances of ‘the young lord Henry’, 1386–1400
- 2 Henry V's Establishment: Service, Loyalty and Reward in 1413
- 3 Henry V, Lancastrian Kingship and the Far North of England
- 4 Henry V's Suppression of the Oldcastle Revolt
- 5 Religion, Court Culture and Propaganda: The Chapel Royal in the Reign of Henry V
- 6 ‘Par le special commandement du roy’. Jewels and Plate Pledged for the Agincourt Expedition
- 7 Henry V and the Cheshire Tax Revolt of 1416
- 8 Henry V and the English Taxpayer
- 9 Henry V, Flower of Chivalry
- 10 War, Government and Commerce: The Towns of Lancastrian France under Henry V's Rule, 1417–22
- 11 Writing History in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Goodwin's The History of the Reign of Henry the Fifth (1704)
- Index
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Summary
Henry V's reputation as manager of the crown's resources stands higher in the current generation of historians than perhaps ever before, and the king's strengths in this area are now routinely regarded as an essential element, alongside the more sensational achievements in war, of the second Lancastrian king's claims to greatness. A strong tradition of scholarship from Ramsay and Steele to McFarlane and Harriss has engaged in detail with two aspects of Henry's gift for finance: his management of parliaments and convocations to effect one of the most intense bouts of taxation experienced in England over the course of the Hundred Years War; and his equally impressive control of the expenditure of those taxes, which ensured, almost uniquely in the Middle Ages, a successful balance between income and expenditure. But a good deal less attention has been given to two other important aspects of the tax history of Henry's reign. How was taxation experienced on the ground by the tens of thousands of ordinary taxpayers who were called upon regularly to open their purses? And how sustainable was the tax system on which Henry built his conquest of Normandy and his ambitions for the settlement of France? By addressing the fiscal history of Henry's reign from the perspective of the taxpayer, we may usefully test the current powerful orthodoxy about the functionality of the Lancastrian fiscal state.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Henry VNew Interpretations, pp. 187 - 216Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013