Throughout Henry VI's minority, military spending, supposedly covered by taxation but always in arrears, was the greatest expenditure of the regime.1 The smaller expense of the royal household was largely covered by income from crown lands and Henry's personal estates, the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. When Henry VI reached his majority, household spending increased, as befitted an adult king, although from the first he was overgenerous in his grants to household men and court favorites. Henry's major interest was the endowment of his educational foundations – King's College, Cambridge and Eton – and he alienated valuable duchy of Lancaster lands to feoffees to support them. He also sought a bride.

Henry's marriage to Margaret was predicated upon the negotiation of a truce between England and France, in the hope that a temporary truce might lead to a ‘lasting peace’. From a financial perspective, ‘peace’ carried the expectation of a diminution of military spending. As G.L. Harriss explains, the ‘truce with France was the financial precondition of the king's marriage, the gratification of his desire to found colleges, and the enlargement of the royal household’ – while avoiding bankruptcy. Had all gone well, the plan might have worked.

When Margaret came to England as a virtually dowerless bride in 1445, Henry VI's finances were already in a parlous state. In early 1446 a further portion of the duchy of Lancaster was allocated to provide a large part of the new queen's dower. The effect of both alienations of duchy lands was a shortfall in Henry's income, making the royal household partially dependent on tax revenues from the exchequer. At the same time, military expenditure on the war in France continued into 1444 before being cut back, and a sudden upsurge in household spending was occasioned by the extraordinary expense of the king's marriage. Thus, the year 1444–45 saw a great increase in the crown's financial commitment, at a time when tax revenues were falling. To try to meet the shortfall the government resorted to loans, by no means a new strategy but one that now proliferated. Creditors were issued with tallies (a form of IOU) to be cashed at the exchequer or ‘assigned’ to the customs revenues collected at a particular port.