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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Even in his lifetime Henry Beaufort was a controversial figure. The Londoners envied his wealth and detested his policies; Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, denounced him as an ambitious schemer and a traitor; both pope and king punished him for his disobedience. Yet more than once he was extolled in parliament for his generosity, loyalty, patriotism and wisdom in affairs of state. These official encomiums preserved his reputation for a generation after his death. Upon them Stubbs built his pic ture of the cardinal as the defender of the Lancastrian constitu tion, the maintainer of Henry V's conquests and the wise seeker after a timely peace. ‘Far sighted and patriotic in his counsels’, he became ‘the mainstay of his house’, ‘ready to sacrifice his wealth and labour to the king’. It was scarcely Beaufort's fault that, at his death, the tokens of Lancaster's fall were already apparent. A different, less favourable, view originated with Edward Hall and was popularized by Shakespeare. In the scheme of retributive justice with which the new historiography clothed the Wars of the Roses, the cardinal and his family appeared as the principal fomenters of dissension. Hall's own detestation of Wolsey added a touch of venom to his strictures on the pride and avarice of Wolsey's predecessor.
page 129 note 1 Thus in John Hardyng's Chronicle, ed. Ellis, H. (London, 1812), p. 392Google Scholar: ‘the bishop of Wynchester, by perlyament, was chaunceller and hiest governour of the kyng his persone and his greate socour, his godfather and his fatheres eme, and supportour was moost of all this realme’. A similar tribute marks the notice of his death in Polydore Vergil's History, ed. Ellis, H. (Camden Soc., 1844), p. 74Google ScholarPubMed. Stubbs's summary on Beaufort is given in his Constitutional History of England, 4th edn. (Oxford, 1890), iii. 143Google ScholarPubMed–44, and its outlines are followed by W. Hunt in the D.N.B., sub nominee, Radford, L. B., Henry Beaufort (London, 1908Google Scholar), and Kingsford, C. L., Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England (Oxford, 1925), p. 13.Google Scholar
page 130 note 1 Henry VI, Pt. 2, Act I, Sc. 1; Henry VI, Pt. 1, Act III, Sc. 1. No accusa tion of usury is to be found in Hall, whose own explanation, that ‘by a bull legatyne whiche he purchased at Rome he gathered so much treasure that no man in maner had money but he, as so was he surnamed the riche Cardinall of Winchester’ patently related to the facts of Wolsey's career. Hall's Chronicle, ed. Ellis, H. (London, 1809), p. 139Google Scholar. Shakespeare was probably using ‘usurer’ not in its specific sense but as one who was renowned for his ‘covetise insaciable’ (ibid., p. 211). For its sixteenth-century usage, see Allen, J. W., History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1928), p. 152.Google Scholar
page 130 note 2 For the provision of covenanted interest by various devices, see: McFarlane, K. B., ‘Loans to the Lancastrian Kings: The Problem of Inducement’,Camb[ridge] Hist[orical]Journal,ix(1947), pp. 51–52Google Scholar; Fryde, E. B., ‘Ed ward Ill's Wool Monopoly of 1337’, History, xxxviii (1952), p. 10Google Scholar, and ‘The English Farmers of the Customs, 1343–51‘, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., Fifth Series, ix (1959), pp. 6–9, 13Google Scholar; Steel, A., The Receipt of the Exchequer, 1377–1485 (Cambridge, 1954), pp.18–20Google Scholar. For the most recent general review of the subject, see Fryde, E. B. and Fryde, M. M., ‘Public Credit’, ch. viii in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, iii (1963), especially pp. 431–40, 454–62.Google Scholar
page 131 note 1 Edward III admitted contracting usurious loans in official documents (Cal. Close Rolls, 1339–1341, p. 176; 1341–1343, p.102) and the practice was also openly recognized in parliament (Rot. Parl, ii. 326; iii. 122–23).
page 131 note 2 K. B. McFarlane, loc. cit.
page 131 note 3 McFarlane, K. B., ‘At the Deathbed of Cardinal Beaufort’, Studies in Medieval History Presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. Hunt, R. W., Pantin, W. A., Southern, R. W. (Oxford, 1948), p. 415; A. Steel, The Receipt of the Exchequer, p. 251.Google Scholar
page 131 note 4 Thus, Jacob, E. F., The Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1961), p. 227Google Scholar: ‘it is most unlikely that he failed to extract interest from what he lent’; Lander, J. R., ‘Marriage and Politics in the Fifteenth Century, The Nevilles and the Wydevilles’, B[ulletinofthe]I[nstitute of] H[istorical] R[esearch], xxxvi (1963), p. 130Google Scholar: ‘the arch-usurer of his day’; Wilkinson, B., Constitutional History of England in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1964), p. 260: ‘his immense wealth was almost certainly built to a large extent on usury’.Google Scholar
page 131 note 5 K. B. McFarlane, in Studies Presented to Powicke, p. 415.
page 132 note 1 A. Steel, op. cit., p. 252.
page 132 note 2 McFarlane, K. B., Camb. Hist. Journal, ix (1947), p. 67; A. Steel, op. cit., p. 20.Google Scholar
page 132 note 3 ‘Aids, Loans and Benevolences’, Historical Journal, vi (1963), pp. 1–19.Google Scholar
page 133 note 1 This statement and all others in this article relating to Beaufort's loans for which no reference is provided are based on a detailed calendar of the loans which I hope to publish in another place.
page 133 note 2 The comparison is with Mr Steel's figure in Appendix D of his book.
page 134 note 1 On five subsequent occasions the Crown's indebtedness to Beaufort exceeded £20,000: (i) in July 1432, in addition to a loan of £12,000 he was owed £8,483 lent in 1431; (ii) in May 1434 he lent £8,666 13s. 4d. while still owed £6,000 lent in July 1432 and £6,666 13s. 4d. lent in May 1433; (iii) in July 1436 he lent £6,000 while still owed £12,666 13s. 4d. lent in the previous February and £6,666 13s. 4d. lent in July 1435; (iv) in April 1437 he lent another £6,666 13s. 4d. while the loans in (iii) were still out standing; (v) his loan of £21,666 13s. 4d. in 1443 was followed by a further £1,333 6s. 8d. in February 1444.
page 134 note 2 K. B. McFarlane, in Studies Presented to Powicke, pp. 423–25.
page 134 note 3 William of Wykeham, for instance, had never contributed more than £4,100 in any decade; see A. Steel, op. cit., p. 135.
page 135 note 1 Rot. Parl., iv. III, 132–35, 210–11, 277–80.
page 136 note 1 For the circumstances of these loans, see McFarlane, K. B., ‘Henry V, Bishop Beaufort and the Red Hat’, E[nglish] H[istorical] R[eview], lx (1945) p. 347. The great majority of those who contributed to the 1421 loan were repaid from the lay subsidy.Google Scholar
page 137 note 1 Cf. K. B. McFarlane, in Studies Presented to Powicke, pp. 412–15.
page 138 note 1 Rot. Parl., v. 6, 32, 37–38.
page 138 note 2 ibid., v. 62–63; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1441–1446, p. 76.
page 138 note 3 Procs. and Ords., v. 216.
page 139 note 1 ibid., v. 276, 279–80, 307, 414–18; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1441–1446, pp. 160, 182, 194.
page 139 note 2 Beaufort entrusted the task of extracting the money from the collectors to a series of receivers, William Foxholes, John Chirche and William Soper, who then accounted at the exchequer where they received tallies of acquit tance. The record of these on the receipt rolls thus gives the terminus ad quem of repayment. Where Beaufort received normal tallies of assignment at the making of the loan the date of their discharge can only be presumed. Where his tallies were invalidated by the change of collectors (the most common reason for their failure) they were speedily changed. This was notably so in the loans of March and November 1438, May 1439 and March and May 1442.
page 139 note 3 Thus (i) in the period October 1423-January 1425 he secured repayment of the £11,657 owed since Henry V's death while lending £10,333 6s. 8d.; (ii) at the same time as he advanced £8,666 13s. 4d. in May 1434 he secured repayment of £6,000 deposited in 1432 and a further £,666 13s. 4d. loaned in 1443; (iii) in April 1437 a loan of £6,666 13s. 4d. was followed in May by the repayment of a like sum advanced in July 1435 together with £2,666 13s. 4d. outstanding from a loan of February 1436. It was, of course, a general convention that a subject should not be liable for a royal loan while his previous contributions were still outstanding.
page 140 note 1 Procs. and Ords., iv. 214.
page 140 note 2 In February 1424 the council was negotiating for the recovery of a tabernacle pledged to the bishop of Durham and others in July 1415 for a loan of £993 6s. 8d. which was to have been repaid after eighteen months but which was still outstanding. Rot. Parl., iv. 210; Procs. and Ords., iii. 415. See also ibid., 179–80.
page 140 note 3 K. B. McFarlane, in Studies Presented to Powicke, pp. 421–23.
page 142 note 1 Wars of the English in France, ed. Stevenson, J. (Rolls Series, 1864), II, ii, pp. 440–51.Google Scholar
page 143 note 1 Latimer and Lyons were impeached for their ‘singuler profit et mal governail entour le Roi’; Gloucester accused Beaufort of derogating from the king's estate to ‘your right grete losse and his singuler proufite and avayle’. There is also some similarity to the charges made by Edward III against Archbishop Stratford in the Libellus Famosus. Cal. Close Rolls, 1341–43 pp. 102–03.
page 143 note 2 Rot. Parl., iii. 216. Pole was also charged, like Beaufort, with contriving to purchase Crown lands on advantageous terms.
page 143 note 3 The Anonimalle Chronicle, ed. Galbraith, V. H. (Manchester, 1927), p. 86. In Rot. Parl., ii. 324–25, the charge against Lyons reads that he ‘gainast par voie de Usurye du Roi son seigneur de qi Conseil il estoit demurrez devant, grant quantitee de monoi, en grant damage et deceite du Roi’.Google Scholar
page 143 note 4 Anonimalle. Chronicle, p. 89; Rot. Parl., ii. 326; ‘sanz rien reprendre de encrees par usurye ou autrement’.
page 144 note 1 A. Steel, op. cit., pp. 18–20. McFarlane's, remark (Comb. Hist. Journal, ix. 1947, p. 68), that there is nothing in the enrolment of the loan of £20,000 on 23 August 1374 to suggest that it was abnormal, is not quite accurate. On the treasurer's receipt roll (Public Record Office, E 401/515) the entry runs as follows: ‘Mutuum—De Ricardo Lyons et Johanne Pyell mercatori bus Londonie xx M1 li. de mutuo. Satisfactum est eis per litteras regis patentes super custumas in diversis portubus Anglie. Inde sol. xx M1 marcas et pro diversis solucionibus isto die x M1 marcas.’ A further loan of 5,000 marks from Richard Lyons and one of £3,000 from John Hedingham are re corded with a similar formula under the same date. The normal form of recording a loan and its repayment is employed for a sum of 200 marks lent by the abbot of Croyland on 22 July in this same roll.Google Scholar
page 145 note 1 These are listed in the Appendix.
page 146 note 1 Beaufort received licence to export wool without passing the Staple in 1427, 1431, 1438 and 1446. Calendar of French Rolls, Forty Eighth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Records, pp. 247, 371; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1429—1436, p. 118, 1436–1441, p. 227.
page 146 note 2 McFarlane, K. B., E.H.R., lx (1945), p.347.Google Scholar
page 147 note 1 All source references are to documents in the Public Record Office.
