The financial history of the reign of Edward II has never been adequately studied in its own right and historians have developed surprising misconceptions about it. It is true that Edward inherited a mass of debts from his father and that during the earlier part of his reign he was at times seriously embarrassed by lack of money. Stubbs and Tout assumed that Edward was an unbusinesslike man, never interested for long in the detailed working of his financial administration or of any other branch of his government. In reality, Edward's early financial difficulties created in him an obsessive preoccupation with wealth. This bore fruit in the last, most autocratic part of his reign, when Edward displayed a minute and obsessive interest in his finances which was perhaps politically unwise but certainly resulted in the accumulation of vast reserves of treasure.

Edward's initial financial difficulties were aggravated by some of the Ordinances of 1311, notably by the abolition of the supplementary ‘new custom’ charged since 1303 on the imports and exports of foreign merchants. His main bankers, the Frescobaldi of Florence, were driven out of the country at the demand of the Lords Ordainers and were virtually ruined by 1312. This did not, however, prevent Edward from acquiring a new, and most resourceful banker in Antonio Pessagno of Genoa, whose advances between 1312 and 1317 reached a higher annual average than those of any Italian banker previously employed by the English crown.