THE FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE CROWN

‘Brittle’ best describes the state of royal finances at the end of the Personal Rule. Income flowed steadily but modestly: annual revenue ranged from £377,243 in cash receipts for 1634 (though partial figures for 1632 suggest a worse year) to peaks of £527,322 in 1631 and over £498,000 for 1630 and 1636. Predictably, Charles spent what he got. In this he was no better and no worse than most monarchs, for the ‘ordinary’ was not designed to generate surpluses, since custom dictated that Parliament would grant extraordinary funds. No war chest was filled at Westminster. Rather, yearly expenditures approximated revenues, even exceeding them slightly in some years. Coupled with the royal fondness (or compulsion) for the assignment of tallies, Charles's ‘ordinary’ was just that - sufficient to get by, but inadequate for an emergency. Tallies and anticipations discouraged the accumulation of surpluses. He had succeeded in living ‘of his own’, but found his policies constrained by financial limitations.

In 1638 the Crown took in £489,358, while the original proposal for the royal army envisioned 40,000 men costing in excess of £900,000 per annum. Even if the army were halved and deployed only for a campaigning season of six months, the estimated £225,000 cost overwhelmed the current budget. Charles's experiences in the 1620s had exposed him to the expense of wars, but those had been overseas expeditions.