Note 37 — Chapter I

Reductions of rent are too numerous to give; they occurred everywhere, and were sometimes apparently bought at a considerable price. (See Round’s Geoffrey de Mandeville, 366.) Loans from the towns seem to have been voluntary. In 1435 the Sandwich commonalty refused to lend money to the King; and further excused themselves from sending him soldiers for the defence of Calais, “having all the men they can spare already employed in the service of the Duke of York.” (Boys, 672.) A grant to the King was again refused in 1486. (Ibid. 678.) The Norwich citizens got into trouble for instituting a suit to have their loan returned (Blomefield, iii. 147, 152). In 1424 Lynn lent 400 marks, and in 1428 the council agreed that burgesses of parliament should receive from executors of the late king a hundred pounds for a pledged circlet of gold because they could not get more (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. part 3, 161). In 1491 the king was at Bristol, where he had a benevolence of £1,800 (Ricart, 47-48). At the coming of Richard the Third in 1484, York, to gain a reduction of the fee-ferm, agreed to give him 100 marks in a cup of gold, and to the queen £100 in a dish. A list is given of the citizens who subscribed—the mayor giving £20, the recorder £100, and so on. The whole sum subscribed was £437 (Davis’ York, 167-9, 174). It would be quite impossible to mention all the loans, but the instance of Canterbury is curious as the first foreshadowing of the national debt. In 1438 £40 was lent to the king, and in 1443 £50; in these cases private individuals advanced the money in various amounts according to their taste for speculation, and probably got certificates promising interest and redemption at par (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. part 1, 139).