HOW SIGNIFICANTLY DID THE GOVERNMENT OF THE LOCALITIES CHANGE FROM 1485-1603?

• Justice done in monarch's name
• By 1485 - judicial system well established - central courts of law, travelling and local courts
• Main central court = Court of the King's Bench in London
• Judges went around localites twice a year
• Justices of Peace (JPs) = local nobility and gentry - increase power and influence since 14th Century
• Appointed annually for each county (county bench)
• Hear and decide cases of felony and trespass
• Arrested potential suspects
• Supervised fixing on prices and wages
• Attend quarter sessions in the year to perform role
• Appointed because - lawyers (quorum = present at meetings) / nobility and gentry / ownership of land worth £20 a year
• JPs adminiser Poor Law and control vagrants

Henry VII

• Appointed trusted members of court e.g. Sir Thomas Lovell = JP in Yorkshire and Sussex
• Increase local powers of JPs, Act of Parliament in 1495 allowed JPs to act on information received about suspects without waiting for jury
• Power to replace jurors who they considered to be corupt
• Gave JPs power to inquire into illegal retaining on nobility and to examine complaints of corruption against local officials

Henry VIII

• Appointment of JP for life unless suspected of not following govt. orders / misusing power
• Wolsey keen to improve local justice and JP quality
• 1526 = summoned JPs to hear peech before filling out a 21 section questionnaire on law and order
• Cromwell careful to check who was appointed as JPs

• Socio-economic crisis of late 1540s and early 1550s led to fears of social disorder - 1552, AoP = all alehouses had to be licenced by JPs
• 1549 = ordered to take inventory of parish goods in order to expose those who had illegally taken them
• 1552 = ordered to enforce 2nd Prayer Book
• By Elizabeth's reign = amount of business by JPs and size of county benches increased
• County bench - 25 under Wolsey / 40-50 under Elizabeth
• No. of JPs by 1603 = 40-90
• Local gentry - JP key to get power and advancement in politics - Cecil'l royal judges visited counties twice a year - limited govt. intervention - element of corruption
• Establishment of LL in 1585 = royal control
• Appointment of deputy lieutenant = JPs
• By 1603 = 309 AoP which placed responsibility on JPs
• 1580s - could deal with riots, witchcraft, property damage and recusancy, minor offences e.g. drunkenness

• Crown = 2 main sources of income = royal lands and monarch's status as landlord (ordinary revenue) / taxation granted by parliament for monarch's needs (extraordinary revenue)
• Tension between Crown's income and expenditure - monarchy rarely had enough money and reliant on parliamentary taxation
• Expenditure e.g. Henry VIII spent more than £100,000 on Hampton Court Palace and Whitehall 
• Royal Household in 1550s = £75,000 a year to run
• Increased taxation - dangerous unrest (high levels over long periods)
• Poorer regions - West and North = difficult to meet Crown's demands leading to revolts of 1489 and 1497 under Henry Vii based on taxation
• Pilgrimage of Grace (1536) - background of taxation levels and poverty in Northern England
• Led to development of new taxation from 1513

• No change in taxation since 14th Century
• Parliament only institution to grant taxation - early Tudors = taxation in emergency e.g. war
• System of tenths and fifteenths based on property and could include land and possessions
• 1334 onwards = local community payments fixed (each tenths and fifteenths = £29,500)
• Not enough income generated = price inflation, money owed was at a fixed rate - not meeting expenditure needs
• Wealth and power avoiding to pay - burden of taxation on poorest of society/urban = more tax than local
• Henry VII continued to use method - taxation granted in 1487, 1489-92 and 1497
• Repeated in 1504, raised additional £180,000
• Asked parliament for tenths and fifteenths and agreed to new tax, assessed on individual's wealth and ability to pay = direct assessment

• Thomas Wolsey's achievment - Henry VIII needed money for wa
• 1509-20 - govt. spent £1 million on war effort, only received "25,000 a year from ordinary revenues before taxation

Introduction of Subsidy

• Flexible - each individual assessed on income from different sources of wealth
• Subsidy assessed by ability to pay based on wealth and property, paid tax on wealthiest category
• Separate assessment for nobility, based on rank
• Local officials appointed for each county - assess wealth
• JPs monitored by national commissioners

• Successful - 1513-23 = £302,099 (not sustained)
• Cromwell asked parliament for subsidy to fund got. in peacetime
• Elizabeth's reign - peacetime subsidies of £140,000, recieved £80,000
• Demands of war increased, little to show, parliaament reluctant to grant subsidy e.g. 1523 denied £800,000
• 1525 = Wolsey forced to raise non-parliamentary tax (Amicable Grant) - mass resistance, forced to cancel

• Elizabeth's reign = assessment of subsidy allowed to stagnate
• Permitted rates of tax paid to become fixed - 4 shillings for every pound their land was worth / 2 shillings and 8 pence for every pound of goods
• Less money and able to buy less with received money
• After 1563 - taxpayers' assessment accepted as accurate - no oath, less income than reality
• William Cecil = £4000 a year, claimed = £133 6s 8d
• Tax records not kept up to date e.g. Suffolk 1523 = 17,000 taxpayers, by 1566 = 7000
• Elizabeth's answer = medival way and multiple subsidies
• 1601 asked and granted 4 subsidies and 8 fifteenths and tenths
• Corruption and stagnation - forced to exploit royal prerogative to fund wars
• Didn't face tax rebellions - suggests that England better controlled

• Poverty increase - issues of unemplyment and vagabondage
• Main cause = increase population
• Apart from 1550s, poor harvest and influenza (Mary's reign)
• 1525 = 2.26 million/1551 = 3.01 million/1601 = 4.1 million
• Prices increase / Wages decrease
• Population increase, pressure placed on resources - more to feed, more demand for food to grow - higher prices
• 1519-1587 on and off, grain scarcer, prices increase
• Dissolution of monasteries in late 1530s - traditional source of support and alms for poor
• Led to vagrancy and beggars - too lazy to work
• Used punishments - harder to control
• Threat to social order - could be arrested
• Vagrants made to return to original parishes - known by authorities

• Henry VII = ordered that beggars and idle poor put in stocks for 3 days, whipped and returned to original parish - poor relief here based on voluntary contributions by wealthy parishoners to church alms fund
• 1531 - Poor law passed and ordered vagrants to be whipped, impotent poor licenced by JPs and allowed to beg
• 1547 - Vagrancy Act, vagrant = able-bodied, without master, employment for 3 days
• 1st offence = V branded on persons chest, forced to work as a slave for 2 years for person who informed against them - impossible to enforce = too harsh
• Repealed in 1550 and replaced in 1552 by new Poor Law = impotent poor to be registered for 1st time - required Parish Priests and Bishops to place more pressure on those reluctant to make voluntary contributions to alms
• Attempted to regulate wages and prices through parliamentary statute - pressure from particular interest groups who wanted to protect their trades
• Acts passed in 1547 and 1555 to regulate cloth-making in East Anglia and Worcester
• 1536 - Cromell introduced Radical Act, ordered local officials to find work for beggars and to organise collections for impotent poor - not renewed
• 1548-9 - laws passed against price and wage fixing in 1554, Act introduced to forbade export of corn when prices above certain level

• 1551-1561 - population decrease from 3.01 million to 2.98 million
• 1st attempt by central govt. to produce legislation that would address multiple problems
• More authority on JPs who were expected to enforce it

• All unmarried people under 30 compelled to work and to accept any job
• Harvest, JPs could force all those able to work to help bring in crops, refusing = 2 days in stock
• 12-60 required to work on land unless gentry, heir to lands worth £10 a year, goods worth £40, already employed in skilled craft, worked in mining, metal-working, glass-making, attending school/university
• All wages assessed and set by local JPs annually
• Work hours fixed - summer = 5am to 7/8pm, no more than 2hrs30mins for meal breaks / winter = dawn-sunset, penalty for absence = 1d an hour
• Apprenticeships = 7 years, compulsory for any skilled occupation

• Increase in importance of JPs = regulation of socio-economic affairs in region
• Technically impossible to enter skilled trade without apprenticeships
• Emphasis on need for every person to have master and importance of food production as essential job for everyone to be involved
• Central govt. attempts to control wage increase and social structure since 14th Century
• Govt. responding to local experimentations with wage assessments and control began in 1550s e.g. London and York builders' wages
• Statute respond to local trend - felt need to respond to concerns = growing partnership between centre and localities
• Didn't solve all problems - further acts needed to deal with poverty and vagabondage e.g. 1572+1576+1598 Poor Laws
• Determination of JPs to hold wages, annual assessments published, didn't change for years e.g. Kent 1563-1588 no change
• 1590s forced to increase wages
• Unsuccessful at preventing unemployment and vagrancy - assumed that there was always work for everyone
• Migration = result of harvest time
• Vagrancy increase 1580s and 1590s

• Deal with vagrancy and poverty
• Elizabeth I = 1563, same act moved towards making payments to poor relief in parish - compulsory
• Special collectors of alms were appointed to collect contributions to local fund - refusal = imprisonment (special collectors decide amount)
• 1572 Poor Law = punishments e.g. boring hole in right ear for unlicenced beggars severe, harder to get a licence 
• 1570s and 1580s - relatively stable economy - increased expectation that local parishes would provide for poor e.g. Norwich and York set up in 1549 and 1550
• 1596 - food riots in south east/west and London
• Increased socal unrest, severe socio-economic crisi 1594-8
• Act for the Relief of the Poor from private billd - 1597 = 11 draft bills - introduced post of overeer of poor for each parish, job was to assess how much poor relief was needed and to collect and distribute relief - revised in 1601, lasted until 1834
• Unpaid overseer - supervised y JPs, additional powers to raise compulsory contributions to local poor relief and punish who refused
• Combined with other poor laws e.g. Vagabonds Act (1598), ordered most dangerous vagrants to be banished
• Act for the Relief of Soldiers and Marines provided pensions for wounded.