English bishops as tax collectors in the sixteenth century

English bishops as tax collectors in the sixteenth century It is generally agreed that one of the many vexing problems which the bishops faced in then management of the Church of England after the break with R o m e was that offinance.Not only did the loss of church lands create one set of difficulties,1 as the Crown, on the pretext of returning spiritualities to their appropriate possessors, stripped the bishoprics of then best manors and liberties in return for advowsons andtithes,2 but further problems arose from the requirement that the bishops act as the Crown's financial agents, collecting dues from the clergy, as well. As a result, some bishops became deeply indebted and their successors, it has been argued, inherited the debts with the bishopric.3 Felicity Heal, in analysing the economic problems of the bishops in the sixteenth century, has suggested that episcopal responsibility for collecting diocesan dues was one of the major causes of an individual bishop's personal financial difficulties.4 The position of Patrick Collinson's archbishop, Edmund Grindal, when hefirstbecame bishop of London at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, has sometimes been seen as falling into this category.5 This is an oversimplification, since, as I shall attempt to show, bishops and other collectors only became responsible for their predecessors' debts in very 1 Felicity Heal, 'The Tudors and Church Lands: Economic Problems of the Bishopric of Ely during the Sixteenth Century', Economic History Review 2nd ser. 26 (1973), 198-217; Claire Cross, 'The Economic Problems of the See of York: Decline and Recovery in the Sixteenth Century', in J. Thirsk (ed.), Land, Church, and People, Agricultural History Review Supplement, 1970, pp. 64-83. 2 F. Heal, 'The Bishops and the Act of Exchange of 1559', Historical Journal 17 (1974), 227^16. 3 Idem, 'Clerical Tax Collection under the Tudors: The Influence of the Reformation', in Continuity and Change: Personnel and Administration of the Church in England 1500-1642, ed. R. O'Day and F. Heal, Leicester, 1976, pp. 97122 . A Ibid., p.m. 5 Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal 1519-1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church, London, 1979, pp. 92-95, 301-02; see G. Alexander, 'Victim or Spendthrift? The Bishop of London and his Income in the Sixteenth Century', in Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays presented to S. T. Bindoff, ed. E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht and J. J. Scarisbrick, London, 1978, pp. 128-45. P A R E R G O N ns 14.1 (July 1996) 130 S. M. Jack specific circumstances. The issue of the bishops' role in the duty of tax collecting after the Reformation, and of the problems this caused them, needs clarifying. This will allow for its importance as an explanation for bishops' financial difficulties in general, and for the crises suffered by certain bishops in particular, to be placed in an appropriate time frame and therefore, better estimated. The position was not static. The rules which had suited the preReformation church were inadequate for the altered circumstances, and were gradually modified. Chopping and changing the central administrative framework under Henry VIII and Edward VI and, under Mary, the collection of the tenths by the cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole, led to further confusion. At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, there was a temporary crisis which took time to resolve but which has coloured historians' perceptions of the whole post-Reformation period. The distinction between the dues owed by the bishop for his own episcopal estate and those of the clergy in his diocese for theirs has not been clearly made; at the same time, the change in the bishop's role at the Reformation has been exaggerated. The financial duties of the bishops were extended during this period, but they were not novel. The task of collecting from the clergy the taxes granted by convocation had been imposed on them since the thirteenth century. The requirement of an accounting had always had the potential for putting a bishop at the monarch's mercy, and had long secured the image of the bishop as part of the monarch's governmental structure. At the same time...