Indebtedness was a problem which dogged both Abbots Simon and John, and their monks. In Abbot Simon’s time, they had been burdened with the cost of obtaining papal confirmation of Simon’s election, and of litigation with the Friars Minor and with the earl of Gloucester, besides the financial penalties incurred as a result of the Barons’ War. Added to these great expenses were the ever increasing financial demands of king and pope. John Taxster reflects the growing concern of the monks about royal and papal taxes and other impositions. Recording the scutage of 40s imposed in 1257 for the projected Welsh campaign, he notes that since Henry’s accession scutage had been raised eleven times and lists the occasions. Taxster’s concern foreshadows the obsession with taxation and other financial matters which is so characteristic of his continuator.

Taxster and his continuator do not always object to taxes and other financial impositions. Clearly Taxster thought it right that the clergy should contribute men or money for the defence of the coasts against Queen Eleanor’s forces in 1264. The Bury chroniclers apparently did not object to paying provided that they considered the purpose of the tax or other imposition justifiable. The continuator does not disapprove of the fifteenth granted by the magnates to Edward I in 1275, to help him pay his debts: Edward had incurred many of them financing his crusade to relieve the Christian states in the Holy Land. The continuator records, with details, that the abbot and convent each paid a fine instead of the tax (as did many of their counterparts), and together fined for the town.

The attitude of Taxster and his continuator to papal taxes and impositions was different from their attitude to royal and clerical taxes and other financial impositions. They shared with other chroniclers and with the clergy and religious at large the opinion that these papal demands were unjustifiable and excessive. They rightly connected them not with good causes but with the pope’s political needs. Moreover, Henry himself had become enmeshed in papal politics.