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Illusions of Grandeur and Reform at the Jacobean Court: Cranfield and the Ordnance*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Several administrative reforms in the reign of James I are commonly associated with the name of Lionel Cranfield. One such reform is supposed to have occurred in the ordnanceoffice in 1620, though curiously little is known about it. The two principal accounts of the ordnance project are contained in the well-known studies of Cranfield by R. H. Tawney and Menna Prestwich.1 From these two accounts it is possible to glean only a few apparent facts; and these can be stated briefly as follows. The ordnance project is alleged to have been carried out by a special commission appointed in November of 1618 or 1619. Although several officers of the ordnance were included on this commission, they apparently offered no resistance to the reform of their own office. And, finally, the recommendations of the commission are assumed to have been implemented with the result that in 1621 King James was able to report to parliament that ordnance expenditure had been reduced from £34,000 to £14,000 annually.2 The first objective of the present article is to show that all of these assumptions about the ordnance reform of 1620 are mistaken. The second objective is to provide a new account of the ordnance project that is more consistent with the existing evidence. A final objective is to shed new light on the career and impeachment of Lionel Cranfield. Cranfield's career lends itself quite naturally to heroic narrative. His attempt to stave off financial disaster by reforming many departments, including the household, navy, and wardrobe, has the appearance of a Herculean undertaking.
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References
1 Tawney, R. H., Business and politics under James I: Lionel Cranfield as merchant and minister (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 171–2Google Scholar. Prestwich, Menna, Cranfield: politics and profits under the early Stuarts: the career of Lionel Cranfield, earl of Middlesex (Oxford, 1966), pp. 218–19Google Scholar.
2 Ibid. One must combine the accounts of Tawney and Prestwich to get anywhere near a full impression. The two accounts are largely complementary, Prestwich providing somewhat more information on most features of the project except the specific proposals for reform which only Tawney describes. Apart from differences in emphasis, their only substantive disagreement relates to the question of which body appointed at what time was the agent of reform.
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28 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Cowper MSS (12th report, appendixes i–iii) (London, 1888–1889), n, 270Google Scholar. Coke's interest in ordnance reform continued into the 1630s. See Aylmer, ‘Administrative reform’, pp. 242–4.
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30 Cowper MSS, 1, 114.
31 Coke MSS, packet 45, Coke to Buckingham (12 Oct. 1622). Coke's papers constitute a large part of the Cowper MSS preserved at Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire. Direct quotations from the Coke MSS are made through the kind permission of the marquess of Lothian.
32 Coke MSS, packet 21, Coke to Buckingham (16 July 1621).
33 Cranfield, pp. 218, 248.
34 Business and politics, p. 171.
35 Ibid. p. 172.
36 Ibid. p. 160.
37 Ibid. pp. 171–2.
38 Brewer, John S. (ed.), The court of King James the First (London, 1839), 1, 308Google Scholar. Coke was a principal secretary of state from 1625 to 1640.
39 Gardiner, History of England, III, 287–9, 374–5; iv, 224–7.
40 Cowper MSS, 1, 108.
41 L.J., III, 300, 373; Howell, State trials, 11, 1187; O.P.H., vi, 135–6, 282–3.
42 Business and politics, p. 171 n. 3. The rebuttal of the ordnance officers is Public Record Office (P. R. O.), State Papers Domestic, James I, vol. 117, no. 54 (S.P. 14/117/54). T h e partial copy of the ordnance report is P.R.O., State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I, vol. 237, folios 110–17 (S.P. 12/237/fos. 110–17). Tawney's citation for this latter document is erroneous. Prestwich referred to a [full report] planning [spectacular saving]. Cranfield, p. 219.
43 P.R.O., Exchequer, Audit Office, misc., vol. vi, no. 3 (A.O. 16/6/3). The ordnance report, like the navy report, consisted of three books. The first book was a survey of the present stores. The second book contained proposals for the future provision of stores. The third book contained proposals for the future government of the office. A.O. 16/6/3 comprises the second and third books.
44 [Administrative reform], p. 242 n. 3.
45 A.O. 16/6/3, P 39.
46 Ibid. PP. 34–5
47 Ibid. pp. 31–4, 39.
48 Ibid. pp. 41–52.
49 Business and politics, p. 171. On this point it is interesting to compare Hogg, Royal arsenal, 1, 58 and Clode, C. M., The military forces of the Crown (London, 1869), II 685Google Scholar.
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51 Farmer, D. L., Britain and the Stuarts (London, 1965), p. 35Google Scholar; Russell, Conrad, The crisis of parliaments (London, 1971), p. 290Google Scholar.
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53 Cranfield, p. 203 n. 3.
54 O.P.H., v, 316. Cobbett, William, The parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803 (London, 1806–1820), 1, 1178Google Scholar.
55 It is less likely, but possible, that it referred to the additional annual savings anticipated in the navy at the end of the five-year building programme. Compare the versions of this speech in Tyrwhitt, Proceedings, 1, 7–8 and Notestein, Commons debates, 11, 8.
56 S.P. 14/120/102, 161/13. See also Nef, John U., Industry and government in France and England, 1540–1640 (Ithaca, New York, 1964), p. 91Google Scholar.
57 S.P. 14/129/74; L.J., in, 332–3; Howell, State trials, 11, 1210–11.
58 L.J., III, 300, 373; O.P.H., vi, 135–6, 282–4; Howell, State trials, II, 1187, 1239. There is no apparent basis for Tawney's unqualified assertion that the proposals of 1620 were ‘unconfirmed either by Council or King’. Business and politics, p. 255.
59 Coke MSS, packet 21, Coke to Buckingham (16 July 1621).
60 Ibid.
61 Howell, State trials, 11, 1187. Cf. L.J., III, 300; O.P.H., vi, 136.
62 Howell, State trials, 11, 1210. Cf. L.J., III, 332; O.P.H., vi, 177.
63 This helps to explain why the ordnance performed so badly during the 1620s. By 1630 the office was more than £15,000 in debt (S.P. 16/166/92). There were several renewed efforts at reform under Charles I. See Aylmer, ‘Administrative reform’, pp. 240–6.
84 Business and politics, pp. 173, 301–2.
85 Cranfield, p. 248.
88 Houston, James I, p. 31. Russell, Conrad (ed.), The origins of the English Civil War (n. p., 1973), P. 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One author concludes that 'By 1621, Cranfield's reforms were worth over £120,000 a year to the Crown'. Farmer, Britain and the Stuarts, p. 35.
87 Business and politics, p. 173 n. 1. Cranfield, pp. 209 n. 4 and 248 n.2.
69 Charnock, Marine architecture, II, 219, 257; McGowan, Jacobean commissions, pp. 265, 295.
70 S.P. 14/156/12.
71 Oppenheim, Administration, p. 197.
72 Gardiner, History of England, Hi, 195, 200–12.
73 Oppenheim, Administration, p. 195.
74 Business and politics, p. 168.
75 Coke, Last Elizabethan, and Aylmer, ‘Administrative reform’, passim. Tawney, Business and politics, pp. 174–83, 194–213.
76 Prestwich, Cranfield, pp. 387, 392–400.
77 Ibid. pp. 396, 591.
78 L.J., III, 300, 369; Howell, State trials II, 1187, 1233.
79 Goodman, Court and times, II, 217.
80 Cranfield, p. 241.
81 Ibid. p. 106.
82 Ibid. p. 395.
83 Prestwich, Menna, ‘English politics and administration 1603–1625’, in Smith, AlanG. R. (ed.), The reign of James VI and I (London, 1973), p. 149Google Scholar. In this essay, Prestwich poses the central question about Cranfield with which we are concerned: ‘But how were his profits made and did they affect his public policies, as Salisbury's involvement with the customs farmers had done?’ The examples she provides, however, are so inconsequential as to seem to exonerate Cranfield. Ibid. pp. 155–6.
84 Business and politics, p. 254.
85 This is not to imply that Cranfield was corrupt. The problem of corruption is dangerously subjective and has received much more thoughtful consideration elsewhere than we could give it here. See Hurstfield, Joel, ‘Political corruption in modern England: the historian's problem’, in Freedom, corruption and government in Elizabethan England (London, 1973), pp. 137–62, 183–96Google Scholar.
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91 Pye was an auditor in the Exchequer. Aylmer, G. E., The king's servants: the civil service of Charles I 1625–1642 (New York, 1961), pp. 310–13Google Scholar; Ruigh, Parliament of 1624, pp. 322–3. Pye and Coke were apparently early allies in the court intrigues of the period. See Cowper MSS, 1, 107, no, 116.
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93 Ruigh, Parliament of 1624, pp. 322–3. In addition to the adequacy of munitions, which Ruigh notes, Pye also raised the issue of Dallison's lands. L.J., III, 301; Howell, State trials, 11, 1189.
94 The best explanation of Cranfield's claim is in Ruigh, Parliament of 1624, p. 322. Compare Tite, Colin, Impeachment and parliamentary judicature in early Stuart England (London, 1974), p. 154Google Scholar. Tite says that Cranfield, by claiming to be the victim of a plot, was exhibiting his arrogance.
95 Coke MSS, packet 69, Coke to Buckingham (early Oct. 1622).
96 Coke MSS, packet 45, Coke to Buckingham (early Oct. 1622).
97 Coke MSS, packet 29, Coke to King Charles (8 Sept. 1627).
98 Tawney, Business and politics, p. 163.
99 Gardiner, Lords debates, pp. 78–9.
100 Coke MSS, packet 69, Coke to Buckingham (early Oct. 1622).
101 Gardiner, Lords debates, p. 86. Even in the case of the household, the archbishop of Canterbury remarked that it was ‘bolldnes in the Treasurer to assume the reformacion to himselfe’. Ibid.
102 L.J., III, 382. Cf. O.P.H., vi, 306.
103 Prestwich, ‘English polities’, p. 144. See also Cranfield, pp. 33, 330. Tawney also employed this explanation of Cranfield's fall. Business and politics, pp. 265–6.
104 Cranfield, pp. 395, 451–2, 456–8.
105 Tawney considered this allegation but inconclusively. Business and politics, pp. 254–5. Note that Tawney stumbled upon the truth here – the fact that there was no settlement in 1620 – but he did not go back and revise his earlier assertions about ‘reform’.
106 Howell, State trials, II, 1210. Cf. L.J., III, 332; O.P.H., vi, 177–8.
107 Howell, State trials, II, 1187; L.J., III, 300; O.P.H., vi, 136.
108 Howell, State trials, II, 1239; L.J., III, 373; O.P.H., vi, 280.
109 The reader can still compare this careful editing of the evidence regarding the ordnance charge with the full texts of the depositions printed in the Lords' Journals regarding the other charges. L.J., III, 345–9, 352–61, 364–7.
110 L.J., III, 374. Cf. O.P.H., vi, 284–5; Howell, State trials, II, 1240.
111 Ibid.
112 L.J., III, 374–5. Cf. O.P.H., vi, 286.
113 The exact question was: ‘Whether the Lord Treasurer be worthy of a Censure in regard of this whole Charge, both for the Three Bargains and for not supplying the Office of the Ordnance?’ L.J., III, 381.