¹ This article is in part an expansion of some remarks in Lindquist, ‘The Bills against purveyors’, Parliamentary History, IV (1985), 35–43Google Scholar, although it also modifies certain points made therein. The standard work on purveyance is Woodworth, Allegra, ‘Purveyance for the royal household in the reign of Queen Elizabeth’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, XXXV, part 1 (Philadelphia, 1945)Google Scholar.

² Croft, Pauline, ‘Parliament, purveyance and the city of London, 1589–1608’, Parliamentary History, IV (1985), 9–34Google Scholar; Lindquist, ‘Bills against purveyors’. We are actually concerned with three bills, one read in 1604 and two that passed the house in 1606. All three bore the same title: an act ‘for the better execution of sundry statutes touching purveyors and cart-takers’. Sir Edwin Sandys attested that the 1604 bill and the first 1606 bill were the same, and the lords said that the second of the 1606 bills was ‘of the same argument and matter’ as the first: Willson, David Harris (ed.), The parliamentary diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606–1607 (Minneapolis, 1931), p. 71Google Scholar; Lords Journals (hereafter L.J.), II, 435. A breviate or abstract of the first 1606 bill agrees very well with what appears to be a summary of the 1604 bill: House of Lords Record Office, Main Papers, 27 Jan. 1605 [-6]; Lindquist, ‘Bills against purveyors’.

³ Munden, R. C., ‘James I and “the growth of mutual distrust”: king, commons, and reform, 1603–1604’, in Sharpe, Kevin (ed.), Faction and parliament: essays on early Stuart history (Oxford, 1978), pp. 58–61, 70Google Scholar.

⁴ Croft, , ‘Parliament, purveyance and London’, pp. 25–6, 32Google Scholar.

⁵ Hirst, Derek, The representative of the people? Voters and voting under the early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar; Russell, Conrad, Parliaments and English politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Russell, , Parliaments and English politics, p. 18Google Scholar.

⁷ Commons Journals (hereafter C.J.), 1, 283.

⁸ Spedding, James, The letters and the life of Francis Bacon (7 vols. London, 1861–1874), III, 183, 186Google Scholar.

⁹ According to memoranda probably drawn up early in James's reign, the king gained £25,390 by the compositions with the household, £2,698 by compositions with the stable, £9,456 by continued purveyance by commission, and £7,167 by carriage: Public Record Office (hereafter P.R.O.), S.P. 14/71/96; P.R.O., L.S. 13/280, fos. 30, 32.

¹⁰ Gough, Richard, Antiquities & memoirs of the parish of Myddle (Shrewsbury, 1875), p. 74Google Scholar.

¹¹ When purveyors visited markets and bought up large quantities of provisions at low prices and without paying ready money, they drove up the price of what remained; perhaps worse, producers stayed out of markets likely to be visited by purveyors. See Lamond, Elizabeth (ed.), A discourse of the common weal of this realm of England (Cambridge, 1893), pp. xlii–xliiiGoogle Scholar; ‘An Acte that purveyoures shall not take victalles within v. miles of Cambridge or Oxforde’ (2 & 3 Phil. & Mar., c. 15), Statutes of the realm, IV (part 1), 289–90; British Library (hereafter B.L.) Lansdowne MSS 46/92, 106; Goring, Jeremy and Wake, Joan (eds.), Northamptonshire lieutenancy papers and other documents, 1580–1614, Northamptonshire Record Society, XXVII (1975), 31Google Scholar. Jame s had to issue a number of proclamations (among other things) ordering producers to serve markets while he was on progress: Larkin, James F. and Hughes, Paul L. (eds.), Royal proclamations of King James l 1603–1625 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 20–1, 86–7, 242, 297–9Google Scholar.

¹² Spedding, , Letters and life of Francis Bacon, III, 182–3Google Scholar. Shortly after James's accession another observer, commenting on Elizabeth's last years, said that purveyors ‘would oftimes for their owne gayne vex with many impositions the poorer sort of the inhabitants neere the usuall places of hir residence’: B.L. Add. MSS 22,925, fo. 37. Similarly, Sir Edwin Sandys said in 1610 that it was ‘the poorest of the people’ who were victimized by purveyance: Foster, Elizabeth Read (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament 1610 (2 vols. New Haven, 1966), I, 142Google Scholar.

¹³ Lodge, Edmund (ed.), Illustrations of British history… (3 vols., London, 1791), III, 73Google Scholar. The lords commissioners for household causes also wrote in 1592 of purveyors ‘dealing hardly with those that may worse beare & sparing those of best ability’: B.L. Egerton MSS 2644, fo. 31.

¹⁴ In 1586 a Lincolnshire justice confiscated an expired commission with which a purveyor was apparently abusing his illiterate countrymen: B.L. Lans. MSS 46/85. Impersonation of purveyors was a widespread abuse, perhaps because commissions could not be generally read.

¹⁵ A collection of ordinances and regulations for the government of the royal household, made in divers reigns (London, 1790), p. 219Google Scholar; P.R.O., L.S. 13/279, fo. I2v. The exemption from cart-taking, based on a clause of Magna Charta, was at first apparently limited to ‘demesne carts’, but it was later interpreted as applying to all carts belonging to privileged persons: P.R.O., L.S. 13/168, fo. 346.

¹⁶ B.L. Lans. MSS 46/92.

¹⁷ Hawarde, John, Les reportes del cases in Camera Stellata, 1593 to 1609, ed. Baildon, William Paley (1894), p. 249Google Scholar; C.J. 1, 190.

¹⁸ Lindquist, , ‘Bills against purveyors’, p. 36Google Scholar.

¹⁹ C.J., i, 191; B.L. Lans. MSS 46/84. Prices seem to have been set down mainly for poultry. Other commissions specified that the purveyors should pay ‘reasonable prices’, which were interpreted as prices below those in the markets.

²⁰ Cowper, J. Meadows (ed.), Henry Brinklow's Complaynt of Roderyck Mors…, Early English Text Society, extra series, XXII (London, 1874), 19–20Google Scholar; Spedding, , Letters and life of Francis Bacon, III, 185Google Scholar; Historical Manuscripts Commission (hereafter H.M.C.), Salisbury MSS, XVIII, 55.

²¹ In 1563 Elizabeth vetoed a bill providing that all cattle taken by purveyors be branded, a measure clearly intended to prevent them from selling for their own profit what they had taken with her commission: C.J., 1, 68, 71–2; L.J., I, 616–18. Similarly, in the last year of her reign, almost at the same time as she complained to one of the household officers of increasing demands on her subjects for provisions and carriage, she helped maintain a purveyor's right to keep a shop to sell fish he had taken with her commission: P.R.O., L.S. 13/280, fo. 82; L.S. 13/168, fos. 40–2. The purveyor had been sued in the Star Chamber by some London fishmongers; Elizabeth herself had revoked the suit from the Star Chamber to the lords commissioners for household causes, who ended up severely punishing the complainants.

²² B.L. Lans. MSS 46/85.

²³ P.R.O., L.S. 13/168, fo. 71.

²⁴ B.L. Eger. MSS 2644, fo. 31; Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (ed.), Parliamentary debates in 1610, Camden Society, LXXXI (1862), 174Google Scholar.

²⁵ The commons complained in James's reign that constables and justices who tried to execute the laws were ‘disgraced’ by the household officers: C.J., I, 192; B.L. Cotton MSS Titus F IV, fos. 32V–33. A Lincolnshire justice thought in 1586 that the household officers ‘do beare’ with the purveyors ‘so moche, that without their privitye we dare not deale with them according to lawe’: B.L. Lans. MSS 46/85. For cases of local magistrates frustrated in their attempts to execute the laws against purveyors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, see B.L. Lans. MSS 46/106; P.R.O., S.P. 14/53/44; 16/406/6.

²⁶ In 1586 the Hertfordshire justices reported several instances of their intervening to quell tumults in the markets caused by the presence of purveyors: B.L. Lans. MSS 46/106.

²⁷ Woodworth, , ‘Purveyance’, pp. 39–52Google Scholar. Many counties had already entered into composition agreements, some as early as Edward VI's reign, but it was in the 1590s that these were extended throughout the realm.

²⁸ P.R.O., S.P. 12/255/84.

²⁹ P.R.O., C. 231, no. 1, pp. 243–82, passim. Burghley's own son, Robert Cecil, claimed at the beginning of James's reign that purveyance ‘is used in as many offices and by as mean instruments as ever it was’: , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVI, 426Google Scholar.

³⁰ Although Woodworth is somewhat inconsistent on this point, she seems to regard the compositions as willingly accepted: Woodworth, , ‘Purveyance’, pp. 4–5, 25–6Google Scholar. The commons, however, claimed in 1604 that they were imposed by ‘compulsory means’, and there is abundant evidence that they were resisted: C.J., 1, 191. Woodworth herself documents resistance in Kent, Derbyshire and Norfolk: Woodworth, , ‘Purveyance’, pp. 39, 41–2, 51Google Scholar. Throughout the 1590s refusal to pay rates seems to have been widespread – purveyors were sent to many shires to enforce payment – and many counties apparently hoped to use James's accession as an excuse to end their agreements: P.R.O., C. 231, no. 1, passim; Sir Henry Whitheed's letter book, 1601–1614, Hampshire Record Series, 1 (1976), 18; B.L. Add. MSS 48,591, fo. 159. Somerset (P.R.O., S.P. 12/255/74), Coventry (P.R.O., C. 231, no. 1, p. 49), Derbyshire (, H.M.C., Rutland MSS, 1, 349)Google Scholar, Cornwall (P.R.O., L.S. 13/168, fo. 87), Leicestershire (, H.M.C., Hastings MSS, IV, 197–8)Google Scholar, and possibly Yorkshire and Staffordshire (, H.M.C., Rutland MSS, 1, 346)Google Scholar broke or threatened to break their agreements during the period.

³¹ B.L. Add. MSS 5847, fo. 163; , H.M.C., Rutland MSS, I, 353Google Scholar.

³² Composition eventually cost Essex and Kent each over £3,000 per annum: P.R.O., L.S. 13/279, fos. 72V–73V.

³³ Composition rates were usually raised on land, though sometimes on cattle. Wheat, however, was supplied in kind. Seventeenth-century accounts of Tunbridge, Nettlestead and Stockbury, all in Kent (Kent Archives Office, Scot of Scot Hall MSS, U1115 013/1–3); Wimeswould, Leicestershire (B.L. Add. MSS 10,457); and Bushey, Sacombe and Westmill, all in Hertfordshire (Hertfordshire Record Office, D/P 26/10/1–2; 89/12/1; 120/8/1 [I wish to thank Mr Alan Thomson for these references]) show that, like the parliamentary fifteenth, which was held to: 11 ‘pinch the poor’, the composition taxes were levied widely, even on holdings of a single acre or on a few animals, and that wheat was contributed in amounts as small as a few pints. In July 1596, admittedly at a bad time of the year and in a year of dearth, Sir Henry Cocke estimated that one quarter of those who normally contributed wheat to the Hertfordshire composition did not have it to spare, ‘and very many also do want money to buy it’: , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, VI, 247Google Scholar.

³⁴ When Romney Marsh compounded, for example, a few ‘greate ocupyers’ used to serving their cattle to the queen drew ‘to contrybute with them all the occupyers generallye…(manye of them such as never served or keapt oxen fytt for her Majesty's service)’: P.R.O., S.P. 12/245/69. Similarly, many counties came to raise a rate to compensate those generally substantial inhabitants who served the queen with their carts, since the queen only paid id. the mile, far below the commercial rate. In Worplesdon, Surrey the cart-owners shared the charge out by taxing the lands – ‘though never so little’ – belonging to the poorer inhabitants, who did not own carts'. Guildford Muniment Room, More MSS, L.M. 1377/3.

³⁵ Hawarde, , Reportes, p. 58Google Scholar; , H.M.C., Buccleuch and Queensberry MSS, III, 52Google Scholar. The queen and her ministers presumably thought that since gentlemen were less troubled by purveyors they would not be so anxious to buy relief. However, when the Derbyshire composition was breaking down in 1598, the justices protested that they had always done their ‘best’ to uphold the county agreement; it was ‘the people’, they later explained, who were ‘unwilling to pay’: , H.M.C., Rutland MSS, I, 346, 349Google Scholar.

³⁶ B.L. Add. MSS 29,975, fo. 7; Smith, A. Hassell, County and court: government and politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 293–302Google Scholar.

³⁷ In Dorset, for example, Nicholas Warren complained of ‘vexation’ and ‘molestation’ and of being ‘often tymes disturbed and grieved’ by the justices, who compelled him and the other inhabitants of Loders (who claimed a chartered exemption from purveyance) to contribute to the countu composition: P. R. O., REQ. 2310/29.

³⁸ P.R.O., S.P. 12/245/47; , H.M.C., Rutland MSS, I, 345–6Google Scholar; B.L. Add. MSS 39,829, fo. 66. Throughout the last years of Elizabeth's reign and well into James's, the household issued commissions to local magistrates to enforce contribution to the compositions. In 42 Elizabeth, for example, commissions were issued to magistrates in Coventry, Lancashire, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire: P.R.O., C. 231, no. 1, pp. 157–73, passim.

³⁹ Proclamations of James I, p. 13.

⁴⁰ , H.M.C.,Salisbury MSS, XXIII, 150Google Scholar.

⁴¹ P.R.O., C. 231, no. 2, pp. 19–28.

⁴² C.J., 1, 191.

⁴³ National Library of Wales, Carreg-lwyd MSS 1694, p. 5.

⁴⁴ Ibid. p. 7. Fletcher was himself a cart-taker; his remarks appear in a tract he prepared in October 1605 for the earl of Northampton.

⁴⁵ Spedding, , Letters and life of Francis Bacon, III, 183Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 17.

⁴⁷ Lindquist, , ‘Bills against purveyors’, pp. 38–40Google Scholar. The author of the bill was probably Lawrence Hyde himself. (We can be fairly confident that it was Lawrence Hyde and not his brother Nicholas though the Journal only identifies ‘Mr Hyde’ as the member who brought in the bill.) The speed with which at the beginning of the 1604 session the committee produced the bill, which was quite elaborate, suggests that they adopted or relied heavily on the bill Hyde brought with him: C.J., 1, 153, 160. Further, Hyde may have been the same ‘Mr Hide’ who acted as counsel for the London fishmongers in their suit against the purveyor in 1602 (see above, n. 21). It is worth speculating that Hyde rediscovered the old laws while preparing his brief for the fishmongers.

⁴⁸ C.J., 1, 190, 223.

⁴⁹ Ibid. p. 946.

⁵⁰ At the beginning of the seventeenth century several groups of merchants and retailers, from London and Bristol, engaged in suits against purveyance or otherwise challenged it: Croft, , ‘Parliament, purveyance and London’, p. 14Google Scholar; C.J., 1, 185, 216; P.R.O., L.S. 13/280, fos. 166–8; above, n. 21. Fuller was apparently involved in one of these suits and Hyde possibly in another.

⁵¹ Even Sir Roger Wilbraham, himself a lawyer, somehow missed the point that the statutes proscribed purveyance, not merely its abuses: Scott, Harold Spencer (ed.), ‘The Journal of Roger Wilbraham’, Camden Miscellany, X (1902), 76Google Scholar.

⁵² C.J., 1, 946.

⁵³ Ibid. pp. 190–2.

⁵⁴ C.J., i, 204; L.J., 11, 294–5.

⁵⁵ Lodge, (ed.), Illustrations of British history, III, 182–3Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Sometime in the first year of James's reign, following the failure of conventional reforms such as revised ordinances and books of diets, the council decided ‘that all the howshould should receave money for their dyetts, onelie the kinge and Queenes chamber to continew in dyett’: P.R.O., L.S. 13/280, fo. 80; Seddon, P. R., ‘Household reforms in the reign of James I’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, LIII (1980), 45Google Scholar. It is difficult to say who first proposed the reform, but Cecil and Northampton were the councillors who seemed most concerned about household expense. The chief household officers, who were also councillors, probably opposed it. Although never applied in James's reign, the plan perhaps reflected the decline of hospitality in English society at large Videly perceived at this time. See Heal, Felicity, ‘The idea of hospitality in early modern England’, Past & Present, no. 102 (02 1984), 66–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁷ In 1606 Bacon explicitly linked radical household reform and parliamentary composition for purveyance: Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 65. It should perhaps be pointed out that a composition would have required something like the commons' bill to enact and secure it. The same bill would have served, with additional clauses providing for the king's revenue.

⁵⁸ , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVI, 79Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ C.J., I, 984.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Ibid. pp. 207, 974, 984.

⁶² B.L. Eger. MSS 2651, fos. 21–3.

⁶³ C.J., I, 969.

⁶⁴ Ibid. p. 974.

⁶⁵ , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XXIII, 150Google Scholar. Instead of ‘consent’ the copy of the ‘Apology’ in P.R.O., S.P. 14/8/70 reads ‘councell’.

⁶⁶ C.J., 1, 974–5.

⁶⁷ Ibid. p. 978.

⁶⁸ Ibid. pp. 984–5.

⁶⁹ M P.R.O., S.P. 14/8/93.

⁷⁰ For the second year in a row the household charges for the year ending at Michaelmas 1605 I exceeded £86,000: Seddon, , ‘Household reforms’, p. 55Google Scholar. In October Northampton complained X that ‘the flaws and excesses… are infinit’: P.R.O., S.P. 14/15/97. The plan of reform involved I (among other economies) commuting fifty-seven diets, or about two-thirds of all those served in V the household, to board-wages. It was thought that £5,000 per annum could be saved I immediately by commuting diets and another £10,000 eventually by ‘abatement of ministers and I officers’ – with the additional advantage of fixing household costs: B.L. Add. MSS 27,909, fos. I“ 19–20; , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVII, 463–4Google Scholar; Seddon, , ‘Household reforms’, p. 46Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Jeayes, Isaac Herbert (ed.), Letters of Philip Gawdy …1579–1616 (London, 1906), p. 158Google Scholar. Chamberlain made a similar report: McClure, Norman Egbert (ed.), The letters of John Chamberlain (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1939), I, 209Google Scholar.

⁷² P.R.O., L.S. 13/168, fos. 75v. 76v–82, 100v–102v; Add. MSS II, 402, fo. 98; Whithed's letter book, pp. 31–2.

⁷³ Akrigg, G. P. V. (ed.), Letters of King James VI & I (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), pp. 263–4Google Scholar; , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVI, 325–6Google Scholar; B.L. Add. MSS 11,402, fo. 107V; P.R.O., S.P. 14/16/76.

⁷⁴ Hawarde, , Reportes, pp. 193–5, 248–9Google Scholar; The English reports, LXXII, 890–1, 895; Letters of John Chamberlain, I, 211.

⁷⁵ Hawarde, , Reportes, p. 249Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ In his speech introducing the commons' petition in 1604 Sir Francis Bacon had dwelt at some length on this, that it was a grievance of gentlemen: Spedding, , Letters and life of Francis Bacon, III, 184Google Scholar. The very next day the king had sent to the house announcing his intention to punish a purveyor for taking tress; C. J., I, 189.

⁷⁷ ‘Journal of Roger Wilbraham’, p. 75.

⁷⁸ For evidence that the bill introduced by Hare was the same as the 1604 bill, see above, n.2.

⁷⁹ Lindquist, , ‘Bills against purveyors’, pp. 36, 40–1Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 53–4.

⁸¹ Dr Croft seems to attribute the commons' greater determination in 1606 to the fact of a radical new bill, authored by Hare: Croft, , ‘Parliament, purveyance and London’, pp. 23Google Scholarff. But the 1606 bill was almost certainly the 1604 bill, probably authored by Hyde (see above, nn. 2 and 47). The discovery of the laws for the first time in 1606 cannot explain the commons'zeal, since they had already discovered them two years before. The explanation for their actions lies not in the bill, but, I am suggesting, in extraneous events, particularly notice taken of the bill outside the house.

⁸² C.J., I, 282.

⁸³ , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVIII, 88Google Scholar. Walter Yonge apparently followed proceedings on purveyance from as far away as Devonshire, although he received a distorted report: Roberts, George (ed.), Diary of Walter Yonge, Camden Society, XLI (1848), 4Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Croft, , ‘Parliament, purveyance and London’, pp. 20–3Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Birch, Thomas (ed.), The court and times of James the First (2 vols., London, 1849), 1, 60Google Scholar. Salisbury was apparently the first to use the term: Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 42.

⁸⁶ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 74.

⁸⁷ P.R.O., S.P. 14/18/89.

⁸⁸ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 63.

⁸⁹ C.J., I, 278.

⁹⁰ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 63.

⁹¹ ‘Journal of Roger Wilbraham’, pp. 76–7.

⁹² C.J., 1, 281.

⁹³ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 75.

⁹⁴ C.J., 1, 277.

⁹⁵ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 63.

⁹⁶ C.J., 1, 286; Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 84–5.

⁹⁷ Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 120–3, 134–5; ‘Journal Roger Wilbraham’, pp. 79–81, 82–6.

⁹⁸ C.J., I, 278. Berkeley also favoured giving the king a ‘yearly revenue’, though one that should be ‘without charge to the people’: Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 62.

⁹⁹ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 123.

¹⁰⁰ Diary of Robert Bowyer, p. 17; C.J., 1, 223, 262, 303–4.

¹⁰¹ Salisbury often consulted Johnson. Johnson in fact drafted his bill when Salisbury sought his advice on a remedy for purveyance: , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVIII, 55–7Google Scholar. In March 1606 there was some talk in the lords of ‘making a lawe to punish the abuse’ of purveyance although not to end its ‘use’: P.R.O., S.P. 14/19/27.

¹⁰² Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 87–8.

¹⁰³ L.J., II, 412.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid. p. 435. The lords also noted that the second bill had the same title as the one they had just rejected.

¹⁰⁵ B.L. Cotton MSS Titus F IV, fos. 32–3.

¹⁰⁶ Diary of Robert Bowyer, pp. 71–2.

¹⁰⁷ C.J., I, 281.

¹⁰⁸ P.R.O., S.P. 14/21/11–13. The projectors thought the fens could be worth £50,000 per annum and proposed to settle them on the king when they were worth £30,000, at which point purveyance was to cease.

¹⁰⁹ , H.M.C., Salisbury MSS, XVIII, 131Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Proclamations of James l, pp. 136–42.

¹¹¹ Hawarde, , Reporles, pp. 278–9Google Scholar; English reports, LXXII, 900–1.

¹¹² Backhouse sat for the borough of New Windsor in Berkshire. His property where the trees were taken was also in Berkshire.

¹¹³ C.J., 1, 249, 999.

¹¹⁴ Elton, G. R., ‘Tudor government: the points of contact: I. Parliament’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, XXIV (1974), 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Munden, ‘James I and “the growth of mutual distrust”’.

¹¹⁶ Russell, Conrad, ‘Parliament and the king's finances’, in Russell, (ed.), The origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973), pp. 91–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.