Trade, towns and villages

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The Statute of the Jewry banned Jews from lending money at interest, which had been the main way many of them earned a living. It also made every Jew over the age of seven wear a yellow badge on their outer clothes.

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Interpretation A is convincing about the financial background. Henry III had taxed the Jews very heavily with tallages in the 1240s and 1250s, and in 1255 he even handed the Jewry to his brother Richard of Cornwall as security for a loan. By Edward's reign the community was much smaller and poorer: perhaps only 2,000-3,000 people were expelled in 1290. The Statute of the Jewry of 1275 banned moneylending at interest, but Jews were largely kept out of trade and the guilds, so many lost their living, and the coin-clipping arrests of 1278-79 and the arrests of 1287 weakened them further. The interpretation is also right about the bargain. Edward returned in 1289 from three years in Gascony heavily in debt. The expulsion order was issued on 18 July 1290 while parliament, including the knights of the shire, was meeting, and it granted a fifteenth that raised about £116,000, the biggest single tax of the Middle Ages. Many knights resented Jewish bonds, which were often bought up by magnates, and even by Queen Eleanor, as a way of getting hold of their lands.

However, Interpretation A leaves out religious motives. The Church condemned usury and taught hostility to the Jews; Archbishop Peckham was fiercely hostile, and Edward was a pious crusader king. Edward had already expelled the Jews from his duchy of Gascony in 1287, when there was no tax bargain at all, and his mother had expelled them from her towns in 1275. Popular prejudice, fed by false accusations such as the blood libel at Lincoln in 1255 and the coin-clipping charges, made the expulsion popular. The government also claimed that Jews had carried on lending in disguised forms after 1275.

Overall, Interpretation A is convincing about the timing of the expulsion and the financial bargain with parliament, but it is incomplete. Historians disagree about the balance of motives, but religious hostility explains why expulsion was seen as an acceptable and popular policy at all.

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Taxes on movables were important for the development of parliament first because they needed the consent of the people who paid them. A tax on movables was a fraction, such as a fifteenth or a tenth, of the value of each household's goods, and it was accepted that such a tax had to be agreed by common counsel, as Magna Carta had said. Because Edward needed these taxes so often, nine times in his reign, he regularly summoned knights of the shire and burgesses as well as lords. In 1275 his first parliament granted a fifteenth, and in July 1290 the knights granted a fifteenth worth about £116,000. The Model Parliament of 1295 summoned two knights from every shire and two burgesses from every borough, with full power to agree on behalf of their communities, and the writs summoning the clergy quoted the principle that 'what touches all should be approved by all'.

This was important because consent gave the representatives bargaining power. Taxes were increasingly granted in return for concessions: the fifteenth of 1290 came as the Jews were expelled, a policy popular with the knights, and in 1301 the Lincoln parliament made its fifteenth depend on Edward agreeing to reduce the royal forests.

The crisis of 1297 showed what happened when Edward tried to tax without proper consent. In July 1297 a tax of an eighth was granted only by a small group around the king, and the earls of Norfolk and Hereford led resistance to its collection. Edward had to accept the Confirmation of the Charters, which promised that aids and taxes would not be taken without the common consent of the realm, in return for a ninth.

So Edward's need for taxes helped to make the attendance of knights and burgesses normal and to fix the principle that taxation needed consent, although the Commons were not yet a separate house and did not attend every parliament.

Model answer

Loans from Italian bankers were extremely important to Edward I, but I do not fully agree that they were his most important source of money. They were vital for speed, but the money itself ultimately came from taxes and customs paid by the English.

The case for Italian loans is strong. The Riccardi of Lucca were Edward's bankers from 1272 to 1294, and historians estimate that they advanced about £400,000 over those years. Their loans paid for the Welsh wars of 1277 and 1282-83, for building castles in Wales and for Edward's needs during his three-year stay in Gascony from 1286 to 1289. Their great value was that they could provide money at once. A tax on movables took months to assess and collect, but soldiers, carpenters and masons had to be paid immediately. The importance of the loans is shown by what happened when they stopped: when the Riccardi collapsed in 1294, Edward was forced into the maltolt, seizures of wool and heavy demands on the clergy, which led to the crisis of 1297. From about 1299 the Frescobaldi of Florence took their place, showing that Edward could not manage without Italian credit.

However, loans were not really a source of income. They had to be repaid, with interest disguised as gifts because the Church forbade usury, and they were repaid from the customs and taxes. So the bankers moved money forward in time rather than creating it.

Taxes on movables, granted by parliament, were probably the most important source. Nine were granted during the reign, in 1275, 1283, 1290, 1294, 1295, 1296, 1297, 1301 and 1306. The fifteenth of 1290 alone raised about £116,000, the largest single tax of the Middle Ages, and the run of taxes from 1294 to 1297 paid for the wars against France, Wales and Scotland. These taxes produced the largest sums, and they reached almost every household in the country.

The wool customs were also crucial. The Great Custom of 1275, half a mark a sack, brought in about £10,000 a year. This was smaller than a big tax on movables, but it came in every year, and it was the security that made the Italian loans possible. The Riccardi lent because they could collect the customs to repay themselves. In 1303 the New Custom on foreign merchants added to it.

Other sources mattered too. The clergy paid papal crusading tenths, half their income in 1294 and fines to recover the king's protection in 1297. In the crisis years, the maltolt, the seizures of wool and the prises of food raised large sums. Edward's ordinary income from royal lands, the sheriffs, feudal dues and the courts continued, but it was small compared with the cost of war.

Overall, I disagree that Italian loans were the most important source of money. Taxes on movables raised the largest sums, and together with the customs they repaid the loans. However, the Italian bankers were the most important for making money available quickly when Edward needed it, and the crisis that followed the fall of the Riccardi in 1294 shows how much he depended on them. The best judgement is that parliamentary taxation was the most important source of money, while Italian credit was the most important way of using it.