Budgeting for famine in Tudor England, 1527–1528: social and policy perspectives

Abstract

This paper considers a unique budget document of the sixteenth century prepared for the Crown to facilitate decision-making and resource (re)allocation via the market in a period of dearth – specifically, the Corn Commissions instituted to cope with the East Anglian Famine of 1527–1528. The budgetary procedure is detailed, together with discussion of the economic, political, and social contexts, and the significance of the Commissions as the foundation for subsequent developments in English public welfare policy. The document and policy of the commissions are critically evaluated as mechanisms of political and social control, which produced adverse behavioural responses and social outcomes.

Keywords:

• accounting history
• budgeting
• public sector
• Tudor
• famine
• critical theory

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are offered to the School of Accountancy, Queensland University of Technology and the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies for inviting the author to present an earlier draft of this paper and for the constructive feedback received. I am also extremely grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor of Accounting History Review for their valuable suggestions in improving the paper.

Notes

The concept of the Hundred was introduced by the Anglo-Saxons and denoted both a measure of land and a local administrative unit (Miller 1999).

Here the Tudor period subsumes the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603).

The original certificate is available online through subscribing libraries via State papers online: The Government of Britain, 1509–1714, published by Gale Cengage Learning (http://gale.cengage.co.uk/state-papers-online-15091714.aspx).

PRA 652-653, 382X8.

Dymond (1981, 37) noted that Clopton was the principal landowner in Liston and paid 87% of the tax in that parish of the Hinckford Hundred.

Maslin was commonly used as mixed flour for bread-making, consisting of wheat and rye ground together. Maslin was also grown, where wheat and rye would be sown together, believed to ‘ensure a crop, since the rye would succeed even if the wheat failed through the shortcomings of the soil or the weather or both’ (Cunningham and Grell 2000, 212). However, ‘this was not very successful, for the rye ripened before the wheat was ready’ (Davidson 2006, 847).

In early modern England, a specific weight or measure could vary in amount and sometimes according to the locale concerned. At the time of the East Anglian famine, there was considerable confusion and a degree of subterfuge on the part of merchants about differences between Tower, Troy, and Avoirdupois weights (see Nicholson 1912). Consequently, a rough guide to the weights used in the Hinckford certificate is that a quarter was equivalent to 28 pounds. There were generally eight bushels to a quarter, four pecks to a bushel, and thus 32 pecks to a quarter.

Dymond (1981, 38) indicated that ‘harres’ refer to a type of pulse, such as the legume crop of vetches.

As detailed in the certificate for the Hundreds of Amysbury, and Elstubb and Everley in Wiltshire (SP 1/45 f.191).

Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1257–1504.

The debasement of coinage involved a reduction in the precious metal content of coins, and thus of their value.

A succession of bad harvests occurred between 1527 and 1536 (Clarke 1922, 24).

Source reference provided in Blomefield (1806, 198) is given as Lib. Civit. 19 H. 8.