Fiscal Theory and Practice in Yorkist England: The Regression from a “Tax” to a “Domain” State

Abstract

This work scrutinises the B. P. Wolffe’s influential argument that the Yorkist «land revenue experiment» transformed the English crown’s finances. It pioneers quantitative estimates of the Yorkist royal budget which emphasise the limited net gains derived from the crown’s resumption of alienated lands. This demonstrates that the notion of «living of the king’s own» which was central to the work of Sir John Fortescue does not afford a realistic blueprint for how a fifteenth-century government could manage its finances, but rather denotes an ideological, class-based, opposition to the lay tax burden. These themes demonstrate the intellectual rigour of the «Bonney-Ormrod model of fiscal change», which accounts for historical fiscal systemic regression from «tax» to «domain» states, as occurred in Yorkist England, just as much as it does more commonly discussed cases of systemic fiscal advancement characteristic of much of early modern Western Europe.