Two Proposals for Raising Money by Extraordinary Means, c. 1627

Abstract

This article introduces and prints the texts of two proposals written in the hand of Secretary, Sir John Cook in 1627, for raising money by extraordinary means. Probably dating from early 1627, ‘A proposition for the setling of his Majesties affairs’ advocated a union of arms for the three kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and an association of support for the wars against Spanish and Imperial forces. Probably dating from December 1627, the draft proclamation for a ‘general…taxation…on ale[ , ], beer or cyder’, aimed at implementing a policy passed by the privy council to introduce a new tax by royal prerogative and enforce it through the Star Chamber. ‘A proposition’ purported to build consensus support for royal policy and to raise money by voluntary subscription. The draft proclamation probably came as close as any privy council proposal from early seventeenth‐century England to absolutism in action; it would have imposed a new tax by the will of the sovereign, supported by arguments of necessity, and enforced by a prerogative court. Although neither proposal was put into effect, they provide insights into the conceptions of governance held by Charles I and his privy council during the wars of the 1620s.