Lord Treasurer, 1550–1558

In what was possibly an unguarded moment, the Earl of Warwick confessed that he had no expertise in financial matters. This may have been a thinly disguised boast that he had no merchants among his immediate kindred, or it may have been a simple statement of fact. ¹ Nevertheless at the beginning of 1550 a crisis point had been reached. The total debt was probably not overwhelming – a little over £200,000 – but it was expensive to service and was not being properly managed. It was also increasing steadily because of the high costs of waging war. The capture, fortification and keeping of Boulogne had cost £1,342,550 since 1544. The garrison of Calais was costing £5000 a year more than the revenues of the town and the fortifications, and other works there, were running at £19,000 a year. ² The navy was costing about £25,000 each year to maintain, over and above the costs of its actual use, and Berwick was absorbing an unknown sum which was probably about the same. To set against this the government enjoyed an ordinary income of about £150,000 p.a. and in addition to that it had sold nearly £800,000 worth of former monastic land and had milked the mint of a further £900,000 since 1544 by way of debasement. ³ All these three factors were damaging to financial stability, because the sale of land diminished income and debasement of the coinage caused (or rather added to) inflation. To the Duke of Somerset the Treasurership had been largely honorific. His priorities had been elsewhere and in any case the office had been vacant for three months when Paulet took it over. What was needed was a Treasurer who could concentrate his energies on the demands of that office, without the distractions of having to manage general policy. It was this consideration, with or without his unaccustomed modesty, which seems to have dissuaded the Earl of Warwick from taking the office himself. ⁴ The Earl of Wiltshire's track record in financial management was not conspicuous, but it was real enough and he had all the right contacts. To put a London Draper in charge of the country's finances was a bold and imaginative move.