The Irish Revenue System: Government and Administration, 1689-1702

Parliamentary History, 2001

In the short-lived Irish parliament of 1692 a government bill was passed imposing additional inland excise duties on beer, ale and other liquors for one year. The first of its kind to be passed in an Irish parliament, the significance of the short-term additional duty act was overshadowed by the constitutional crisis arising from the house of commons' claims relating to the raising of money in parliament.' However, the additional duty act was the first in a long line ofacts that were to play an essential role in the advent of regular parliaments in Ireland in the eighteenth century, and, in so doing, was to be a primary factor in the creation of a new understanding of the constitutional relationship between the government and the protestant political nation in Ireland. Although historians have acknowledged that a significant alteration in the system of government in Ireland came about in the 1690s and early eighteenth century, there have been few attempts to explain these changes. It is the aim of this article to examine the development and use of short-term taxation in the period 1692 to 17 16, and thereby to address the fundamental questions of how and why parliament met on a regular basis in eighteenth-century Ireland. At the time of the restoration of Charles I1 in 1660 the yield from the public revenue in Ireland varied between L35,000 and L70,OOO p.a. This amount was insuficient to meet the annual cost ofgovernment. However, the Irish parliament of 1661-6 voted a permanent financial settlement on the crown which enabled an increase in the net annual yield from L87,833 in 1661 to E256,994 in 1684. The results were twofold: by the 1670s annual income regularly exceeded expenditure, creating a surplus which was siphoned off to the English treasury; and, more important, the Irish government's ability to cover all public expenditure every year meant that there was no longer any pressing need to summon an Irish parliament. Thus no parliament was summoned between 1667 and Likewise, when William I11 * I would like to express my gratitude to the Institute of Irish Studies, the Queen's University of Belfast, for awarding me a Junior Research Fellowship for 1998-9, during which time this article was completed.

Parliamentary History, 2014

This article examines the connection between issues of security, finance and the army in Ireland in the years 1714-16. The death of Queen Anne and succession of the first Hanoverian monarch, George I, in August 1714, offered renewed hope to the supporters of the Jacobite cause in Ireland, Scotland, England and beyond. However, the threat of a Stuart restoration by force of arms served to galvanise the efforts of government in both England and Ireland in support of the Hanoverian succession, though the necessary military preparations and precautions resulted in increased public expenditure. In Ireland, the government's need to find new sources of revenue meant that parliament would have to be convened, which, in turn, necessitated compliance with a series of constitutional practices which had evolved since the 1690s in relation to Poynings' Law and supply legislation. Yet despite a threatened Jacobite invasion, factional political manoeuvring, as ever, demanded compromise, though ultimately the wholly protestant Irish parliament took the necessary precautions to secure Ireland for the new Hanoverian regime by voting new taxes and facilitating the creation of a national debt in order to raise new regiments for the army. The coalescing of the issues of security, finance and the army thereby led to new innovations in Irish parliamentary and financial practice which were to become key components of the constitutional framework in Ireland until legislative independence in 1782.

2015

Economic historians conventionally date the origins of the English fiscal state to the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. By European standards this was a belated innovation; the Spanish, Dutch and French had developed effective methods of debt service around a century earlier, based upon high tax revenues and borrowing. This study will explore the reasons why the English lagged behind their rivals in developing a fiscal state. England was not a poor country, and the reasons for its low tax base and poor creditworthiness were largely political. However, political historians, accustomed to analysing texts, rarely appreciate the significance of figures. This study will use financial data to contextualise debates about Crown finances, showing that a significant proportion of the political nation was dissatisfied with important areas of domestic and foreign policy. However, a political culture which sought to establish a consensus encouraged them to subvert, rather than confront...

Historical Research, 2016

This article is the first detailed examination of the English parishes and knights' fees tax of 1428, based upon parliamentary and exchequer material. It demonstrates that the house of commons insisted upon granting this novel tax, in place of a more financially burdensome fifteenth and tenth, during the financial crisis of 1427–8. The parishes and knights' fees tax was efficiently administered, notwithstanding some local complications, although its yield was not commensurate with the scale of the crown's financial needs by the late fourteen-twenties. This provides a unique insight into the origins of the well-documented late Lancastrian fiscal crisis.

Peter Crooks (ed.), Government, war and society in medieval Ireland: essays by Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon (Four Courts: Dublin, 2008), pp 353–75

iBook, 2012

As an experiment with a new form of publication, I converted a recent talk into a short iBook. The talk, to a seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, concerned the state of government finance before and during the period of baronial reform and rebellion in England, in the 1250s and 1260s. The iBook makes some modest use of interactive features such as the glossary, but was intended primarily as a test of how quickly and easily such a publication could be produced and made available. The book presents some new financial information, derived from unpublished records, particularly pipe rolls and memoranda rolls, to argue that: Henry III’s financial position, on the eve of the baronial coup of 1258, was healthier than is often assumed; Henry’s financial problems were largely of his own making, particularly his absurd commitment to the Sicilian venture; and the baronial reform regime of 1258-61 achieved some success in improving the administration of the Exchequer, and maintaining the flow of government income.

Irish Historical Studies, 2015

This article examines a petition drawn up by Robert Ayleway, an official within the Irish fiscal-military state in 1692, in connection with charges of corruption and incompetence during the Williamite Wars (1689-91). Ayleway’s petition, and his wider career, demonstrate that he was part of a process of English and Irish state formation that had begun well before 1688, driven by informal patronage networks as much as by formal bureaucratic developments, creating an entrenched interest group of officials that nevertheless came into conflict after 1689 with new officers, many of them foreign, who came to Ireland in William III’s train. Both sides suspected the loyalty of the other, but the petition reveals that Ayleway saw himself, with some justice, as a competent and loyal official who had used his private means to serve the public in a way that had also advanced his own private interests, suggesting something of the ethos of officials within the new Irish (and English) fiscal-military state.

The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 122C (2022), pp. 1-25, 2022

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