The Financial Structure of an English Provincial Town in the Early Modern Period : An Analysis of the Chamberlains' Accounts of Elizabethan Newcastle upon Tyne

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  • イギリス近世都市の財政構造 : エリザベス朝期ニューカスル会計簿の分析
  • イギリス キンセイ トシ ノ ザイセイ コウゾウ エリザベスチョウキ ニューカ

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The Chamberlains' Accounts are the records of weekly receipts and payments of the town chamber. Using these documents of Elizabethan Newcastle upon Tyne, I tried here to analyse the financial structure and performance of a town corporation and make sense of the changing nature of its government during this period. One of the most distinguishing characteristcs of this period is the sharp expansion of financial base, even at a higher pace than that of inflation in those days. The cause of this increase is indisputable; the unprecedented advance of the coal industry in this region brought ample funds to the common hutch of the town chamber in the form of impositions on coal and ships or other dues, while the traditional incomes like admission fees for freedom and various rents were relatively decreasing. However a more notable aspect of the financial performance in this period is that the expansion of expenditures was also rapid enough to match, or rather exceed, this incomparable increase of revenue. I classified these unarranged payments written in the Accounts into several main items. In the early Elizabethan period, more than one third of toral expenditure consisted of the outside payments such as fee farm rent, costs for sending representatives to the parliament and various legal expenses, which were indispensable to claiming the privilages of this corporation. Of other items, fees to officeholders, expenses relating to disposal of ballast were principal outgoes. An item peculiar to this town is payment to the town-owned colliery managed for the supply of coal to the town inhabitants. By the end of the Elizabethan period, expenses of all items except coal mining greatly increased, but the ratio of almost all of them to total expenditure decreased or at most retained their former levels. On the contrary, both the amount and percent of expenses concerning the social life and welfare of the town inhabitants significantly incrreased. The swelling of town finance of this period was thus the result, not only of inflation or industrial progress, but of changing nature of town government. This change of financial structure suggests that the town corporation was shifting from the medieval fee-farm paying body to an agent of social policy.

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