Abstract
This chapter describes how war finance bankrupted Edward III in 1340, while the refusal of his foreign creditors to continue their support forced him to turn to English merchants, who formed successive companies to finance him on the security of the customs. In this way, considerable mercantile capital was diverted into war finance, some of which is recorded in the certificates. It contributed to, but does not, fully explain why their total was 25% higher than that of the 1330s, or of any previous decade after 1285. It appears that once Edward’s new gold coinage was established it improved liquidity by making more silver coins available for the inland trade, thereby encouraging a great expansion of credit in 1348.
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Nightingale, P. (2018). English Financiers, a Gold Currency and Plague, 1340–1349. In: Enterprise, Money and Credit in England before the Black Death 1285–1349. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90251-7_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90251-7_11
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90251-7
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