Politics Finance and the Church in the Reign of Edward II

Walter Stapeldon fifteenth bishop of Exeter was the founder of Exeter College Oxford and the greatest of Edward II''s treasurers of the Exchequer. As Edward''s regime crumbled in 1326 he paid the price of his master''s rapacious policies of which he was the chief instrument. This study shows how the Plantagenet revolution in government the most massive overhaul of the Exchequer ever undertaken in medieval England was shaped with a clear financial purpose. On the basis of his extensive research in the Exchequer archives Dr Buck reveals for the first time the extent and severity of the government''s action on the levying of debts to the Crown which although initiated earlier was exacerbated in the early 1320s when parliament and the clergy were refusing the king supply. Placing the policies of Stapeldon''s treasurership in their political and parliamentary context he argues that the Exchequer was Edward''s most powerful weapon against the aristocratic opposition and in the process reassesses the accepted interpretation of these years of turmoil.