VERNON, Christopher.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Considerations For regulating the Exchequer, First edition of this economic polemic, written on the brink of civil war and drawing on 30 years' experience at the Stuart treasury.Christopher Vernon (c. 1582-1652) was a career treasury man, in royal service by 1611 and rising to serve as Charles I's First Secondary of the Pipe Office and Surveyor of the Greenwax. In these offices he supported Charles's efforts to raise extra-Parliamentary finance, in particular by uncovering forgotten royal landholdings. A puritan, he maintained a relatively neutral position during the war, for which his family suffered during the Restoration.As Daniel W. Hollis observes, "one of the few remaining points of agreement among Stuart scholars is that the Crown's political difficulties, especially the conduct of foreign affairs and wars, stemmed in large part from inadequate revenues" (p. 419). Vernon's book illustrates the inner mechanisms of those revenues, focusing on the sheriff system of collecting royal rents and debts.

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