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Charles' First Issues Legal Tender in Ireland
By Michael D. Greaney
December 31, 2007 |
James I Stuart spent the greater part of his reign in a continuing and strenuous effort to make his royal authority absolute, at least when he wasn't playing cards or hunting. This is possibly best summarized in James' act of expunging from the Journals of the House of Commons the declaration that reasserted the liberties of Parliament. As he stated on this occasion, "I will govern according to the commonweal, but not according to the common will." That is, what was "good" was to be determined by the king alone, not the general consensus of all mankind. This he would do (presumably) with the special power vested in him directly by God - or so Sir Robert Filmer in Patriarcha and Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan asserted.
All of this, of course, results from a lasting belief that whoever has power has some kind of God-given right to have that power. In this belief, whoever holds power automatically knows by nature what is best for everyone. The elite in charge is different in kind, not just in degree, from those who do not hold power, whether you're talking about the political ruler of a country or the manager of a business, even if the employees own the business through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan or cooperative.
While this idea (a pagan holdover from the East) had bubbled to the surface off and on throughout the Middle Ages, it was not until 1485 (the date usually given as the official end of the Medieval period) when Henry VII Tudor asserted a previously-unknown "right of conquest" (i.e., the "might makes right" of Kallicles the Sophist ) to the throne of England and the Lordship of Ireland that it became ensconced as the established political philosophy. Thomas More - the "Man for All Seasons" ("He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced." ) executed by Henry VIII Tudor - satirized Henry VII's claim to the English crown in Utopia by having the Utopians decide solely on the basis of "practicality" whether or not to invade and take over another country - letting might make right, which More was fully aware contradicted Medieval political theory, as well as the whole science of moral philosophy ("ethics").
The theory of the divine right of kings continued its development under the Stuarts, with James I taking a personal interest and, on occasion, an active role in the debates over where sovereignty resides. The question was whether sovereignty resides in some ruler in which God directly vests the right to rule by a special act, or in the people to whom God grants sovereignty in the form of reason and a morally-free will as an inherent part of human nature, and who delegate that sovereignty to the ruler who governs with their consent.
The former position bases what is "good" on the ruler's interpretation of God's will, and usually requires a church or religion established as an official branch of the State, with the head of State ipso facto head of the religion. The latter position bases human understanding of "good" on the general consensus of mankind, the belief being that since man is made in God's image and likeness, what humanity sees as "good" in human nature has a high probability of being "analogously good" in God's nature.
That is, human beings are not "clones" of God, but "analogues" of a sort. In a similar way, the phrase a"all men are created equal" within the context of Jeffersonian natural law theory doesn't mean that all human beings are absolutely identical, but that each human being is "analogously complete" with respect to all other human beings. Each human being therefore has the same natural ("inalienable") rights as every other human being, as the rest of passage from the Declaration of Independence makes clear: "and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable [or, for the purist, unalienable] rights."
In the Middle Ages the "official" theory (regardless what courtiers and royalist sycophants might attempt to assert), was that God grants sovereignty to the people, who delegate it to their chosen ruler, whether that delegation and consent is explicit or implicit. The burning question in the Middle Ages was whether this grant of sovereignty is revocable or permanent. Thomas Aquinas believed that it is revocable for just cause, that is, egregious violations of the natural law by the ruler that have a material effect on the common good. This is the accepted teaching of the Catholic Church today (which bases its theology and social teachings on the philosophy of Aquinas ) and is also the basis for the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776.
The Stuart (and earlier, the Tudor) English State was thus directly at odds with a political theory embodied in Roman law, the basis for European civilization. Despite James' best efforts, however, it was not until the reign of Charles I, his son, that things were to come to a head. The anti-Catholic (even anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-Muslim) theory of the divine right of kings was to be the guiding principle of the Stuarts, determining their policies in governing England and, of course, Ireland, as well as their treatment of religious and political minorities. It is within this context, not that of Catholic v. Protestant, that we must understand the 17th century, particularly as the vestiges of the struggle continue to affect us today. As one Irish historian put it,
Though the climax of the sovereign's struggle for autocratic power was not reached till the reign of Charles I, all the elements of future conflict were to be found in James's defiance of the Remonstrance addressed to him by the Commons on his illegal taxation and his assumption of ecclesiastical prerogatives. Charles's doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings was only an expansion of the same principle. A brief period of arbitrary government was to end in England in the execution of the monarch; in Ireland it brought about the rebellion of 1641.
This has a very important effect on politics and thus on economics - and thereby (from both sources) on the nation's coinage and monetary system. If a ruler governs by divine right, he (or she) is ultimately the owner of everything in a country, including the people, and can create money at will, thereby making promises to deliver wealth that belongs to other folks. Henry VII Tudor left England to Henry VIII in his will as a personal possession, instead of presenting him to Parliament as the heir-apparent and arranging for his son's election on his demise, as had been the case with previous kings.
Magna Charta became an effective nullity, as did Laudabilitur, the alleged papal bull that granted temporal lordship of Ireland to the kings of England. Thus, even had Laudabilitur been authentic, Henry VII rejected it as the basis for his claim (and subsequently that of all rulers of England) by asserting a different basis for his rule of England, Ireland, and Wales.
If a king owns everything in the country, as Thomas Hobbes and other supporters of divine right asserted, then taxation changes from being a grant from the people to the State to defray the legitimate costs of government and becomes an exercise of the right of private property. The State takes taxes because it can, and does not need to justify it; it is solely the good will of the ruler that allows the citizens to keep anything, whether life, liberty, or property. In fact, the ruler doesn't even need to tax directly, he (or she) can simply create money which, via the "hidden tax" of inflation transfers wealth from its nominal owners to those who have the power to issue unbacked or debased currency. Henry VIII Tudor was an expert at this sort of fiscal stunt, although he probably didn't realize it.
If, on the other hand, taxes are a grant from the people to the State, they are unjust without the consent (whether explicit or implicit) of the citizens. James I and his son Charles asserted that they were simply exercising their (divine) rights by demanding taxes, while Parliament asserted that the king had no basic right to tax without the consent of Parliament. No one had quite gotten to the point where the individuals on whom the taxes were imposed might be considered as having something to say about it - most citizens didn't have the franchise. When, ultimately, Charles figured out a way to finance government operations without recourse to taxation by borrowing the money from foreign States, heads - quite literally - began to roll, starting with Charles' own. As the late 19th century American political commentator Henry C. Adams noted:
As self-government was secured through a struggle for mastery over the public purse, so must it be maintained through the exercise by the people of complete control over public expenditure. Money is the vital principle of the body politic; the public treasury is the heart of the state; control over public supplies means control over public affairs. Any method of procedure, therefore, by which a public servant can veil the true meaning of his acts, or which allows the government to enter upon any great enterprise without bringing the fact fairly to the knowledge of the public, must work against the realization of the constitutional idea. This is exactly the state of affairs introduced by a free use of public credit. Under ordinary circumstances, popular attention can not be drawn to public acts, except they touch the pocket of the voters through an increase in taxes; and it follows that a government whose expenditures are met by resorting to loans may, for a time, administer affairs independently of those who must finally settle the account.
We need only add Adams' further comments on this score to illustrate exactly why Parliament was so outraged, even fearful of Charles' method of financing his government through recourse to foreign loans:
The tendency of foreign borrowing is in the same direction as that of domestic borrowing. As the latter obstructs the efficiency of constitutional methods, so the former tends to destroy the full autonomy of weak states. The granting of foreign credit is a first step toward the establishment of an aggressive foreign policy, and, under certain conditions, leads inevitably to conquest and occupation.
By using the national credit to finance his consolidation of power, Charles managed to threaten two of the things Englishmen profess to hold most dear, their constitution (which, being unwritten, is rather difficult to pin down), and the "splendid isolation" of their country. Thus with a single act, Charles threatened two things that didn't really exist except in the minds of the English. These were their individual liberties - which existed only nominally for the largely propertyless masses - and the uniqueness of England, a myth created by the Tudors.
This is not, of course, to say that what Charles did was not a serious danger to the lives, liberties, and property of the people of Ireland and England, but these were nullities anyway, for the most part, having been chiseled away by the Tudors.
Having adequately (we hope) set the scene for Charles' advent on the stage of life, we finally (hurrah!) employ the phrase that is the bane of all educationalists grading papers and state that Charles was born. Oh, yes, "at Dunfermline on the 19th of November 1600," and the second son of James I and Anne of Denmark, in case specific details are wanted. He was almost immediately created Duke of Albany and, soon after his father's ascension to the throne of England in 1603, Duke of York. When Prince Henry (Charles' elder brother) died in 1612, Charles became the heir-apparent, although he was not created Prince of Wales until 1616.
Charles wasted very little time in becoming actively involved in public affairs. In 1620 he championed the cause of his sister, Elisabeth, Electress Palatine, who in 1613 married Frederick V, Elector of the Rhine Palatinate, and who in 1619 became (briefly) queen of Bohemia. Elizabeth was much more popular than her husband, who appears to have made a very bad impression on his new subjects. The Bohemians called her "the Queen of Hearts," but it didn't matter how much they loved her if they had to put up with Frederick in order to do so. In a series of events that seem to typify the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia's Protestant Diet (legislature) had forced Frederick on the Catholic country.
The people rose in rebellion, and, after meeting with a few reverses, won a decisive victory over Frederick at White Mountain in 1620. The couple was driven into exile, whereupon Elizabeth's nickname changed to "the Winter Queen" as a result of her short tenure and to match Frederick's new sobriquet of "the Winter King." They ended up in the Hague, eventually becoming the ancestors of the Electors of Hanover, who took over in England once Parliament ran out of Protestant Stuarts in 1714. Had Frederick received any of the aid promised by the Protestant League and his father-in-law James I Stuart, he would very likely have remained king of Bohemia - and therein lies a further tale involving Stuart financial manipulation.
In 1621 Charles took up the cause of the Lord Chancellor, Sir Francis Bacon, the noted philosopher and essayist. The Parliament of 1621 had been called to raise money for the cause of the German Protestants and James' son-in-law, Frederick, the Winter King, in the Thirty Years' War. Instead of granting him the money, however, Parliament forced James to abolish certain lucrative monopolies, resulting in substantial reductions in the royal income - thereby accounting for his failure to assist Frederick.
To add insult to injury, Parliament impeached Bacon, allegedly for bribery, but more likely because the Lord Chancellor advocated political union with Scotland. The Scottish connection was still obnoxious to many people, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a vivid memory. As the plot itself had not at this time become irrevocably linked to the "Catholic Cause," the idea of getting rid of the "foreign" Stuart dynasty was not universally condemned, nor was union with Scotland looked on with approbation. James dissolved this Parliament for "asserting its right to debate foreign policy" (i.e., not giving James the money to assist Frederick). Charles managed to prevent Bacon's degradation from the peerage, a rather meaningless action from whichever angle you view it.
On March 27, 1625, Charles I succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, and on 1 May he was married by proxy to Henrietta Maria. Charles' first coinage issues continued the policy of his father of consolidating the financial affairs of the various kingdoms under one umbrella. It wasn't possible to establish a monetary union with Scotland at this time. This was probably due to distrust on both sides of the border about fiscal imperialism and similar concerns. A century and a half later the great Samuel Johnson still expressed distrust of the Scots, even though his best friend and biographer, James Boswell, came from that country. This was the source of one of the good doctor's most famous epigrams. As Boswell related:
My much-valued friend Dr. Barnard, now Bishop of Killaloe, having once expressed to him an apprehension, that if he should visit Ireland he might treat the people of that country more unfavourably than he had done the Scotch; he answered, with strong pointed double-edged wit, "Sir, you have no reason to be afraid of me. The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, Sir; the Irish are a FAIR PEOPLE; - they never speak well of one another."
Naturally I can't resist adding in another one of Johnson's "compliments" to the Irish at the expense of their Caledonian relations:
Dr. T. Campbell records in his Diary of a Visit to England (p. 62), that at the dinner at Messieurs Dilly's (post, April 5, 1775) he ventured to say that the first professors of Oxford, Paris, &c., were Irish. "Sir," says Johnson, "I believe there is something in what you say, and I am content with it, since they are not Scotch."
In any event, in furtherance of his father's policy of establishing a uniform currency throughout Great Britain and Ireland, Charles' first coinage was made for general use in both England and Ireland. Scotland still retained its independent coinage there was just as much suspicion of the English in Scotland as there was of the Scots in England.
Charles I's initial Tower silver issues follow closely the designs and denominations established by his father. The halfpenny, which ranges in price from about $11 in very good to $160 in extremely fine, carries no mintmark or legend, but simply a rose on each side. This is probably due to the small size of the planchet. It is grouped with the first issue on the basis of the design for, without mintmarks, it is extremely difficult for the average collector to determine when a particular specimen was struck.
The penny follows the design of the galfpenny (or vice versa), having a rose on both sides, but carries a number of mintmarks and includes some minor varieties. These range in price from about $6 in very good to $100 in extremely fine.
The halfgroat, or twopence also duplicates the design found on the halfpenny. It bears a crowned rose on the obverse and the reverse, and ranges in price from $10 in very good to $100 in extremely fine.
Charles I's first issue contains no groats - four pence - but the sixpence (with one major variety) does display a mark of value, a large "VI" to the right of the king's left-facing bust on the obverse, as well as dates ranging from 1625 through 1629. The reverse displays a shield. These range in price from $18 in very good to around $300 in extremely fine.
The shilling (the new "workhorse" of the economy) carries a design virtually identical to that of the sixpence. Apart from a larger size, the only readily discernible difference is that the "VI" is changed to a "XII" to indicate the number of pence in the denomination. These range in price from $25 in very good to around $500 in extremely fine, depending on the sub-variety.
The half-crown - 2 shillings and sixpence, or 30 pence - features an equestrian portrait of the king (i.e., the king on a horse, facing left, holding a sword upright in his left hand), as had by now become traditional on "crown" value coins. The reverse shows a shield. These range in price from $60 in very good (for the common varieties) to anywhere from $500 to $3,000 in extremely fine.
Silver crowns, being some of the most popular collector coins no matter what your specific area of interest, see prices rise dramatically. The designs, of course, mirror the half-crowns (or maybe it's the other way around?), featuring an equestrian portrait of the king and a shield on the reverse. Prices range from $140 in very good to upwards of $3,000 in extremely fine. With the half-crowns, the $3,000 price tag is for exceptional specimens, while for crowns, it's simply the upper limit for well-preserved specimens.
All in all, the first issues of Charles I, while interesting, give little hint as to the wide variety of issues of all types that were soon to come. They are, nonetheless, very collectible and (as we might expect) have a great deal of historical significance.
ENDNOTES
1Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy. Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1998, p. 8.
2Dr. Samuel Johnson.
3More also ridiculed the notion (rooted in the philosophy of William of Occam) that private property was not natural to man, and should therefore be abolished. The supreme irony of this is that most modern commentators somehow assume that More was endorsing communism the very thing he was satirizing!
4See, e.g., two political tracts by James I, "The Trew Law of Free Monarchies" (1598) and "A Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at White-Hall" (1610).
5Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris ("On Atheistic Communism"), 1937, § 29.
6Gen. 1:26.
7I could insert a lengthy dissertation on the conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines to illustrate the political and economic results of this dispute, but it's a little too far from the subject at hand, and it is not an easily explained black and white issue.
8Cf. Pope Leo XIII Ęterni Patris ("On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy"), 1879; Pope Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem ("On St. Thomas Aquinas"), 1923; as well as a whole bunch of other documents by a whole raft of popes that take "Thomism" for granted.
9Eleanor Hull, A History of Ireland and Her People, 1931.
10Henry C. Adams, Public Debts, An Essay in the Science of Finance. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898, pp. 22-23.
11Ibid., p. 25.
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