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Charles Continues Milled Coinage Program
 | By Michael D. Greaney, World Coin News
December 03, 2008 |
One of the peculiar features embodied in the full-blown "divine right of kings" is the belief that the ruler has ultimate property in all the goods, even bodies, of his or her subjects. Effectively socialism, Thomas Hobbes best stated this tenet in his philosophical justification for totalitarianism, Leviathan:
A Fifth doctrine, that tendeth to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth, is, That every private man has an absolute Propriety in his Goods; such, as excludeth the Right of the Soveraign. Every man has indeed a Propriety that excludes the Right of every other Subject: And he has it onely from the Soveraign Power; without the protection whereof, every other man should have equall Right to the same.1
It is one of those weird paradoxes of history that Walter Bagehot, author of The English Constitution (1867) and Lombard Street (1873), used Hobbes as a primary source. In this and many other passages Hobbes expounded the essential principle of socialism. Socialism, whether a mild, "Fabian" type or communism, relies on destroying private property by vesting effective or actual title in the State, that is, eliminating private property as an institution. As Karl Marx declared in The Communist Manifesto (1848), "The theory of the communists may be summed up in a single sentence: the abolition of private property." (Property, as we have mentioned before, is not the thing owned, but the natural - inalienable or absolute - right to be an owner, and the socially-determined, limited rights that define what an owner may do with what he or she owns.)
Bagehot's 1867 tome describes the presumed transformation of the unwritten English constitution from the more-or-less democratic Medieval concepts expressed in Magna Carta (a document Bagehot mentions only to ridicule2) to the Tudor and Jacobean totalitarian model. Lombard Street (analogous to the relationship that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, has to The Wealth of Nations, 1776) is an application of the principles expressed in The English Constitution.
Bagehot's contribution was (in effect) to assert that the divine right to rule had passed from the "monarch" - ironically, Greek for "sole ruler" - to the House of Commons, a body in his day controlled by a relatively small financial elite, an oligarchy known as the "Upper Ten Thousand." The paradox enters in when we realize that Bagehot, whose work has been taken as a defense of and support for laissez-faire capitalism, is based solidly on the work of Hobbes, a philosophical pillar of State socialism!
It should also come as no particular surprise that Hobbes composed his work during the reign of Charles I. The book went through three versions, the first in 1640 (privately circulated), the second in 1642, and the final - which nearly cost him his head when Cromwell replaced Charles as sole ruler or dictator (Bagehot declared it was a flaw in the American system that the U.S. Constitution similarly didn't allow for a dictator in times of national emergency3) - in 1651. After that, the author very wisely published very little on political matters and lived in effective retirement until his death in 1679.
The theory of divine right not only undermined the basic precepts of the English constitution, a very real and effective "document," for all that it remains unwritten, it led to Charles making direct, if unintended, attacks on specific laws, even the whole idea of rule of law itself. (The work of Albert Venn Dicey, chief "rival" of Walter Bagehot, was to restore the idea of rule of law to intellectual respectability after it had taken some hard hits over the centuries.4 Dicey, a great if qualified admirer of the American constitution and system of government based on natural law,5 articulated essential principles of social justice, while engaging in his own slight paradox by rejecting the term.6)
The most critical area in which Charles showed creativity with respect to the ancient English doctrine of rule of law was, as we have already seen, in the methods he employed to raise funds. By his own lights and judging solely from standards of personal ethics, Charles was a moral man. The problem was that he, as a divine right king, could not acknowledge any authority in the State higher than his own - including the natural law discerned through the centuries as to the common opinion of mankind as to what constituted "good."
This led to an interesting situation. Charles was absolutely convinced that his subjects were morally obligated to provide him with the money he needed to govern. In that, he was correct. Government is, essentially, a service of general benefit to the State, and citizens are obligated to make a grant of money to see that the services of government can be carried out. Many politicians, however, have a tendency to decide otherwise once they get into power, and attempt to divest themselves of the very necessary accountability to the citizen that accompanies a grant of tax money.
Unfortunately, consistent with his belief that he ruled by divine right, Charles didn't see the levy of taxes or other mechanisms by means of which he obtained cash as partaking of the character of a grant from the people to the State. He saw it as an exercise of his ultimate right of property in the possessions of his subjects, just as Hobbes declared. The former requires the consent of those who are taxed, while the latter would be self-justified.
A similar attitude prevails even to this day in the halls of government. "Government money" is somehow disconnected from the money that people pay in as taxes. The result is that the State is perceived as "owning" the money instead of receiving it only on condition that it be used for the public good. This leads in many cases to the State using money taken from the taxpayers to engage in "social engineering" or to support programs or policies at odds with the principles governing the general culture or even the State itself.
Politicians seem never to remember Aristotle's warning that some actions perceived as "democratic" are not always in the best interests of a democracy, or even capable of preserving it. The true politician - "statesman" would be a better word - must always walk a tightrope. Public opinion can sometimes be contrary to what is in the best interests of the public, but then, so can the opinion of the politician. Perhaps Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish opponent of Dr. Samuel Johnson on the question of American independence, said it best in a speech before the electors of Bristol in 1775: "An elected representative owes his constituents not only his industry, but his judgment, and he betrays them when he sacrifices it to their opinion."
By extension, Burke's dictum applies to all politicians, for in western political philosophy (and even some interpretations of eastern political philosophy), those in power only govern with the consent of those whom they govern. Thus, while Charles was convinced that he ruled by divine right, it was, consistent with traditional western thought, actually with the consent of the people although they had no voice, and many of which opposed the moves parliament took in their name.
Further, since Charles was convinced that by withholding tax money parliament was illegally depriving him of what belonged to him by divine right, any subterfuge was justified. In 1627, for example, Charles threw five knights into prison for refusing to make him a forced loan. He also became very creative in the matter of fines levied by the Star Chamber, taking some lessons from Wentworth's practices in Ireland, searching out every possible law for which infractions incurred a monetary fine. He sent special commissions to discover instances of illegal enclosure of common lands ... and did not require the removal of the fences, for that would have destroyed a future revenue source when the next commission came through the area a few years later.
When anyone criticized his methods, he dismissed the complaints as misguided or subversive.
One benefit of the king's hunger for cash was that (in England at least) there were no executions for political crimes in the 1630s. This isn't to say that large numbers of people weren't sentenced to death on political grounds. It just means that if convicted, you could substitute a large fine and a small prison sentence. Lord Balmerino, a leading Scots peer, was convicted and sentenced for treason (normally a capital crime) for possessing a piece of paper containing complaints that parliament could not express its views freely. He was not executed. Similarly, Thomas Wentworth, Lord Deputy of Ireland, sentenced Lord Mountmorris to death when Mountmorris filed a complaint concerning Wentworth's management of the Irish revenue (i.e., managing to find a way to funnel it into the Lord Deputy's purse instead of the king's). Mountmorris, too, escaped execution, it being more profitable to fine and imprison him.
In light of Charles' desperate need for cash and his usual flexibility as to the means whereby he obtained it, the fall session of the Irish parliament of 1634 promised to be interesting.
Charles' back was, frankly, against the wall. The Graces had been promised and paid for, and the "Old English" Catholics and moderate Protestants, to say nothing of the native Irish who had no political voice but were an important factor nonetheless, were starting to get more than a little annoyed. Adding to Charles' dilemma was the fact that his newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, was attempting yet another reform of the English, Scots and Irish churches. This required money, of course, but even more it required the threat of armed force. The Irish were, for once, not a problem. Reforms were passed and implemented ... and simply ignored, as Catholics, Presbyterians, and Dissenters continued to pay their coerced tithes to the established church and attend their own services without regard to the near-empty official church buildings.
In England, Charles and Laud managed to stir up quite a bit of controversy, but the English by this time (at least according to some historians) were sufficiently cowed to acquiesce after making some extremely vocal protests. Dissenters had by this time settled on a policy of emigration (as Americans familiar with "the Pilgrims" know), so the more extreme Puritans were simply removing themselves from the scene. This left the Scots - and therein (as the poet says) lies the rub.
To Puritans and Presbyterians, Laud's reforms appeared to be "popery" in all but name. Charles was attached to "High Church" forms of worship, and this meant that his appointment of William Laud to the See of Canterbury signaled a strengthening of the ceremonial aspects of Christian worship. In Charles' mind, this was probably no more than a way of reconciling his philosophy of divine right in the civil order with the public expression of worship in the religious order. The "show" at court and at religious services should all have a basic consistency, all the more so in that Charles was (according to accepted theory) head of the churches of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as head of State.
Neither Catholics nor Dissenters in England or Ireland saw matters in this light; the former due to their rejection of Charles as head of the Church, the latter due to their rejection of Charles as sole ruler. Disaffected elements in England were either silenced or left the country, however, while those in Ireland simply ignored the reforms. All things considered, Charles' realm of England and Ireland was relatively quiet, and after the chaos of the 1640s, people were to look back on the 1630s as a time of peace and prosperity. This was rather like the way Americans in the Vietnam era looked to the 1950s as the high point of American civilization ... ignoring minor matters such as the Korean conflict, segregation, the "Red Scare," and a few other inconveniences.
That left Scotland as the center of resistance to Charles' policies during the period of "personal rule," or, depending on your orientation, "tyranny."
As far as the Scots were concerned, they had a number of legitimate grievances. As the Stuarts were, first and foremost, the Scottish royal house, they felt they had a claim to being the "first" among the kingdoms. Hungarians in the 18th through the early 20th centuries felt the same way about their position in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which by rights, should have been the Hungaro-Austrian Empire. After all, wasn't the Emperor first and foremost king of Hungary, but merely Grand Duke of Austria? The Hungarian Revolution of 1867 started as a demand that Hungary assume its rightful place in the Empire and was ended with Franz Joseph's creation of the dual monarchy, similar to that which obtained in Scotland and England under the Stuarts.
(Interestingly, the last emperor, another Charles I, 1916-1918, was never crowned emperor, but was crowned king of Hungary, something the Hungarians never forgot. They continued to agitate for the return of the king until the Russians took over the country at the end of World War II. Admiral Horthy established a dictatorship of the country after the chaos that followed the First World War that lasted until October 1944 when he announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Axis. All the time he maintained the fiction that he was regent for Otto, Charles' son - Charles died in 1921 - while working very hard to keep Charles, then Otto, out of the country.)
The Scots' political complaints were exacerbated by religious differences. Laud's program of reform was (as we might expect) implemented through the bishops of the Anglican church. Control over the "Kirk" in Scotland had been a serious bone of contention since the ascension of James I/VI Stuart. Whether the king of Scotland was head of the Scottish established church in the same way that the king of England was head of the English established church was never, if you'll excuse the expression, established in a manner accepted by both sides of the question.
In any event, James had waged an unending campaign to bring the Kirk to heel, an effort culminating in the so-called "Black Articles of Perth" in 1618. These not only mandated such "papist" practices as kneeling to receive communion, but - much worse - reintroduced the office of bishop. Charles continued his father's program, but extended it. When he paid his one and only visit to Scotland in 1633 to be crowned, Archbishop Laud took the opportunity to stage an elaborate coronation ritual, virtually guaranteed to offend the Scots.
While in Scotland, Laud called a meeting to include all the "lords spiritual and temporal," meaning all the bishops and the members of the ruling class who had titles. The "lords temporal" chose not to attend, possibly as a move to humiliate the bishops and reduce their growing power. On their side, the bishops were anxious to increase their own power as much as possible - at the expense of the temporal lords, who pretty much dictated the rather chaotic religious policy of the Kirk.
This was alarming enough, but soon after Charles returned to England it became known that he had ordered the English Book of Common Prayer to be modified for use in Scotland. Up to this time the Scottish Kirk had not had any uniform guide to worship, and Charles' action appeared to the Scottish establishment as an unwarranted intrusion into both their religious and political liberties. Trouble was definitely brewing, and the king would need all the support he could muster.
Fortunately, not all of Charles' reforms were viewed with such alarm, nor were they so potentially inflammatory. One very positive reform was to continue the new program of milled coinage to supplement the hand-hammered product. So popular was the new minting process that Nicholas Briot, the French die-sinker who had come over to England in 1631, was able to expand operations, issuing a second milled coinage beginning in 1638. The designs, again, are virtually identical with the hand-hammered product, with the difference being finer workmanship and better execution.
Briot's second coinage was somewhat more limited in scope than his first. Of course, part of this may be due to the practice at the time of issuing Pennies and Halfpence of the first coinage concurrently with the higher denominations of the second and subsequent coinages. Whatever the reason, the second coinage issued under Briot's auspices consisted of sixpences, shillings, and halfcrowns.
The sixpences show a "late" bust of Charles on the obverse, facing left, with a "falling lace" collar, a broad lace border and no scarf. Behind the head is the denomination in Roman numerals, "VI." The reverse shows a square-topped shield over a long cross that has arms reaching to the inner circle surrounding the shield (the cross on the previous issue had arms that reached to the edge of the flan). Mintmarks consist of a vertical anchor and a mullet. While somewhat more expensive than the hammered version of the same coin, prices are still reasonable. The sixpence starts at around $50 in Fine, going for about $150 in Very Fine.
The shilling, 12-pence, is similar in all respects to the sixpence, with only the denomination, "XII," and the size to show the difference. The mintmarks are an anchor and a "B," presumably for "Briot." Prices start at around $100 in Fine, and go up to about $250 in Very Fine.
The halfcrown (two shillings, sixpence or 30 pence) has an equestrian portrait, that is, the king on horseback, carrying a sword before him, facing left. The reverse is equally elaborate, displaying an ornate crowned shield between a crowned C and R, for Carolus Rex. The mintmarks are, again, an anchor and a small "B." Prices for the halfcrowns start at around $250 in Fine, going up to around $600 in Very Fine.
Despite these indications of a solidly-established reign, England may have been relatively acquiescent to Charles' "personal rule," but could not be relied upon if push came to shove. Emigration had removed the more vocal critics, but it wouldn't need much to push the less vocal into resistance. This was due in large measure to the dispossession of the ordinary people of Ireland. Under the old system, every Irish man and woman (yes, and child) had a defined property right in the productive assets - grazing and agricultural land - held by the clan. Every couple of years or so as conditions changed, the chief would reallocate the land according to individual need and the needs of the clan, but otherwise the system resembled that proposed in the "Community Investment Corporation" ("CIC") concept developed by the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"), www.cesj.org.
That is, the members of the clan owned the land and other natural resources - whatever man did not create - equally, but whatever was grown or grazed on the land (crops and, above all, cattle) were private property. The CIC would improve this by issuing each citizen in an area a single, lifetime, non-transferable, voting and fully participating share in the CIC, which would own all the land, natural resources and infrastructure. Individuals and companies would lease the land and natural resources, and the lease profits would be distributed to the citizens.
As the concept could apply to Iraq, for instance, each citizen of that country could become a shareholder in the oil and other natural resources, deriving an income and having a say-so in what happens to the oil. This would be an effective counterterrorism measure, as terrorists can only operate where they have a base of support, and they have no base of support where people do not feel oppressed.7 The people of Ireland in the 17th century no longer had any means of acquiring and possessing private property, and thus frequently took up the only profession open to them: soldier.
That meant the only place where Charles could garner any support and seek troops was Ireland, England's military forces at this time having become seriously degenerated. The former reliance on local militia, trained and maintained by the magnates, had been deliberately discouraged to undermine their power, but funds had been lacking to provide for the formation and maintenance of a regular army to replace the former arrangement. At this time the only regular military force in England consisted of less than 50 "gentlemen pensioners" who made up the Yeomen of the Guard of the Tower of London - the famous "Beefeaters."
Ireland and Scotland, on the other hand, had large numbers of professionally-trained soldiers, both at home and abroad. Scotland had traditionally sent significant numbers of men to the continent as an important export; many rulers and lords maintained a Scots Guard, with the Scots Archers of Louis XI, the "Universal Spider," being particularly noteworthy (Sir Walter Scott's novel Quentin Durward is set in that milieu) as well as helping to cement the "Auld Alliance" between France and Scotland.
Since the "Flight of the Earls" in 1607, an entire generation of the native Irish nobility and gentry, to say nothing of large numbers of Anglo-Irish as well as common people, had soldiered on the Continent. Further, the Lord Deputy controlled the only (legal) standing military force in Ireland, Scotland or England, aside from the Yeomen of the Guard. That meant that if Charles got into trouble and needed military force to extricate himself, the only place to which he could look for aid was Ireland.
This meant in turn that the Anglo-Irish, the moderate Protestants, and the native Irish who made up the bulk of any levy of troops, had to be pacified - which meant that Charles (through Lord Deputy Wentworth) had better come to terms in the matter of the Graces.
ENDNOTES
1 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, Chapter 29.
2 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution. Portland, Oregon: Sussex Academic Press, 1997, 154.
3 Ibid., 20.
4 See A. V. Dicey, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885).
5 Some commentators find it amusing that Bagehot, in a book ostensibly devoted to the English constitution, spends a large amount of text sneering at the American constitution and system of government, at one point calling an important process a "farce."
6 See A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion In England (1905).
7 The CESJ Iraq oil proposal can be found at http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/paradigmpapers/iraq-nationbuilding.htm.
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