# Explain England, c. 1776 **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 28, 2013, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386 "2013-08-28T11:39:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/21 "2013-08-28T23:17:51Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > Thanks for sharing your knowledge on European history. It is still hard for me to grasp that a king actually had someone to answer to. And, if what you say is true, then King George was not a tyrant. The colonists’ beef was with Parliament and only Parliament, wouldn’t you say? No, their beef was also with the Prime Minister, Lord North, and his ministers. Technically they were just advisers to the king, but in reality they wielded executive power as long as they had a majority in the House of Commons. ---
**Author:** ![ryanl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b487fb/32.png) [@ryanl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryanl)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/22 "2013-08-28T23:40:59Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > Ok, now that last statement really blows my mind! Who did Louis XIV have to answer to during his rule (other than the people who revolted against him)? And, why else would they have revolted, then?) Obviously, I am lacking a clear understanding of European history. > > Queen: King! King! The people are revolting! > King: They certainly are! 😉 The French Revolution, much like the English Civil War, stemmed in large part from the need of the monarch to raise additional taxes. Therein lies the answer to your confusion. Governments live on taxes and a monarch needs to rely on someone to raise and collect these taxes. In the case of [Charles I](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War): > [@](#): > > Before the fighting, the Parliament of England did not have a large permanent role in the English system of government, functioning as a temporary advisory committee, summoned by the monarch whenever the Crown required additional tax revenue, and subject to dissolution by the monarch at any time. Because responsibility for collecting taxes lay in the hands of the gentry, the English kings needed the help of that stratum of society in order to ensure a continued stream of revenue. If the gentry were to refuse to collect the King’s taxes, the Crown would lack any practical means with which to compel them. Parliaments allowed representatives of the gentry to meet, confer and send policy-proposals to the monarch in the form of Bills. These representatives did not, however, have any means of forcing their will upon the king—except by withholding the financial means required to execute his plans. As to Louis XVI, France faced significant financial problems as a result of war expenditures and its involved in the American Revolution. To deal with the debt problems, Louis XVI had to summon the [French equivalent of Parliament](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estates-General_of_1789): > [@](#): > > The Estates-General (or States-General) of 1789 (French: Les États-Généraux de 1789) was the first meeting since 1614 of the French Estates-General, a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobles (Second Estate), and the common people (Third Estate). Summoned by King Louis XVI to propose solutions to his government’s financial problems, the Estates-General sat for several weeks in May and June 1789 but came to an impasse as the three estates clashed over their respective powers. It was brought to an end when many members of the Third Estate formed themselves into a National Assembly, signalling the outbreak of the French Revolution. The monarch who was all-powerful and able to order his wishes without consideration of his relationship with the ruling classes likely never existed. outside of Hollywood films. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/23 "2013-08-29T13:45:48Z")
> [@Jinx](#): > > Ok, now that last statement really blows my mind! Who did Louis XIV have to answer to during his rule (other than the people who revolted against him)? Louis XIV was an absolute monarch. Having lived through the “Fronde” (a major revolt led by members of parliaments and the high nobility) as a child, and having feared for his life, he spent all his reign making sure that such a situation would never happen again. And precisely he had to answer to people who could revolt against him (technically he had some minimal checks on his power : the parliament of Paris could refuse to register his edicts but he could in turn force them to do so, and he was constrained by the “fundamental laws of the kingdom” : for instance he couldn’t sell land owned by the crown, and couldn’t change the order of succession) ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/24 "2013-08-29T14:34:34Z")
Louis XIV and similar “absolute” monarchs lived with the reality of life-and-death politics. basically, if you piss off enough people, you will end up getting them all to revolt against you. Even a monarch like Louis XIV engaged in a balance of bribing, cajoling, threatening, and outright persecution to get his point across. It’s a giant balancing act. If you need a big army to enforce your policy, then you face the risk that the commander of the army, or of a large section of it, may turn against you. If the King annoys too many of his barons, as happened with King John, then they will get together and attack you. The only thing that saved John was the feeling that if they got rid of him, then a dozen barons would be fighting among themselves over who should be King. (Roughly what happened in the War of the Roses). The prosperity that produces cash taxes from the city industries happens best in times of peace and freedom. A merchant or guildsman who is afraid that a marauding army or tax collector will steal his money is going to hide it away rather than invest it in more production facilities. If your method of rule is to lay waste to the countryside, even taxes baased on agricultural production will suffer. Lous XIV likely ruled with the same process as the modern Chinese government… As long as things were peaceful and everyone was safe and happy and prosperous, things were fine. A good ruler (or ruling party) does not try to tip that boat with a lot arbitrary arrests or arbitrary seizure of people’s assets. So while Louis might have been able to do anything, teh secret to a long and prosperous leadership was to limit what you do. You can do whatever you wnat, but if you do, you may not be king for long. What’s the old Daffy Duck joke about the magic trick where he swallows dynamite and a lit match? “It’s a great trick, but I can only do it once.” ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/25 "2013-08-29T23:39:50Z")
And the “absolute” rule of the French kings only lasted as long as the royal revenues did. Once their expenditures began to exceed their revenues consistently, they began to lose support. Eventually the king had to summon the Estates, which had not met in over a century, to raise taxes. The Estates, particularly the Third Estate (the commoners) began to raise grievances, and the “absolute” monarchy disintegrated pretty quickly after that. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/26 "2013-08-29T23:46:20Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > Since 1215 with Magna Carta the English crown has not been allowed to levy or collect taxes except by consent. The Tudors with Henry VIII was basically an absolute monarchy. And Henry didn’t have to give out new levies. He took over Catholic Church property which, at that time, was richer than the Crown. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/27 "2013-08-29T23:55:26Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > True, although by the 1770s, I wonder just how much executive power the king had. It was understood by all that the king’s veto could not be actually exercised (it last used in the early 1700s). The king could threaten to pack the House of Lords in the 1830s\* although I wonder how much of that was the Prime Minister actual power and how much was the king. > \*Not sure about the date Not the 1830s, 1911. And the threat of that sort of action is still there if necessary. But, yes, the king, in 1911, was acting at the behest of the Prime Minister (or perhaps even more, of his powerful and popular Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Prime Minister to be, Lloyd-George). The point was to limit the power of the unelected Lords in relation to the democratically elected Commons. The king sided with the Commons, as he knew they represented the will of the people. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/28 "2013-08-29T23:59:11Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > The Tudors with Henry VIII was basically an absolute monarchy. And Henry didn’t have to give out new levies. He took over Catholic Church property which, at that time, was richer than the Crown. Sure, but he had a good deal of popular and Parliamentary support for doing that (much of the country was already leaning Protestant), and he still could not levy actual taxes (which, of course, he did too, and needed to once the church money ran out) without the consent of Parliament. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/29 "2013-08-30T00:45:55Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > The Tudors with Henry VIII was basically an absolute monarchy. And Henry didn’t have to give out new levies. He took over Catholic Church property which, at that time, was richer than the Crown. > [@njtt](#): > > Sure, but he had a good deal of popular and Parliamentary support for doing that (much of the country was already leaning Protestant), and he still could not levy actual taxes (which, of course, he did too, and needed to once the church money ran out) without the consent of Parliament. The analogy I like to use - the English attitude to the Catholic Church hierarchy might be compared to the US attitude to their communist party. While there were plenty of devout Catholics (including Henry VIII) the pope was frequently a “guest” of France or Spain, England’s enemies. So, decisions from Rome seemed tainted with the special interests of England’s enemies. (The original demand, that the pope grant a pretty routine annulment of Henry’s marriage to his first wife Princess Catherine of Aragon (Spain), was seen as dictated by Spain.) Even more so once the split happened, people who chose the Roman church over England were seen as aligning themselves with the “enemies” of England. Since the Church owned what, about 10% or more of England, taking their lands and assets was seen as a very lucrative move. Note the proviso - this was the real limit to “absolute” power. To buy the acquiescence of the nobles, he gave them all a decent share of the loot. This also guaranteed that in the future, it would be very difficult to reverse the seizure. If there were a fight between him and some pretender backed by the Church, the nobles would line up with him rather than lose the newly won large chunk of their own estates. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/30 "2013-08-30T01:11:53Z")
It wouldn’t have been completely routine. One problem was that Henry had been granted a papal dispensation in order to marry Catherine (she was his brother’s widow and such a marriage was normally illegal). Henry was asking to have his marriage annulled on the grounds that the earlier dispensation was wrong. So he was asking for an official declaration that a previous Pope had been wrong on a legal issue. Not a routine request in the midst of the Reformation. That said, if there hadn’t also been political issues involved, then Henry probably could have made a deal to get his request granted. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/31 "2013-08-30T01:15:10Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > The Tudors with Henry VIII was basically an absolute monarchy. And Henry didn’t have to give out new levies. He took over Catholic Church property which, at that time, was richer than the Crown. Henry went to Parliament a bunch of times for taxes, especially early in his reign. In fact, as you mentioned, one of the big reasons for the confiscation of the monasteries was to prevent further taxation. And Parliament resisted Henry a lot. He usually won in the end, but not always. They effectively destroyed Cromwell’s Poor Law, and actually, most of Cromwell’s reform bills failed. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/32 "2013-08-30T01:32:32Z")
Given how difficult it was for the king to raise taxes, does anyone know what the state’s budget was compared to GDP back in those days? Of course, such a figure will be approximative but having a ballpark idea would be useful to see just how much latitude the king had. Did the king only have to ask for more money when paying for a war or the debts incurred during a war? If not, what other reasons did the king seek taxes? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/33 "2013-08-30T04:19:54Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Louis XIV was an absolute monarch. Having lived through the “Fronde” (a major revolt led by members of parliaments and the high nobility) as a child, and having feared for his life, he spent all his reign making sure that such a situation would never happen again. > And precisely he had to answer to people who could revolt against him (technically he had some minimal checks on his power : the parliament of Paris could refuse to register his edicts but he could in turn force them to do so, and he was constrained by the “fundamental laws of the kingdom” : for instance he couldn’t sell land owned by the crown, and couldn’t change the order of succession) Exactly: while he didn’t have to go in front of a “board of directors” to present his “yearly report” and get it approved, it was part of his job to make sure that conditions leading to revolts did not happen. He answered, in different ways, to the whole country. Why would the king seek taxes? For the same reason as any other government: to provide for any public services. Roads, bridges, the judiciary… do not grow on trees. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/34 "2013-08-30T09:36:39Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > The king could threaten to pack the House of Lords in the 1830s\* although I wonder how much of that was the Prime Minister actual power and how much was the king. > \*Not sure about the date [QUOTE=njtt] Not the 1830s, 1911. [/QUOTE] No, the threat to create new peers had indeed been used in the 1830s, specifically in 1832 to secure the passage of the Reform Act, although it took Grey’s resignation as Prime Minister to force William IV into agreeing to make the threat. Part of the reason George V agreed in 1911 was because everyone knew that Asquith could cite the 1832 precedent and similarly resign. [QUOTE=the\_diego] The Tudors with Henry VIII was basically an absolute monarchy. And Henry didn’t have to give out new levies. He took over Catholic Church property which, at that time, was richer than the Crown. [/QUOTE] But Henry did not confiscate Church property on his own authority. All the key measures enacting the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries were Acts of Parliament. Even Henry recognised that such radical change could only be effective if he acted in conjunction with Parliament. Nor was that insight new. Everyone in England had long accepted that the king had a free hand over the small stuff but thought that the big stuff required parliamentary approval. Although no one at the time put it quite in such terms and not everyone always agreed as to what those things were, there was already the sense that the king-in-Parliament could do things that the king alone could not. The flipside however was that, if he could get parliamentary approval, there was no stuff too big that the king couldn’t do. As nothing was bigger than the Reformation, quite a few Tudor historians would argue that Henry inadvertently reinforced Parliament’s position. And a few would even argue that Thomas Cromwell had done so deliberately. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386/35 "2013-08-30T12:00:01Z")
> [@APB](#): > > No, the threat to create new peers had indeed been used in the 1830s, specifically in 1832 to secure the passage of the Reform Act, although it took Grey’s resignation as Prime Minister to force William IV into agreeing to make the threat. Part of the reason George V agreed in 1911 was because everyone knew that Asquith could cite the 1832 precedent and similarly resign. The point relevant to the discussion is when was the threat used most recently, to which the correct answer is **not** 1832 but 1911. I was not denying that it was used in the 1830s, I was pointing out that the power of the monarch to create peers has played a _much_ more recent actual role in the constitutional development of Britain than the poster to whom I as replying had implied (and is still potentially of relevance). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-england-c-1776/667386.md?page=1)