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Hello and welcome to the history of England, episode 57 of the ex-communicate.

When we were last with John a few weeks ago, he'd been making his first attempts to recover

his French lands, with very limited success. So, hated or loathe it for the moment John was

confined to England, but he had no intention of resting easy during his confinement.

In some shape or form, he wasn't going to stop planning and working to get those lands back,

or at least certainly not until after 12-14.

One of a plan he came up with, it was going to have to involve money, and in 12-05 this

presented him with something of a problem. Because there were four things coming together.

Firstly, he'd lost vast parts of his empire and therefore vast sources of raw revenue.

Secondly, in losing that empire he'd given himself an unusually keen need for lots of money to

carry out a war of reconquest. Thirdly, that great cause he now had to win back the lands of his

forefathers wasn't very popular, which made raising the stuff more difficult. And finally,

his reign coincides with some unhappy economic circumstances.

All of this meant that John had to strain every nerve to bring in the royal revenues,

and in the creation of the revenue omelette, a certain amount of egg breaking was inevitable to take

place. Since the first shall we last let's talk about the economics of it all first.

Increased activity in European markets, greater abundance of silver from Germany,

vast expendotron war combined with a slow pace of economic productivity growth to produce inflation.

It meant of course that one of the largest of John's costs rose, i.e. the cost to employ his mercenaries.

...