This is John Bachelor, conversation with Professor Jonathan Healy, his book The Blasing World,

A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603 to 1689.

James the first struggled with Parliament.

Why?

He needed money for wars.

And Parliament was careful.

And this begins the argument that will turn into revolutionary times.

Lots of violence.

The 17th century, as England transformed itself from a kingdom ruled by one king, to a kingdom ruled by one king to a kingdom ruled by lots of competing forces

including eventually Cromwell but here at the beginning, the argument with Parliament, not enough money, but taxes, sounds

very familiar.

More of this later tonight.

Well, it's, I mean this is another one of those kind of long-term structural problems which are happening in the 17th century, which is it comes at the end of a period of very, very long-running inflation.

And what that means is that the state finds it very, very difficult to fund itself

because the cost of everything, especially war, is going up.

It would, it's the 16th century, early 17th century sees a sort of military

revolution where you basically get a kind of transition from bows and arrows and

you know swords and stuff to much more sophisticated gunpowder weapons big fortifications big ships and that this of course costs lots and lots of money and the trouble is that the way that the state raises taxes is based on is

based on sort of nominal value and that doesn't go up to get to to keep up with

inflation so all states around Europe are struggling with

with this problem. And what that means is that the the king is forced to

constantly go back to Parliament because there is a sort of a legal

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