Elton Continued

I am continuing to read Elton and discover more about Elizabeth I.

The Tudor period, and Elizabeth's reign especially, were a period of inflation, something which had been lacking for the previous century at least. It seems various reasons are given for this, but two of the chief reasons appear to be the influx of New World Silver into Europe via Spain. This resulted in more money floating around and therefore a natural rise in prices resulting from people paying more for goods to ensure they got them. The second reason, at least in England was the frequent debasing of the coinage. At least Elizabeth put a stop to it.

However, part of the consequence of this inflation was the relative impoverishment this caused for many land owners. Landed income tends to be fixed to a certain degree and therefore more difficult to increase as a counter to rising prices and costs of living. As one of the largest Landowners in the country, and with many diverse estates, the Crown was not in a position to increase its rents easily. This fact greatly facilitated the growing impoverishment of the Crown. Elizabeth has often been accused of parsimony and to be fair she struggled for money throughout her reign. According to Elton, when she died the Crown owed some £400,000, a huge some in today's money.

OK so this is a fairly basic fact and to many might be rather meaningless. To understand the significance of this poverty we need to dig deeper. The Crown represented the government of the country, indeed in many respects it was, unlike today. In order to conduct it's business the Crown and hence the government required money. If the Crown had independent means then that government business could be conducted more easily. Without that independent means the Crown and government had to rely on the good will of parliament to grant subsidies through taxes. In effect this was the fore-runner of our budgetary and tax system today. So Elizabeth's poverty meant she had to rely on parliament more than she would have liked in order for her government to conduct it's business. This meant to some extent she was a hostage to the demands of an often puritanical, and certainly strongly protestant, House of Commons.

Again you might be thinking "so what". Well this was a time of religious uncertainty and dubious national security. Elizabeth's reign came hard on the heels of an increasingly fervent reformation followed by and violent, though brief, counter-reformation during the previous two short reigns. Stability was needed and Elizabeth knew it. Unfortunately, continental Europe wanted to see England return to the fold of the Roman church whilst a well organised and vociferous minority group of puritans wanted England to move in the direction of Calvinist Protestantism.

Elizabeth had to tread a delicate tight-rope of domestic and foreign policy to keep these two poles from destroying her realm and her position. The lack of money and frequent need to treat with parliament made this tight-rope all the more delicate. Perhaps what is so admirable about Elizabeth I is that she succeeded, in spite of all the difficulties and dangers, and when she died, England was already in a position to become a strong player in European politics, though this was perhaps not obvious yet.

It is truly awesome and infinitely interesting how History moves in cycles, even if it does not exactly repeat itself. We can look at Elizabeth's reign and see many parallels with our own political times. The economic crisis we are suffering currently is placing similar constraints on the Government. The politics are different, but similarities exist. Our government is only in being because a delicate coalition of differing interests keeps it there. That very same government is being forced into painful measures of growing parsimony that will be felt by the whole country and yet it still needs to meet both it's foreign and domestic obligations.

It strikes me that a good way to help anyone, including school students understand history is to relate it to the modern world, the world to which they can relate. That must surely be the key to opening up history for people. After all that is a huge part of the value of studying history, the insights it gives us of the present and the clues it can give us to the near future.