You’re reading Age of Invention, my newsletter on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation. This free edition went out to 7,400 people. You can sign up here: When England’s Parliament met in 1621, it was mainly supposed to vote king James I the funds to fight a war. His daughter’s domain, the Palatinate of the Rhine, had just been invaded, and the European Protestant cause was under grave threat. As I set out two weeks ago, however, the House of Commons had seized the chance to pursue a scandal. Jealous of the Crown’s challenge to their status as local power-brokers, and hoping to embarrass the king’s favourite, the Marquess of Buckingham, MPs opened an investigation into Sir Giles Mompesson’s
It was somewhat of an aside, but the statistic that jumped out at me was "At a time when bread and beer made up 75-85% of the typical person’s expenditure..." Is there some index/resource that lists what percentage of a person's income certain goods consume? I'm able to find indices for the twentieth century but I don't know where to look for data for the 19th century and earlier.
I suppose the point of swapping a chunk of bullion for coins was that coins are more liquid - you could settle a bill of any size for enough coins while trying to pay someone with a lump of bullion would be trouble. As such, the seignorage charge is something like a central bank overnight interest rate - the price of liquidity from the provider of last resort.
It was somewhat of an aside, but the statistic that jumped out at me was "At a time when bread and beer made up 75-85% of the typical person’s expenditure..." Is there some index/resource that lists what percentage of a person's income certain goods consume? I'm able to find indices for the twentieth century but I don't know where to look for data for the 19th century and earlier.
I suppose the point of swapping a chunk of bullion for coins was that coins are more liquid - you could settle a bill of any size for enough coins while trying to pay someone with a lump of bullion would be trouble. As such, the seignorage charge is something like a central bank overnight interest rate - the price of liquidity from the provider of last resort.