Stop on the Exchequer
Eynon Smart describes how, when the third Dutch War began in 1672, Charles II and his Ministers were faced with financial needs; a reprieve for the Exchequer was their answer, but it disturbed the country’s banking system.
Financial crises are no new phenomenon: our communal memory is well stocked with them. They differ according to the circumstances of their time, but the normal cause is the community’s inability to pay its way, for whatever purchases are considered desirable at the moment by its political and financial controllers. The trouble of 300 years ago this year may have been unique in its nature, but it was normal enough in its causation. War had to be paid for.
For in 1672 the English went to war with the Dutch, for the third and last time. It was a mere sixteen years before the Glorious Revolution; but the fortunes of time were bringing in some particularly quick revenges in that half century. The second Anglo-Dutch War had ended only five years before, with the Treaty of Breda.
Then we had been fighting the Dutch and the French as well; now we were embarking on the new war with France as an ally. Indeed, a primary cause of the new conflict was the need for Charles II to implement that part of his agreement with Louis XIV in the secret Treaty of Dover.
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