A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game by Uglow Jenny

Author:Uglow, Jenny [Uglow, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2010-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Like the natural philosophers, the money-men were developing a new intellectual approach, questioning, observing, collecting data and building theories on how trade grew and money circulated. They argued about money supply, interest rates and the best structure for trade to flourish, and pondered for the first time about the ‘balance of trade’. Since the early years of the century one group of thinkers had worried that the import of goods meant loss of physical bullion – gold and silver – to overseas. In opposition, another group asserted that ‘value’ lay not in intrinsic things like bullion but in the act of exchange itself – in the great circulation of trade, money returned amplified to its source. England’s Treasure by Fforaign Trade, by Thomas Mun, written in 1622 but published in 1664 (pointedly dedicated to the Lord Treasurer, Southampton), put it succinctly: ‘Money begets trade and trade begets money’.21 But while some writers held that the market was infinitely flexible and elastic and therefore backed freedom of trade and competition, as Samuel Fortrey did in England’s Interest and Improvement in 1663, others, like John Bland in Trade Revived (1659) saw demand as finite, and therefore recommended monopolies and protection.

The language of trade, of contract, obligation and ‘equity’ provided a model of relationships, which, as Charles and others around him slowly saw, could be applied to government as well as trade. This way of thinking brought a new respect for mediation in disputes, social as well as mercantile, and the idea of ‘coming to an agreement’, without invoking aristocratic codes of honour.22 The strength of the great companies also influenced the argument for religious toleration since the directors of the Levant Company and the East India Company included many nonconformists who could not be dislodged, however hard Sheldon and his allies tried, and it was important for the crown to keep them sweet.

As traditional sources of royal revenue from prerogative courts, fees and fines halted or diminished, so the duties from customs and excise, and loans from the companies, became vital to the Exchequer. Charles himself was named as an investor in many ventures (though he rarely paid the sum marked against his name). Hundreds of reports and letters relating to trade and the colonies stacked up in the Treasury, and the offices of the Secretaries of State and the Chancellor. In late 1663 and early 1664 these ranged from the East India Company’s worries about negotiating with the King of Persia, to Governor Willoughby’s problems with ‘factious spirits’ in Barbados and the recruitment of new settlers for the Carolinas and Jamaica.23

Trade also brought new ideas and broadened intellectual horizons. In the gallery of merchants, one of the most striking was Paul Rycaut, youngest son of a great Flemish shipowner and financier based in London. Rycaut became chancellor of the Levant Company’s factory at Constantinople in the early 1660s. Soon he took on the role of ambassador, filling his notebooks with accounts of the sultan’s empire, armies, people and culture.24 In 1667

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