Darth Vader and 10 Downing Street (July 19, 2023)

Downing Street is named after Sir George Downing, who died about this day in 1684, and whose treason best resembles that of Darth Vader.

Downing was born around 1623 and immigrated in his youth to the new colony of Massachusetts with his uncle - the all-powerful governor John Winthrop. Downing graduated in the first class of Harvard College and went back to England to help his fellow Puritans in the Parliament's army in the Civil War against King Charles I. He started as a chaplain but later was appointed head of military intelligence. After the king and monarchy were executed in 1649 Downing was appointed ambassador at the United Provinces (Netherlands).

In 1659 England was in a state of anarchy. Downing realized that the king's son was about to be restored to the English throne. He helped that to happen, and was rewarded with knighthood and expensive real estate in London. Continuing as an ambassador, he was contacted by his former commander, Colonel John Okey, who was on the run with two other regicides. Downing promised to give them shelter but then extradited them to a gruesome execution in London.

The Massachusetts Puritans were shocked by the betrayal of this great hope: A Winthrop on his mother's side, a Harvard graduate, and a top officer at war and peace. It is similar to the story of Anakin Skywalker, the great hope of the force, who betrayed his jedi colleagues to the emperor.

After instigating two wars with the Dutch and serving as de facto Treasurer of England, Downing retired from public service and built upon the land he was granted. It was later named after him: Downing Street. 

For "World No Tobacco Day" (May 31, 2023)

A decade after starting to grow tobacco, Virginia's budget was denominated in pounds of tobacco (source).

Tobacco became the only export commodity, almost the only locally produced commodity, and took on all the functions of money. 

Pocahontas' end (March 21, 2023)

Mrs. Rebecca Rolfe, a.k.a. Matoaka, a.k.a. Pocahontas, was buried on this day in 1617, aged 21. 

Brought to the most infectious place on Earth (London) to be shown to the royal family and promote investing in the Virginia Company, her Indian immune system had no chance.

Her end: A grave in Gravesend. 

When exactly she died is unknown; all that's left are church records of the burial. The grave itself is lost.

She was survived by husband John Rolfe and 2-years-old baby Thomas. Her most famous descendant today is actor Edward Norton. 

Shooting your way out of debt (March 4, 2023)

Was it ever legal to literally discharge a debt by shooting the creditor? 

Technically, yes. And not in the Wild West. 

On this day in 1635 Massachusetts made bullets legal tender for small debts. 

The law failed to specify either the method or velocity of tendering bullets to the creditor. 

Joking aside, this law proves that the Puritan colony was innovative on monetary affairs from an early age (it was five years old then). Like all colonies it suffered from shortage of coins. Bullets were an excellent alternative in that armed society, because everyone already had bullets at hand, just like we all have notes and coins.

The mad genius of Boston (February 12, 2023)

Cotton Mather, born in Boston on this day 360 years ago, was a pastor, scientist, witch hunter, historian, exorcist, and Harvard professor.

His father was a pastor and Harvard's president. His odd first name was his mother's maiden name - a common custom back then. The Mathers were interested in science, which back then included comets' paths, but also comets' importance as portents, and witchcraft. Cotton tried exorcism in the 1680s with one bewitched family, and was active as a scientific/religious advisor to the judges during the Salem witch trials of 1692.

His other endeavors were more successful: He wrote the colony's history, convinced the population to accept a novel type of paper money during an economic crisis, and his scientific pursuits made him the first American member of the Royal Society of London. His greatest achievement was convincing many people to be inoculated during a smallpox epidemic in Boston in 1721. Nobody knew why it worked, but Mather believed evidence from Asia and Africa that the seemingly crazy method worked.

Cotton Mather was the leading intellectual of English America in the decades around 1700. 

Why was French Canada occupied? (February 8, 2023)

On this day in 1690: First full-scale hostilities between French Canada and English America.

For several years there had been clashes between English colonies on the frontier and some of the Indian tribes who were backed by Canada. Tensions between the colonies exploded when an Anglo-French war (the Nine Years' War) began on the other side of the Atlantic. Soldiers from Montreal joined Indians and attacked Schenectady, a village near Albany in the New York colony. A terrible massacre of civilians ensued, and survivors were led through the woods during a difficult winter to Montreal. Many did not make it.

King William's War thus began in earnest. The English colonies - Anglican and Puritan alike - were stunned and united for the first time by this event. New York and Connecticut tried to occupy Montreal by land but failed to reach it. Massachusetts, which included Maine and New Hampshire, but not Plymouth, captured Acadia (Nova Scotia) by sea. Later Massachusetts and Plymouth sent a fleet to occupy Quebec and failed.

Seven decades, and a couple of additional wars, passed before the British Empire managed to occupy French Canada.

Below is the most non-authentic map I could find of the Canadian expedition. 

The one-in-a-million coin find (January 28, 2023)

The original New England  had exactly one coin. 

Archeologists probably found it 400 years later.

In 1579 Francis Drake landed north of present-day San Francisco Bay. He claimed the land as Nova Albion (New England in Latin) and declared Queen Elizabeth as its monarch. He posted a copper plate with that claim and displayed Elizabeth's portrait by a sixpence coin. From there he sailed west and circumvented the Earth. The records are here.

In the 1970s archeologists found such a coin in Olompali State Historic Park. It is almost surely that coin.

This was not the end of Drake's involvement with English America. In 1586, while returning from another expedition against Spanish America (in the Atlantic Ocean) he stopped by at Roanoke, the first actual English colony in America. The colony was in big trouble after starting a war with the neighboring Indian tribes. The colonists were all evacuated by Drake who took them back to England.

In 1614 John Smith explored the area to the north of his former Jamestown and called it New England after Drake's Nova Albion because it was in the same latitude.

Sir Francis Drake died on this day in 1596.

Benjamin Franklin and paper money (January 17, 2023)

Benjamin Franklin's longest interest was paper money. As a printer, promoter, and theorist, the Founding Father who appears on the $100 bill, was the master of American paper money for 50 years.

Born on this day in 1706 in Boston, he was forced to work in his brother's printing press at age 12. At age 17 he moved to Philadelphia and at age 23, in 1729, he published a pamphlet promoting the printing of paper money in the colony of Pennsylvania. The main currency there was silver coins. Franklin published the pamphlet anonymously, which was common, partly to hide his personal financial interest. He already owned a printing press and printed New Jersey's paper money. His efforts paid off, as Pennsylvania decided in favor of paper money, and Franklin got the job of producing it. He printed paper money for the entire region for many years.

As the colony's ambassador to London he proposed a uniform colonial paper money under British control but the idea was rejected. As member of the rebellious Continental Congress he was in the committee that arranged the issue of paper money - the continental dollar. He spent most of the war as ambassador to France. From there he wrote a letter in 1779 - exactly 50 years after his pamphlet - in which he praised the heavily inflated paper money. This "wonderful machine," claimed Franklin, was winning the war. It enabled the rebels to keep fighting without any tax collection mechanism. He was the first to identify precisely what economists today call "inflation tax": Anyone holding inflated money loses that value while holding the money, and this value invisibly goes to the money's issuer.

In the letter, Franklin also wrote that the French cannot comprehend how an army keeps fighting with paper money and no gold, for several years. He explained them, and soon - in the French Revolution - they would do the same. After 2000 years of debasing gold coins to extract funds for war finance, Europeans followed the American example and switched to the printing press as a key instrument of war. 

The attainted archbishop (January 10, 2023)

His execution was legislated in Parliament. On this day in 1645 the Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud was executed according to an Act of Attainder. This legal device allowed Parliament to execute anyone it wished, thereby bypassing the need to get a conviction in trial with jury. The name presumably came from “taint” because the person and his family were tainted, losing all property, and nobility status if there was any.

Laud's execution, after a failed trial, occurred during the English Civil War between the Puritan-dominated Parliament and King Charles I who was head of the Anglican Church. Archbishop Laud was second in rank in the church, a religious zealot who had chopped off the ears of leading Puritan ministers. He paid for this by having his head chopped off.

In Britain, the Act of Attainder was legal until the 19th century. The founders of the United States were so appalled by it that they prohibited it in the Constitution, in the same line that prohibits retroactive legislation. Something similar still exists in the case of impeachment: When the President is impeached by the House of Representatives, the senators vote as a jury. This is also a device borrowed from medieval England. 

This day in 1642: A key step to modernity (January 4, 2023)

After a constitutional battle with Parliament that lasted more than a year, King Charles I stormed the House of Commons to arrest some members. He asked Speaker William Lenthall where they were. Lenthall bowed and said politely: “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.” In other words - get lost, I don't work for you.

The king left the House and left London a few days later, to return only for his trial and execution seven years later. The First Civil War broke later that year.

More on the brave Lenthall here . 

The steward from hell: England’s 1672 great debt default (January 2, 2023)

On this day in 1672 King Charles II of the House of Stuart (meaning ‘steward’ in Scots) proved he was no steward of public funds. The profligate king of 14 mistresses ordered suspension of payments of silver coins from his Exchequer to his creditors. This order became known as The Stop of the Excehquer.

Historians debate how much this default ruined London’s private goldsmith-bankers who were the largest creditors. It certainly was a reason for changing the rules as part of the 1688-1689 Glorious Revolution. Under the new rules of the game, with Parliament’s oversight on tax funds and their use, in 1694 a new private company borrowed money from the public in a much more secure way. The money financed a war with France, and the company was called the Bank of England.  

The birth of modern currency (December 24, 2022)

Happy 332nd birthday to legal tender paper currency — a savior from crises but the creator of hyperinflations.

Since the US cut the link between the dollar and gold in 1971, we all use currency that is legal tender for debts and taxes but has no intrinsic value and no legal relation to any commodity with intrinsic value. This device has been used on and off since 1690 when the colony of Massachusetts Bay invented it.

This invention was a revolution in the history of money: People accept such money because it circulates into and out of the modern state’s treasury. I’ve been looking into this breakthrough since 2005, and this April my book about it will be published by the University of Chicago Press .

Why 1690 Massachusetts? All non-Spanish American colonies suffered from shortages of real money (silver coins) and improvised with agricultural products as money. But Massachusetts could do better. It was the trade hub of North America and the intellectual powerhouse of North America (e.g., Harvard College). It opened a mint (until England closed it), tried banking, and invented other forms of money such as bullets.

In 1690 Massachusetts tried to occupy French Canada. Failure left the government in huge debt to soldiers. Prohibited by England from issuing real money, the government printed “bills,” which the soldiers and sellers in shops could accept voluntarily, and forced these “bills” only on tax collectors. Formally this was not money; practically it was. It saved the day.

Pastor Cotton Mather, the mad genius of Boston, wrote about his people: “In this extremity they presently found out an expedient, which may serve as an example, for any people in other parts of the world, whose distresses may call for a sudden supply of money to carry them through any important expedition.” He was right. The idea spread to other colonies, then to the rest of the world. Unbacked paper money financed the American and French Revolutions and ended the Great Depression, but it also ruined Germany and countless other countries with high inflation.

Since 1971 we all use Massachusetts money.

Below is the only surviving bill from 1690. The relevant law passed on December 24, but the bill was dated according to the opening date of the legislative session - December 10. 

The first American paper money (December 20, 2022)

New Holland was a Dutch colony founded in 1630 on a territory occupied from Portugal. It continued the sugar industry of the Portuguese colonists, using slave labor. It also fought often with Portuguese forces who eventually took the colony back in 1654.

Probably the only lasting legacy of New Holland is that its governor, Count Johan Maurits of Nassau (pictured below), issued the first paper money in America. He did it in 1640 and again in 1643. As in numerous European wars beforehand, he issued it to soldiers while awaiting the arrival of "real money" - precious metal coins. 

Count Johan Maurits died on this day in 1679.

For more on Counts and money, see this part from Mel Brooks' History of the World: 

On Barbados and Churchill (November 30, 2022) 

Barbados began as an English-run hell - a slave colony producing sugar. It was released from British rule on this day, one year ago, by changing from a monarchy (with the British monarch) to a republic. It also happens to be Churchill's birthday.

Oddly, my upcoming book has this line: "Horses sent to Barbados operated mills that squeezed sugarcane, extracting the sweet juice and leaving out the slaves’ blood, sweat, and tears."

Below is a horrifying part of a 1657 English map of Barbados, showing the hunting of runaway slaves as a routine activity. 

The most influential American colonist you never heard of (November 15, 2022)

On this day in 1641, Elisha Hutchinson was born.

A descendant of English royalty, and an ancestor of FDR and the Bush presidents, this Massachusetts councilor led a committee that issued paper money in 1690. Just like our currency, it was legal tender for taxes and not backed by gold. It was the first modern currency. Today we all use that type of currency.

That Hutchinson was listed first in the committee, before the colony’s treasurer, indicates that he was the dominant person in the operation, perhaps the inventor of that revolutionary money.

Colonial historians know very well his grandmother Anne – a religious dissenter and the first American feminist – and his grandson Thomas – the last civilian governor of colonial Massachusetts.

Below is the only surviving bill from 1690, with Elisha’s signature leading the committee members, next to a presumed portrait of Elisha. 

Those tired, poor, huddled masses: 1618 version (October 28, 2022)

As we commemorate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, on this day in 1886, it should be recalled that immigration of the poor to America did not begin in the late nineteenth century. 

Already in the 1610s the City of London was eager to get rid of its large population of vagabond youths, and so one letter from 1618 about Virginia mentions that “the city is shipping thither 100 boys and girls who were starving in the streets.” 

This was one of numerous shipments. They were treated little better than livestock on the ships and by tobacco planters. Most of them died within a few years, as the colony had a 50% annual mortality rate from disease and war. 

The Empire Strikes Back: 17th century version (October 23, 2022) 

On this day in 1684 a court in England vacated the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company.

The charter had been granted by King Charles I in 1629 and created a trading company, like the Virginia Company before it. Within a year, some Puritans took the charter to America and turned the company into a nearly independent colony of Puritan refugees. When Civil War started between Charles and Puritans who stayed behind, Massachusetts voiced no objection over the war and Charles’s 1649 execution.

But in 1660 royalty was back and the decapitated king’s son became King Charles II. Eventually he set his sights on the largest Puritan refuge within the English Empire, and from 1676 he started demanding that Massachusetts become more loyal to him. He took legal steps to annul the charter, succeeded in 1684, and soon died. His brother and heir James II imposed a dictatorial regime on Massachusetts. After more revolutions in England and Massachusetts, a second charter was granted in 1691 by William and Mary.

Below is the 1685 entry from Samuel Sewall’s diary on receiving the news of the charter being vacated. It came with an order to proclaim the new King James II. It was addressed to Governor Simon Bradstreet in his person, rather than to “the Governor and Company” as before, because the company was legally dead. 

The early modern period (October 12, 2022)

The early modern period began on this day in 1492 as an excited Columbus stepped on the sand of a Caribbean island and ended when an excited mob stepped on the guards of the Bastille.

While modern historians mostly lament the grave sins of colonialism and slavery, there were some positive developments in Western civilization during this period. The name of the period reflects well its position between old and new. As is well known, medieval dictatorship and religious fanaticism started giving way to modern democracy, science, and tolerance.

Another, less famous transition was from gold and silver coins to paper money. From semi-mythological reports such as Marco Polo’s, paper money became a fact of life for an increasing number of European countries during the early modern period. For the Americans who rebelled against the British at the end of that period, financing their army with paper money was a trivial choice after decades of experience with that “wonderful machine” as Benjamin Franklin called it in 1779. Franklin himself, a printer by profession, started printing paper money for various colonies in the 1720s, and below is one example:

The Puritan armada (October 6, 2022)

On this day in 1690, Massachusetts forces began the first siege of Quebec.

The expedition was a disaster for the invaders. It was compared by contemporaries to the Spanish Armada of 1588 – and rightly so:

1. In both cases the leader had no qualification other than his social status. The Massachusetts fleet was led by the only knight in New England, Sir William Phips, who had been knighted for salvaging a sunken Spanish treasure ship. One Bostonian wrote sarcastically of a “pumpkin fleet ... commanded by a person [who] never did exploit above water.”

2. Weather helped the invaders’ defeat. In Quebec it was the advancing freezing of the Saint Lawrence River that led the Massachusetts fleet to sail away in order to survive.

3. As with the Spanish Armada, the financial outcome was catastrophic. Massachusetts’ Puritans were certain that God would help them beat Catholic Canadians and planned to use the plunder to pay their troops. The failure left the colony seriously short of funds. The government ended up inventing a novel type of money that would change human history, but we’ll get to that on the December anniversary.

A Boston history podcast had an episode about the siege, from which I took this French map of the siege:

America’s first newspaper (September 25, 1690)

On this day in 1690, America’s first newspaper was published. The first issue of “Publick Occurrences” was also its last.

The newspaper was issued in Boston by printer Benjamin Harris during the first war of the English colonies with Canada. At that moment, thousands of men were secretly sailing from Massachusetts toward Quebec in order to occupy it. The tough Puritan government furiously shut down the newspaper. Councilor Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary that it “gives much distaste because not licensed” (i.e., authorized by the government). No other attempt would be made at publishing a newspaper in America until the eighteenth century. 

The text of the newspaper is here and the Council's order is here .

Dumb and dumber - the previous two Kings Charles of England (September 13, 2022)

During the 17th century England went through twin crises. In each one, a royal turn toward Catholicism and despotism led to revolutions aided by foreign Protestant armies.

That history repeated itself in this manner – though a million details differed – is testimony of unbelievable stupidity.

The two Kings Charles were culpable together with two Kings James. This is their story, in a nutshell.

James I got the English throne in 1603 when Elizabeth I died childless. He married his son Charles to a French Catholic princess (a problem in Protestant England) and argued that he was above the law. After he died in 1625, Charles went further in these directions. Charles supported the Anglican Church’s drift towards Catholicism, and levied taxes without Parliament’s approval. He then tried to impose that religious doctrine on Scotland (his other kingdom) and got in return a Scottish invasion of England in 1640. Parliament used Charles's weakness to start a civil war with Charles in 1642, and eventually the Parliament’s army tried Charles, executed him, and abolished monarchy.

The army’s leader, Oliver Cromwell, became de facto king, but after he died there was anarchy that resulted in an invitation to Charles I’s son to return from exile. He returned in 1660 as King Charles II. It took a decade for the new king to go in his father’s ill-fated footsteps. He allied with cousin Louis XIV of France, while his brother and heir James converted to Catholicism. In the early 1680s Parliament tried to fight James’s prospective inheritance of the throne, almost resulting in civil war. Charles II became as despotic as his father and was saved from revolution only by his natural death in 1685. Parliament gave King James II a chance, but in 1688 the elite invited the Dutch leader William – James’s nephew and son in law – to invade England. William invaded and James II fled to France.

Thus ended the pathetic story of the Kings Charles and Kings James. Two of these four men were deposed in revolutions, which is an astonishing achievement in obedient, deferrential England. The other two men bear much of the blame, because they set up their successors not for success but for failure.

 Their enduring legacy was an increase in Parliament’s powers, turning England / Britain / UK in the long run to a constitutional monarchy. 

Playing cards money (September 7, 2022)

The English were not the only colonists in North America. They had French neighbors who influenced them. The French Canadians created the first paper money in North America - made from playing cards. On this day in 1685, the Canadian government terminated the three-months experiment that made history.

Playing cards were used to pay soldiers when the government ran out of precious metal coins. Anticipating a shipment of coins from France, the government obtained cards and turned them into currency with writings, signatures, and stamps. Everyone was forced to accept this currency, and redemption in coin was promised. When the coins arrived, the government gave all card holders eight days to redeem them (source).

The issue of card money continued intermittently until the British occupation of Canada eight decades later. Among the British civilians tasked with terminating the cards was one David Hume.

Paper money had been reported by Marco Polo and had been used in military emergencies for centuries in Europe. Canada’s contribution was to bring the idea to North America, and, most significantly, to the neighborhood of Massachusetts. Five years later, in 1690, Massachusetts also issued paper money to soldiers, to pay them after failing to occupy … Canada. From Massachusetts, paper money would spread to all English colonies, and later to the rest of the world. More on that in a later post.

A 20th century reconstruction by the Bank of Canada: 

Witches - I condemn thee to oblivion! (August 29, 2022)

The Act of Oblivion, enacted in England on this day in 1660, is one of the most beautifully named and useful laws in history.

The act forgave nearly everyone for the events since the Civil Wars began in 1642, so that the Restoration of the House of Stuart would not result in a fourth civil war. The few people excepted were mostly those who were personally involved in the trial and execution of King Charles I. 

Among the excepted were two former leaders in Massachusetts: Governor Henry Vane and Salem pastor Hugh Peters. They were judicially slaughtered in a process called "hanged, drawn, and quartered."  

Speaking of Salem, the crimes not forgiven in the Act of Oblivion seriously included “all offences of invocations, conjurations, witchcrafts, sorceries, enchantments, and charms.” This shows that the 1692 Salem witch trials were part and parcel of contemporary English culture and law, rather than a Puritan or New World aberration.

The Massachusetts Open Market Committee (August 23, 2022)

Long before there was the Federal Open Market Committee - that controls money and thus inflation - there was the Massachusetts open market committee. In 1690. Much like the modern committee - created by law on this day in 1935 - the Massachusetts committee also injected new money to the economy by buying government bonds, and it represented the interests of the executive, legislature, and private sector.

The committee's composition was a beautiful act of checks and balances, long before the United States Constitution made the concept famous. Was it a coincidence? Not at all! You can find details on this aspect of the story in my lectures, in English or Hebrew. Much more will be told in my upcoming book.

Note the shorthand for "Committee" on the currency below. Three of the five committee members had to manually sign each and every bill.

Hiroshima: The surprising vindication of early modern alchemy (August 6, 2022)

When uranium split into krypton, barium, and energy above Hiroshima, on this day in 1945, it was in some sense the vindication of the most ridiculed scientific endeavor – alchemy. Yes, one element could be turned into another. Though obviously not in the way alchemists envisioned.

Early modern alchemy was not just for getting rich per se. Much like the nuclear bomb, it was supposed to be useful for military purposes. This can be seen in the extract below, taken from a letter written by the English physician Dr. Robert Child in 1648. Just before the Thirty Years' War ended, he wrote about alchemy to a fellow alchemist, John Winthrop Jr., son of the Massachusetts governor. Child used the alchemical signs for silver (moon) and gold (sun).

Dr. Child could never have imagined “Little Boy.” 

That OTHER 1619 project (July 30, 2022)

Virginia’s first assembly convened on this day, July 30, 1619.

As two leading scholars put it recently, the assembly “effectively gave all adult [non-servant] men a say in the laws and institutions governing the colony. It was the start of democracy in the United States.”

In contemporary England, in contrast, only the very richest men (probably the top decile) could vote. It was therefore a milestone in the development of modern democracy. Thank you for that, infamous Virginia Company.

Two burgesses were elected from each tobacco plantation. The assembly met in the church of “James Citty” [Jamestown] and, after a prayer, its first order concerned an election dispute. The assembly’s first act stated “that no injury or oppression be wrought by the English against the Indians whereby the present peace might be disturbed and ancient quarrels might be revived.” The peace had been achieved with Pocahontas’ marriage five years earlier and would blow up three years later.

Sadly, Jamestown was a death trap, with malaria and fevers savagely ravaging the ignorant population every summer. On August 1, one of the burgesses died, and so on August 4, the governor dissolved the assembly to save everyone else, as seen in this 19th century reprint of the assembly records (with the long “s” that looks like “f”):

America's 17th century aborted bank (July 12, 2022)

July 12, 1688: An English knight used a medieval instrument to slay … America’s only bank project.

It was the first American crisis of mortgage-backed financial assets, 320 years before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

In an economy with few silver coins and no government paper money, English emigrant John Blackwell led the Boston elite in a plan to establish a private land bank, which would print and lend its paper money to borrowers who deposit their land titles as collateral.

But New England was ruled then by an English dictator, Sir Edmund Andros. He decided that all land titles were legally invalid. On July 12, 1688, he started suing members of the elite with medieval “writs of intrusion,” claiming that their lands really belonged to the king. Four days later, the land bank was aborted.

The period’s most famous diarist, Samuel Sewall, was a merchant and one of those sued. He went to England to complain that all credit in the colony was severely shaken: “Their lands, which were formerly the best part of their estate, became of very little value, and consequently the owners of very little credit.”

The legacy:

1. This was only the first of several bank projects sabotaged by England/Britain. Only Independence enabled American banking.

2. In 1690, when a new government in Massachusetts had to issue paper money to soldiers, it could not back it with land because of that supposed reversion of all land titles to the king. The new paper money was therefore “backed” only by being legal tender for taxes. It was, in fact, the invention of our modern currency – unwittingly caused by a petty English tyrant.

For the 1688 financial crisis, see my article .

For a political economy perspective with game theory, see my article .

For the effect on the 1690 paper money, see my article . 

The bigger picture will appear in my book “Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency,” University of Chicago Press, 2023.

Below are paragraphs from Sewall’s diary and Blackwell’s letter aborting the bank, as reprinted in the 19th century:

That July 4 on which the English colonization of America began (July 4, 2022)

In April 1584, two English ships sent by Walter Raleigh sailed to America. They went through the Canaries (May) and West Indies (June). On July 4, Captain Arthur Barlowe reported, “we arrived upon the coast, which we supposed to be a continent and firm land.” They later landed “to take possession” of the land for Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth.

The lineage of the US goes back to that expedition. The expedition recommended settlement of the place, which took effect the following year. From that short-lived colony of Roanoke came another expedition, which recommended the Chesapeake Bay as a better place. The settlers headed to the Bay in 1587, were dropped off at Roanoke, and became “the lost colony.” However, the plan materialized 20 years later in Jamestown. 

Happy Fourth of July!

The report to Raleigh was published by Richard Hakluyt a few years later, and reprinted:

The Continental dollar (June 22, 2022)

June 22, 1775: The stamp heard round the world.

The Second Continental Congress resolved “that a sum not exceeding two millions of Spanish milled dollars be emitted by the Congress in bills of Credit, for the defence of America” and “that the twelve confederated colonies be pledged for the redemption of the bills of credit.”

The bills lost nearly all their value during the war, but they bought Americans’ independence. In 1779 Benjamin Franklin called the paper money “a wonderful machine” and “the great instrument of our defence.”

The noise of the rebels’ printing press was noticed elsewhere. By the end of the century, paper money would finance both the French Revolution and the later British military response to it.

A new global monetary order arose: paper money during war, gold during peace. It would last until the Great Depression.

Here are the surprising denominations and the bills’ form, as resolved by Congress on June 23

(from its journals, pages 103-106):  

Awful beginnings in Massachusetts (June 14, 2022)

June 14, 1631: Massachusetts cuts off the opposition. And his ears.

Exactly a year earlier, on June 14, 1630, John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, disembarked at Salem, together with the company’s charter and seal and future governors Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet (who would be governor as late as 1692). It was the most (or second most) consequential landing in New England history (behind Mayflower).

New England would never be the same.

How did the leadership handle the rare chance it got to start a new society and polity? They celebrated the first anniversary of their arrival by going Medieval on a political and religious opponent who worked for the Company’s former governor.

From John Winthrop's journal, p. 64:

English America - the last beginning (June 9, 2022)

June 9, 1610, was the last day in history in which there were no people of English birth/origin on American soil. It was then that Thomas West (Lord De La Ware) resettled the recently abandoned Jamestown. 

The starving colonists abandoned Jamestown and sailed away, but before reaching the ocean they bumped into a Virginia Company fleet led by Delaware from England that turned them back and started Jamestown 2.0. De La Ware fled shortly thereafter due to several semi-tropical illnesses that nearly killed him. After he died his name was shortened to Delaware and he was honored by having the almost smallest state named after him.

John Smith published the resettlement story in Oxford in 1612, reprinted:  

Missionaries in a religious refuge (June 1, 2022)

June 1, 1660: Massachusetts hangs Quaker missionary Mary Dyer who voluntarily and purposely came there to be martyred. She had been banished on pain of death, once reprieved at the last moment. 

More info: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Barrett-Dyer

A LinkedIn poll:

Corporate America - the beginning (May 23, 2022)

May 23, 1609: Barber-chirurgeons and the birth of Corporate America.

King James I chartered “The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first Colony in Virginia.” The 1606 charter was just for a few unincorporated investors, but this second charter included hundreds of people, including Sir Oliver Cromwell (the uncle of the future Protector), and many London guilds, including the horrifying “company of barber-chirurgeons” (barbers, knowing how to cut and bleed others, doubled as surgeons!).

This charter was followed by a charter to the Massachusetts Bay Company 20 years later, so when people speak today about Corporate America, sometimes I can’t help thinking: duh!

Source, pages 80-98. 

Early American revolutionaries (May 20, 2022)

May 20, 1686: An uncelebrated day worth celebrating. One of the earliest seeds of the American Revolution was planted in Boston.

King James II had just replaced the elected colonial legislature with a dictator. Before disbanding, the legislature formally and unanimously threatened the dictator in writing: You are making a mistake!

In their words: Because "there being not the least mention of an assembly in the commission” given by the king, “the subjects are abridged of their liberty as Englishmen, both in the matter of legislation and in the laying of taxes … therefore we think it highly concerns you to consider whether such a commission be safe, either for you or us.”

Three years later the colonists made good on the threat. After the Glorious Revolution in England they toppled the dictatorship. No English authority would try again to eliminate a Massachusetts assembly until ... 1774. When that happened, the people already knew what to do.

Thanks to men like these, dictatorship is inconceivable today in my country and in many others. So, cheers to Governor Simon Bradstreet and the rest of them brave Puritans.

Below is the entire statement of the legislature, from Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. V, 515-516: