Monarchy Or Money Power

The difficulty which all the medieval Kings experienced in greater or less degree was the establishing of themselves in the People’s love. The King needed the People as much as the People needed the King, but it was ever the object of interested parties to hold them asunder. And so was witnessed a perpetual struggle between, on the one hand, King and Church, anxious alike to hold their servants and ministers in subjection to duty, and, on the other hand, unruly servants and ministers, barons and prelates, seeking means of sustaining themselves in revolt against both spiritual and temporal authority, and so very often becoming allied to the financial powers. Money from an early time showed itself the enemy of Kingship, in which it recognized the bulwark against its operations. Money became concerned, like the rebellious nobles and prelates who were often its tools, to hold the King and his People apart and make them both dependent upon its own power. It was from this danger that Richelieu delivered France at the moment when, in England, a triumphant oligarchy based upon the City of London was hurrying King Charles I to the scaffold.