Michael Braddick, University of Sheffield

Fiscal transformation and political compliance: England 1550-1700

Prior to 1640 England’s fiscal base was limited and attempts to expand it prompted serious legal problems. In the period of the civil war and revolution (1640-1660) new sources of revenue were established which, despite evidence of resistance, permanently transformed the fiscal base. A third phase, 1660-1690 then followed in which these revenues were stabilised, and in the final phase, rapidly expanded, providing the security for a transformation of public borrowing. Behind this transformation lay the establishment of legitimate forms of revenue. The paper will briefly set out this problem before considering the ways in which historians have approached the issue of compliance, and I will argue for the need to marry macro- and micro-historical forms of analysis