Ship money refers to a tax that Charles I of England tried to levy without the consent of Parliament. This tax, which was applied only to coastal towns during a time of war, was intended to offset the cost of defending that part of the coast, and could be paid in actual ships or the equivalent value. The collection of the tax inland during peacetime started in 1634 and provoked increasing resistance by 1636. This conflict was one of the causes of the English Civil War.
Read more about Ship Money: Opposition
Famous quotes containing the words ship and/or money:
“We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I went to the circus, and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty-dollar gold piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it.... I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses, when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in wasting it on them.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)