# English Monarchs Explained: Henry VIII to George III — Coke, Charles I, the Glorious Revolution & 1776

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/english-monarchs-explained-henry-viii-to-george-iii-coke-charles-i-the-glorious-revolution-1776
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/english-monarchs-explained-henry-viii-to-george-iii-coke-charles-i-the-glorious-revolution-1776.md
Podcast: [Consequential Actions Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158)
Published: 2026-07-30T22:04:04+00:00
Episode link: https://jeffkellick.substack.com/p/english-monarchs-explained-henry
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/209179011/3356fb282191828676ecbaa86f7ea132.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/consequential-actions-podcast-7101158/episodes/english-monarchs-explained-henry-viii-to-george-iii-coke-charles-i-the-glorious-revolution-1776
Duration seconds: 3400

## Resource

How a Crown That Could Not Tax Became a Parliament That Could Tax Without Limit This is a companion episode — a teaching hour, whiteboard and all — built to sit beside the middle stretch of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776. The arguments of Articles 8 through 15 each follow a mind: a lawyer insisting the common law bounds the king, a regiment debating the vote in a church at Putney, a philosopher justifying revolution, a generation of Scots and Frenchmen asking what a free society requires. None of those hours stops to keep account of who held the throne while that mind was at work, or what he had already claimed, or what he had already done. This hour supplies that account. It runs from the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, with a short coda to the Treaty of Paris in 1783 — thirteen reigns and one stretch with no monarch at all. It is built to be heard once straight through, then returned to in pieces. Use the chapter links below to jump to any reign you want to revisit. Along the way it answers a single question: when Sir Edward Coke told his king that the common law would control the acts of the crown, who was that king, what had he claimed, and what had he done? Three threads run through it. First, which monarch sits behind which article — James I and Charles I behind Coke; Charles I and the interregnum behind the Levellers; Charles II and James II behind Sidney and Locke; James II and William and Mary behind the Glorious Revolution; the Hanoverians behind the Scots and Continentals. Second, how the powers of the crown were assembled and then taken apart, one statute and one reported case at a time — from the Reformation Parliament to ship money to the Petition of Right. Third, and most consequential, why a Parliament that ha…

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## Transcript

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