Tag: Bath Abbey

Part 1 here

My kingdom for a wife (and an heir):

In the early 16^th Century, Bath Abbey and England had a new king, desperate for an heir, married to a woman who could not give him a son.

Henry VIII, who had not expected the throne, was a carousing, hard-living man, tilting in yards, hunting, drinking and eating until late hours. And, he had a roving eye. Eventually, he decided that the first wife would not do, and to divorce her, he toppled the entire religious establishment in England.

Ultimately, Henry would have six wives, with a ditty to immortalize their fates: ‘Died, beheaded, died. Died, beheaded, alive.’

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Economics at Bath:

What, you might ask, does the church of Bath Abbey have to do with the study of economics? Follow me here for a bit, please.

Take an Economics 101 class, and you will learn that Adam Smith is the ‘father’ of modern economics.  If Smith’s the father, then Thomas Malthus, with his theory on food production and population growth, is surely the ‘son’ of.  I’m muddling around here a bit, but what I mean to say is that both Smith and Malthus were hugely influential in their economic philosophies. 

I write fiction now, but I do have three degrees in economics, and when I heard that Thomas Malthus was buried at Bath Abbey, I had to go pay my respects at his memorial. 

Malthus’ theory of population explosion is simple and reasonable enough.  If food production grows, then it doesn’t necessarily, over time, lead to a better standard of living, because the population growth will eventually eat up all the food surplus.

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