Dissolve the Monasteries

I've mentioned this in passing before, but maybe it needs to be spelled out.

England's great landed aristocrats in the Middle Ages--for convenience, "The Barons"--were, economically speaking, a pretty sorry lot. They spent most of their time trying to bring the king to book (think Magna Carta) or beating up on each other (think War of Roses) or generally grinding the peasants to a pulp.

When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1536-41, he was not making a direct attack on the secular nobility. He was, however, helping himself to the largest single assemblage of primo real estate in the realm. What happens next is inevitably complicated. But one way or another, the land wound up in the hands of private land-owners--but specifically not the barons (though sometimes maybe their younger brothers or surplus younger sons). These new landowners--call them "the genry"--faced a different set of problems and motivations. Although they had a kind of wealth, it wasn't so copious as to allow them to throw it around with prodigality. Instead, they had to learn to make a profit: to get to know their land, to work it, to make it productive, to make themselves wealhy, to trigger the successive upheavals in England tht climaxed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

In short, a stimulus program that worked. Memo to the President: dissolve the monasteries.