William Shepherd

An e-mail came in overnight from Adam Crosland to brief me on the changes he had made to the Radical Consultation's profile on MySpace. He also needed some help linking the Gaian Knight image to the the knightly order text on the Magna Carta II website. So I spent an hour figuring things out. The work done over the years with HTML came in handy. My reply included the piece of HTML code used for hyperlinking the image and a piece of text to provide two routes to the Magna Carta blog.

While working on the MySpace site I took the chance to warn Adam that I was hoping for three more images from him very soon for linking in a similar manner to the Declaration of Independence, the Real Nations Charter and the Real Communities Charter. The Chaucer theme worked well for the Gaian Knights so I am hoping for something similar for the Neighbourhood Charter with its links to Charter 2015 Project and Magna Carta II.

This morning I found a second draft of England’s Economic Politics for a new century...dated Saturday 21st May 2005...with two new chapters...Yeoman, Peasants & Artisans and Wessex Real Bank & Riegel Exchange Bank...and three new appendices...Cow Economics, The Wealth of Counties and The Real Bank of Wessex. The word count is up to 97 700 and donation requested is up 50% to £ 7 500. Here is an edited version from the chapter on Time & Money.

In 1995 I started a publishing house and by the end of 2004 I figured that my publishing activities had a sufficient head of steam that it made sense to raise £20 000 of private equity and to do this by selling 8 of the 64 shares in three micro-publishing businesses. I calculated that over 10 years £60 000 had been invested so this would mean that if I got my price...implying a minimum value of a £160 000 for the business...then I would have been adding value at £10 000 a year. Wealth or value is not the same as money. So where had the money come from?

The arithmetic is fairly complicated because 2 man-years had been invested in the Private Papers of Crocodile Uppsala and about £10 000 spent setting up the Linnaeus Journeys Project in the Baltic in 1998. Neither project were considered ready for inclusion in any share issue but the inheritance money had gone into these two projects as well as into the Magpie Sagas Publishing and Rye Maritime Books that were to be included.

Before Connie died I had no doubt that the investment would be recouped many times over. Connie’s death played havoc with my motivation...and complications over ownership have not helped...but for all that this 10-year project represents a typical microbusiness startuing up from scratch with very little money and with inheritances providing a little of the seed capital.

About a third of the money came from Retained Earnings. Connie and I each earned about £1 000 a year more than we spent...though our income and expenditure profiles differed. Connie spent little and earned her money at wage slavery rates of £8 an hour by picking up 12 hours of pottery painting each week. Her rule was also to only put money into her boat that she earned working on someone else's boats.

I earned more, spent more and paid our overheads. My income also depended upon an erratic workload from Cultura. So I had good years and bad years. But over the 10 years between falling in love in 1992 and losing Connie in 2002 my Profit & Loss Statement would have been in the black while my Net Worth was climbing steadily. In practice of course we were being forced to save as we were often broke...although never desperately so. We went sailing each summer for 6-10 weeks...and we were very happy. Work-life balance was as good as it gets.

Another third came from loans and credit cards arranged with the commercial banks. Some new equity money could go to pay down debt but an Individual Voluntary Agreement might be better...it’s a straightforward business decision which may depend upon cash flow forecasts when the Magpie Sagas goes to bookshops in the UK and China.

The final third came from a couple of half-bites into two £20 000 inheritances. One of them came from my parents...but one house does not go far between four boys. This is one of the few times in life when it is useful being an only child. The other legacy came from Connie's parents by way of a divorce settlement that happened to coincide with the deathof her ex-husband's last surviving parent.

Now let me introduce you to a rule of thumb I refer to as The Rule of Five. My experience over the past 10 years is that without money you spend £1 for every £5 spent with money. The other side of the coin is that if you have only your retained earnings to invest and recycle back into your business then it takes five times as long to get to the same place.

When I started publishing in 1995 I expected it to take about 4 years to get to where I am today...ten years later even with money being tight. Had I been setting up the project in a large publishing corporation with a proper budget I would have given it a 2-year time line. With hindsight I reckon my estimates were about right as there is 2 years-worth of work...4 man-years as there were two of us...invested in the projects in the share offer. Working for a big publisher Connie and I would have justified salaries of £25 000 a year. 10 years instead of 2 is a factor of five. So time is not money after all. Money is Time. Less money is more time and more money is less time. It is a factor of five. Hence the Rule of Five.

‘Given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign’. Thus goes the text of the preliminary draft of Magna Carta. Four copies survive, at Lincoln and Salisbury Cathedrals and two in the British Museum. The year is 1215. Sixteen months later King John was dead and his young nine-year old son Henry III was on the English throne.

In Shakespeare’s King John, between Runnymede on 15th June 1215 and John’s suspicious death on 19th October 1216, Queen Eleonor…Henry II’s wife and the mother of Richard I and King John…also dies, Richard’s son Arthur…Pretender to the English Throne…falls to his death from the castle walls trying to escape custody…and Arthur’s mother Constance wrecks the peace deal between Arthur and John and blessed by France and Spain…a deal that includes the lovely Blanche…daughter to Alfonso King of Castille and John’s niece by his sister Elianor. Arthur is as besotted with Blanche as Henry VIIIth was later to be with Ann Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth’s mother.

Standing in the wings at the time of Magna Carta and allied with King Philip of France were the merchants of The City of London . While jostling for advantage and shifting with the moods of the latest perfidy are a bunch of noble cross benchers with their French estates at risk from the royal wheeling and dealing. Behind the scenes of this very European drama lurks Pope Innocent III…represented by his ambassador Cardinal Pandulph…who shuffles back and forth between the royal courts…not to preserve the peace…but to further the interests of the Roman Catholic Church.

For several days leading up to the signing of the Great Charter of English Liberties, John was in negotiation with the barons, the Church and the merchants of London. Signing of a preliminary draft marked John’s formal acceptance. This draft…the Articles of the Barons…listed 49 specific grievances that the King agreed to remedy. From it the full text was prepared in the Royal Chancery...so John got to write the minutes…with some further clauses added.

Here is what Rudyard Kipling…a pretender to the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square…heard whispered at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
What say the reeds at Runnymede?
The lissom reeds that give and take,
That bend so far, but never break,
They keep the sleepy Thames awake
With tales of John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede:
You mustn't sell, delay, deny,
A freeman's right or liberty.
It wakes the stubborn Englishry;
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!

When through our ranks the Barons came,
With little thought of praise or blame,
But resolute to play the game,
They lumbered up to Runnymede;
And there they launched in solid line
The first attack on Right Divine,
The curt uncompromising "Sign!'
They settled John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Your rights were won at Runnymede!
No freeman shall be fined or bound,
Or dispossessed of freehold ground,
Except by lawful judgment found
And passed upon him by his peers.
Forget not, after all these years,
The Charter signed at Runnymede.'

And still when mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

A few days after the official signing with the parties still gathered at Runnymede copies of the charter began to be issued over the King’s seal for the general information of the realm. This was the signal for dispersal. But this tells only half the story. For more about what really happened at Runnymede visit my Swedish website.