History of the British national debt both government borrowing and the national debt have risen dramatically, reaching around 70% of GDP by the end of 2012. The origins of the British national debt can be found during the reign of William III, who engaged a syndicate of City traders and merchants to offer for sale an issue of government debt. This syndicate soon evolved into the Bank of England, eventually financing the wars of the Duke of Marlborough and later Imperial conquests. The establishment of the bank was devised by Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, in 1694, to the plan which had been proposed by
Coronation of the British monarch when the fourth recension was first used, having been compiled over several preceding decades. Although influenced by its French counterpart, the new "ordo" focussed on the balance between the monarch and his nobles and on the oath, neither of which concerned the absolutist French kings. One manuscript of this recension is the "Liber Regalis" at Westminster Abbey which has come to be regarded as the definitive version. Following the start of the reformation in England, the boy king Edward VI had been crowned in the first Protestant coronation in 1547, during which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer preached a sermon against idolatry