[Verse 1]
Sixteen seventy-two, a January freeze,
Charles the Second holds the purse and bends the knees
Of every goldsmith banker counting coin in London town,
Backwell, Vyner, ledgers open — watch the king shut them down
One point two, one point three million pounds of trust,
Locked inside a treasury turned suddenly to dust
He calls it just a pause, not a vanishing act,
But the merchants know a broken promise when they feel the fact
[Chorus]
Зупинка каси, стоп у банку,
Король сказав: "Стривай, не нині"
Stop of the Exchequer, hold the payment,
Борг росте, а серце щемить
He froze the flow to fund his fleet and feed his war machine,
Зупинка каси — the coldest debt the Crown has ever seen
[Verse 2]
Behind the velvet curtain, Dover's secret clause,
Louis sends his livres to grease the lion's paws
Third Anglo-Dutch War needs powder, ships, and pay,
So the Exchequer's wallet gets commandeered away
Treaty signed in sixteen seventy, hidden from the Lords,
Gold from France, the quiet hand behind the public swords
The bankers never voted, never got to veto this —
Their capital conscripted like a soldier with a kiss
[Chorus]
Зупинка каси, стоп у банку,
Король сказав: "Стривай, не нині"
Stop of the Exchequer, hold the payment,
Борг росте, а серце щемить
He froze the flow to fund his fleet and feed his war machine,
Зупинка каси — the coldest debt the Crown has ever seen
[Verse 3]
Sixteen seventy-seven, a promise wrapped in silk,
Six percent interest, smooth and sweet as milk
But payments come like weather, sometimes sun and sometimes none,
Erratic as a compass spinning underneath the sun
The Bankers' Case crawls forward through committee and through court,
Through reigns and through rebellions, through every failed report
Twenty-eight more winters pile atop the broken bond,
Until the case concludes in seventeen hundred — and beyond
[Bridge]
No parliament to bind him, no court that he must fear,
Credibility is зникла, gone like vapor in the air
This is the textbook default, the one the scholars cite,
North and Weingast's warning of a crown with too much might
Compare it to the Glorious year, when power learned to share —
Commitment means constraint, a leash the sovereign has to wear
Без того — borrowing's a gamble, never quite a pact,
Довіра розбивається — trust is a fragile fact
[Chorus]
Зупинка каси, стоп у банку,
Король сказав: "Стривай, не нині"
Stop of the Exchequer, hold the payment,
Борг росте, а серце щемить
He froze the flow to fund his fleet and feed his war machine,
Зупинка каси — the coldest debt the Crown has ever seen
[Outro]
Backwell ruined, Vyner broken, London's credit cracked in two,
Зупинка каси — lesson learned for every revenue
Before the bond, before the bank, before the state could truly trust,
There was a king who stopped the clock and left the ledger in the dust