In small towns as well as large, good people outnumber bad people by 100 to 1. In big towns the 100 are nervous. But in small towns, it's the one.
Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.