Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England: Volume 9 (Economic History)

No 'foreign' retailer or artisan was to live in the borough unless he first compounded with the bailiffs and aldermen for his freedom or for his foreign fine, on pain of 40 s. No 'foreigner' was to buy any corn, grain, salt, coal, herring, fish, merchandise, or anything else from any other 'foreigner', on pain of forfeiture.

No goods were to be 'foreign bought and sold' without payment of appropriate fines, while inhabitants were required to sue only in the borough courts unless granted special licence to sue elsewhere. In regulations for taking up the freedom by birth were tightened. Had the town still been in economic decline there would have been little need to protect the burgesses from competition, and further proof of the borough's attraction to traders is provided by the limits and bounds of St. Dennis's or the Pardon Fair set out in On the south side of High Street stood fletchers, bowyers, saddlers, collarmakers, ropers, glovers, smiths, haberdashers, hollandshiremen, grocers, linendrapers, and mercers, their stalls extending from East gate to St.

On the north side of the road were the fishmongers and salters, then the shoemakers whose stalls extended up to the butchers' shambles. Beyond them, towards the cornmarket, stood nailmen, ironmongers, 'Ipswich men being coverlet men', foreign woollendrapers and hosiers, turners, basketmakers, 'bowlmen', and traders in butter, cheese, and corn. The goldsmiths also had an appropriate, but unspecified, location. The injunction that stalls were only to line the streets and not to be placed crossways or alongside each other implies competition for space, a bustling hive of activity for the eight days of the fair.

The number of burgesses admitted to the town supports that interpretation. The total admitted each decade by purchase remained roughly stable during the earlier 16th century, at a level comparable to that of the later 15th. Remain he did, immediately becoming a common councillor, later an alderman, and eventually bailiff four times before his death in If the complaints of the s are to be believed, many more were assuming the freemen's privileges without paying for them.

Despite the textile depression a distinct quickening of economic activity is evident in mid 16th-century Colchester, enough to sustain the urban economy through a difficult period for its staple industry and to permit some demographic growth across the second and third quarters of the century.

The town's economy grew decisively in the final third of the 16th century, and the key to that growth was the revival of its cloth industry. The lesson of the mid-century crisis in the English cloth export trade was that demand for the traditional heavy woollen product was inelastic, and that it was dangerous to rely so heavily upon one type of cloth, fn.

Innovation was widespread, and in Colchester such innovation was inspired by the arrival of Dutch immigrants in the s. Only then did the influx slow, a census of recording 1, aliens. The immigrants were granted considerable privileges, most notably control of the Dutch Bay Hall to which all 'new draperies' were taken for inspection and sealing before sale. Despite recurrent disputes with English weavers during the later 16th and early 17th century those privileges were repeatedly upheld. Colchester bays became a byword for quality in the 17th century, and were still known in the early 18th century 'over most of the trading parts of Europe'.

The revival of the Colchester textile industry is evident from the town's occupational structure Tables I and II. In the period the percentage of the occupied population engaged in cloth production and distribution rose to 26, with baymaker fourth among the town's leading occupations. By the period baymakers had achieved first position, and 37 per cent of the occupied male population was employed in cloth production and sale. That figure rose to 40 per cent later in the century, by which time Continental producers were attempting to emulate the English product.

Occupations of Colchester apprentices enrolled between and tell the same story, the proportion involved in textile production rising from little more than a quarter in the s to almost a half in each of the first three decades of the 17th century. The industry's progress was not entirely trouble free, particularly in the unstable trading conditions of the s and s. Notwithstanding such vicissitudes, the long-term trend in production of new draperies in Colchester was decidedly upward. The officers of the Dutch Bay Hall collected 'rawboots', fines for faulty workmanship by English manufacturers, which from provide an index of bay production Table III.

The decennial average figure rose steadily until the s when a combination of poor harvests and warfare caused difficulties for English foreign trade in general. Colchester's economy flourished in other ways from the later 16th century. The thrice-weekly market continued to sell a variety of foodstuffs including 'garden stuff', the Dutch having stimulated the development of horticulture. Pontage was levied in on corn, timber, firewood, straw, hay, clay, sand, bricks, tiles, household implements, and wool carried to and from the town by road.

Nevertheless, wool was still sold in inns and private houses, the lessee of the market claiming in that the aldermen and common councillors were the greatest offenders. The town's overseas trade tended to follow the fortunes of its cloth industry. Port books suggest an expanding export trade in the late 16th century and the early 17th, based chiefly upon the new draperies. Exports of traditional woollen cloths, depressed in the s, mirrored the general recovery of that trade in the early 17th century, only to fall off steadily after In , apart from cloth, Colchester exported hides, leather and leather goods, coal, beer, wax, rough horns, and 'woadnets' perhaps 'woadnuts' or balls of woad , all in small quantities.

A little coal, some old wool-cards, hops, rapeseed, saffron, peas, some clothing, a ton of 'old iron', and the occasional horse appear, but quantities of dressed calfskins, leather, rye, wheat, and oysters dominated the non-textile export trade. Export of oysters grew remarkably, the annual average for the four years and amounting to 1, bu.

Imports also grew and diversified. In , apart from various types of cloth, Colchester imported some Spanish wool and unspun cotton, handles for cards and wire, new wool-cards and combs, teazles, and red and green dyestuffs. Several shipments of salt were received, besides luxuries such as sugar, prunes, raisins, pepper, cloves, and ginger. Household items included French knives and drinking glasses, bottles, brown and white paper, pins, and thread.

Battery, copper wire, stone bottles, cordage, quern stones, rope, fish oil, vinegar, spirits, French salt, Spanish salt, Norway deal, 'timber to make cardboard', Holland cheese, clapboards, prunes, cloves, refined sugar, pickled herrings, wine lees, Osnabruck and broad Hamburg cloth and other manufactured items, foodstuffs, and raw materials came to the town, largely from Rotterdam but also from ports in France and Norway.

Despite its expanding trade, Colchester was not in the front rank of English provincial ports. Figures for customs payments in the s place it 14th out of the 19 ports for which evidence survives, fn. In , during a dispute with Colchester merchants, the Merchant Adventurers Company claimed that the town could boast only four or five merchants trading overseas, and that those bought only a fraction of the cloth made at Colchester, most bays being taken to London to be bought by the Merchant Adventurers and others. In the four years the annual average national export of double bays was 36, cloths, of which 1, 3.

The geographical horizons of Colchester's trade were not extended by its expanding new drapery exports. Imports were additionally received from the unidentified 'Olderne' and 'Borwage' possibly for Norway , and from Emden Germany. Occasional shipments were made to Seville Spain , the Spanish Islands and the Azores, but the bay trade to the Mediterranean was dominated by London. They lasted less than a year. The generals not only supervised militia forces and security commissions, but collected taxes and insured support for the government in the English and Welsh provinces.

They were resented by provincials. Many members of Parliament feared the generals threatened their reform efforts and authority. Their position was further harmed by a tax proposal by Major General John Desborough to provide financial backing for their work, which Parliament voted down for fear of a permanent military state. Ultimately, however, Cromwell's failure to support his men, sacrificing them to his opponents, caused their demise. Cromwell was aware of the contribution that Jewish financiers made to the economic success of Holland, now England's leading commercial rival.

It was this that led to his encouraging Jews to return to England , years after their banishment, in the hope that they would help speed up the recovery of the country after the disruption of the Civil Wars. In , Cromwell was offered the crown by a re-constituted Parliament; since he had been instrumental in abolishing the monarchy he said no after long deliberation.

He ruled as king in all but name, but his office was not hereditary. Instead Cromwell was to nominate his own successor. Cromwell's new rights and powers were laid out in the Humble Petition and Advice , a legislative instrument which replaced the Instrument of Government. The older historiography came in two flavours: The Whig history interpretation and the Marxist historiography interpretation.

The Whig model, dominant in the 19th century, saw an inherent conflict between irresistible, truly English ideals of liberty and individualism represented by The Puritans and Roundheads, overcoming the medieval concept of the king as the unquestionable voice of God. Historians became increasingly uncomfortable with the writing of history as a predetermined search for an idealistic goal , and the Whig approach lost favour after the First World War — Meanwhile, in the late 19th century, the remarkably high quality scholarship of archivally oriented historians, especially Samuel Rawson Gardiner and Charles Harding Firth had provided the rich details on national politics, practically on a day-by-day basis.

Tudor period

Scholars, however, generally neglected the local dimension. In the post-war era — , the class conflict of the Marxist interpretation emerged as a powerful explanation that seemed to tie all the details together. It portrayed a battle between the declining Crown and upper class feudalistic aristocracy , versus the rising middle class gentry. Marxists downplayed the religious dimension.

On one side, influential names included R. The main argument was that the Civil War was a challenge launched by the rising gentry class to overcome the power of the Crown and the aristocracy. Marxists like Hill saw the war as England's bourgeois revolution—that is, the overthrow of an outdated feudal order by the new middle class. The class conflict interpretation was vigorously challenged by conservative scholars, such as Hugh Trevor-Roper , who argued that the gentry was not rising but instead felt that its status was being undermined.

It fought back against its exclusion from the power, patronage and payoff by an extravagant court, by the king's swelling state bureaucracy and by the nouveau riche financiers in London. Marxist historiography itself lost much of its intellectual support after the s. Historians now give much more emphasis to religiosity , and to the diversity of local situations. Instead of an argument that massive popular anger had built up in the early 17th century and caused the Civil War, the current approaches depict the early Stuart period as marked by harmony, good government, and popular support.

How then could there be a civil war? The current scholarly solution is to emphasise what historians call the "British problem", involving the impossible tensions occurring when a single person tried to hold together his three kingdoms with their entirely different geographical, ethnic, political, and religious values and traditions. Widespread dissatisfaction with the lack of the king led to the Restoration in , which was based on strong support for inviting Charles II to take the throne.

The first basic lesson was that the king and the parliament were both needed, for troubles cumulated when the king attempted to rule alone — , when Parliament ruled without a king — or when there was a military dictator — The Tory perspective involved a greater respect for the king, and for the Church of England. The Whig perspective involved a greater respect for Parliament. The two perspectives eventually coalesced into opposing political factions throughout the 18th century.

The second lesson was that the highly moralistic Puritans were too inclined to divisiveness and political extremes. The Puritans and indeed all Protestants who did not closely adhere to the Church of England, were put under political and social penalties that lasted until the early 19th century. Even more severe restrictions were imposed on Catholics and Unitarians. The third lesson was that England needed protection against organised political violence. Politicized mobs in London, or popular revolts in the rural areas, were too unpredictable and too dangerous to be tolerated.

This solution became highly controversial. The Restoration of was a deliberate return to the stability of the early 17th century. There was very little recrimination. King Charles acted with moderation and self-restraint, and with energy and attention to details. He was largely in control of royal affairs, especially after his daughter Anne Hyde married the king's brother James he became king in When the Second Anglo-Dutch War ended in failure in , the king removed Clarendon in a severe confrontation; the earl was accused of treason and was banished to France.

Charles gave out high offices in England with an eye toward favouring his longtime allies, and making sure his erstwhile enemies received at least some symbolic positions. In Scotland he included all of the important factions from the s. In Ireland he retained the men currently in power. It covered everyone, with the exception of three dozen regicides who were tracked down for punishment. It was illegal to use dubious non-parliamentary fund-raising such as payments for knighthood, forced loans, and especially the much-hated ship money.

Parliament did impose an entirely new excise tax on alcoholic beverages that raise substantial sums, as did the customs, for foreign trade was flourishing. Parliament closed down the harsh special courts that Charles had used before , such as the Star Chamber , Court of High Commission , and the Council of the North. Parliament watched Charles' ministers closely for any signs of defiance, and was ready to use the impeachment procedure to remove offenders and even to pass bills of attainder to execute them without a trial. Religious issues proved the most difficult to resolve. Charles reinstated the bishops, but also tried to reach out to the Presbyterians.

Catholics were entirely shut out of opportunities to practice their religion or connect to the Papal States in Rome. The Royalists won a sweeping election victory in ; only 60 Presbyterians survived in Parliament. Severe restrictions were now imposed on the Nonconformist Protestant bodies in England, preventing them from holding scheduled church services, and prohibiting their members from holding government offices at the national or local level. For example, The five-mile law in made it a crime for nonconformist clergymen to be within 5 miles of their old parish.

Charles II cancelled their charters and imposed centralised rule through the Dominion of New England. His colonial policies were reversed by William III. Most of the smaller independent religious factions faded away, except for the Quakers.

ECONOMIC HISTORY

The Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists remain, and were later joined by the Methodists. These non-Anglican Protestants continued as a political factor, with its leaders moving toward what became the Whig party. The country gentry continued to form the basis of support for the Church of England, and for what became the Tory party. Parliament was especially alarmed at the success of Cromwell's New Model Army , which demonstrated that a well-organized, well-led professional army was far superior to poorly trained militia units.

Cromwell had used his standing army to take full personal control, and so it was much to be feared as a threat to traditional liberties. The New Model Army was permanently disbanded, and all the soldiers received their full back pay. On the other hand, as long as enemy nations such as Spain and France, had large standing armies, England was practically defenceless on land.

King and Parliament all agreed on the wisdom of a strong expanded Royal Navy. But while the king tried to build up a small standing army, Parliament kept a very close, nervous watch. Puritanism was entirely out of fashion, as the royal court introduced a level of hedonism that far exceeded anything England had ever seen. Harris says, "At the center of this world was a libertine court — a society of Restoration rakes given more to drinking, gambling, swearing and whoring than to godliness — presided over by the King himself and his equally rakish brother James, Duke of York.

England never had a standing army with professional officers and careerist corporals and sergeants. It relied on militia organised by local officials, private forces mobilised by the nobility, or on hired mercenaries from Europe. At the restoration, Parliament paid off Cromwell's army and disbanded it. For many decades the Cromwellian model was a horror story and the Whig element recoiled from allowing a standing army. Calling up the militia was possible only if the king and local elites agreed to do so.

This became the foundation of the permanent British Army , By it had grown to soldiers in marching regiments, and men permanently stationed in garrisons. A rebellion in allowed James II to raise the forces to 20, men. There were 37, in , when England played a role in the closing stage of the Franco-Dutch War. In , William III expanded the army to 74, soldiers, and then to 94, in Parliament became very nervous, and reduced the cadre to 7, in Scotland and Ireland had theoretically separate military establishments, but they were unofficially merged with the English force.

The British have always regarded the overthrow of King James II of England in as a decisive break in history, especially as it made the Parliament of England supreme over the King and guaranteed a bill of legal rights to everyone. Steven Pincus argues that this revolution was the first modern revolution; it was violent, popular, and divisive.

Tudor period - Wikipedia

He rejects older theories to the effect that it was an aristocratic coup or a Dutch invasion. Instead, Pincus argues it was a widely supported and decisive rejection of James II. The people could not tolerate James any longer. He was too close to the French throne; he was too Roman Catholic; and they distrusted his absolutist modernisation of the state. What they got instead was the vision of William of Orange, shared by most leading Englishmen, that emphasised consent of all the elites, religious toleration of all Protestant sects, free debate in Parliament and aggressive promotion of commerce.

Pincus sees a dramatic transformation that reshaped religion, political economy, foreign policy and even the nature of the English state. During the joint rule of William and Mary, William made the decisions when he was in Britain; Mary was in charge when he was out of the country and also handled Church affairs. William encouraged the passage of major laws that protected personal liberties.

The Act restated and confirmed many provisions of the earlier Declaration of Right , and established restrictions on the royal prerogative. It provided that the Sovereign could not suspend laws passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, infringe the right to petition , raise a standing army during peacetime without parliamentary consent, deny the right to bear arms to Protestant subjects, unduly interfere with parliamentary elections, punish members of either House of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive bail or inflict cruel and unusual punishments.

The primary reason the English elite called on William to invade England in was to overthrow the king James II, and stop his efforts to reestablish Catholicism and tolerate Puritanism. However the primary reason William accepted the challenge was to gain a powerful ally in his war to contain the threatened expansion of King Louis XIV of France. William's goal was to build coalitions against the powerful French monarchy, protect the autonomy of the Netherlands where William continued in power and to keep the Spanish Netherlands present-date Belgium out of French hands.

The English elite was intensely anti-French , and generally supported William's broad goals. The French king, and the, denounced William as a usurper who had illegally taken the throne from the legitimate king James II and ought to be overthrown. England and France would be at war almost continuously until , with a short interlude — made possible by the Treaty of Ryswick.

Leopold, however, was tied down in war with the Ottoman Empire on his eastern frontiers; William worked to achieve a negotiated settlement between the Ottomans and the Empire. William displayed in imaginative Europe-wide strategy, but Louis always managed to come up with a counter play. But eventually the expenses, and war weariness, but the second thoughts. At first, Parliament voted him the funds for his expensive wars, and for his subsidies to smaller allies. Private investors created the Bank of England in ; it provided a sound system that made financing wars much easier by encouraging bankers to loan money.

Louis XIV tried to undermine this strategy by refusing to recognise William as king of England, and by giving diplomatic, military and financial support to a series of pretenders to the English throne, all based in France. Williams focused most of his attention on foreign policy and foreign wars, spending a great deal of time in the Netherlands where he continued to hold the dominant political office.

His closest foreign-policy advisers were Dutch, most notably William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland ; they shared little information with their English counterparts. The wars were very expensive to both sides but inconclusive. William died just as the continuation war, the War of the Spanish Succession , — , was beginning. It was fought out by Queen Anne, and ended in a draw.

Baxter is a leading specialist on William III, and like nearly all his biographers he has a highly favourable opinion of the king:. Anne became queen in at age 37, succeeding William III whom she hated. Down until , the Parliament was dominated by the " Whig Junto " coalition. She disliked them and relied instead on her old friends Duke of Marlborough and his wife Sarah Churchill , and chief minister Lord Godolphin — But the war dragged on into an expensive stalemate.

The opposition Tories had opposed the war all along, and now won a major electoral victory in Anne reacted by dismissing Marlborough and Godolphin and turning to Robert Harley. She had 12 miscarriages and 6 babies, but only one survived and he died at age 11, so her death ended the Stuart period. Anne's intimate friendship with Sarah Churchill turned sour in as the result of political differences.

The Duchess took revenge in an unflattering description of the Queen in her memoirs as ignorant and easily led, which was a theme widely accepted by historians until Anne was re-assessed in the late 20th-century. Anne took a lively interest in affairs of state, and was a noted patroness of theatre, poetry and music.

Scotland and England were entirely separate countries, having the same ruler since Queen Anne, ruling both countries, worked to bring them together in the Acts of Union Public opinion in Scotland was generally hostile, but elite opinion was supportive, especially after the English provided generous financial terms and timely bribes. The Parliament of Scotland agreed to the terms and disbanded. Scotland was much smaller in terms of population and wealth.

Its colonial venture in the Darien scheme had been a major financial and humanitarian disaster. The Acts of Union refunded the losses of the Scottish investors in Darien. In basic terms, Scotland retained its own Presbyterian established church, and its own legal and educational systems, as well it's its own separate nobility. The Scots now paid English taxes, although in reduced rates, and had a voice in the affairs of Great Britain.

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The long-term economic benefits took a couple of generations to be realised, and long-standing distrust continued for generations. The risk of war between the two was greatly diminished, although Jacobite raids launched from the north hit England for another forty years. The new Britain used its power to undermine the clanship system in the Scottish Highlands [79] Ambitious Scots now had major career opportunities in the fast-growing overseas British colonies , and in the rapidly growing industrial and financial communities of England.

Scotland benefited, says historian G. Clark, gaining "freedom of trade with England and the colonies" as well as "a great expansion of markets. By the time Samuel Johnson and James Boswell made their tour in , recorded in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland , Johnson noted that Scotland was "a nation of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth increasing" and in particular that Glasgow had become one of the greatest cities of Britain. The total population of England grew steadily in the 17th century, from to about , then declined slightly and stagnated between and The population was about 4.

The next cities in size were Norwich and Bristol with a population of about 30, each. Historians have recently placed stress on how people at the time dealt with the supernatural, not just in formal religious practice and theology, but in everyday life through magic and witchcraft.

The persecution of witches began in England in , and hundreds were executed. The government made witchcraft a capital crime under Queen Elizabeth I of England in Judges across England sharply increased their investigation of accused 'witches', thus generating a body of highly detailed local documentation that has provided the main basis for recent historical research on the topic.

Historians Keith Thomas and his student Alan Macfarlane study witchcraft by combining historical research with concepts drawn from anthropology. Older women were the favourite targets because they were marginal, dependent members of the community and therefore more likely to arouse feelings of both hostility and guilt, and less likely to have defenders of importance inside the community. Witchcraft accusations were the village's reaction to the breakdown of its internal community, coupled with the emergence of a newer set of values that was generating psychic stress.

Historian Peter Homer has emphasised the political basis of the witchcraft issue in the 17th century, with the Puritans taking the lead in rooting out the Devil 's work in their attempt to depaganise England and build a godly community. As the process of psychological modernisation reached more and more people, fears of witchcraft and magic tended to steadily diminish. After Puritans were largely excluded from the judiciary and lost their power to investigate. In , Jane Wenham was the last woman found guilty of witchcraft in England. In Parliament no longer believed that witchcraft was real—despite the efforts of James Erskine, Lord Grange , the Scottish Lord who made a fool of himself speaking in opposition.

Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act which made it a crime to accuse someone of witchcraft. The laws against witchcraft were not fully repealed until with the passing of the Fraudulent Mediums Act There was no free schooling for ordinary children, but in the towns and cities small local private schools were opened for the benefit of the boys of the middle classes, and a few were opened for girls.

The rich and the nobility relied on private tutors. Private schools were starting to open for young men of the upper classes, and universities operated in Scotland and England. The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge provided some education for prospective Anglican ministers, but otherwise had academic standards well below their counterparts in Scotland.

Historians have looked at local documents to see how many men and women used their signature and how many used X's. Literacy rates were very low before , but grew steadily in the next three centuries, with men twice as likely to be literate as comparable women. Two forces were at work: Protestant religion called for the ability to read the Bible , and changing social and economic conditions. For example, towns grew rapidly, providing jobs in retailing in which literacy was a distinct advantage.

When the Puritans fell out of power, Britain began to enjoy itself again. Historian George Clark argues:. The first coffee houses appeared in the mids and quickly became established in every city in many small towns. They exemplified the emerging standards of middle-class masculine civility and politeness. Admission was a penny for as long as a customer wanted. The customers could buy coffee, and perhaps tea and chocolate, as well as sandwiches and knickknacks.

Recent newspapers and magazines could be perused by middle-class men with leisure time on their hands. Widows were often the proprietors. The coffeehouses were quiet escapes, suitable for conversation, and free of noise, disorder, shouting and fighting in drinking places. The working class could more usually be found drinking in pubs, or playing dice in the alleyways. Many businessmen conducted their affairs there, and some even kept scheduled hours. Historian Mark Pendergast observes:.

Lloyd's Coffee House opened in and specialised in providing shipping news for a clientele of merchants, insurers, and shipowners. In a few years it moved to a private business office that eventually became the famous insurance exchange Lloyd's of London. By the s private clubs had become more popular and the penny coffee houses largely closed down.

In science, the Royal Society was formed in ; it sponsored and legitimised a renaissance of major discoveries, led most notably by Isaac Newton , Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. Out in the countryside, numerous architects built country houses — the more magnificent the better, for the nobility and the wealthier gentry. Inigo Jones is the most famous. Numerous architects worked on the decorative arts, designing intricate wainscoted rooms, dramatic staircases, lush carpets, furniture, and clocks that are still be seen in country houses open to tourism.

The Great Fire of London in created the urgent necessity to rebuild many important buildings and stately houses. Sir Christopher Wren was in charge of the rebuilding damaged churches. More than 50 City churches are attributable to Wren. His greatest achievement was St Paul's Cathedral. Historians have always emphasised the localism in rural England, with readers gaining the impression that the little villages were self-contained communities.

However, Charles Phythian-Adams has used local evidence to paint a much more complex picture. People could relocate from one village to another inside these networks without feeling like they were strangers. The network would include for example one or more market towns, county centres, or small cities. Roads existed and were supplemented by turnpikes. However the chief means of transportation was typically by water, since it was much cheaper to move wagon loads of commodities, especially wool and cloth, by boat than over land. Much effort was made to improve the river system, by removing obstacles.

A mania to build canals, —, enlarged the range and lowered costs. After , the coming of railroads enlarged the range of local networks so much that the localism was overwhelmed []. The 18th century was prosperous as entrepreneurs extended the range of their business around the globe. By the s Britain was one of the most prosperous countries in the world, and Daniel Defoe boasted:.

As an island there was little incentive for gaining new territory. In the Tudor and Stuart periods the main foreign policy goal besides protecting the homeland from invasion was the building a worldwide trading network for its merchants, manufacturers, shippers and financiers.

This required a hegemonic Royal Navy so powerful that no rival could sweep its ships from the world's trading routes, or invade the British Isles.

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Wool was the great commercial product. The 13 American colonies provided land for migrants, masts for the navy, food for the West Indies slaves, and tobacco for the home and the re-export trades. The British gained dominance in the trade with India, and largely dominated the highly lucrative slave, sugar, and commercial trades originating in West Africa and the West Indies. The government supported the private sector by incorporating numerous privately financed London-based companies for establishing trading posts and opening import-export businesses across the world.

Each was given a monopoly of trade to the specified geographical region. The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa had been set up in to trade in gold, ivory and slaves in Africa; it was reestablished as the Royal African Company in and focused on the slave trade. Other powers set up similar monopolies on a much smaller scale; only the Netherlands emphasised trade as much as England.

Woolen cloth was the chief export and most important employer after agriculture. In the medieval period, raw wool had been exported, but now England had an industry, based on its 11 million sheep. London and towns purchased wool from dealers, and send it to rural households where family labour turned it into cloth. They washed the wool, carded it and spun it into thread, which was then turned into cloth on a loom. Export merchants, known as Merchant Adventurers, exported woolens into the Netherlands and Germany, as well as other lands. The arrival of Huguenots from France brought in new skills that expanded the industry.

Government intervention proved a disaster in the early 17th century. A new company convinced Parliament to transfer to them the monopoly held by the old, well-established Company of Merchant Adventurers.