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

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Social historians after began in-depth investigations of English religion at the local level, and discovered the orthodox interpretation was quite mistaken. The Lollardy movement had largely expired, and the pamphleteering of continental reformers hardly reached beyond a few scholars at the University of Cambridge —King Henry VIII had vigorously and publicly denounced Luther's heresies.

More important, the Catholic Church was in a strong condition in England was devoutly Catholic, it was loyal to the pope, local parishes attracted strong local financial support, religious services were quite popular both at Sunday Mass and at family devotions. Complaints about the monasteries and the bishops were uncommon. The kings got along well with the popes and by the time Luther appeared on the scene, England was among the strongest supporters of orthodox Catholicism, and seemed a most unlikely place for a religious revolution.

Henry engaged in a number of administrative, economic and diplomatic initiatives. He paid very close attention to detail and, instead of spending lavishly, concentrated on raising new revenues. Henry VIII, flamboyant, energetic, militaristic and headstrong, remains one of the most visible kings of England, primarily because of his six marriages, all designed to produce a male heir, and his heavy retribution in executing many top officials and aristocrats.

In foreign-policy, he focused on fighting France—with minimal success—and had to deal with Scotland, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire, often with military mobilisation or actual highly expensive warfare that led to high taxes. The chief military success came over Scotland. This followed from his break from Rome, which was caused by the refusal of the Pope to annul his original marriage. Henry thereby introduced a very mild variation of the Protestant Reformation. There were two main aspects. First Henry rejected the Pope as the head of the Church in England, insisting that national sovereignty required the Absolute supremacy of the king.

Henry worked closely with Parliament in passing a series of laws that implemented the break. Englishmen could no longer appeal to Rome. All the decisions were to be made in England, ultimately by the King himself, and in practice by top aides such as Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. Parliament proved highly supportive, with little dissent. The decisive moves came with the Act of Supremacy in that made the king the protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of England. After Henry imposed a heavy fine on the bishops, they nearly all complied. The laws of treason were greatly strengthened so that verbal dissent alone was treasonous.

There were some short-lived popular rebellions that were quickly suppressed. The league level in terms of the aristocracy and the Church was supportive. The highly visible main refusals came from Bishop Fisher and Chancellor Thomas More; they were both executed. Among the senior aristocrats, trouble came from the Pole family, which supported Reginald Pole who was in exile in Europe. Henry destroyed the rest of the family, executing its leaders, and seizing all its property.

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The second stage involved the seizure of the monasteries. The monasteries operating religious and charitable institutions were closed, the monks and nuns were pensioned off, and the valuable lands were sold to friends of the King, thereby producing a large, wealthy, gentry class that supported Henry. In terms of theology and ritual there was little change, as Henry wanted to keep most elements of Catholicism and detested the "heresies" of Martin Luther and the other reformers.

Scarisbrick says that Henry deserved his traditional title of 'Father of the English navy. He inherited seven small warships from his father, and added two dozen more by In addition to those built in England, he bought up Italian and Hanseatic warships.

It was the most powerful naval force to date in English history: It forced the outnumbered French fleet back to its ports, took control of the English Channel, and blockaded Brest. Henry was the first king to organise the navy as a permanent force, with a permanent administrative and logistical structure, funded by tax revenue. His personal attention was concentrated on land, where he founded the royal dockyards, planted trees for shipbuilding, enacted laws for in land navigation, guarded the coastline with fortifications, set up a school for navigation and designated the roles of officers and sailors.

He closely supervised the construction of all his warships and their guns, knowing their designs, speed, tonnage, armaments and battle tactics. He encouraged his naval architects, who perfected the Italian technique of mounting guns in the waist of the ship, thus lowering the centre of gravity and making it a better platform.

He supervised the smallest details and enjoyed nothing more than presiding over the launching of a new ship. Elton argues that Henry indeed build up the organisation and infrastructure of the Navy, but it was not a useful weapon for his style of warfare. It lacked a useful strategy. It did serve for defence against invasion, and for enhancing England's international prestige. Professor Sara Nair James says that in — Cardinal Thomas Wolsey , "would be the most powerful man in England except, possibly, for the king. Operating with the firm support of the king, and with special powers over the church given by the Pope, Wolsey dominated civic affairs, administration, the law, the church, and foreign-policy.

He was amazingly energetic and far-reaching. In terms of achievements, he built a great fortune for himself, and was a major benefactor of arts, humanities and education. He projected numerous reforms, but in the end English government had not changed much. For all the promise, there was very little achievement of note. From the king's perspective, his greatest failure was an inability to get a divorce when Henry VIII needed a new wife to give him a son who would be the undisputed heir to the throne. Historians agree that Wolsey was a disappointment.

In the end, he conspired with Henry's enemies, and died of natural causes before he could be beheaded. Historian Geoffrey Elton argued that Thomas Cromwell , who was Henry VIII's chief minister from to , not only removed control of the Church of England from the hands of the Pope, but transformed England with an unprecedented modern, bureaucratic government. Cromwell introduced reforms into the administration that delineated the King's household from the state and created a modern administration.

He injected Tudor power into the darker corners of the realm and radically altered the role of the Parliament of England. This transition happened in the s, Elton argued, and must be regarded as part of a planned revolution. Elton's point was that before Cromwell the realm could be viewed as the King's private estate writ large, where most administration was done by the King's household servants rather than separate state offices.

By masterminding these reforms, Cromwell laid the foundations of England's future stability and success.

Cromwell's luck ran out when he picked the wrong bride for the King; he was beheaded for treason, More recently historians have emphasised that the king and others played powerful roles as well. Meanwhile, customs revenue was slipping. To get even larger sums it was proposed to seize the lands owned by monasteries, some of which the monks farmed and most of which was leased to local gentry. Taking ownership meant the rents went to the king. He created a new department of state and a new official to collect the proceeds of the dissolution and the First Fruits and Tenths.

The Court of Augmentations and number of departments meant a growing number of officials, which made the management of revenue a major activity. Its drawback was the multiplication of departments whose sole unifying agent was Cromwell; his fall caused confusion and uncertainty; the solution was even greater reliance on bureaucratic institutions and the new Privy Council.

Stuart period

In dramatic contrast to his father, Henry VIII spent heavily, in terms of military operations in Britain and in France, and in building a great network of palaces. How to pay for it remained a serious issue. The growing number of departments meant many new salaried bureaucrats. There were further financial and administrative difficulties in —58, aggravated by war, debasement, corruption and inefficiency, which were mainly caused by Somerset. After Cromwell's fall, William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester , the Lord Treasurer , produced further reforms to simplify the arrangements, reforms which united most of the crown's finance under the exchequer.

The courts of general surveyors and augmentations were fused into a new Court of Augmentations, and this was later absorbed into the exchequer along with the First Fruits and Tenths. There was little debt, and he left his son a large treasury.

Henry VIII spent heavily on luxuries, such as tapestries and palaces, but his peacetime budget was generally satisfactory. The heavy strain came from warfare, including building defences, building a Navy, Suppressing insurrections, warring with Scotland, and engaging in very expensive continental warfare. Henry's Continental wars won him little glory or diplomatic influence, and no territory.

After , the Privy Coffers were responsible for 'secret affairs', in particular for the financing of war. However, under the direction of regent Northumberland, Edward's wars were brought to an end. The mint no longer generated extra revenue after debasement was stopped in Although Henry was only in his mids, his health deteriorated rapidly in At the time the conservative faction, led by Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk that was opposed to religious reformation seemed to be in power, and was poised to take control of the regency of the nine-year-old boy who was heir to the throne.

However, when the king died, the pro-reformation factions suddenly seized control of the new king, and of the Regency Council, under the leadership of Edward Seymour. Bishop Gardiner was discredited, and the Duke of Norfolk was imprisoned for all of the new king's reign.

When the boy king was crowned, Somerset became Lord Protector of the realm and in effect ruled England from to 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.

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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. 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.

Tudor period - Wikipedia

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.

Tudor period

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. 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.

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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. 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. Arguing that the export of unfinished cloth was much less profitable than the export of the finished product, the new company got Parliament to ban the export of unfinished cloth.

There was massive dislocation marketplace, as large unsold quantities built up, prices fell, and unemployment rose. Worst of all, the Dutch retaliated and refused to import any finished cloth from England.

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