¹ North, Douglass C., “Institutions, Transaction Costs, and the Rise of Merchant Empires,” in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350–1750, ed. Tracy, James D. (Cambridge, 1991), 22–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 25, 34; and the scholars discussed in Ogilvie, Sheilagh, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800 (Cambridge, 2011), 2–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hinton, R. W. K., The Eastland Trade and the Common Weal in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1959)Google Scholar.

² Notable recent contributions include Stern, Philip J., The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mishra, Rupali, A Business of State: Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company (Cambridge, 2018)Google Scholar; Leng, Thomas, Fellowship and Freedom: The Merchant Adventurers and the Restructuring of English Commerce, 1582–1700 (Oxford, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ See the essays in Pettigrew, William and Veevers, David, eds., The Corporation as Protagonist in Global History, c. 1550–1750 (Leiden, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillips, Andrew and Sharman, J. C., Outsourcing Empire: How Company States Made the Modern World (Princeton and Oxford, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ On this point, see Stern, Philip J., “Companies: Monopoly, Sovereignty, and the East Indies,” in Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed. Stern, Philip J. and Wennerland, Carl (Oxford, 2014), 187–88Google Scholar.

⁵ See Malament, Barbara, “The ‘Economic Liberalism’ of Sir Edward Coke,” in Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir Edward Coke (Indianapolis, 2004)Google Scholar; originally published in the Yale Law Review in 1967.

⁶ David Harris Sacks's work on monopolies has been suggestive: Sacks, D. H., “The Greed of Judas: Avarice, Monopoly, and the Moral Economy in England, ca. 1350–c. 1600,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 263–307Google Scholar. For the idea of free trade in the Civil War period, see Leng, Thomas L., “‘His Neighbours Land Mark’: William Sykes and the Campaign for ‘Free Trade’ in Civil War England,” Historical Research 86, no. 232 (May 2013): 230–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ For a discussion of the “public sphere” in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, see Lake, Peter and Pincus, Steven, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 2 (April 2006): 270–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 273–79.

⁸ Outports were provincial ports outside of London.

⁹ Finkelstein, Andrea, Harmony and the Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought (Ann Arbor, 2000), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ashton, Robert, The City and the Court 1603–1643 (Cambridge, 1979), ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pauline Croft, “Free Trade and the House of Commons, 1605–1606,” The Economic History Review, n.s. 28, no. 1 (February 1975): 17–27. The revisionist position was anticipated in some ways by Friis, Astrid, Alderman Cockayne's Project and the Cloth Trade: The Commercial Policy of England in its Main Aspects 1603–1625 (Copenhagen and London, 1927)Google Scholar. The revisionist case was in part a response to Marxist historiography. For a classic presentation, see Hill, Christopher, A Century of Revolution (New York, 1961), esp. 15–43Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Elton, G. R., The Parliament of England 1559–1581 (Cambridge and New York, 1986), 223–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dean, David, Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England: The Parliament of England, 1584–1601 (Cambridge and New York, 1996), 133–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Much of this work follows the “new institutional” economics developed by North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The assumption that Parliament and the Crown were locked in a constitutional battle from the early seventeenth century until the Glorious Revolution can also be found in North and Weingast, Barry, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Journal of Economic History 46, no. 4 (December 1989): 803–32Google Scholar; Ekelund, Robert B. Jr. and Tollison, Robert D., Politicized Economies: Monarchy, Monopoly, and Mercantilism (College Station, 1997)Google Scholar; and Acemoglu, Daron, Johnson, Simon and Robinson, James, “The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Growth,” American Economic Review 95, no. 3 (June 2005): 546–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The influence of Christopher Hill looms large in the account of England's economic growth presented in the bestseller by Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (New York, 2012), ch. 7Google Scholar. For a recent attempt by a historian to resuscitate the Marxist account of political and economic change, see Yerby, George, The Economic Causes of the English Civil War: Freedom of Trade and the English Revolution (New York and London, 2020)Google Scholar.

¹² See, for instance, the comments of Francis Bacon in T. E. Hartley, ed., Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, 3 vols. (Leicester, 1981–95), 3: 439 (hereafter Eliz. Parl. Proc.). See also Finkelstein, Harmony and the Balance, ch. 1.

¹³ Withington, Phil, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005), ch. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Tittler, “The Emergence of Urban Policy, 1536–58,” in The Mid-Tudor Polity c. 1540–1560, ed. Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler (London, 1980). For the prominence of corporate thinking in early modern culture, see Turner, Henry S., The Corporate Commonwealth: Pluralism and Political Fictions in England, 1516–1651 (Chicago, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ Mary Dewar, ed., A Discourse of the Commonweal of this Realm of England (Charlottesville, 1969), 125.

¹⁵ William Cotton, ed., An Elizabethan Guild of the City of Exeter: An Account of the Proceedings of the Society of Merchant Adventurers During the Latter Half of the Sixteenth Century (Exeter, 1873), 1–9, 25, 99–107; MacCaffrey, Wallace T., Exeter, 1540–1640: The Growth of an English Town (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 136–49Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Petition of the merchant retailers to the Council, 1579, The National Archives (TNA), SP 15/26/6. The Privy Council sided with the retailers: Pauline Croft, ed., The Spanish Company (London, 1973), xix.

¹⁷ John Roche Dasent et. al., eds., Acts of the Privy Council of England, 46 vols. (London, 1890–1964), 17: 107, 371–74 (hereafter APC).

¹⁸ Sacks, David Harris, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450–1700 (Berkeley, 1991), 197–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayor and Aldermen of Bristol to the Earl of Leicester, 28 March 1571, Historical Manuscripts Commission, in Calendar of the Manuscripts of…The Marquis of Bath (London, 1960), 5: 172–73; Mayor and Alderman of Bristol to Lord Burghley, 28 March 1571, TNA, SP 12/77/35.

¹⁹ Eliz. Parl. Proc., 1: 210–11.

²⁰ Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, ed. E. Goldsmid, 14 vols. (Edinburgh, 1885–90), 3: 101–12; Mishra, Business of State, 19. A 1566 statute gave the company power to enforce its charter: Journal of the House of Commons (London, 1802), 1: 80 (hereafter CJ); Journal of the House of Lords (London, 1767–1830) 1: 662 (hereafter LJ); Notes concerning a bill for a charter company to Muscovy, 1566, TNA, SP 12/40/93.

²¹ For example, see TNA, SP 12/40/93 (Muscovy traders); TNA, SP 12/99/28, 12/129/50 (French merchants); TNA, SP 12/129/53 (“mere” merchants of Chester); TNA SP 12/239/40 (Levant Merchants).

²² Hinton, Eastland Trade, 5–6.

²³ Wood, Alfred C., A History of the Levant Company (Oxford, 1935), 18, 20Google Scholar.

²⁴ Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), 369Google Scholar.

²⁵ Request by merchants trading to Spain and Portugal for incorporation, 1574, TNA, SP 12/99/8; Croft, ed., Spanish Company, vii–xiii.

²⁶ Anne F. Sutton, “The Merchant Adventurers of England: Their Origins and the Mercers’ Company of London,” Historical Research 75, no. 187 (February 2002): 25–46; W. E. Lingelbach, ed., The Merchant Adventurers of England: Their Laws and Ordinances with Other Documents (Philadelphia and New York, 1902), xxxi, 204–07, 229–35; Abstract of a charter granted to the Merchant Adventurers, 28 April 1586, TNA, SP 12/188/44.

²⁷ Mishra, Business of State, 25–34.

²⁸ Notes concerning a bill for a charter company to Muscovy, 20 October 1563, TNA, SP 12/40/93.

²⁹ Considerations on why a bill against the Merchant Adventurers should not pass, 2 March 1581, TNA, SP 12/148/6.

³⁰ Certain notes of some practices of Englishmen in England, Denmark, and Narva, 1576?, TNA, SP 12/108/16. Low German (closely related to Dutch) was the lingua franca of Baltic traders: G. D. Ramsay, The City of London in International Politics at the Accession of Elizabeth Tudor (Manchester, 1975), 217.

³¹ TNA, SP 12/148/6. See also the case in favor of the Exeter Merchant Adventurers in Cotton, ed., Elizabethan Guild, 1.

³² Ramsay, G. D., The Queen's Merchants and the Revolt of the Netherlands (Manchester, 1986)Google Scholar; Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade, 182.

³³ Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade, 175–78; Lord Winchester to William Cecil, 10 October 1560, TNA, SP 12/14/19; Wood, Levant Company, 35.

³⁴ For instance: Complaint against the Tripoli company uniting with the proposed Levant company addressed to Lord Burghley, 5 July 1591, TNA, SP 12/239/80; and the Cinque Ports petition on behalf of Thomas Nowell of Sandwich, 20 March 1597, APC, 26: 557–58.

³⁵ Reasons to show that merchants to Barbary should not be incorporated, with answers, ca. 1582, TNA, SP 12/157/85.

³⁶ Causes of the decay of traffic in Kingston upon Hull, ca. 1575, TNA, SP 12/106/59.

³⁷ Retailers of London to Secretary Wilson, 10 March 1579, TNA, SP 12/130/3.

³⁸ “Act for increase of mariners,” HL/PO/JO/10/1/2 (House of Lords Main Papers, 1582–1585), fols. 17–25, quote from fol. 21, Parliamentary Archives.

³⁹ Maud Sellers, ed., The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers 1365–1917 (London, 1917), 230.

⁴⁰ CJ, 1: 66, 111, 128, 130, 132; Eliz. Parl. Proc., 1: 488. For the suggestion that interlopers backed the 1581 bill, see TNA, SP 12/148/6.

⁴¹ TNA, SP 12/41/44. The date (1566) given to the document in Robert Lemon, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic 1547–1580 (London, 1856), 284, is mistaken. “Ethenik” meant “pagan.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “Ethnic, n. and adj.”

⁴² Supple, B. E., Commercial Crisis and Change in England 1600–1642 (Cambridge, 1959), 30Google Scholar; Ashton, City and the Court, 84–85. Leng has pointed to the importance of the imperial mandate against the Merchant Adventurers: Leng, Fellowship and Freedom, 177–201.

⁴³ R. H. Tawney and Eileen Power, eds., Tudor Economic Documents, 3 vols. (London, 1924), 3: 265–76, quote at 267.

⁴⁴ James F. Larkin and Paul F. Hughes, eds., Stuart Royal Proclamations, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1973–83), 1: 11–14; Sir Robert Wroth's speech, summarized in CJ, 1: 150–51. Wroth probably served as a mouthpiece for Robert Cecil: Nicholas Tyacke, “Wroth, Cecil and the Parliamentary Session of 1604,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 50, no. 121 (May 1977): 120–25.

⁴⁵ The historiography of the 1604 bills has focused on which interest group was most important in pushing for free trade. Friis, Cockayne's Project, 149–55; and Robert Ashton, “The Parliamentary Agitation for Free Trade in the Opening Years of the Reign of James I,” Past and Present 38 (December 1967): 40–55; Robert Ashton, “Jacobean Free Trade Again,” Past and Present 43 (May 1969): 151–57, argued for the importance of outport opposition to the companies. Theodore Rabb, “Free Trade and the Gentry in the Parliament of 1604,” Past and Present 40 (July 1968): 165–73, suggested that gentry investors in joint-stock companies were hostile toward regulated companies, but there is little evidence from the debates themselves to sustain this argument. Leng, Fellowship and Freedom, 195–99, has highlighted the support of London interlopers for free trade.

⁴⁶ CJ, 1: 218; for the bill, see “An Act for Free Trade for all merchants into all Countries beyond the seas,” Lansdowne 487, fols. 179–82, British Library (hereafter BL).

⁴⁷ CJ, 1: 219.

⁴⁸ CJ, 1: 221.

⁴⁹ For free trade as a challenge to royal power, see Friis, Cockayne's Project, 133; Yerby, Economic Causes, 117–18. For the claim that the act dissolved the companies, G. Yerby, “The Representative State: Why the English Parliament was Distinctive in the Early 17th Century,” Parliamentary History, 39, no. 3 (October 2020): 378–404, at 390. Wallace Notestein registered confusion on this point: W. Notestein, The House of Commons 1604–1610 (New Haven, 1971), 108. The claim that the act dissolved the companies is based on the arguments of the companies against the bill, and the report of the Venetian ambassador, who took the companies’ claims at face value: “Venice: June 1604,” in Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, vol. 10, 1603–1607, ed. Horatio F. Brown (London, 1900), 154–64. British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol10/pp154-164.

⁵⁰ CJ, 1: 219.

⁵¹ CJ, 1: 219; Lansdowne 478, fol. 181^r-v, BL.

⁵² CJ, 1: 219–20.

⁵³ LJ, 2: 336.

⁵⁴ Lansdowne 478, fol. 180, BL.

⁵⁵ Croft, “Free Trade and the House of Commons.”

⁵⁶ CJ, 1: 324–27. Exeter's representatives failed in their first attempt to exempt the Exeter Merchant Adventurers from the provisions of the bill: CJ, 1: 275.

⁵⁷ Friis, Cockayne's Project, 163–64; Croft, ed., Spanish Company, xlvi.

⁵⁸ Thus, by way of comparison, the Bristol Merchant Adventurers failed to gain an exemption from the 1606 free trade statute. On this point, see Sacks, Widening Gate, 216–17; CJ, 1: 275.

⁵⁹ Friis, Cockayne's Project, 72; Leng, Fellowship and Freedom, 189.

⁶⁰ Cecil to Lord Chief Justice Popham, 8 September 1605, TNA, SP 14/15/54.

⁶¹ John P. Ferris, “Somers, Sir George (1554–1610), of Berne, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset,” in The History of Parliament, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (Cambridge: 2010), https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/somers-sir-george-1554-1610.

⁶² TNA, SP 14/19/97.

⁶³ Mayor and aldermen of Bristol to Lord Burghley, Lord High Treasurer, 20 October 1597, Lansdowne 84, fol. 52, BL; Mayor and aldermen of Bristol to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, 7 June 1609, TNA, SP 14/45/106.

⁶⁴ APC, 35: 291–92, 342.

⁶⁵ TNA, SP 14/15/54.

⁶⁶ Wood, Levant Company, 20–39.

⁶⁷ Carr, Cecil T., ed., Select Charters of Trading Companies A.D. 1530–1707 (New York, 1913), 62–77Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Elizabeth Read Foster, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1610, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1966), 2: 152, 159–60.

⁶⁹ Foster, ed., Proceedings in Parliament, 2: 193.

⁷⁰ Foster, ed., Proceedings in Parliament, 2: 201.

⁷¹ Cooper, J. P., ed., Wentworth Papers 1597–1628 (London, 1973), 71Google Scholar.

⁷² Jansson, Maija, ed., Proceedings in Parliament 1614 (Philadelphia, 1988), 117Google Scholar, 129.

⁷³ For numbers of publications, see Erikson, Emily, Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought (New York, 2021), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁴ For instance, John Wheeler, A Treatise of Commerce, ed. George Burton Hotchkiss (New York, 1931); Thomas Mun, A Discourse of Trade, From England vnto the East Indies (London, 1621); Misseldon, Edward, Free Trade or the Meanes to Make Trade Flourish (London, 1622)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Erikson, Trade and Nation, 246; Kyle, Chris R., Theater of State: Parliament and Political Culture in Early Stuart England (Stanford, 2012), 146–74Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Friis, Cockayne's Project, 245–46, 267–68.

⁷⁷ Milles, Thomas, The Cvstvmers Apology (London, 1599), Sig. D3–5Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Milles, Thomas, An Outport Cvstomers Accompt (London, 1610)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

⁷⁹ Milles, An Outport Cvstomers Accompt; see also Milles, Thomas, The Cvstomers Replie. Or Second Apologie (London, 1604), 18Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ John Cramsie, “Commercial Projects and the Fiscal Policy of James VI and I,” The Historical Journal 43, no. 2 (June 2000): 345–64, at 350, 356.

⁸¹ Gentleman, Tobias, Englands Way to Win Wealth (London, 1614), 40Google Scholar.

⁸² Robert Kayll, The Trades Increase (London, 1615), 52–54.

⁸³ APC, 34: 99, 107, 108; Sir Dudley Digges, Defense of Trade (London, 1615). For the company discussions on how to respond to Kayll's attack, see Mishra, Business of State, 131–39.

⁸⁴ Henry Haibley, “A Breife Discourse Concerning Free Trade,” BL Add. MSS. 11308, fols. 46–58. For a recent discussion of this document, see Leng, Fellowship and Freedom, 224–25.

⁸⁵ BL, Add. MSS. 11308, fol. 52.

⁸⁶ BL, Add. MSS. 11308, fol. 47.

⁸⁷ “Some of those meanes pointed at, whereby treasure hath bin wasted and the present want occasioned,” TNA, SP 14/118/130–131 (two copies, one fair).

⁸⁸ Incomplete manuscript endorsed “For free trade,” U269/1/OE/1660, Kent Archives, Maidstone (hereafter KA).

⁸⁹ Malynes, Gerard, Consuetudo, Vel Lex Mercatoria, or the Ancient Law-Merchant Divided into Three Parts (London, 1622), 210, 216–17Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Magnussen, Lars, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (London and New York, 1994), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Emphasis in original.

⁹¹ Malynes, Gerard, The Maintenance of Free Trade, According to the Three Essential Parts of Traffique (London, 1622), 26, 50–52Google Scholar, 75–76. On this point, see also TNA, SP 14/118/131.

⁹² Supple, Commercial Crisis, 197–224.

⁹³ They in part inspired Edward Misseldon's contemptuous response: Misseldon, E., The Circle of Commerce or the Ballance of Trade (London, 1623)Google Scholar, in which Misseldon caricatured Malynes as a free trader.

⁹⁴ Wallace Notestein, Frances Relf and Hartley Simpson, eds., Commons Debates 1621, 7 vols. (New Haven, 1935), 2: 73 (hereafter CD 1621). The rod of iron symbolized harsh rule by a designated authority: Psalm 2:9; Rev. 2:26–27, 12:5, 14:5.

⁹⁵ For these bills, see White, Stephen D., Sir Edward Coke and the “Grievances of the Commonwealth,” 1621–1628 (Chapel Hill, 1979), 67–69Google Scholar, 72–76, 81.

⁹⁶ White, Sir Edward Coke, 119–35; Foster, Elizabeth Read, “The Procedure of the House of Commons Against Patents and Monopolies, 1621–1624,” in Conflict in Stuart England: Essays in Honour of Wallace Notestein, ed. Aiken, W. A. and Henning, B. D. (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Kyle, Chris, “‘But a New Button to an Old Coat’: The Enactment of the Statute of Monopolies, 21 James cap. 3,” Journal of Legal History 19, no. 3 (1998): 203–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁷ CD 1621, 3: 64. He later lauded Coke's speech in support of the bill as the best he'd heard in his life: CD 1621, 5: 346.

⁹⁸ CJ, 1: 520, 552, 627 (liberty for all to buy and sell wool); 534, 595 (free trade to all countries); 526, 534, 552, 564, 588, 622 (free trade in Welsh cloth); 578, 591 (liberty to fish in the Americas); 605 (liberty to trade to France); 551, 553, 619 (the monopolies bill); 537, 549, 627 (free trade in Welsh butter).

⁹⁹ CD 1621, 5: 490.

¹⁰⁰ CD 1621, 5: 346, 94. “No one ought to be wiser than the law.”

¹⁰¹ CD 1621, 3: 444, 4: 435. Nyell believed these fellowships primarily operated as forums for dispute resolution, akin to piepowder courts.

¹⁰² “26 February 1624,” in Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons, ed. Philip Baker (British History Online, 2015–18), British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/proceedings-1624-parl (hereafter PP 1624).

¹⁰³ CD 1621, 7: 69–72.

¹⁰⁴ CD 1621, 7: 596. The mayor and common council of Sandwich organized two petitions, gaining the support of all the ports but Dover. One petition complained of the Merchant Adventurers, and a second requested that Parliament confirm the Cinque Ports charter by statute: “The New Black Book,” Sa/AC7, fol. 88, KA. The Commons did not begin proceedings on a Cinque Ports bill, and to forestall any assertion that free trade was a liberty peculiar to the Cinque Ports, Coke was careful to note “By the common law it is lawful for all men to trade.” CD 1621, 2: 376.

¹⁰⁵ Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London, 4 vols. (Washington, DC, 1906–35), 1: 227, 241, 272, 293–94.

¹⁰⁶ CJ, 1: 581–82; Rabb, Theodore, Jacobean Gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629 (Princeton, 1998), 229–34Google Scholar. After the dissolution of the 1621 Parliament, Sandys, in an effort to save the company from financial collapse, negotiated with the Earl of Middlesex to secure a monopoly over the import of tobacco, but the decision by the Privy Council in 1623 to dissolve the company saved him from having to explain his hypocrisy to his colleagues in the 1624 Parliament. See Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, 297, 301, 358–80.

¹⁰⁷ CD 1621, 7: 229–31, 575.

¹⁰⁸ CJ, 1: 579. See also CD 1621, 4: 175, 216; 2: 286.

¹⁰⁹ For the debate on the bill, see CD 1621, 2: 432; 3: 427–29; 4: 430–31; 5: 400. For the content of the bill, see 7: 267.

¹¹⁰ CD 1621, 3: 429.

¹¹¹ “28 February 1624,” PP 1624.

¹¹² CD 1621, 5: 487. See also the speech of Sir John Davis at 5: 295.

¹¹³ CD 1621, 3: 199; 2: 379; “Remedyes… for quickinge and repayringe of our trade,” 1622, Stowe MS 354, fols. 63, 65, BL; APC, 38: 223.

¹¹⁴ Stowe MS 354, fol. 65, BL; “2 May 1624,” PP 1624.

¹¹⁵ CD 1621, 2: 379; Statement of clothiers of Oxfordshire, 1622, TNA, SP 14/18/51; Justices of Suffolk to the Lords of the Privy Council, 1622, TNA, SP 14/128/67.

¹¹⁶ “10 May 1624,” PP 1624.

¹¹⁷ CJ, 1: 694.

¹¹⁸ CD 1621, 2: 89.

¹¹⁹ Prestwich, Menna, Cranfield: Politics and Profits under the Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1966), 313Google Scholar, 321.

¹²⁰ APC, 37: 391.

¹²¹ As suggested by the successful push for the 1624 monopolies bill, which left intact the King's power to create corporations. See Kyle, “Enactment of the Statute of Monopolies.”

¹²² Report of the committee of trade to the Privy Council, 22 June 1622, TNA, SP 14/131/55; “Answers to grievances concerning trade,” 1624, BL Add. MSS. 11690, fol. 70; Supple, Commercial Crisis, 66–70.

¹²³ “30 April 1624,” PP 1624.

¹²⁴ “19 May 1624,” PP 1624.

¹²⁵ Ashton, City and the Court, ch. 3.

¹²⁶ APC, 39: 268–69.

¹²⁷ See, for instance, Mishra, A Business of State; Stern, “Companies,” 178–79, 190–91; William A. Pettigrew and Tristan Stein, “The Public Rivalry Between Regulated and Joint Stock Corporations and the Development of Seventeenth-Century Constitutions,” Historical Research 90, no. 248 (May 2017): 341–62.

¹²⁸ I am thinking here of Sir Geoffrey Elton's elucidation of what he called the Tudor government's “points of contact.” See G. R. Elton, “Tudor Government: The Points of Contact I. Parliament,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 24 (1974): 183–200; G.R. Elton, “Tudor Government: The Points of Contact II. The Council,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 25 (1975): 195–211; G.R. Elton, “Tudor Government: The Points of Contact III. The Court,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 26 (1976): 211–26.

¹²⁹ For an alternative view see Mishra, A Busines of State, 305.

¹³⁰ Charles I's preference to rule without consideration of dissenting voices was noticed by historians even during the height of revisionism. See, for instance, Hirst, Derek, “Court, Country and Politics before 1626,” in Fraction and Parliament: Essays on Early Stuart History, ed. Sharpe, Kevin (Oxford, 1978), 105–37Google Scholar; Reeve, L. J., Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³¹ Brenner, Robert, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton, 1993), 281–86Google Scholar; Supple, Commercial Crisis, 121–22. And yet Charles was quite willing to damage the companies’ interests when it suited his purposes, as evidenced by his support for the Courteen project at the expense of the East India Company, and his support for the Duke of Lennox's patent to export cloth which violated the privileges of the Merchant Adventurers.

¹³² Ashton, City and the Court, 153–56; Clay, C. G. A., Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1984), 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leng, Fellowship and Freedom, 229.

¹³³ Leng, “William Sykes and the Campaign for ‘Free Trade.’”

¹³⁴ Pettigrew and Stein, “Public Rivalry.”

¹³⁵ “8 April 1624,” PP 1624. See also Mun, A Discourse of Trade, 22.