It was in the 16th century that England began its meteoric rise to the top of the economic

and industrial heap. Queen Elizabeth went national, with the Statute of Artificers in 1563, to
regulate employment and check transfer of industry to rural districts. It also tried to provide
proper training to the workers to enhance the quality of English products. The number of
apprentices each master could employ was severely limited, a measure calculated to stifle the
growth of any one firm, and to decisively cartelize the wool industry and cripple competition.
The number of years of apprenticeship, before the apprentice could rise to become a master, was
universally extended by the statute to seven years, and maximum wage rates for apprenticeships
were imposed throughout England.

Earlier, the English government passed the Weavers’ Act in 1555, which drastically
limited the number of looms per establishment outside the towns to only one or two and
checked the putting-out system. To maintain the quality and to prevent fraud, checks on weights
and measures were introduced and the justices of peace in every region were asked to supervise
them. Plans for new industries like linen manufacture and the cultivation of crops such as hemp
and flax, which provided industrial raw materials, were introduced. Customs duties were raised
on the import of cloth, thereby conferring more special privileges on the domestic cloth trade
and increasing the financial ties of the Crown to the cloth merchants.

All these measures were closely tied to the idea of reducing imports and boosting
exports. Export of wool and leather was forbidden in 1559. In 1605, the English woollens were
placed under the state’s authority and quality dimension inspected by officials. The next year,
the use of gum was forbidden for dyeing silk to prevent deterioration in quality. In 1613, royal
inspectors were appointed to control the production of silk. Prominent in English mercantilism
was the pervasive creation by the Crown of grants of monopoly privilege: exclusive power to
produce and sell in domestic and in foreign trade. The creation of monopolies reached its climax
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), in the latter half of the 16th century.

Seven monopolies were granted for the production of specific products or to carry out
trade in specific regions to selected group of merchants or associations. Under Elizabeth, her
minister Burleigh aided the formation of the joint stock Mines Royal Company (1568) to exploit
the copper and iron mines of Northumberland and Keswick. A famous project called Cockayne
project was prepared on mercantilist lines that tried to forbid the export of un-dyed cloth.
However, the real object was to help the Eastland merchants who were trading in the Baltic
region and faced competition from other places. To encourage the export of English products,
treaties with foreign states were signed.

It began in the time of Henry VII when two important treaties – Malus Intercurses and
Magnus Intercurses – were signed with Flanders, one of the chief manufacturing centres of
Europe, specializing in woollen textiles. These enabled English merchants to sell their products
on preferential treatment without paying duties. The Tudor government also passed a number of
Poor Laws to check the increase of undesirable elements in the towns. The Act declared that a
tax or poor rate was to be assessed and collected in each locality by the parish authorities. Able-
bodied poor were to be provided with work. Pauper children were given training in some useful
trade.
 The Privy Council issued orders in 1586 directing the authorities to provide good quality
grain to the poor at reasonable prices during bad harvests. All able-bodied men were to pursue
some trade and poor relief was strictly supervised only for those who actually needed support.
At the same time, the government also tried to control the entry of outsiders into specific crafts
to prevent the decline in the quality of manufactured products. No labourer was to be hired till
he possessed a letter of recommendation from his last employer. The Justices of Peace were
given the authority to fix the pay of workers. Bullionist regulations were also enforced based on
the general mercantilist ideas.

In 1581, parliamentary law forbade the export of any coins or bullion. The Tudor laws
also insisted that English goods should be shipped only on English vessels. It also stated that the
goods brought in foreign ships had to pay higher duties so as to give English ships a notable
advantage. Such measures also contributed to the strength of England by helping her to develop
a powerful navy. From the seventeenth century, the English government began showing interest
in colonial expansion. The English East India Company was created in 1600 based on a charter
from Queen Elizabeth. Soon the company acquired a number of trading posts in India, in the
Indian Ocean, in Persia and several other places.

The foreign trade of England continued to grow rapidly and the production volume
increased, particularly that of coal. The expansion of manufactures like glass furnaces, forges
with large hammers, paper and alum works and textile centres, helped in the rise of the
bourgeois class. The fortune of this class was closely associated with the expansion of trade and
manufacturing. They needed encouragement and protection of the state, which was reflected in
mercantilist ideas. During Oliver Cromwell's time mercantilist policies were followed with
greater vigour. In 1651, the first Navigation Act was implemented to establish English
supremacy over the neighbouring waters.

This Act insisted that European goods could be only transported on English ships or
ships belonging to the importing country. This implied that goods from colonies could only be
carried in English ships, as the colonies did not possess their own ships. The second and third
navigation Acts led to a naval war that destroyed the commercial supremacy of the Netherlands.
Eighteenth-century England witnessed increasing regulation over the English colonies. It was
under the guidance of Sir George Downing, who is at times called the architect of the English
mercantile system, that trade between England and the colonies was strongly enclosed,
protected and channellized in English shipping.

Instead of a direct ban on the export of treasure, as seen in the old attempts, the
emphasis now shifted to increasing the volume and value of exports, reducing the volume and
value of imports carried in foreign-owned ships and by receiving income from freights through
British ships as far as possible. The famous English Navigation Acts, which played a leading role
in provoking the American Revolution, are an excellent example of the structure and purpose of
mercantilist regulation.

The network of restriction greatly penalized Dutch and other European shippers, as well
as American shipping and manufacturing, for the benefit of English merchants and
manufacturers, whose competition was either outlawed or severely taxed and crippled. The use
of the state to cripple or prohibit one’s competition is, in effect, the grant by the state of
monopolistic privilege; and such was the effect for Englishmen engaged in the colonial trade.
Thus, the emphasis in English mercantilism changed with the passage of time and with the
economic development of the country. It shifted from bullionism and strict internal supervision
to the sphere of foreign trade and colonies.