'Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth': anti-monopoly petitioning in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England (c. 1590-1625)

Paterson, E

Thesis

'Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth': anti-monopoly petitioning in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England (c. 1590-1625)

Abstract:: In the late Elizabethan and Jacobean period, monopolies emerged as a crucial tool of crown financial policy. In response, subjects petitioned crown, council, and parliament to lament the changes these grants wrought on their trades and livelihoods. This thesis will offer an analysis of anti-monopoly petitioning activity between 1590-1625. It will demonstrate the vibrancy and sophistication of petitioning in this often-overlooked period, whilst illuminating the important intersection between politics and economics at the turn of the seventeenth century. This economic issue politicised subjects, who turned to petitioning to lament the effects of this intrusive form of prerogative finance. They embraced the opportunities to approach parliament, council, monarch, and even new commissions charged with managing economic petitions. Subjects proved willing to draw on wider discourses in political culture and economic thought as bargaining strategies within petitions designed to further their own economic interests.

This thesis will adopt a case study approach, focusing on the monopolisation of leather, starch, glass, and cloth. It will draw on a range of sources, predominantly manuscript, from such archives as the State Papers and individual livery companies. The role of London’s livery and overseas trading companies both as petitioners, and as a source of concerted opposition themselves, will be explored throughout. In addition, the capacity for subjects to organise petitioning activity independently of the auspices of corporate organisation will be shown. By analysing often overlooked petitioning campaigns, the complex alliances between courtiers and artisans made possible in this era of monopolisation will also be illuminated. Through a focus on these anti-monopoly petitioning campaigns, this thesis will add to understandings of manuscript petitioning culture in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, whilst demonstrating the importance of economic issues to the politics of the early modern public sphere.

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APA Style

Paterson, E. (2023). 'Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth': anti-monopoly petitioning in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England (c. 1590-1625) [PhD thesis]. University of Oxford.

MLA Style

Paterson, E. 'Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth': Anti-Monopoly Petitioning in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England (c. 1590-1625). University of Oxford, 2023.

Chicago Style

Paterson, E. 2023. “'Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth': Anti-Monopoly Petitioning in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England (c. 1590-1625).” PhD thesis, University of Oxford.
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