obliged to seek expedients by which he might engage the people
of fashion to wear it.[***] The manufacture of fine linen was totally
unknown in the kingdom.[****]

* Journ. 26th May, 1621.

** Journ. 20th May, 1614. Raleigh, in his Observations,
computes the loss at four hundred thousand pounds to the
nation. There are about eighty thousand undressed cloths,
says he, exported yearly. He computes, besides, that about
one hundred thousand pounds a year had been lost by kerseys;
not to mention other articles. The account of two hundred
thousand cloths a year exported in Elizabeth's reign, seems
to be exaggerated.

*** Kymer, tom. xvii. p. 415.

**** Rymer, tom. xvii. p. 415.

The company of merchant adventurers, by their patent, possessed the sole
commerce of woollen goods, though the staple commodity of the kingdom.
An attempt made during the reign of Elizabeth to lay open this important
trade, had been attended with bad consequences for a time, by a
conspiracy of the merchant adventurers not to make any purchases of
cloth; and the queen immediately restored them their patent.

It was the groundless fear of a like accident, that enslaved the nation
to those exclusive companies which confined so much every branch of
commerce and industry. The parliament, however, annulled, in the third
of the king, the patent of the Spanish company; and the trade to Spain,
which was at first very insignificant, soon became the most considerable
in the kingdom. It is strange that they were not thence encouraged to
abolish all the other companies, and that they went no further than
obliging them to enlarge their bottom, and to facilitate the admission
of new adventurers.

A board of trade was erected by the king in 1622.[*] One of the reasons
assigned in the commission is, to remedy the low price of wool, which
begat complaints of the decay of the woollen manufactory. It is more
probable, however, that this fall of prices proceeded from the increase
of wool. The king likewise recommends it to the commissioners to inquire
and examine, whether a greater freedom of trade, and an exemption from
the restraint of exclusive companies, would not be beneficial. Men were
then fettered by their own prejudices; and the king was justly afraid
of embracing a bold measure, whose consequences might be uncertain.
The digesting of a navigation act, of a like nature with the famous
one executed a