Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth

Monopolies, Petitioning, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England
This book examines anti-monopoly petitioning activity in England between 1590-1625. It reveals that the growth of monopolies and issuing of new charters was an integral issue triggering subjects to engage in politics. It adds a new dimension to scholarly understandings of popular political culture at the turn of the century.
This book offers the first in-depth analysis of anti-monopoly petitioning in late-Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Drawing on a range of manuscript petitions, it reveals the centrality of the issues of monopoly and corporatism for the politicisation of a range of subjects between 1590-1625. Both Elizabeth I and James I liberally granted monopolies and charters as a fiscal device. Petitioning emerged as the main way through which subjects protested these intrusions on their trades and livelihoods. Whilst this activity occurred throughout the realm, it was especially pronounced in the city of London. Members of London’s livery companies, bodies which held exclusive rights to trade, petitioned for and against monopolies and charters. Bloodsuckers of the Commonwealth offers a fresh perspective on political culture in this well-studied period by arguing that economic policies generated conflicts, contests, and participation in a nascent public sphere.

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