Commissions, Committees, and Councils of Trade, 1622–1696

This chapter looks at the activities of the commissions, committees, and councils of trade from 1622 to 1696, with a focus on the leading sector in England’s manufacturing and trade, textiles. The remit and concerns of these bodies covered a range of ‘abuses’ in production and trade, and by extension, the protection of the interests of the commonwealth and employment of the ‘native’ poor. In turn, the commissions, committees, and councils considered various measures to remedy economic ills, such as strengthening existing regulation and delegating new powers to workforces, including in the form of incorporation. Petitions from textile producers and traders constitute the main evidence base of this chapter. This allows us to see the social depth of supplication to the commissions, committees, and councils of trade throughout the seventeenth century. Petitioners were drawn from middling and poorer sorts who represented the full supply chain of textiles from fibres to fabrics: from regional wool growers to international trading companies. The chapter argues that increased social depth was especially marked in the earlier bodies of James VI and I, and Charles I’s reigns, as well as in the republican Council of Trade of 1650. However, it also shows that these bodies became markedly less inclusive of business interests and composed more of nobles during the reign of Charles II, and, from the 1670s (as England’s incipient commercial empire advanced), tilted towards overseas colonial plantations and away from the concerns of domestic manufacturers.