ABSTRACT
Historians are coming more and more to recognise the decisive significance of these decades in the economic history of England. ‘After the civil wars,’ writes Dr Corfield, ‘successive governments from the Rump onwards, whatever their political complexion, gave much more attention to the interests of trade and colonial development in their foreign policies.’1 Restrictions which had hampered the growth of capitalist economic activity were removed, never to be restored. ‘The first condition of healthy industrial growth,’ wrote Professor Hughes apropos the salt industry, ‘was the exclusion of the parasitic entourage of the court.’
