ABSTRACT
The arrival of a unitary state concept in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England has not received due attention from historians. Two aspects have already been noted here: the inner dynamic of sovereign representative law; and the outward force of a national foreign policy. The third pillar of state formation was the development of extended yet integrated commercial systems. Geographical and political compactness encouraged the consolidation of a national market, coordinated by a distinctively broad class of yeomen farmers. Also unique to England was the powerful alliance of gentry and merchants, asserting the principle of freedom of trade, and parliamentary control of the customs. The definitive provisions of statute law, and a right of consent to all public finance, came to be seen as the only acceptable forms of economic regulation. And just as the enclosed or consolidated farms and properties excluded the claims of king or commons, so the hard borders of the state closed out the open relationships of medieval Christendom. These combined structures of individualist occupation and commercial integration explain why the first fully-fledged capitalist economy emerged in England, once the prerogatives of the old regime were displaced.
