ABSTRACT
During the first half of the seventeenth century English foreign trade was largely in the hands of commercial companies. Each company was allotted by royal grant a market in which to trade and all merchants interested in that market had to be members of the appropriate company. Only one of the bigger companies, the East India, was a joint-stock company, and that not altogether in the modern sense of the term. The principle of limited liability had not yet been legally recognized, nor was the capital of the company of a permanent character but was subscribed only for one voyage or a group of voyages. From their very inception the trading companies had a chequered career. They suffered violent public criticism as monopolies, were forced to pay considerable sums of money to the Crown for the maintenance of their privileges, and even then were liable to find themselves suddenly faced with rivals set up almost at the mere caprice of the Stuart kings. For example, both the bigger companies, the East India and the Merchant Adventurers, had under the early Stuarts to engage in a difficult and long-drawn-out contest with rival groups trading actively in their markets with full royal approval. Moreover, the promoters of agitation against company monopolies were most often themselves would-be monopolists who were anxious to obtain a foothold in the distant fields of profitable enterprise discovered by the pioneers and fortified by the military posts of the original adventurers. 1
