ABSTRACT

The collection, editing and translation of documents for the Principal Navigations which occupied Hakluyt over the next decade, was an expression of mercantilist thought, the resources for which were, in part, controlled by the intervention and legitimation of the Privy Council. In 1614, before the intervention of the William Cockayne Project, of the cloths exported to the traditional markets of the Netherlands and Germany, 57,000 were undressed and a meagre eleven were transported dressed. In 1586 the Privy Council intervened in a controversy between clothiers and Merchant Adventurers. In fact the late 1580s saw a flurry of complaints from cloth workers and clothiers, and in 1587 the governor of the Adventurers, Richard Saltonstall, wrote to Francis Walsingham to object to the constraints placed upon his company. Cockayne’s project is largely infamous as one of ‘the classic cases of ill-conceived government intervention in the economy.’.