ABSTRACT
Woolen cloth was still the most important national export, although war and changes in European markets had caused some difficulty for the trade in the first three decades or so of the seventeenth century. There were several important ports, many agricultural villages, a number of smallish market towns, and one large city, London, which was the center of economic as well as national political affairs. As Peter Laslett has pointed out, seventeenth-century England was a one-class society. The Stuart monarchs, like other European rulers of the early seventeenth century, faced a crisis of government and, more particularly, of government finance. A major cause of trouble for the king was his religious policy, in particular his efforts to impose a High Church system of liturgy and discipline, Arminianism, upon the Anglican church. The Scottish intervention in English politics, so disastrous for Charles, was a great advantage to his political opponents.
