The Impact of the English Civil War on the Economy of London, 1642-50 by Coates Ben;

Author:Coates, Ben;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Foreign states and London's overseas trade

In January 1643 the King threatened that, if London continued to support Parliament, he would withdraw his protection from London merchants overseas, and instruct his representatives abroad to treat them as his enemies, so that 'all foreign Princes shall know, That as such Person hath parted with his Loyalty to us, so he must not hope for any Security by us'.44 One royalist correspondent wrote: 'either the last clause of denying his protection to the merchants will work, or inevitable prove the ruin of all trade. It is a high strain and of dangerous consequence, but no course must be left unattempted; if this work not with the merchants nothing will'.45

In February 1643 the King approached the Merchant Adventurers for a loan of £20,000, to be paid in Holland. The company informed the Commons, which naturally forbade payment. In order to allay the company's fears of reprisals the Commons ordered their navy committee to consider how to protect their property in Holland and provide escorts for the company's ships Nevertheless the Merchant Adventurers were sufficiently alarmed to petition Charles I for some assurance of his continued protection abroad, to which the King replied that if they remained loyal then they had nothing to fear.46

The parts of London's overseas trade over which the King had the most direct influence were those with Ireland and the American colonies. In the autumn of 1644 the royalists established a commission to seize goods and debts belonging to Londoners in Dublin but after nearly three years of rebellion London's Irish trade was probably small, especially as Parliament had already prohibited trade with those parts of Ireland under the King's control. Nevertheless there were some agents working for London merchants collecting debts in Dublin and the interior, and the commissioners imprisoned a number.47

A potentially more fruitful area for the royalists were the new colonies of the Chesapeake Bay, the source of London's rapidly growing tobacco imports before the war. In February 1644 the King issued a commission to Leonard Calvert, the governor of Maryland then visiting Oxford, to seize the goods, debts and ships of Londoners under his own jurisdiction and in Virginia. Moreover relations between London and the Chesapeake colonies were clearly deteriorating before Calvert had time to return to America. In April two London vessels attacked a ship from royalist Bristol in the James River, Virginia. Afterwards the two London ships were unable to land and were forced to leave the colony without taking on tobacco. In Maryland the captain of one London merchant ships, Richard Ingle, was arrested for treason, although he was subsequently allowed to leave the colony. In June 1644 the Commons ordered the committee for the navy to consider the best way to bring Virginia under its control. However in 1644 war broke out between the Virginians and the Native American Powhatan confederation. This probably deterred the colonist from severing links with London and relations with Parliament were patched up. In August 1644 a group

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