Corruption, Conspiracy and Collusion: Anti‐Monopoly Petitioning in the Parliament of 1621*

Abstract

AbstractIn the Jacobean period, monopolies were central to crown financial policy. Through petitions, subjects protested the effect of these grants on their trades and livelihoods. In the parliament of 1621, the Commons’ standing committee for grievances emerged as an important recipient of anti‐monopoly petitions. Moving beyond the current historiographical focus on institutional and procedural developments in parliamentary petitioning practice, this article offers a close rhetorical analysis of anti‐monopoly petitions and counter‐petitions in 1621, highlighting the dialogic nature of petitioning disputes. An emerging language of corruption and modes of politic reasoning will be shown to have shaped petitionary appeals, as subjects used the concepts of faction and conspiracy to oppose and defend monopolies. The article argues for the need to consider the close interrelation between the economic and political in 1620s England.