Nightingale. Nightingale sued the Company for illegal
seizure of goods, and Chief Justice Holt ruled that the
Company’s seizure was unlawful because it was exercising
a monopoly right created by royal prerogative. Holt
reasoned that monopoly privileges could be created only by
statute, and this had to be done by Parliament. So Holt
pushed all future monopolies, not just of the Royal Africa
Company, into the hands of Parliament. Before 1688
James II would quickly have removed any judge who made
such a ruling. After 1688 things were different.
Parliament now had to decide what to do with the
monopoly, and the petitions began to fly. One hundred and
thirty-five came from interlopers demanding free access to
trade in the Atlantic. Though the Royal African Company
responded in kind, it could not hope to match the number or
scope of the petitions demanding its demise. The
interlopers succeeded in framing their opposition in terms
not just of narrow self-interest, but of national interest, which
indeed it was. As a result, only 5 of the 135 petitions were
signed by the interlopers themselves, and 73 of the
interlopers’ petitions came from the provinces outside
London, as against 8 for the Company. From the colonies,
where petitioning was also allowed, the interlopers
gathered 27 petitions, the Company 11. The interlopers
also gathered far more signatures for their petitions, in total
8,000, as opposed to 2,500 for the Company. The struggle
continued until 1698, when the Royal African Company
monopoly was abolished.
Along with this new locus for the determination of
economic institutions and the new responsiveness after
1688, parliamentarians started making a series of key
changes in economic institutions and government policy
that would ultimately pave the way for the Industrial
Revolution. Property rights eroded under the Stuarts were
strengthened. Parliament began a process of reform in
economic institutions to promote manufacturing, rather than
taxing and impeding it. The “hearth tax”—an annual tax for
each fireplace or stove, which fell most heavily on
manufacturers, who were bitterly opposed to it—was
abolished in 1689, soon after William and Mary ascended
the throne. Instead of taxing hearths, Parliament moved to
start taxing land.