Social and economic developments in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

The monarchy took advantage of the weakness of the aristocracy (owners of large agricultural lands) to strengt

hen its power, by establishing King Henry VII the Court of the Star Chamber to try the nobles. The confiscation of monastic property by King Henry VIII gave a major impetus to the development of the capitalist system. In England, as the king encouraged capitalist landowners at the expense of the aristocracy and its traditions (the feudal system), which was rejected by the king, this policy contributed to the demolition of one of the pillars of the old system based on (the king, the church, and the aristocracy).

The king’s challenge to the aristocratic class created the force that pushed English society and economy towards the capitalist system and the Puritan revolution, as that class began to exploit its property in the best modern scientific way, investing it capitalistically for profit, which contributed to the emergence of the free economic tendency, just as the bourgeois (middle) class contributed to its emergence with the same importance.