Its courts of special instance hampered industrial life at every turn in the interest of religious conformity.

Their heavy fines and irritating restrictions upon foreign workmen were nothing so much as a tax upon industrial progress.
What the Nonconformists wanted was to be left alone; and Davenant explained the root of their desire when he tells of the gaols crowded with substantial tradesmen whose imprisonment spelt unemployment for thousands of workmen.

Sir William Temple, in his description of Holland, represents economic prosperity as the child of toleration.

The movement for ecclesiastical freedom in England, moreover, became causally linked with that protest against the system of monopolies with which it was the habit of the court to reward its favorites.

Freedom in economic matters, like freedom in religion, came rapidly to mean permission that diversity shall exist; and economic diversity soon came to mean free competition.
The latter easily became imbued with religious significance.