17.
v 12 Henry VII.cap.

1.
One check to industry in England was the erecting of corporations; an abuse which is not yet entirely corrected.

A law was enacted, that corporations should not pass any by-laws without the consent of three of the chief officers of state.[*] They were prohibited from imposing tolls at their [**] The cities of Glocester and Worcester had even imposed tolls on the Severn, which were abolished.[***] There is a law of this reign,[****] containing a preamble, by which it appears, that the company of merchant adventurers in London had, by their own authority, debarred all the other merchants of the kingdom from trading to the great marts in the Low Countries, unless each trader previously paid them the sum of near seventy pounds.

It is surprising that such a by-law (if it deserve the name) could ever be carried into execution, and that the authority of parliament should be requisite to abrogate it.
It was during this reign, on the second of August, 1492, a little before sunset, that Christopher Columbus, a Genoese, set out from Spain on his memorable voyage for the discovery of the western world; and a few years after, Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese, passed the Cape of Good Hope, and opened a new passage to the East Indies.

These great events were attended with important consequences to all the nations of Europe, even to such as were not immediately concerned in those naval enterprises.
The enlargement of commerce and navigation increased industry and the arts every where; the nobles dissipated their fortunes in expensive pleasures: men of an inferior rank both acquired a share in the landed property, and created to themselves a considerable property of a new kind, in stock, commodities, art, credit, and correspondence.