From the mid-1500s to 1700, coal production increased fourteen times. Sir Ambrose Crowley, an iron maker with coal works, established disability and medical benefits and pensions for his workers.
Smiths used trip hammers powered by water mills which turned an axle with cams on it. They made iron gates, fences, balconies, and staircases with hammer, anvil, and chisel. Cast iron was made by running liquefied metal into molds. This was harder but more brittle than the tough but malleable wrought iron. Tinkers went from house to house to repair metal items such as pots and pans.
Salt and glass manufacture expanded. Glass drinking vessels were in common use. Mirrors of blown plate glass were manufactured in England. Some plate glass by casting was imported. Plate glass was a large and strong glass piece, which was formed by the liquid glass being poured on a table. This glass was not distorted, so mirrors could be made perfectly reflective. Then plate glass for coaches, mirrors, and windows became manufactured in England; this new industry was organized on capitalist lines.
The East India Company had about half the trade of the nation. Its shares were frequently bought and sold. It responded to anger over its semi-monopoly status by granting liberty to all English subjects below the age of forty to live in its Indian settlements and to trade practically everywhere. Bombay, India became subject to the East India Company. Charters gave the East India Company the right to coin money, to exercise jurisdiction over English subjects, to levy taxes, to build and command fortresses, to command English and Indian troops, to make peace and war, and to enter into alliances with Indian rulers. The Company always paid high dividends and the market price of its shares generally rose. 100 pound stock was worth 130 pounds in 1669, 245 pounds in 1677, 280 pounds in 1681, 360 and even up to 500 pounds in 1683, and 190 pounds in 1692. In 1693 a new charter for the Company included loss of monopoly status by resolution of the Commons. With this resolution, Parliament assumed the right of regulating commerce, now no longer the king's province. Thereafter the Commons regulated trade with India and determined who could participate in trade there. Political issues developed, which initiated corruption at elections by entertainment and bribes to candidates, which was later proscribed. The trade opened up to many more traders and investors. Ordinary investors came to include women and Quakers.
When there was a surplus of grain, it was exported. About 1696, the king set up a board of trade of eight paid members and great officers of state, who nominally belonged to it, and a staff. This was to achieve a favorable balance of trade. For instance, it imposed tariffs to protect internal markets and put restraints on imports of goods producible in the country, e.g. live cattle, dairy products, and woolen goods. It also restricted the export of raw wool. England led the way in protectionist measures.
Exports included grain, silk, metal wares, foodstuffs, lead, and tin. Cloth and manufactures were exported to America. Dyeing and dressing of cloth became the norm and undressed cloth exports fell sharply. Imports included linen, flax, hemp, timber, iron, silk (raw, thrown, and woven), wine, brandy, fruit, coffee, chocolate, cauliflower, and oil. From America came molasses, sugar, tobacco, and dyes. The East India Company imported calico, silk, pepper, spices, China tea, potions, and saltpeter. Tonnage of English shipping doubled by 1688. Exports and imports increased 50% by 1700.
Parliament required an oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns William and Mary from all those in public functions, including the clergy. By extending this rule to the clergy, Parliament asserted a supremacy of Parliament over the church. It also asserted a supremacy over the king by requiring all monarchs to take a coronation oath promising to govern according to the statutes, laws, and customs of Parliament, to make judgments with law and justice in mercy, and to maintain the Protestant religion established by law.
Drinking of gin, which had first been made by a Flemish physician, became popular under King William, who was Dutch. The year of his accession, the gin monopoly ended.
England competed with other nations for land in the New World. Carolina, named for Charles II, was colonized for commerce in 1663. The Episcopal Church, an analogue of the Church of England, was established there by law. The whole coast became English after war with the Netherlands gave New York, named for Charles II's brother the Duke of York, and New Jersey to England in 1667. Presbyterians and Baptists fled from religious tests and persecutions in England to colonize New Jersey. For free passage to the English colonies, people became indentured servants, agreeing to serve the master of the ship or his assigns with a certain kind of labor for a term of a few years according to a written contract made before departure. Also, various statutes made transportation to any part of America to the use of any person who will pay for his transportation, for a term of years, usually seven, a new possible penalty for offenses. In 1636, Harvard College was founded in New England to advance literature, arts, and sciences, as well as to train ministers.
In 1682, Quaker William Penn, son of an Admiral, founded the colony of Pennsylvania for Quakers in a "Holy Experiment" in political and religious freedom. The king had granted proprietary rights to this land to him to discharge a Crown debt to his father. When Penn refused to take off his hat before King Charles and asked why Charles took off his own, Charles, unruffled, replied that "It's the custom of this place that only one man should remain uncovered at a time". The Pennsylvania Charter of 1701 went beyond Magna Carta and England's law in guaranteeing right to counsel and giving a right to defendants to summon witnesses in all criminal cases. It gave Penn absolute authority and he established liberty of conscience (freedom of religion) and freedom from arbitrary arrest. In 1751, some Quakers founded a small hospital in Pennsylvania as an asylum for the insane, where they would be treated humanely.