They tried to force cloth dyeing home by monopoly — the Dutch boycotted the trade

Until the 1610s England wove the finest wool cloth but lacked the finishing skills, so it exported undyed 'white' cloth to Holland, where the Dutch dyed and dressed it and sold it back at a profit. Alderman William Cockayne, then governor of the Eastland Company, proposed to capture that finishing profit at home. He obtained an exclusive patent, the King took the monopoly on selling home-dyed cloth, and a royal proclamation banned the export of white cloth — the King even seizing the Merchant Adventurers' charter that had empowered them to export it.

The Dutch and German cities retaliated by banning the import of all English dyed cloth. Commerce was thrown into confusion: Cockayne could sell only at home, and English dyed cloth was worse finished and dearer than the Dutch product. The weavers clamoured as the trade stalled. The King first allowed a limited white-cloth export, then annulled Cockayne's patent and restored the Merchant Adventurers' charter.

The forced vertical integration failed. The Company of Merchant Adventurers numbered about 3,500 members and handled almost all the woollen trade to Germany and the Netherlands, yet the scheme depressed that trade for years. The finishing arts England had tried to seize by decree were, as a later historian put it, 'gained by us gradually, and without force, which a compulsory law in King James's reign could not effect.'