La prerogativa assoluta e i dibattiti parlamentari sui monopoli nella tarda Età elisabettiana (1597-1601)

This article aims to address the question of monopolies in late Elizabethan England in relation to the royal prerogative, which allowed the Queen to confer such privileges to her subjects by means of letters patent. The crux of the matter was the use of the absolute prerogative – which the common law held to be allowed only salus populi – in spite of the common good, or public interest, as it clearly emerged in the parliamentary debates on monopolies of 1597 and 1601. Arguably, the granting of patents which protected egoistic interests was a consequence of the expanding authority of both monarchy and the state in the 1590s. The common-law doctrine of monopolies, as expounded by the judges in a leading case, played a key role in ascertaining and defining the relation between the absolute prerogative and the common good, showing a highly significant coincidence between late Elizabethan legal and political theory. The paper shall further examine the aforesaid question in order to cast light on the relation between the development of the statehood and the contemporary perception of public interest in late sixteenth-century England.