There was a notable contrast between England and her near neighbours both in the sixteenth and in the nineteenth century but the nature of the contrast changed fundamentally. At the beginning of the period England was a laggard economy. It was one of the least urbanised countries in Europe in the sixteenth century. In Tudor times when an attempt was made to create a new mining or industrial venture it frequently involved attracting expert advice and craftsmen from the continent. Financial expertise in London did not compare with that in Italy or the Low Countries. In international trade England was a source of raw material or simple manufacture; wool and woollen cloth had long dominated the export trade. Improvements in agriculture consisted chiefly of the adoption of methods first introduced elsewhere, especially in the Low Countries. The population of the country was probably smaller than it had been at its peak before the Black Death and did not rival those of several continental countries. If a comparison is made in terms of political influence or military strength it is clear that England fell some way short of the major powers of the day, notably Spain and France. Writing of seventeenth-century England, Wilson remarked: ‘Almost everywhere, and especially in the remoter parts of the countryside, there survived the remains of an ancient and unspecialized economy in which many people lived a more or less self-sufficient life, growing a substantial proportion of the food they ate or drank, making their own clothes and footwear, cutting their own fuel, boiling their own soap, and so on.’