In the 16th century people explored the world quite a lot and some trade company were founded, like the East India Company. During Elizabeth's reign poverty was a real problem for common people, because of enclosure as well; the Parliament passed a "Poor Law" to help people who couldn't care for themselves. In that period Puritanism sprang out of Protestantism as well and it became even more powerful. They refused "superstitious" symbols of Catholicism and had very strict moral values.                                              After the death of Elizabeth I (1603) James I came to the throne. He ruled his reign without the help of the parliament, except for the taxes. It increased a lot the hostility of Parliament towards the monarchy. The new king did not give the Catholics some rights they had been deprived before, so they organized a plot in 1605, but not successfully. New restriction were passed against Catholics. At the time of Charles I there were lots of different religious: Anglicans, Catholics and Puritans the leaders of the opposition to the Crown. In 1628 the Parliament presented the "Petition of Rights", because Charles imposed taxes without its permission, but he did not cared too much about that. In 1642 was created a Parliamentary Army and started the civil war:  Royalists (the Catholics, the gentry and the Aristocracy) against the Parliament with the professional and mercantile classes. Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan general and the leader of the Parliamentary Army and won the resistance. In January 1649 Charles I was executed and the Royal Family went to the court of Louis XIV in Paris. In London was instituted a republic, called "Commonwealth". Cromwell became its Lord Protector, but after his death it collapsed: there was no worthy successor. So Charles II was called back from France and he restored the monarchy, respecting the condition of the Parliament. This period is known as the Restoration and in that period the Tories, who preserved the alliance between the Crown  and the nobility, and the Whigs, who represented the middle classes, organized two opposite groups in Parliament. Unfortunately during the Restoration a fire and plague hit London: about one third of inhabitants were killed and most of the old section of the city destroyed.            In the 17^th century English colonization and commence spread in all over the world and took place the "Bloodless Revolution": James II, the new king, imposed the Catholic religion, even if most of people were Protestant.