The conclusion returns to the book’s central argument – that wardship, the arbitrary burdens it imposed on those unfortunates ensnared, the wider economic costs ensuing, all while producing so little benefit to the Crown, was representative of the wider Stuart state. It is easy to envisage how a nascent industrial revolution might have been smothered by the Stuart fiscal state, perhaps via monopolies being awarded to undeserving favourites, or contracts and property rights being re-drawn to suit the perceived interests of the Crown. Ultimately, the conclusion will make the case that the industrial revolution could not have started in England during the eighteenth century, were it not for the constitutional changes of the seventeenth century.