The monograph of M. M. Lbrova, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the University of Saratov, is devoted to the study of the first sprouts of capitalism in the cities of England, primarily in London. The work traces the development of merchant capital from small trade associations to large foreign trade companies, the development of credit and its new forms, the penetration of trade and usurious capital into the sphere of production and small trade, the emergence of capitalist buyers and distributors of raw materials, the birth of forms of capitalist production, the emergence of a layer of hired workers in cities.