I wasn't thinking just of colonies, rather of a range of economic and political outpourings - its contributions to industrialisation, liberalism, modern parliamentary governance (even if few had a say). Nobody but the king lamented the loss of the 13 colonies that much - within a few years trade was bouncing along as never before - rather it's the passing of the later "second" empire that that still agitates some fevered minds.

The conflict of the 1640s was again primarily about political power, and the economic dimension mostly involved division among the well-to-do between those benefiting from privileges granted by the crown and those competing in the market. Food was (as across most of Europe) more expensive than a century earlier owing to the inflow of Spanish colonial silver, but prices on the eve of the civil war weren't much above those of the previous 20-30 years.

The peerage continued mostly unmolested under the Commonwealth, though the House of Lords was abolished from 1649 until the Restoration of 1660 ended a brief experiment with a hand-picked upper house. Cromwell was invited to assume the crown, but declined: his title of Lord Protector can be interpreted as regent, though he insisted his regime was republican. He wasn't averse to the odd palace: most of the less essential royal properties were sold off in 1649, but today's older residences remained state assets, Cromwell governing from Whitehall Palace (its site today occupied mostly by the MoD and Cabinet Office after most of the old building burned down in 1698, the Banqueting House and parts of the basement surviving).