drawbacks

regulated

willing to pay its admission fees and acquiesce in its authority. Advantages Within its sphere of influence the company had a complete and monopoly of trade, and no outsider or interloper" was of the tolerated. This monopoly was backed by the authority company. of the English state. It was intended to develop "a wellordered and ruled trade " 1 in which production was limited, prices were high and stable, and commodities were wellwrought. This was the ideal of mediaeval commerce. The Merchant Staplers, for example, prided themselves on the fact that they had "kept and maintained the prices of the said commodity [wool] in utterance thereof to the strangers as much as in them hath lain" 2. Again, the Merchant Adventurers claimed credit on the ground that they did "keep up the price of our commodities abroad by avoiding an over glut of our commodities whereto they trade

whereas contrariwise when trade is free, many sellers will make ware cheap and of less estimation". The system of chartered companies had certain definite advantages. It gave to merchants in the pursuit of their trade a recognized status as the members of a wealthy and powerful company, able to maintain its privileges and to resist oppression. It prevented excessive competition among traders, which flooded the market with commodities and lowered prices to the benefit of foreign buyers. Merchants abroad were forbidden to sell or buy secretly; and their transactions were conducted in the presence of brokers, who were to make a report to the governor and so prevent strife or disputes arising among them. It was also the duty of the governor to demand evidence from traders that they had paid custom duty on English exports. At the same time the regulated company afforded the government an instrument by which it could direct trade into the proper channels, and advance the interests of the state as they were then understood. Its great drawback was that it retarded the

1 Wheeler wrote his Treatise to exhibit "the commodities arising by a well-ordered and ruled trade ".

2

a Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 566, No. 129.

The Journals of the House of Commons, i. 219.

4 Hakluyt (ed. 1903), ii. 153; Edward IV.'s charter to English merchants in the Netherlands (1462).

The

expansion of trade, it curtailed competition and checked enterprise. It is commonly said in its defence that the market was limited, and the demand for commodities fairly stable. In so far as this was the case, the evil was not perhaps unduly great, but it is difficult to determine how far opportunities for individual enterprise and initiative were restricted to the real detriment of the oversea trade. The enemies of the chartered company were the interlopers who interlopers. were outside their fellowship, but "intermeddled" with their trade. They appealed to the traditional “Englishman's liberty "1 and defied the Adventurers' monopoly. Their activities were most marked in the seventeenth century, but they were already in existence in the sixteenth. The Merchant Adventurers were able to rely upon the support of the government, and we obtain interesting glimpses of the interloper in an Order in Council in 1570. It recited: "Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well; and being informed that divers persons, not free of that your Company nor brought up in trade of merchandise, do not only impeach your trade as well by unskilful and disorderly occupying, as also by violating such your privileges by great travail and charge of our progenitors' grant obtained and granted: And amongst other, that one, Thomas Clecher, doth without order or authority intermeddle with trade of merchandise in the Low Countries of Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Flanders, and none the less doth stubbornly and obstinately refuse to abide such orders as others of your Company do, and also doth attempt to call said privileges in question by the law there: We, minding the preservation of good orders and the maintenance of that your Company, do will and command ye that by virtue of these said Letters ye do in our name command the said Thomas to surcease his suit there, and stand to abide and obey such your orders as is amongst ye provided for such offenders: And our further will and pleasure is that, if at any time hereafter any person not free of that company do attempt to traffic into the said

1 The phrase occurs in the statute of 1497: Statutes, ii. 638. But in the economic sphere the traditional liberty of Englishmen was largely a traditional myth.

Low Countries or to break or violate your privileges and good orders, that ye do likewise by virtue of these our Letters command in our name all and any such person and persons to appear before ye, and to stand to abide and obey all such good orders and ordinances as by ye have been made and ordained. And if either the said Clecher or any other disordered person do refuse to accomplish the content of these our Letters, that then ye do command him or them in our name to appear before our Privy Council, and that ye do advertise our said Council thereof with particulars of his or their offence or misdemeanour, to the intent we may take such order with him as may be to the example of any attempting the like, and the preservation of your privileges and good orders which we mind by all means to maintain" 1.

London and

There was theoretically a well-defined distinction between Rivalry of the regulated and the joint-stock company; the former was provincial open to all, and each individual traded on his own; the traders. latter was confined to a few who traded as a corporate body. But in practice the distinction tended to disappear, for the regulated company was always liable to become a monopoly in the real and exclusive sense of the term. The Merchant Adventurers outside London complained that at one time they had traded freely with foreign countries, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and the Netherlands; but now the London company imposed a fine of twenty pounds, and so drove provincial merchants from foreign markets. Henry VII., despite the favour which he showed to the Merchant Adventurers, was not prepared to tolerate an unfair discrimination against his own subjects, and the admission fees. were lowered to ten marks, one-third of the amount 2.

competitors

Adven

In order to establish their supremacy in English foreign The trade, the Merchant Adventurers had first to overcome the of the competition of those who were already in the field. The Merchant two great commercial rivals with whom they were drawn turers: into conflict were the Merchant Staplers and the Hanseatic League. This struggle among the trading capitalists must

1 Printed in the Appendix to Atton and Holland, King's Customs, i. 458.

2 Statutes, ii. 638 (1497). Compare the charter of 1505: Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 552, No. 121.

(i.) The Merchant Staplers.

be carefully distinguished from the struggle of which we have already spoken: between the trading capitalists on the one hand and the industrial capitalists on the other. (1) The Merchant Adventurers were exporters of cloth just as the Merchant Staplers were the chief exporters of wool; and they tried to force Staplers, who shipped abroad woollen cloth, to join their company and pay the admission fine of ten marks. The Staplers, however, claimed that they ought not to pay admission fines for the right to trade in cloth, on the ground that cloth was staple merchandise and had been exported by them as far back as the reign of Richard II.1. The Merchant Adventurers replied that the privilege of the Staplers was confined to Calais, and that they had no privilege in the Low Countries 2. They also denied that cloth was staple merchandise: "cloths at any time", they contended,

were not privileged to the Staplers"-only wool and woolfells; and the Staplers had failed to show that they had ever exported cloth to Flanders itself. They added that on their part they were willing ungrudgingly to pay the admission fees of a hundred marks each to the Staplers, if they "occupied the feat" of a Merchant of the Staple, and they expected similar conduct on the part of their rivals. Henry VI. supported the Staplers 5, but under the Tudors the Merchant Adventurers pressed their claims with implacable obstinacy. They were resolved to keep the cloth trade in their own hands, and eventually (1504) a Star Chamber decree ordered Staplers, who exercised the occupation of the Merchant Adventurers, to submit to their authority; and similarly in the reverse case 6. This was intended to mean that the Staplers should pay to the Merchant Adventurers the ordinary duties levied on cloth, but under colour of this decision the latter insisted that their rivals must enter their company. The king intervened, but they continued to enforce their demands and imprisoned those who resisted their authority, and attached their goods. 1 Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 588, No. 135 (1583).

2 Ibid. ii. 558, No. 125 (temp. Hen. VIII.).

3 Ibid. ii. 588-589, No. 135.

4 Ibid. ii. 558, No. 125.

Ibid. ii. 547, No. 119.

8 Ibid. ii. 555, No. 123 (1510);

Ibid. ii. 539-543, No. 116 (1458). 7 Ibid. ii. 548, No. 120 (1505).

556, No. 124; 563, No. 127.

The prosperity of the Staplers had greatly declined, and they were no longer in a position to offer adequate resistance to their younger and more vigorous rivals. Time had been when they had advanced large sums of money to the king 1, but in a petition to Wolsey (c. 1527) they said that their numbers were fallen from four hundred shippers to one hundred and forty. They were affected by Henry's wars, for where the French were wont to purchase two thousand sacks of wool, now they did not buy one-fifth; and Flanders was using larger quantities of Spanish wool 2. A contemporary writer also voiced the belief that Edward III.'s gift of native sheep to Spain had been detrimental to the realm 3. In any case English wool was largely taken up by native clothiers, and the Staplers recognized that the home industry had the prior claim.

Hanseatic

(2) The Hanseatic League was a more formidable rival (ii.) The than the Merchant Staplers, whose power had already passed League. its meridian, and here the struggle to wrest English trade out of their hands was fiercer and more prolonged. In 1371 the Commons complained that the Easterlings ill-treated native merchants who travelled from year to year to "parts of the Scone" to purchase herrings, and they demanded that the Easterlings should treat merchants in their own dominions as they were treated here1. A few years later (1378) the Hanseatic League addressed a letter to the city of London, stating that their merchants had been deprived of their accustomed privileges in England and were molested by London citizens; in default of redress they threatened to withdraw from this country. The city replied that the privileges of the Hanse were suspended by order of parliament on account of the injuries inflicted on the king's subjects abroad. They only regained their privileges when they promised to abstain from ill-treating English traders on the continent. The terms of the agreement drawn up in 1390

1 For Staplers' loans, see Jenckes, English Staple, 20 (n. 7); Sandeman, Calais under English Rule, 71-72; Abram, Social England, 66.

2 Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 565, No. 129.

3 Pauli, Drei volksw. Denkschr. 24; Macpherson, Annals, i. 539.

4 Rot. Parl. ii. 306 a.

5 Letter Book H, 101.

6 Rot. Parl. iii. 52 a.