provided that English merchants should enjoy freedom of traffic in Prussia and German merchants in England. lawful merchants of England whosoever shall have free licence and authority with all kinds of ships, goods and merchandises to resort unto every port of the land of Prussia, and also to transport all such goods and merchandises up farther unto any other place in the land of Prussia, and there with all kinds of persons freely to bargain and make sale, as heretofore it hath from ancient times been accustomed. Which privilege is granted in all things and by all circumstances unto the Prussians in England"1. But almost immediately the agreement was broken, and strife was renewed by both parties. English cruisers captured ships owned by Hanseatic traders, who by way of reprisal seized English vessels trading in the Baltic 2. The League also complained that, whereas they ought to trade wholesale both with burgesses and aliens, they were prohibited from dealing with non-burgesses, and were not allowed to have their own houses, while they were also burdened with increased customs 3. On their side the English complained that they were excluded from the Hanseatic dominions, and that the League took hostile measures against them in Norway and Sweden. Under Henry IV. there were longdrawn-out negotiations in which the League treated with the king as one sovereign power with another. After a short-lived compact concluded in the first year of the reign 5, peace was eventually patched up in 14096. The hostility of the Merchant Adventurers and the League was not, however, at an end. In 1435 English merchants were expelled from Prussia, and vainly clamoured that the Easterlings should receive similar treatment in England'. In 1442 they renewed the complaint that they were disturbed in their trade, and on this occasion the government threatened to deprive the Hansards of their privileges if they refused redress 8. Eventu 1 Hakluyt (ed. 1903), ii. 18 seq. 2 Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. App. 443. 4 Ibid. ii. 80. 3 Hakluyt, ii. 72. 5 Rymer (O. ed.), viii. 112. 6 For an account of these negotiations, see Hakluyt, ii. 27-98, and Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. App. 443. Rot. Parl. iv. 493 a; the reply was, Le roi s'avisera. 8 Ibid. v. 64 b. ally in 1468 the struggle culminated in open war and the suspension of commercial intercourse. But in 1473 Edward IV., whom the League had assisted to recover his crown, restored all their privileges on condition that native merchants were allowed to repair freely to their dominions and have full rights of trade1. They do not appear, however, to have returned to Boston, for when Leland visited it he found that "the steelyard houses yet there remain, but the steelyard is little or nothing at all occupied ". According to his account: "The Easterlings kept a great house and course of merchandise at Boston until such time that one Humphrey Littlebury, merchant of Boston, did kill one of the Easterlings there about Edward IV.'s days; whereupon rose much controversy: so that at the last the Easterlings left their course of merchandise to Boston, and since the town sore decayed". The Treaty of Utrecht, as it was termed, postponed the triumph of the Merchant Adventurers for a century. The Hansards did not fulfil the conditions imposed upon them, and Henry VII. failed to destroy their monopoly 3. Under Edward VI. (1553) their privileges were seized into the king's hands, and the reasons assigned by the government for their action in suspending the Hanseatic monopoly serve to indicate the nature of the offences with which they were charged. (1) The privileges of the steelyard extended to no certain persons or towns, and the Hansards admitted to their freedom whom they list, to the annual loss to the customs of nearly twenty thousand pounds; (2) they coloured foreign goods; (3) they denied liberties to English merchants by prohibiting them from buying or selling in their dominions, contrary to the treaty of reciprocity under Edward IV.; (4) their privileges were at first beneficial to the merchants without inflicting injury upon the realm, but were now grown prejudicial to the state. Mary at once 1 Rot. Parl. vi. 65 a. The English ambassadors were instructed to insist on reciprocity of commercial privileges: Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 389, No. 82. 2 Itinerary, iv. 114, 181. No doubt the real reason why the Hansards left Boston was on account of the breach of commercial relations between the League and England. 3 Infra, p. 504. 4 Cal. of State Papers Foreign, 1547-1553, P. 249. The loss of their privileges ruined some of the merchants: Select Cases in the Court of Requests, 205. Monopoly of the Merchant Adventurers. restored the steelyard to its former rights, but in the reign of Elizabeth, after making a last effort to drive the Merchant Adventurers from Germany on the ground that their monopoly conflicted with the laws of the Empire 1, it finally lost its privileged position. The Merchant Adventurers had at length emerged from the long contest successful, and they are said to have displayed their power by delaying the sailing of the Armada for a year 2. The victory of the Merchant Adventurers is often interpreted in the light of a national triumph. But we must avoid the error of confusing the interests of a privileged mercantile body with those of the nation at large. In 1604 a bill was introduced into the House of Commons, which was designed to throw open the trade of the country to all merchants. The arguments by which the promoters of the bill supported their measure" for the enlargement of trade", warn us not to assume that the monopoly enjoyed by the chartered companies was necessarily advantageous to the development of English commerce: "All free subjects are born inheritable . . . to the free exercise of their industry", and "it is against the natural right and liberty of the subjects of England to restrain it into the hands of some few as now it is; for although there may be now some five or six thousand persons, counting children and prentices, free of the several companies of the merchants in the whole; yet apparent it is that the governors of these companies by their monopolizing orders have so handled the matter, as that the mass of the whole trade of all the realm is in the hands of some two hundred persons at the most, the rest serving for a show only and reaping small benefit". The commercial monopoly of the Merchant Adventurers was also held to be detrimental to the progress of English industry, and the charges levelled against the company in 1550 and 1586 3 were repeated in 1604. "The clothiers having no utterance of their cloth but to the Merchant Adventurers, they by complot among themselves will buy at what time, what quantity and what price, themselves 1 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. xvi. 36. 2 Ibid. 39. list; whereby the clothiers are fain often to return with loss, to lay their cloths to pawn, to slack their trade-to the utter ruin of their poor workmen, with their wives and children". The attack upon the chartered companies was not, as is sometimes thought, inspired by jealousy of the city of London: "unless we will confine London unto some two hundred men's purses". On the contrary, the plea for free trade was intended to secure the more equal distribution of the wealth of the land", for this, it was added, "is a great stability and strength to the realm" 1. ness. of English The expansion of English trade in the fifteenth century The Libelle is reflected not only in numerous statutes, but in the writings Polycye. of contemporaries. A national policy was gradually formulated, and though at first vague in outline and unstable in its tendencies, it ultimately acquired precision and definiteThe author of the Libelle of English Polycye 2 advanced the bold claim that England should control the commerce of the world; displaying an intimate knowledge of commercial affairs, his cardinal doctrine is that England's command of the Straits of Dover enabled her to dominate the commercial routes of western Europe. The Emperor Sigismund upon his visit to England had urged upon Henry V. the value of Dover and Calais, exhorting him to guard them “as your tweyne eyne to keep the narowe see ". The importance of the Straits lay in the fact that Flanders was the staple of all "the nations of Christendom". The trade of Spain, Portugal, Scotland and Brittany centred in its great cosmopolitan ports, and therefore all the carrying trade of these countries "must needs pass by our English coast. . . betwixt Dover and Calais". This placed them in our power, and gave us a formidable instrument to employ in our diplomatic relations. Moreover, since "the wool of England sustaineth the commons" of Flanders we were in a position to ruin the Flemish manufactures. Thus the whole world must necessarily seek our friendship and goodwill. The Libelle accordingly reiterates the contention that 1 The Journals of the House of Commons, i. 218 seq. 2 Printed in Political Poems and Songs, ed. T. Wright (Roll Series), vol. ii.; and in Hakluyt, Voyages (ed. 1903), ii. 114-147. Its criticism of Italian trade. the aim of our policy should be to make ourselves "masters of the narrow sea . . . that is the wall of England ". "For if this sea be kept in time of war Who can here pass without danger and woe?" But England, we are told, was neglecting her opportunities by allowing her navy to fall into decay. Edgar had built a fleet of ships "not few but many a score", and in the days of Edward III. there was no navy in the sea That might withstand of his majesty ". Henry V. again had built three great ships, the Trinity, the Grace-Dieu and the Holy Ghost. But now conditions were changed, and for the ship represented on English coins our enemies in derision were bidding us "set a sheep". The writer devotes special attention to England's commercial relations with the great Italian cities. He praises the Genoese because they brought us useful commodities-wood, oil, cotton, gold, cloths of gold, silk and black pepper-while they took from us our wool and woollen cloth. But the trade of Venice and Florence is bitterly condemned; it was regarded as an intolerable evil that we should exchange our valuable commodities for extravagant trifles. "The great galleys of Venice and Florence Be well ladened with things of complacence, All spicery and of grocer's ware, With sweet wines, all manner of chaffare [merchandise], tailed, Nifles [nicknacks], trifles that little have availed. And things with which they fetely [cleverly] blear our eye. For much of this chaffare that is wastable Might be forborne for [as] dear and deceivable . . Thus these galleys for this liking ware And eating ware, bear hence our best chaffare, |