History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

1. Is a corporate seal of the cinque port Sandwich, of about the date A.D. 1238. This curious seal shows that English ships were then provided with sails, which were furled aloft as at the present time, and, further, that they carried their long-boat on deck amid-ships, as do most merchant vessels now.

2. A seal of the town of Poole, A.D. 1325, exhibits a sheer of remarkable height, with the representation of the castle aft and forwards, the name of which is preserved in the present word “forecastle,” for the portion of the vessel towards the bow. The anchor may also be noticed, hanging clear over the bows and ready for use.

3. Is an exceedingly well preserved seal of Dover, of A.D. 1284, exhibiting similar elevated portions at the stern and bow for the use of the fighting men, with a curious representation, also, of a sailor ascending the shrouds, across which, no doubt, ratline lines were placed, though these can hardly be detected in the drawing. This seal has some other special details, as on the forecastle two men blowing trumpets in different directions; on the after deck, a man steering with a long oar over the side; and on the main deck, two sailors apparently coiling the cable.

4. Is the seal of about the same period of the town of Faversham. It is remarkable for the amount of detail preserved on it. On this, as on the seal of Sandwich, two sailors may be noticed seated aloft on the yard in the act of furling the sail. On the deck is an officer giving the word of command, and in the castle over the poop a man holding a standard. On the fore deck are five soldiers variously armed with spears and axes, and, near the top of the mast, is the castellated object often observed on similar seals, indicating the crow’s nest.

5. A seal of Michael Stanhope, vice-admiral of Suffolk, of a somewhat later date, is remarkable in that it represents a ship with four masts and a bowsprit. Each mast has a single yard, with the lug sail furled on the three smaller ones, and set on the fourth and largest. The bow is ornamented with a crocodile’s head, his back appearing to form the roof of the forecastle. Over the bow is the anchor triced up to the side of the vessel.[559]

By the charter granted in the twenty-second year of the reign of Edward I., the Cinque Ports[560] were bound to provide, at any time the king passed over the sea, not less than fifty-seven ships fully equipped, each to have twenty armed soldiers maintained at the cost of the ship-owner for fifteen days. Soon afterwards, the constable of Dover Castle set forth, in a proclamation, the proportion of ships which these and other ports, admitted to certain privileges, were bound to furnish. The total number thus collected amounted to seventy-eight vessels, of which Hastings had to supply eighteen; Bekesbourne, in Kent, seven; Rye, five; Winchelsea, ten; Dover, nineteen; Folkestone, seven; Faversham, a similar number; and Sandwich with Deal and other minor places, five: the whole to be ready and properly “armed and arrayed,” each to carry twenty men besides the master and mariners, who were to serve five days at the expense of the ports and afterwards at that of the king’s.

The nucleus of a national navy was thus established. In cases of emergency, other vessels were obtainable from London or built for the occasion by the government; and to make certain of a still further supply, the whole merchant service were required to be ready within forty days from the time of the summons. The “Cinque Ports,” for their five days’ service, paid the masters sixpence, and the sailors threepence per day.[561]

Although the reign of Edward, like that of his predecessor, was unfortunately marked by many contentions at home and abroad, the interests of commerce were not neglected, and foreigners obtained privileges far beyond any they had previously enjoyed.[562] Those, for instance, who repaired to England were not merely granted full quiet and security, but they were exempted from all differential duties and special restrictions, and from the payment of either “murage, pontage, or pavage,” although in cities they were only allowed to sell their goods by wholesale, except in the case of spices or mercery wares. Goods of any kind might be exported or imported, with the exception of wine, which could not be re-exported without a special licence. Foreign merchants were also allowed to take up their abode at any town or borough in the kingdom, subject only to the civil and municipal laws of the country. The crown promised not to seize their goods without making full satisfaction. Bargains were to be enforced after the “earnest penny” had passed between the buyer and seller; and all bailiffs and officers of fairs were commanded to do justice without delay, from day to day, “according to the law of merchants.” Before goods were weighed, it was stipulated that both buyer and seller were to see that the scales were empty and of equal balance, and all weights were to be of one standard. When the scales were balanced, “the weigher” was expressly required to remove his hands. Moreover, in all trials by jury, in which strangers were interested, the jury was to consist of half Englishmen and half foreigners.

It was also in the reign of Edward I. that letters of marque appear to have been for the first time issued. A merchant of Bayonne,[563] at that time a port of the English dominions in Gascony, had shipped a cargo of fruit from Malaga, which, on its passage along the coast of Portugal, was seized and carried into Lisbon by an armed cruiser belonging to that country then at peace with England. The king of Portugal, who had received one-tenth part of the property, declined to restore the ship and cargo, or make good the loss; whereupon King Edward’s lieutenant in Gascony granted the owner of the ship and his heirs licence, to be in force for five years, to seize the property of the Portuguese, and especially of the inhabitants of Lisbon, to the extent of the loss he had sustained and of the expenses of recovery.

It was likewise during the reign of Edward (10th Oct., 1283) that parliament passed the famous “statute of merchants,” which gave a remedy for the due recovery of debts, “as for want of such a law many merchants were impoverished, and many foreign merchants desisted from trading with England.” It is remarkable that, in the required process, the debtor was supposed incapable of writing, and was, therefore, required to put his seal to a bill drawn by the mayor’s clerk, who thereupon affixed the royal seal prepared for that purpose. If, on judgment against him, the debtor was proved to have no property, he was imprisoned and fed on bread and water until the just demands of the creditors were satisfied.

Nor were Edward’s commercial enactments confined to those we have thus briefly noticed; for, understanding that certain citizens of London,[564] together with other merchants of England, Ireland, Gascony, and Wales, were in the habit of compelling the barons of the Cinque Ports and others to pay an average on articles which ought to have been exempted, as in the case of goods thrown overboard in storms, he ordained that the vessel with her apparel, provisions, and cooking utensils, “the master’s ring, necklace, sash, and silver cup,” as well as the freight for the goods brought into port, should be free of all such payments: on the other hand, that all other things in the vessel, not excepting even the seamen’s bedding, should bear a proportion of the loss incurred, and that the master should not be permitted to claim freight for goods so thrown overboard.[565]

In Scotland, as might have been expected, commerce was of even slower growth than in England, nor was it till the reign of Alexander III. that there was any real maritime force; and although the vassals of Scotland, as, for instance, the king of Man, were required to contribute ships for the use of the state in proportion to their lands, the king does not appear to have considered that such merchant vessels as these were of much value, as he passed a law whereby his merchants were prohibited for a limited period from exporting any goods in their own vessels, “because some of them had been captured by pirates, and others lost by shipwreck and by arrestments in foreign ports.” Of course, the inevitable result followed that, for a time, the merchant vessels of Scotland were totally extinguished. The enactment, however, for some unaccountable reason, seems to have given satisfaction, as the historians of the period remark that—“in consequence of these laws the kingdom abounded in a few years with corn, money, cattle, sheep, and all kinds of merchandise, and the arts flourished.”[566] It is, indeed, possible that Scotland may have imbibed the spirit of extreme liberality in its maritime policy which then prevailed throughout England, where it was evidently supposed that foreign merchants brought wealth which England could not otherwise have obtained. It is, perhaps, remarkable that we have no notice of any trading port of Scotland except that of Dunbar, which, at that time, was subject to the English crown.

Fortunately, however, a document has been preserved which furnishes the names of the chief ports of England during the reign of Edward I.[567] It is interesting and instructive. They were then as follows: Dover, Sandwich, Romney, Winchester, Rye, Hythe, Faversham, Hastings, Shoreham, Seaford, Portsmouth, Southampton, Dartmouth, Lymington, Weymouth, Poole, Humble, Lymne, Sidmouth, Chichester, Teignmouth, Frome, Fowey, Looe, Bodmin, Wareham, Falmouth, Bristol, Haverford-West, Caernarvon, Caermarthen, Landpadanour, Conway, Chester, Bridgewater, Cardiff, Oystermouth, Rochester, Gravesend, Northfleet, London, Harwich, Ipswich, Dunwich, Orford, Yarmouth, Blackney, Lynn, Boston, Wainfleet, Saltfleet, Grimsby, Hull, Ravensburg, Scarborough, Tynemouth, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, and Dunbar. Such were the principal ports of England at the commencement of the fourteenth century. Some of these places are now hardly known for their trade, while the very names of others among them have long since disappeared. How changed since then are the seats and centres of England’s maritime commerce!

But we know nothing of the amount of shipping belonging to these ports for more than half a century afterwards; nor, till a comparatively recent period, of the extent of business carried on in England. Had such records been preserved, we should probably have seen that in the port of Liverpool alone, then scarcely recognisable, a larger amount of tonnage now arrives and departs during a week or even a day, than entered and left all these ports in the course of a year. The only document in the shape of statistics referring to shipping of the thirteenth century that can be discovered, is a return which states that, in the year ending 20th November, 1299, there arrived in the port of London, and in all the other ports of the kingdom, except the Cinque Ports, seventy-three vessels with cargoes of wine, of which the smallest had not less than nineteen tuns on board, from each of which the king, by ancient law, had the right to take, at a fixed price, two tuns for the use of his household.

But even this return conveys but a very vague and imperfect idea of the number of vessels then belonging to England, or of the extent of its maritime commerce; moreover, the importation of wine was then much larger in proportion to that of other articles of commerce than it is now. The Cinque Ports, from their wealth and exclusive privileges, were, doubtless, large consumers of wine and had great facilities for its storage.[568] London had long been, as it is now, pre-eminently the port for wine. To Edward I. is due the selection of the Vintry (a name still remaining) on the banks of the Thames, where vessels delivered their cargoes alongside the wharf. Thence they often proceeded up the river Fleet, as far as Holborn Bridge, to take in their return cargoes, the smaller ones occasionally ascending even as far as Battle Bridge, near the present station of the Great Northern Railway at King’s Cross.

The twenty years’ reign of Edward II. is not marked by any events worthy of note relating to maritime commerce. Retrogression rather than progress was the result of his policy and of his constant troubles and contentions with neighbouring nations. When, however, he had been deposed, indeed almost immediately after the accession of Edward III., a considerable step in advance was made by the grant of fresh patents and charters to secure for the merchants of England further staples on the Continent. Nearly the whole of the wool trade had been previously carried on by foreigners, but the English now aimed at having “staples” in Brabant and Artois as well as in Flanders, whither they could freely send their own wool and dispose of it themselves from their own entrepôts. And in this they at length succeeded; for with their own capital they bought their wool, and exporting it in their own bottoms to a staple in Holland, Flanders, or France, disposed of it in those countries without the intervention of any second party or foreign merchant. This privilege was considered at the time a great step in advance; but now it is not easy to understand how the laws of any country could have withheld from its merchants the right to trade wherever or whenever other nations did not object.

Such changes in the mode of transacting business tended materially to enlarge the knowledge of the English merchants, acquiring as they did from year to year, by their intercourse with the more refined and intelligent merchants of Holland and France, much information on subjects they might have learnt at an earlier period of their history had their rulers not embroiled them in constant wars with the very nations with whom they were now in direct communication. Again, though it is certain that, at least on the western side of England, the Romans had worked coal on or near the surface,[569] the opening of the great coal-fields near Newcastle first took place in the reign of this wise monarch—though, curiously enough, its value was sooner appreciated by foreigners than by the people of the country in which this vast source of wealth was found. For a considerable period after its discovery, the consumption of coal was supposed to be so unhealthy that a royal edict prohibited its use in the city of London while the queen resided there, in case it might prove “pernicious to her health.”[570] On the other hand, while England was thus prohibiting the use of the article which has made her by far the most famous commercial nation of either ancient or modern times, France sent her ships laden with corn to Newcastle, receiving coal as their return cargoes, and her merchants were the first to carry this now great article of commerce to foreign countries.

For the first time we obtain also at this period something like reliable information with regard to the extent of trade of England and the number and size of her merchant vessels. Hitherto everything with regard to them, and indeed to the vessels of almost all other countries, has been, in a great measure, a matter of conjecture, the accounts preserved being so conflicting that scarcely more than the vaguest idea of their form or size can be ascertained. Nor, indeed, so far as we know, were there any returns of the actual strength of the navy of England or of the number of vessels which each port could send to sea on an emergency, until Edward III. ordered a roll to be prepared of the fleet he employed in the blockade and siege of Calais.[571]

From the details given in this roll we have the means of forming a tolerably correct impression of the merchant shipping of the time; and it is remarkable how small was the proportion of ships and men which the king himself supplied. Many of the ports, it will be seen, supplied a larger number of both than the king himself, these being, obviously, the merchant shipping at other times employed in the foreign trade of the country. This interesting document clearly shows that from the earliest period up to the siege of Calais, as was also the case for a long period subsequently, the English fleets were composed almost exclusively of merchant ships, contributed by the chief ports in the kingdom or in the dependent provinces.

That Yarmouth, in Norfolk, should have supplied the largest number of vessels, is probably due to its herring fisheries, and to the great quantities of wool which were then shipped from that port to Brabant and the ports of Flanders and Holland.[572] Again, Fowey, in Cornwall, furnished more seamen than London, in all likelihood on account of the tin trade; while the now extinct port of Winchelsea, in Sussex, occupied the first position amongst the Cinque Ports, perhaps from its neighbourhood to the then chief ironworks in the country. Those places directly interested in foreign trade contributed rateably, in accordance with its extent, and not with reference to the number of their inhabitants. For instance, the city of York furnished only one small vessel with nine men on board; whilst the town of Newcastle, now becoming important as the port of shipment of sea-borne coals, furnished no fewer than seventeen ships.

We also learn from this record that the Prince of Wales, who distinguished himself greatly in the expedition, had as his wage 20s. per diem; the Bishop of Durham, 6s. 8d.; thirteen earls 6s. 8d. each; forty-four barons and bannerets, 4s.; one thousand knights, 2s. Esquires, constables, captains and leaders, of whom there were four thousand and twenty-two, received 1s. each. Masons, carpenters, smiths, engineers, tent-makers, miners, armed gunners, from 10d. to 3d. per day; mariners, 4d.; whilst the Welshmen on foot had 4d. and 2d. But this roll is also valuable for what it omits to tell us. Thus if it be the record of the fleet before Calais, we cannot doubt that England then had many other vessels of naval and commercial importance, for, even at this period of English history, we find organized piracy was not extinct: thus, in November 1347, a Spanish fleet piratically seized and sunk (for the two nations were then at peace) ten English ships, on which a fleet of fifty ships was immediately sent to sea to make reprisals. In this fleet the King himself, with the Prince of Wales, and many of the nobility, embarked, and attacked off Winchelsea forty large Spanish carracks, fully manned and armed, and richly laden with cloth and other valuable commodities, capturing no less than one-half, and sinking or disabling most of the others.

Unfortunately, in 1354, France again became the scene of war, which ended in the celebrated battle of Poictiers under Edward the Black Prince. In the campaign which followed the expiration of the truce, consequent upon the capture of the French king and the most of his army on the field of Poictiers, Edward collected a fleet of no less than eleven hundred vessels, in which were embarked one hundred thousand men, by whom Paris was successfully invaded; but at the siege of La Rochelle his good fortune deserted him, and his whole fleet, then under the command of the Earl of Pembroke, became the prize of the combined squadrons of France and of Castile. Although, on pressing demands for succour, Edward was enabled to fit out a fresh fleet of four hundred ships, of which he personally assumed the command, fortune and the winds proved adverse; and, after having been nine weeks at sea, he was unable to effect a landing on the French coast. Greater reverses followed, and the vast territories which the English possessed in France, and which they had maintained at so great a cost, soon sank into comparatively insignificant proportions. The death of the Black Prince, in 1376, preyed so heavily upon the king that he only survived him for twelve months; and in June, 1377, he died, after a reign of more than half a century, broken-hearted at the loss of his brave and distinguished son.

Although Edward, throughout the whole of his long reign, had encouraged a liberal commercial policy, and had devoted, in an especial manner, his attention to naval affairs, it was impossible for maritime commerce to flourish in the midst of turmoil and war. England, though she lost the greater portion of her unnatural territory in France, may have preserved, as against the fleets of that country, her superiority at sea, and her wars with France on the one hand, and with Scotland on the other, may have developed the natural bull-dog courage of her seamen; but war, while it lasted, transferred the bulk of her over-sea carrying trade to the ships of Spain, Flanders, Holland, and of the Mediterranean nations, the whole energy of her people, which might have been better employed in the development of her natural resources and manufactures, having been devoted to war and to the creation of its instruments of destruction. Commissioners were even summoned to London to hold a sort of naval parliament during these struggles with France, and to render an account of the number of vessels which each port could supply to the naval force of the country. The press warrants authorized the appointed officers to seize not merely all vessels lying in the several ports, but every vessel which came from sea during the continuance of the commission; and these vessels were frequently compelled immediately to discharge the whole of their cargoes, although their last port of destination had not been reached, till Edward, during the greater part of his reign, had actually more than one-half of the merchant vessels of the kingdom in his service.[573] Operations such as these could not fail to seriously injure the maritime commerce of England, and, at the same time, afford encouragement to foreigners to absorb her over-sea carrying trade.

But although the ships of Spain and of the Mediterranean were at first the chief gainers by this state of things, those of the more northern nations of Europe soon became, from the same causes, the most formidable commercial rivals of England. While the English were engaged in unprofitable conflicts, they were steadily increasing in wealth and commercial greatness. Flemish ship-owners, taking advantage of the constant disputes of England with France and Scotland, acquired a considerable portion of the trade which would otherwise have fallen to England, and materially increased their business relations with the Mediterranean, with Egypt, and the East. Nor were they alone in their efforts. The advantages to be derived from distant commerce had now become known to all the nations of the North; while they were rapidly gaining an insight into the most profitable mode of conducting it, and ascertaining the class of goods best adapted for the markets of the East, and the description of vessels most suitable for carrying on the trade.

The people occupying the Netherlands, observing on the one hand how English genius and energy were being wasted in war, and, on the other, perceiving the vast progress of the Italian republics, and the wealth which their inhabitants had accumulated by their intercourse with the East, endeavoured, and with success, to imitate their example. Besides being carriers by sea they became themselves large manufacturers, opening up an extensive trade with Persia through the medium of Constantinople, and enjoying during the reign of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, an amount of prosperity second only to that of Venice, then the chief of the Italian republics. Protected by the franchises which their energy had wrung from their lords paramount, the inhabitants of Flanders were thus induced to apply themselves with vigour to commercial and manufacturing pursuits. Almost every town emulated its neighbour in works of usefulness or taste, exhibiting alike their habits of industry and their inventive genius. Their population increased to an astonishing extent, their wealth in a yet greater ratio; and the modern traveller may note in buildings still extant the superabundant pecuniary resources of that period, and the joint results of freedom from war and of unwearied industry.

Somewhere towards the close of the thirteenth century the merchant vessels of the Italian republics first began to frequent the markets of the Netherlands, and in 1318 Venetian ships brought to Antwerp spices, drugs, and silk-stuffs. The Hanseatic League, which had now become a commercial association of considerable importance, readily entered into relations with the Italian traders, so that the markets of Flanders became the best supplied of any in the north of Europe with the products and manufactures of the Mediterranean, Arabia and India, furnishing in exchange from their factories a variety of fine cloths in assortments adapted to the wants of the Eastern people. Thus, while England was distracted and impoverished by war, foreign merchants found safety and protection, and became greatly enriched, under the government of the Count of Flanders. The Flemings were satisfied with moderate duties. Whilst clearing their coasts of pirates and of hostile corsairs to the utmost extent in their power, they in all cases respected the property of shipwrecked vessels, which had too often been considered the prize of any promiscuous wrecker, and encouraged traders from all nations to frequent or settle on the banks of the Scheldt and the Meuse, many of whom realized large profits out of England’s folly or misfortunes.

During the period of the commercial splendour of the Netherlands, Bruges and Antwerp were the chief entrepôts of the north of Europe for foreign goods. The former of these, in the course of the fourteenth century, had successfully negotiated favourable commercial treaties with the German empire, as also with Spain, Portugal, England, Scotland, and Ireland, which, in the following century, were extended with great advantage to Venice, Genoa, and Aragon; but, towards the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century Bruges was surpassed by Antwerp, where, after the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape, Flemish vessels trading with the East landed their cargoes. Antwerp had, indeed, previously to that period enjoyed a large and profitable maritime commerce. Apart from the many advantages which the port possessed, the liberal policy established by the Duke of Brabant and the privileges he conferred on foreigners had induced English, German, Genoese, and Florentine merchants to make it a rendezvous for their ships, and a depôt for storing their goods, whence they were distributed throughout the continent and the whole of the north of Europe.

Some idea may be formed of the importance of Flanders and the Low Countries, and how they then surpassed all the other nations of northern Europe in wealth and commercial enterprise, from the fact that Ghent had no less than forty thousand looms constantly at work in the manufacture of cotton and woollen cloths. She likewise supplied in great abundance, and of superior quality, serges, fustians, and tapestries. Courtray possessed, in the sixteenth century, six thousand weavers’ looms; Ypres, four thousand, which produced very fine cloths, especially those of the scarlet colour so frequently specified in the tariffs of the countries of the South and East; while the Cloth Hall of that place was considered one of the most beautiful edifices of all Flanders. Oudenarde supplied tapestries which rivalled those of Arras: Tournay was famed for a peculiar description of serges. Louvain, though somewhat injured by the growth of other places, had employed in the fourteenth century four thousand looms; Mechlin, three thousand four hundred; and Brussels was, even at that early period, renowned for its woollen fabrics.[574]

Middleburgh, in Zealand, had then attracted to its market the merchants of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, who trafficked in its manufactures as well as in the productions generally of the country. Haarlem wove in its looms an extraordinary quantity of fine cloth and velvets much in request by the wealthy and prosperous Italian republics. The Low Countries received in return from Venice, spices, drugs, perfumes, cotton-prints, and silk stuffs. Genoa, Florence, Ancona, and Bologna, despatched also to Holland their silks, cloths of gold and silver, corselets, pearls, cotton, silk twist, alum, oils, and other articles of manufacture and produce. France sent to her ports the fine cloths of Paris and of Rouen, the common velvets of Tours, and the linen yarns of Lyons, besides wines in great abundance.

About this period the merchants of Brabant, Flanders, Zealand, and Holland, obtained from the king of France the privilege of establishing agencies in her chief commercial cities. Spain was likewise then largely engaged in over-sea commerce, and competed with the merchants of France and Italy in importing to the North sugar, cotton, dye-woods, and other articles of foreign growth; but it appears that they were so much molested by pirates, especially by the English, that in 1340 the cities of Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges, were obliged to seek and obtain from Edward III. a safe conduct[575] for the merchant shipping of Catalonia, Castille, and Majorca. In spite, however, of the king’s protection, so daring and regardless of all law were these marauders, that a few years afterwards two vessels laden with valuable cargoes, and sent by the merchants of Barcelona and Valencia for Flanders, were captured by pirates from Bayonne, and carried into an English port.[576]

The Hanseatic League having now become by far the most important commercial association in Europe, its merchants entered with zeal into the rich and prosperous trade which made Flanders and the Low Countries so conspicuous in the annals of the commercial history of the period. More than seventy cities and towns were associated with the League. Its chief agencies, firmly established at Bruges in Flanders, at Bergen in Norway, and at Novgorod in Russia, entirely monopolized for many years the trade of these countries. Its agents and factors, all of whom were mercantile men, were guided by rules and instructions emanating from head-quarters at Lubeck, and from these they had no power to deviate unless under extraordinary circumstances. They were not permitted to have any common interest with strangers, or to trust their goods on board any other merchant ships than those belonging to the places with which the association was in league. Wholly occupied in extending their own privileges and in securing for themselves the business of any place where they had established themselves, they soon became obnoxious to their rivals, and their counting-houses were frequently exposed to popular fury. When unable to obtain redress for the outrages thus committed against it, the League closed its warehouses, and its members withdrew from the place. They could inflict no more severe punishment for the wrongs they had sustained; indeed, the withdrawal of their trade was often considered so great a calamity to the inhabitants, that large concessions were made and new privileges granted to induce their return. More than once the League transferred their quarters from Bruges to Dordrecht in Holland, and, on each occasion, obtained fresh grants before they agreed to resume business in the former city.

But the League was unable to obtain at Bruges the power and influence it too frequently exercised at other places; for it had there to contend with men of business habits and of considerable wealth, whose firms had long conducted business with distant countries, and who held large stocks of the same description of merchandise from which the League itself derived its chief profits. Moreover, the Flemings of Bruges imported in their own ships, or in those of the nations with whom they were in direct correspondence, the products of the East, the manufactures of Italy, and the wines of the South. At other places, however, and especially in the North, where the League had comparatively few competitors and none whom it could not crush when necessary, it exercised, at times, an overbearing dominion. Arrogant and despotic, it even claimed the right of having submitted for its sanction the question of the succession of the Danish princes to the throne. At Bergen it persecuted with inveterate rancour any foreigner who attempted to oppose it in trade; and, at Novgorod, it behaved in such a manner as more than once to arouse the severe displeasure of the Russian government. Nor did it hesitate, when it suited its purpose, to carry on maritime wars, frequently exercising the power of an European sovereign; and more than one potentate of the North experienced the terrible ravages caused by the fleets of this powerful and haughty commercial association.[577]