The Tudor period begins with the lowest point reached in town and country of a decline and decay that had been steadily persistent for nearly two hundred years. The prosperity of a trading city depends upon the prosperity of its markets. There were many causes for this decay. The famines, of which there were four, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the Hundred Years’ War; the Civil Wars; the weakness of the fleet and the piracies in the Channel; the growth of the power of Parliament and the consequent decay of local independence; the feeble government of Edward II. and Henry VI.; the fearful devastation of the Black Death; the changes in the manorial system;—all these things together contributed to the decay of trade over the whole country. To quote a writer on the fifteenth century. Denton, in his England in the Fifteenth Century, says that the decay of England commenced soon after the death of Edward I. It continued, showing an increased rate of decay, after the death of Edward II.
The country parishes everywhere, on the northern and the Welsh march, on the southern seaboard, and in the Eastern Counties, had to be exempted from payment of taxes on account of poverty; lands were untilled; there was loss of sheep and cattle; agriculture was at a standstill for fear of pirates. Or the country parishes were actually deserted: the people, ruined, had left the farms and the clearings; the churches were allowed to fall into ruin; Monastic Houses were desolate and empty because the Brethren had no longer any rents.
In the towns there were open spaces within the walls where houses had once stood. One has only to visit King’s Lynn in Winchelsea for an example of this decay.
Even in London, it has been observed, for more than a hundred years after the Rebellion of Jack Straw there stood in Fleet Street the blackened ruins of two forges which that rebel’s followers had burned. In all that time there was not found any who thought it worth while to rebuild the forge.
In London during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although the time was one of commercial decline, there were still rich merchants. It is in a time of decay that the merchants make complaints of aliens; that they clamour for protection; that they demand the import and the export of merchandise in English ships; that they would prohibit the sending of gold and silver out of the country; let the foreign merchants be paid in kind.
The melancholy condition of the country at the beginning of the sixteenth century is described most vividly by Cunningham:—
“There is less mention made of decay in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century; but the facts were again brought forcibly forward when the Parliament of Henry VIII. began to put pressure on the owners of houses to repair their property and to remove the rubbish that endangered life in the towns. Norwich had never recovered from the fire of 1508; the empty spaces at Lynn Bishop allowed the sea to do damage in other parts of the town. Many houses were ruined and the streets were dangerous for traffic in Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Bridgenorth, Queenborough, Northampton and Gloucester; there were vacant spaces heaped with filth, and tottering houses in York, Lincoln, Canterbury, Coventry, Bath, Chichester, Salisbury, Winchester, Bristol, Scarborough, Hereford, Colchester, Rochester, Portsmouth, Poole, Lyme, Feversham, Worcester, Stafford, Buckingham, Pontefract, Grantham, Exeter, Ipswich, Southampton, Great Yarmouth, Oxford, Great Wycombe, Guildford, Stratford, Hull, Newcastle, Bedford, Leicester and Berwick; as well as in Shaston, Sherborne, Bridport, Dorchester, Weymouth, Plymouth, Barnstaple, Tavistock, Dartmouth, Launceston, Lostwithiel, Liskeard, Bodmin, Truro, Helston, Bridgewater, Taunton, Somerton, Ilchester, Maldon and Warwick. There were similar dangers to the inhabitants of Great Grimsby, Cambridge, the Cinque Ports, Lewes; and even in the more remote provinces things were as bad, for Chester, Tenby, Haverfordwest, Pembroke, Caermarthen, Montgomery, Cardiff, Swansea, Cowbridge, New Radnor, Presteign, Brecknock, Abergavenny, Usk, Caerlon, Newport in Monmouthshire, Lancaster, Preston, Liverpool and Wigan, were taken in hand in 1544. In trying to interpret this evidence, however, we must remember that we are reading of attempts to repair, not of complaints of new decline; the mere fact that such attempts were made was perhaps an indication that things had reached their worst; and we are perhaps justified in inferring from the double mention of some few towns that a real improvement was effected in the others.” (The Growth of English Industry.)
There is thus abundant evidence concerning the decay of trade. Cunningham speaks of the decay of the craft gilds and their mismanagement. This may be considered a part of the general decay and a consequence. At first, the craft gilds exercised police control over their members and so secured good order; the old authority and power of the alderman in his ward had been practically taken over by the gilds; each master had his apprentices living with him and forming part of his own household. Yet the apprentices made the riot in 1517 long remembered as Evil May Day. Another of their objects was the production of honest and good work. Yet in 1437 and again in 1503 it was enacted that no ruler of gilds or fraternities should make any ordinances which were not approved by the Chancellor of the Justices of Assize. The third object was the securing of fair conditions for those who worked in the trade. Yet consider the grievances of the journeymen in 1536:—
“Previous Acts relating to craft abuses are recited and the statute proceeds: ‘Sithen which several acts established and made, divers masters, wardens and fellowships of crafts, have by cautel and subtle means practised and compassed to defraud and delude the said good and wholesome statutes, causing divers apprentices or young men immediately after their years be expired, or that they be made free of their occupation or fellowship, to be sworn upon their holy Evangelist at their first entry, that they nor any of them after their years or term expired shall not set up, nor open any shop, house, nor cellar, nor occupy as freeman without the assent and license of the master, wardens or fellowship of their occupations, upon pain of forfeiting their freedom or other like penalty; by reason whereof the said ’prentices and journeymen be put to as much or more charges thereby than they beforetime were put unto for the obtaining and entering of their freedom, to the great hurt and impoverishment of the said ’prentices and journeymen and other their friends.’ Such restrictions naturally resulted in the withdrawal of the journeymen to set up shops in suburbs or villages where the gild had no jurisdiction; and from this they were not precluded, in all probability, by the terms of their oath. This might often be their only chance of getting employment, as the masters were apparently inclined to overstock their shops with apprentices, rather than be at the expense of retaining a full proportion of journeymen.” (The Growth of English Industry.)
In 1545 Henry VIII. ordained the confiscation of the property of all colleges, fraternities, brotherhoods and gilds. This measure, sweeping in its terms, was not generally carried out. In 1547 the advisers of Edward VI. swept away all the craft gilds in England except the Companies of London and a few gilds in country towns. The statute provided that artisans might work where they pleased whether they were free of the town or not.
Trade, therefore, had entered upon new conditions; this was inevitable, owing to the many changes—the revolutionary changes which created so wide a gulf between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
With these preliminaries we can now proceed to the revival and expansion of trade and the development of enterprise in the sixteenth century, but more especially during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The endowment of the City with a Bourse is generally attributed to the perception by Sir Thomas Gresham of the need for such a place of meeting,[8] though the matter had been mooted and the opinion of merchants taken thirty years before.
In the year 1537, Sir Richard Gresham, the father of Sir Thomas Gresham, whose business had taken him to Antwerp, when he saw the Bourse frequented daily by merchants, wrote a letter to Cromwell in which he suggested the erection of a Bourse in Lombard Street, as the place most frequented by merchants. As nothing came of the proposal he wrote again in the following year with an estimate of the cost, viz. £2000. If, he said, the Lord Privy Seal would induce Alderman Sir George Monoux to part with certain property at cost price he, Gresham, would undertake to raise £1000 towards the building before he went out of office. Whereupon the King addressed a letter to Monoux desiring him to dispose of certain property in Lombard Street, which was wanted for the commonweal of the merchants. Monoux, with Gresham’s consent, referred the matter to arbitration. A yearly sum of twenty marks to be paid by the City was offered. Monoux at first refused to take it, but afterwards, at the King’s request, consented. Then, for some unknown reason, nothing more was done. The matter was left over for many years.
At this time Thomas Gresham (son of Sir Richard by his first wife, Audrey, daughter of William Lynne of Southwick, Northampton) was nineteen years of age, and still serving his apprenticeship to his uncle, Sir John Gresham, Mercer. He was received into the Company in 1543. In the same year he was acting for the King at Antwerp. In 1551 he was appointed Royal Agent or King’s merchant, which caused him to reside at Antwerp during many months, and at frequent intervals. On the accession of Mary he was dismissed, but his services were speedily discovered to be necessary, and he was reappointed. Elizabeth continued his appointment.
In 1561 his factor, Richard Clough, wrote to him from Antwerp expressing his astonishment that London should have gone on so long without a Bourse:—
“Considering what a City London is; and that in so many years the same found not the means to make a Burse, but merchants must be contented to stand and walk in the rain, more like pedlars than Merchants. In this Country, said he (meaning Antwerp), and in all other, there is no kind of people that have occasion to meet but ye have a place for that purpose; indeed and if your business were done (here) and that I might have the leisure to go about it, and that I would be a means to Mr. Secretary to have his favour therein, I would not doubt but to make so fair a burse in London as the great burse is in Antwerp, without soliciting of any Man more than he shall be well disposed to give.”
Gresham remembered the attempt made by his father in 1538 and its failure; he resolved to take up the matter again, and in some way introduced it to the Court of Aldermen, who asked him, through one of their body, what he proposed to give himself towards the undertaking. This was in 1563, two years after Clough wrote his letter. Gresham took time to consider. In 1565 he sent in the offer. He would himself erect a “comely burse” if the City would provide a suitable site.
The site was found on the north side of Cornhill. Two alleys, Swan Alley and New St. Christopher’s, were purchased for £3532: the materials of the houses sold for £478. Subscriptions were invited and came in readily. On the 7th of June 1566 Sir Thomas was able to lay the foundation stone. Every one of the aldermen laid his stone or brick, with a piece of gold for the workmen.
The architect and the design came from Flanders. The Clerk of the Work, Henryk, was a Fleming, and most of the workmen were foreigners, special permission being granted for their employment. The City gave 100,000 bricks; the stone-work came from abroad, and “to this day” (Sharpe) “the Royal Exchange is paved with small blocks of Turkish hone-stones, believed to have been imported by Sir Thomas Gresham and to have been relaid after the fires of 1666 and 1838.”
Observe, therefore, that to the City belonged the site, but that the Exchange itself was the property of Gresham.
By the 22nd of December 1568 the Burse was so far complete as to allow of merchants meeting within its walls; but it was not till the 23rd of January 1571 that the Queen herself visited it in state, and gave it the name of the Royal Exchange. From the beginning a part of the Exchange was set aside for Marine Insurance, not a new thing, because it had long been the practice of the Lombard merchants in the thirteenth century to give such insurances.
The Royal Exchange became a place of recreation as well as of business. The citizens walked here on the evenings of Sundays and Holy days, where the City waits played from 7 P.M. till 8 P.M. up to the Feast of Pentecost, then they played from 8 P.M. till 9 P.M. until Michaelmas. In 1576 it was ordered that no games of football should be played within the Royal Exchange.
The Exchange remained the property of Sir Thomas Gresham until his death, when he bequeathed the building together with his mansion in Broad Street, after the death of his wife, on certain conditions, to the City and the Mercers’ Company in trust, viz.:—
“The Citizens, for their Moiety of the said Edifice, are from Time to Time to appoint four Persons duly qualified to read Lectures of Divinity, Astronomy, Musick, and Geometry, in his Mansion-house [afterwards Gresham College], and to pay annually to each of the said Lecturers a Salary or Stipend of fifty Pounds. And also to pay yearly to his eight Alms-People in Broad-Street (whom the Mayor and Citizens have likewise the Power of chusing) the sum of six Pounds thirteen Shillings and four Pence each. And besides, to pay annually to the Prisons of Newgate, Ludgate, Kings-Bench, Marshalsey, and Wood-Street Compter, the Sum of ten Pounds each.
And the Mercers, for their Half, are, from Time to Time, to chuse three persons well accomplished, to read Lectures of Law, Physick, and Rhetorick, in the aforesaid Mansion-House called Gresham-College, with the same salaries to each of the Lecturers as to the above-mentioned. The said Company of Mercers are likewise obliged to pay the sum of one hundred Pounds per Ann. for four quarterly Dinners to be provided at their Hall, for the Entertainment of the whole Company; and also to pay to Christ’s, St. Bartholomews, the Spital, Bethlehem, and St. Thomas’s Hospitals, and the Poultry Compter, the Sum of ten Pounds per Ann. each.” (Maitland, vol. i. pp. 256–257.)
The reversion fell in on the death of Lady Gresham in 1596, when the City and the Company took steps to carry out the Trust. Gresham House became Gresham College, and so continued until the year 1767, when the Crown took over the building for an Excise office, giving the City £500 a year perpetual annuity. For some time the lectures ceased; when they were renewed they were delivered in the City of London School until the building of the present Gresham College in Basinghall Street.
We have become accustomed to consider the enterprise and restless spirit of adventure which makes the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so full of interest, as finding their sole field in the New World and in voyages such as those of Drake and Cavendish; and in heroes such as Frobisher, Gilbert, and Raleigh. We forget the expeditions of Willoughby and Burroughs to find a north-east passage; the courage of Chancellor, who opened up trade with Russia; the travels of Jenkinson, who first crossed Russia and sailed over the Caspian Sea; the brave Captains of the Levant Company, who fought their way through the Barbary corsairs and the galleys of Spain; those faithful servants of the same Company, Newbery, Fitch, and Leedes, who discovered the long-forgotten overland route to India; the voyages of the first ships of the East India Company in seas unknown, among a people strange and suspicious; the persistent attempts to open up the African trade; we have forgotten—if we ever learned—how, all over the world, along the shores of the Baltic, in Arctic seas, round the Cape of Good Hope, in the Far East, in North-West America and in the West Indies, the sails of England carried the gallant adventurers whose very numbers make their names difficult to be remembered; across the unknown plains of Russia, across the Great Syrian desert, unvisited by Christians since the days of Bohemond and Baldwin, down the Great River, even the river Euphrates; in the Courts of the Great Mogul, in Malay land, among the Red Indians of North America,—everywhere, visible to all, were found the men of the Western Queen, as great a name to the Czar of Muscovy as to Philip of Spain.
In Hakluyt may be found written by Anthony Jenkinson, one of the most determined and most daring of the trading travellers of this time, a list of the countries which he had visited in six years. It is as follows:—
“The names of such countries as I Anthony Jenkinson have travelled unto, from the second of October 1546, at which time I made my first voyage out of England, untill the yeere of our Lord 1572, when I returned last out of Russia.
First, I passed into Flanders, and travelled through all the base countries, and from thence from Germanie, passing over the Alpes I travelled into Italy, and from thence made my journey through Piemont into France, throughout all which realme I have thoroughly journied.
I have also travelled through the kingdomes of Spaine and Portingal, I have sailed through the Levant seas every way, and have bene in all the chiefe Islands within the same sea, as Rhodes, Malta, Sicilia, Cyprus, Candie, and divers others.
I have bene in many partes of Grecia, Morea, Achaia, and where the olde citie of Corinth stoode.
I have travelled through a great part of Turkie, Syria, and divers other countries in Asia minor.
I have passed over the mountaines of Libanus to Damasco, and travelled through Samaria, Galile, Philistine or Palestine, unto Jerusalem and so through all the Holy land.
I have been in divers places of Affrica, as Algiers, Col, Bon, Tripolis, the gollet within the Gulf of Tunis.
I have sailed farre Northward within the Mare glaciale, where we have had continuall day; and sight of the Sunne ten weekes together, and that navigation was in Norway, Lapland, Samogitia; and other very strange places.
I have travelled through all the ample dominions of the Emperour of Russia and Moscovis, which extende from the North sea, and the confines of Norway and Lapland, even to the Mare Caspium.
I have bene in divers countries neere about the Caspian sea, Gentiles, and Mahometans, as Cazan, Cremia, Rezan, Cheremisi, Mordouiti, Vachin, Nagaia, with divers others of strange customs and religions.
I have sailed over the Caspian Sea, and discovered all the regions thereabout adjacent, as Chircassi, Comul, Shascal, Shiruan, with many others.
I have travelled 40 daies journey beyond the said sea, towards the Oriental India and Cathaia, through divers deserts and wildernesses, and passed through 5 kingdomes of the Tartars, and all the land of Turkeman and Zagatay, and so to the great city of Boghar in Bactria, not without great perils and dangers sundry times.
After all this, in An. 1562 I passed againe over the Caspian sea another way, and landed in Armenia, at a citie called Derbent, built by Alexander the Great, and from thence travelled through Media, Parthia, Hircania, into Persia to the court of the great Sophie, called Shaw Tomasso, unto whom I delivered letters from the Queenes Majestie, and remained in his court 8 months, and returning homeward, passed through divers other countries. Finally, I made two voyages more after that out of England into Russia, the one in the yeere 1566, and the other in the yeere 1571. And thus being weary and growing old, I am content to take my seat in mine owne house, chiefly comforting myselfe, in that my service hath bene honourably accepted and rewarded of her majestie and the rest by whom I have beene employed.”
And now it was that stories of danger from frost and from storm; of cruelties endured at the hands of savages, and pirates; of captivity among Moors; of tortures inflicted by the accursed Inquisition; of hairbreadth escapes; of wanderings over lands never before seen; of great treasures lying ready for the bold adventurer,—ran up and down the City. The ’prentice told what he had heard to fellow ’prentice; the sailors told the boys upon the wharves; the ship after her successful voyage came up to the Pool with cloth of gold for sails and dressed with flying streamers. Above all, the imagination of the youth was fired more by the splendid stones of danger and of battle and of escape from captivity than by the prospect of great riches. Do you know how John Fox escaped from Alexandria? For my own part I do not know any story better told or more certain to inspire the lads who heard it with a burning desire to be with such a company and to be doing such things. It is from Hakluyt (ii. 133), and I venture to relate it here and in his own words, to show the kind of story which quickened the pulse and fired the blood of the London youth.
“Nowe these eight being armed with such weapons as they thought well of, thinking themselves sufficient champions to encounter a stronger enemie, and comming unto the prison, Fox opened the gates and doores thereof, and called forth all the prisoners, whom he set, some to ramming up the gate, some to the dressing up of a certaine gallie, which was the best in all the roade, and was called the captaine of Alexandria, whereinto some carried mastes, sailes, oares, and other such furniture as doth belong unto a gallie.
At the prison were certaine warders, whom John Fox and his companie slew; in the killing of whom, there were eight more of the Turks, which perceived them, and got them to the toppe of the prison; unto whom John Fox, and his company, were faine to come by ladders, where they found a hot skirmish. For some of them were there slaine, some wounded, and some but scarred, and not hurt. As John Fox was thrise shot through his appareil, and not hurt, Peter Unticaro, and the other two, that had armed them with the duckats, were slaine, as not able to weild themselves, being so pestered with the weight and uneasie carying of the wicked and prophane treasure; and also divers Christians were as well hurt about that skirmish as Turkes slaine. Amongst the Turkes was one thrust thorowe, who (let us not say that it was ill fortune) fell off from the toppe of the prison wall, and made such a lowing, that the inhabitants thereabout (as here and there scattering stoode a house or two) came and dawed him, so that they understood the case, how that the prisoners were paying their ransomes; wherewith they raised both Alexandria which lay on the west side of the roade, and a Castle which was at the Cities end, next to the roade, and also an other Fortresse which lay on the north side of the roade; so that nowe they had no way to escape, but one, which by man’s reason (the two holdes lying so upon the mouth of the roade) might seeme impossible to be a way for them. So was the read sea impossible for the Israelites to passe through, the hils and rockes lay so on the one side, and their enemies compassed them on the other. So was it impossible that the wals of Jericho should fall downe, being neither undermined, nor yet rammed at with engines, nor yet any man’s wisdome, pollicie, or helpe set or put thereunto. Such impossibilities can our God make possible. He that helde the Lyons jawes from rending Daniel asunder, yea, or yet from once touching him to his hurt; can not He hold the roring canons of this hellish force? He that kept the fiers rage in the hot burning oven, from the three children, that praised His name, can not He keepe the fiers flaming blastes from among His elect?
Now is the roade fraught with lustie souldiers, laborers, and mariners, who are faine to stand to their tackling, in setting to every man his hand, some to the carying in of victuals, some munitions, some oares, and some one thing, some another, but most are keeping their enemie from the wall of the road. But to be short, there was no time mispent, no man idle, nor any man’s labour ill bestowed, or in vaine. So that in short time, this gally was ready trimmed up. Whereinto every man leaped in all haste, hoyssing up the sayles lustily, yeelding themselves to His mercie and grace, in whose hands are both winde and weather.
Now is this gally on flote, and out of the safetie of the roade; now have the two Castles full power upon the gally, now is there no remedy but to sinke; how can it be avoided? the Canons let flie from both sides, and the gally is even in the middest, and betweene them both. What man can devise to save it? there is no man, but would thinke it must needs be sunke.
There was not one of them that feared the shotts, which went thundring round about their eares, nor yet were once scarred or touched, with five and forty shot, which came from the Castles. Here did God hold foorth His buckler, He shieldeth now this gally, and hath tried their faith to the uttermost. Now commeth His speciall helpe; yea, even when man thinks them past all helpe, then commeth He Himselfe downe from heaven with His mightie power, then is His present remedie most readie prest. For they saile away, being not once touched with the glaunce of a shot, and are quickly out of the Turkish canons reach. Then might they see them comming downe by heapes to the water side, in companies like unto swarmes of bees, making shew to come after them with gallies, in bustling themselves to dresse up the gallies, which would be a swift peece of worke for them to doe, for that they had neither oares, mastes, sailes, gables, nor anything else ready in any gally. But yet they are carying them unto them, some into one gally, and some into another, so that, being such a confusion amongst them, without any certaine guide, it were a thing impossible to overtake them; beside that, there was no man that would take charge of a gally, the weather was so rough, and there was such an amasedness [amazedness] amongst them.”
The effect on London of the magnificent expeditions of the English was startling. Think what these things meant. The country for a long time could look back upon nothing but defeat, humiliation, civil war, and religious dissensions. There were no military achievements, no naval victories; no increase of trade; never was the nation more depressed and humbled than at the death of Queen Mary and the accession of Elizabeth.
Then—almost suddenly—all was changed. More than the old spirit came back to the Londoners, the descendants of the men who had followed Philpot the Mayor to the destruction of the Scottish pirate. Not only the sea dogs of Devon, but those of Wapping, Ratcliffe, Redriff, and the Cinque Ports went forth to fight the Spaniard wherever they could find him. Think of the career of Frobisher. Three times he essayed the north-west passage to Cathay; he commanded one of Drake’s ships in his expedition to the West Indies; he fought against the Armada; he was wounded, and died from wounds received at the siege of Crozan in Brittany. Forty years on the sea, sword in hand, sailed this brave captain. London possesses his body, which lies in St. Giles’s Church, Cripplegate. There was also Cavendish, the gentleman filibuster, who captured the richest prize ever known, and came home, his sails of damask, his sailors clad in silk, and his masts gleaming with cloth of gold. Or there was the defeat, the flight after battle against overwhelming odds, which affected the imagination even more than victory. Such was Sir John Hawkins’s fight at San Juan de Ulloa, five ships against thirteen. Even death, when death came splendidly, moved the hearts of the young men to brave deeds. Was there ever death finer than that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert? The last time he was seen by the people on the other ship, his companion, he was sitting on the high poop, his Bible in his hand. “We are as near to Heaven,” said the old captain, “by sea as by land.” Night fell and the men on the Hind saw the light of the Squirrel suddenly disappear. She had gone down with all on board. And while speaking of splendid deaths, there was that of Sir Richard Grenville. In his ship the Revenge, with five other vessels, he was met by a Spanish fleet of fifty-three ships; his companions fled, and the Revenge alone fought them all:—
But at length he was captured with his crippled ship and his diminished crew.
The ship in which Drake sailed round the world (The Golden Hind), when it became unfit for service, was laid up near the “Mast Dock” at Deptford, where it remained for a long series of years an object of curiosity and wonder. Hentzner, in 1598, says he saw here the ship of that noble pirate, Francis Drake. From a passage in one of Ben Jonson’s plays it appears to have become a resort for holiday people, the cabin being then converted into a banqueting house. Drake’s ship at Deptford is spoken of as one of the “sights” in some verses prefixed to the redoubtable Tom Coryat’s Crudities, 1611. When the young Duke of Saxe-Weimar saw the ship in 1613, but very little remained of it. It was then lying by the river-side in shallow water, in a dock; the lower part only was left, the upper part being all gone, for almost everybody who went there, and especially sailors, were in the habit of carrying off some portion of it. Philipott, History of Kent, 1659, says that in a very short time nothing was left of her. And in Moryson’s Itinerary, 1617, it is noticed as follows—“Not farre from hence (Deptford), upon the shore, lie the broken ribs of the ship in which Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world, reserved for a monument of that great action.” A chair, made out of the wood, is to be seen in the gallery of the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
Let us take a contemporary poet, to see how Drake’s own generation was affected by his exploits:—
And if the following truly represents the spirit of the sailors, what a promising and cheerful spirit it was!
But enough of songs, we must return to the more serious aspects of Trading England. When merchants first began to carry on foreign trade in association it is impossible to ascertain. But as we find “Men of the Emperor” and “Men of Rouen” in London in Saxon times, it is probable that foreign trade was from the beginning carried on by members of companies. These members traded each for himself; but they were associated for protection, and of necessity an “interloper”—as the private trader was afterwards called—could not carry his wares to a foreign city when he knew not the language, or the customs, nor could claim the privileges accorded to the Companies. On the other hand, behind the members stood a powerful corporation; this gave the merchants credit; this procured for them respect and protection; this provided the machinery of warehouses, markets, interpreters, and information as to laws, regulations, prices, demand, supply, privileges, and all the special points required to be mastered if trade were to be successful.
The first foreign trading Company, then, was exactly like a Trades Guild, in which only members could follow the trade, which had its own quarter, made its own laws for itself, elected its own officers, yet every member worked for himself.
The longest lived and the most important of the mediæval companies was the Hanseatic League, already mentioned at p. 82.
The earliest association of London merchants for foreign trade is that called the Staplers’ Company. They claimed to have existed long before the Merchant Adventurers. There is, however, a great deal of mystery attached to their early history. Thus, if they were associated for exporting the staple wares, such as wool, lead, tin, and skins, how far did they overlap the Hanseatics? And were they all foreigners? The latter question seems answered by the law of 1253, which prohibited English merchants from exporting staple goods. Again, was this law strictly enforced? In 1362, more than a hundred years later, it was repealed.
The Merchants of the Staple are sometimes confused with the Fraternity of St. Thomas à Becket, from whom sprung a much more important body—the Merchant Adventurers. The reason of the decay of the Staplers was the growth of English industries, which forbade the exports of the most important of the staples—wool. The Staplers, however, continued their trade, having their headquarters at Antwerp, Brussels, Louvain, Calais, and Bruges, successively. It will be remembered that Edward III. established the Staple of Wool at Westminster; the name of Staple Inn preserved the fact that the merchants had houses on that site.
About the year 1358 the Fraternity of Thomas Becket received privileges from Louis, Count of Flanders, for fixing their staple of English woollen cloth at Bruges. This Fraternity gave rise to the Mercers’ Company founded under Edward the Third. The Saint, son of a London mercer, was especially regarded as the protector of the Company. The Brotherhood was not at first possessed of exclusive rights, but if we suppose that they were backed by the richest traders in London, namely, the Mercers and the Drapers, and that no other London trader would compete with them, it is quite probable that they feared no competition. They got a Charter in 1406 when Henry the Fourth gave them the right of choosing their own governors; they then began to arrogate to themselves exclusive rights, which were confirmed by another Charter of 1436. So wealthy and powerful did they become that when, in 1444, they removed their headquarters from Middleburg to Antwerp, the magistrates and citizens met them outside the town, and offered them an entertainment. Their Secretary, John Wheeler (Treatise of Commerce, 1601), says that the “English Nation” were the real founders of Antwerp’s wealth. There were troubles as to the attempts of private merchants to trade; in 1497 it was provided by Act of Parliament that every Englishman should have free entrance to foreign marts on payment of ten marks, presumably to the Fraternity. Again, in 1505, a new Charter changed their name to that of the “Merchant Adventurers of England.” Under this Charter they held in their hands the export trade in woollen cloths, and were authorised to hold courts and to admit other merchants for a fee of ten marks to trade with them in Flanders, Holland, Brabant, Zeeland, and the countries adjacent under the Archduke’s government. The Merchant Adventurers became a power in the land; so great a power, indeed, that when Charles the Fifth proposed to establish the Inquisition in Antwerp, he was dissuaded by the Merchant Adventurers, who threatened to leave the City if he persisted. It is said that the Company then employed 50,000 persons in the Netherlands. At this time their limits comprised all the ports from the river Somme to the German ports within the Baltic. They exported white and coloured cloths to the value of one million sterling every year, and imported, among other things, wine, copper, steel, gunpowder (could we not make our own gunpowder?), silk, velvets, cloth of gold. This business was well nigh ruined by King James the First when he granted a monopoly for the sale of cloths dyed at home to Sir William Cockaine, Alderman. (See London in the Time of the Stuarts, p. 194.)