The Hansa Towns

by Helen Zimmern

Small wonder, therefore, that the trade was as much coveted as it was prosperous, and that the mayor and municipal council of London did not cease from laying their complaints before the queen. They literally pestered her with petitions and demands on this subject.

For some months the Hansa succeeded in averting the storm from their heads, but finally the leading members of the Steelyard found themselves suddenly cited to appear before the Queen's Privy Council, and had to listen to a long catalogue of grievances drawn up by their accusers.

The sum total of these grievances was, that the Hansa did not contribute sufficiently to the resources of the English Crown; that it was prejudicial to the English navy, because it refused to employ any vessels but its own; that it harmed the very quality of English cloth, for the makers, seeing the Hansa would be sure to buy, presented them often with inferior qualities. An amusing complaint is the following: Whereas, say the memorialists, the Hanseatics are all bachelors, they greatly injure English trade at Antwerp, because the increased leisure this state gives them, allows of their trading more extensively and actively. Further, they once more brought forward the time-honoured objection that the Hansa would permit of no reciprocity, and while nominally allowing the English to settle in their towns, crippled their trade by heavy taxation and vexatious regulations.

That these assertions were not without foundation, not even the Hansa could deny. They could but point to ancient charters to justify them in a measure. The result of this last formal complaint was, however, that the Privy Council decided that henceforth the Hansa should abstain from importing English cloth into the Netherlands, and that the quantity of undyed goods they might export be reduced by two-thirds. They further added that any infraction of these orders would result in entire suppression of all privileges.

The Hansa, who did not easily own themselves beaten, and who desired at all costs to hinder their rivals from supplanting them, sent various embassies in the course of the next few years to the Court of England. They also once more attempted the agency of bribery and corruption by means of Hansa gold, to attain their ends. In vain. Embassies, seductions, led to no result; not even a letter which King Philip of Spain was induced to indite to his wife, the Queen of England, on their behalf, could modify by one iota the decision taken by the Privy Council.

Despairing of a good result from these measures, the League resolved to have recourse to its ancient mode of exerting pressure upon obstinate peoples, by threatening to break off all intercourse with them. The measure was, however, likely to have brought destruction to them in England; that it did not was due to the circumstance that the towns were no longer, as in past days, blindly obedient to the orders issued by the Hanseatic Diet. The Hansa, issuing such an order, forgot that they were no longer the exclusive masters of the North and East.

Such was the state of things when Queen Mary died, and Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, took into her firm and able hands the reins of the English government (1558). It is true that she gave a gracious reception to the Hanseatic embassy that waited on her in May, 1560; but between a gracious reception and a confirmation of the ancient privileges of the League the Hansa were to learn that there lay an abyss she would never bridge over.

That the Hansa's power was effectually broken in England ultimately was due to that queen and to her wise statesman, Lord Burleigh.

It was soon felt by the nation at large that, with the advent to power of Elizabeth, a new spirit was infused into English life and enterprise. After a hundred years of weakness, England awoke to renewed life and vigour, and with vigour awoke ambition.

The Merchant Adventurers, encouraged by Gresham, put forward their desires; and they, too, asked that the Hansa should be kept down. These desires were listened to by the patriotic sovereign. She reconfirmed all the new tariffs with which the Hansa had been charged by Edward VI., and she further made various demands which the Hansa were most unwilling to concede; for they implied a strict investigation of the affairs of their factory—an investigation that they had no wish to provoke.