Prohibitions of the same nature, though with a different object, were frequently imposed on the trade between England and Flanders by Edward I. and his son. As their political connexions fluctuated, these princes gave full liberty and settlement to the Flemish merchants, or banished them at once from the country.[k] Nothing could be more injurious to England than this arbitrary vacillation. The Flemings were in every respect our natural allies; but besides those connexions with France, the constant enemy of Flanders, into which both the Edwards occasionally fell, a mutual alienation had been produced by the trade of the former people with Scotland, a trade too lucrative to be resigned at the king of England's request.[m] An early instance of that conflicting selfishness of belligerents and neutrals, which was destined to aggravate the animosities and misfortunes of our own time.[n]
English woollen manufacture.
A more prosperous era began with Edward III., the father, as he may almost be called, of English commerce, a title not indeed more glorious, but by which he may perhaps claim more of our gratitude than as the hero of Crecy. In 1331 he took advantage of discontents among the manufacturers of Flanders to invite them as settlers into his dominions.[o] They brought the finer manufacture of woollen cloths, which had been unknown in England. The discontents alluded to resulted from the monopolizing spirit of their corporations, who oppressed all artisans without the pale of their community. The history of corporations brings home to our minds one cardinal truth, that political institutions have very frequently but a relative and temporary usefulness, and that what forwarded improvement during one part of its course may prove to it in time a most pernicious obstacle. Corporations in England, we may be sure, wanted nothing of their usual character; and it cost Edward no little trouble to protect his colonists from the selfishness and from the blind nationality of the vulgar.[p] The emigration of Flemish weavers into England continued during this reign, and we find it mentioned, at intervals, for more than a century.
Increase of English commerce.
Commerce now became, next to liberty, the leading object of parliament. For the greater part of our statutes from the accession of Edward III. bear relation to this subject; not always well devised, or liberal, or consistent, but by no means worse in those respects than such as have been enacted in subsequent ages. The occupation of a merchant became honourable; and, notwithstanding the natural jealousy of the two classes, he was placed, in some measure, on a footing with landed proprietors. By the statute of apparel, in 37 Edw. III., merchants and artificers who had five hundred pounds value in goods and chattels might use the same dress as squires of one hundred pounds a year. And those who were worth more than this might dress like men of double that estate. Wool was still the principal article of export and source of revenue. Subsidies granted by every parliament upon this article were, on account of the scarcity of money, commonly taken in kind. To prevent evasion of this duty seems to have been the principle of those multifarious regulations which fix the staple, or market for wool, in certain towns, either in England, or, more commonly, on the continent. To these all wool was to be carried, and the tax was there collected. It is not easy, however, to comprehend the drift of all the provisions relating to the staple, many of which tend to benefit foreign at the expense of English merchants. By degrees the exportation of woollen cloths increased so as to diminish that of the raw material, but the latter was not absolutely prohibited during the period under review;[q] although some restrictions were imposed upon it by Edward IV. For a much earlier statute, in the 11th of Edward III., making the exportation of wool a capital felony, was in its terms provisional, until it should be otherwise ordered by the council; and the king almost immediately set it aside.[r]
Manufactures of France and Germany.
A manufacturing district, as we see in our own country, sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighbourhood. Accordingly, the woollen manufacture spread from Flanders along the banks of the Rhine and into the northern provinces of France.[] I am not, however, prepared to trace its history in these regions. In Germany the privileges conceded by Henry V. to the free cities, and especially to their artisans, gave a soul to industry; though the central parts of the empire were, for many reasons, very ill-calculated for commercial enterprise during the middle ages.[t] But the French towns were never so much emancipated from arbitrary power as those of Germany or Flanders; and the evils of exorbitant taxation, with those produced by the English wars, conspired to retard the advance of manufactures in France. That of linen made some little progress; but this work was still, perhaps, chiefly confined to the labour of female servants.[]
Baltic trade.
The manufactures of Flanders and England found a market, not only in these adjacent countries, but in a part of Europe which for many ages had only been known enough to be dreaded. In the middle of the eleventh century a native of Bremen, and a writer much superior to most others of his time, was almost entirely ignorant of the geography of the Baltic; doubting whether any one had reached Russia by that sea, and reckoning Esthonia and Courland among its islands.[x] But in one hundred years more the maritime regions of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, inhabited by a tribe of heathen Sclavonians, were subdued by some German princes; and the Teutonic order some time afterwards, having conquered Prussia, extended a line of at least comparative civilization as far as the gulf of Finland. The first town erected on the coasts of the Baltic was Lubec, which owes its foundation to Adolphus count of Holstein, in 1140. After several vicissitudes it became independent of any sovereign but the emperor in the thirteenth century. Hamburgh and Bremen, upon the other side of the Cimbric peninsula, emulated the prosperity of Lubec; the former city purchased independence of its bishop in 1225. A colony from Bremen founded Riga in Livonia about 1162. The city of Dantzic grew into importance about the end of the following century. Konigsberg was founded by Ottocar king of Bohemia in the same age.
But the real importance of these cities is to be dated from their famous union into the Hanseatic confederacy. The origin of this is rather obscure, but it may certainly be nearly referred in point of time to the middle of the thirteenth century,[y] and accounted for by the necessity of mutual defence, which piracy by sea and pillage by land had taught the merchants of Germany. The nobles endeavoured to obstruct the formation of this league, which indeed was in great measure designed to withstand their exactions. It powerfully maintained the influence which the free imperial cities were at this time acquiring. Eighty of the most considerable places constituted the Hanseatic confederacy, divided into four colleges, whereof Lubec, Cologne, Brunswic, and Dantzic were the leading towns. Lubec held the chief rank, and became, as it were, the patriarchal see of the league; whose province it was to preside in all general discussions for mercantile, political, or military purposes, and to carry them into execution. The league had four principal factories in foreign parts, at London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novogorod; endowed by the sovereigns of those cities with considerable privileges, to which every merchant belonging to a Hanseatic town was entitled.[z] In England the German guildhall or factory was established by concession of Henry III.; and in later periods the Hanse traders were favoured above many others in the capricious vacillations of our mercantile policy.[a] The English had also their factories on the Baltic coast as far as Prussia and in the dominions of Denmark.[]