The remnants of Anglo-Venetian commerce were mainly conducted by the overland route. The Venetian colony in London was principally occupied in dispatching wool this way, paying the enormous duties exacted from foreigners rather than buy from the Staplers at Calais. The latter practice was contrary to the policy of the Senate; in 1532 they severely censured some citizens who were guilty of it.[[102]] The influence which the Merchant Adventurers and the Staplers were able to exert on the Government during the period following the death of Henry VIII seriously affected the Italian merchants in London. In 1557 Giovanni Michiel, the Venetian ambassador, reported that they were in a fair way to being forced to quit England altogether, owing to the prohibition of the export of wools through Flanders. A similar matter had in the previous year elicited a complaint from the whole of the Italians resident in London. They had been in the habit of exporting, via Antwerp, a considerable quantity of cloths and kerseys for the Levant. The Government, in the interests of the Merchant Adventurers, had ordered them to desert Antwerp and make Bergen their entrepôt. The English shipowners, indeed, contended that they ought not to trade overland at all, but to ship through the Straits of Gibraltar. Finally a grudging permission was given for a certain amount of cloth to be sent through Antwerp, provided that none of it was sold this side of Italy.[[103]]
MAP OF BRITISH ISLES, NORTH SEA, AND BALTIC.
Venetian, c. 1489. From Egerton MS. 73, f. 36.
The accession of Mary, in 1553, followed by the execution of Northumberland, produced no permanent changes in commercial policy. The tonnage, poundage, and wool duties granted for the reign by the first Parliament differed scarcely at all from those of Edward VI and his two predecessors. The Hansa recovered its privileges for a short time, only to be again deprived of them before the end of the reign. Relations with the Netherlands, strained during the Protestant régime, improved after the marriage of the queen with Philip of Spain. But these affairs are of little interest compared with the projects for more extended enterprise which now began to be seriously entertained for the first time. The really significant events of the period are the voyages of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his successors in search of a North-East Passage to Cathay, the opening up of an important trade with Russia, and the expeditions of English merchants to the Gold and Ivory Coasts in search of a more lucrative traffic than home waters could offer them. In fact, the old pelagic system of commerce was now developed as fully as foreign competition would admit; and the sky was white with the dawn of the oceanic era, with the progress of which the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon race has marched hand in hand.
CHAPTER VII
THE FALL OF THE HANSA
During the reign of Henry VIII the Hanseatic League enjoyed its last days of prosperity in England. Its ancient privileges, confirmed and regularized by treaty with Edward IV, and precariously maintained in face of the unsparing encroachments of Henry VII, continued to be enjoyed in practically undiminished form throughout the life of the second Tudor; being, in fact, justified in the king’s estimation by the services, and still more by the potential disservices, which their possessors had it in their power to render to the English State.
In the first Parliament of the reign, therefore, a short Act was passed for the maintenance in statu quo of the rights of the Steelyard; and similar Acts were repeated at intervals by succeeding Parliaments. In practice, however, the general privilege thus conferred was not held to be immune from modification by the operation of statutes dealing with particular branches of trade. Of this order were the laws governing the manufacture and export of cloth, which were to the following effect: In the session of 1511–12 the old Acts[[104]] forbidding the export of any but fully-wrought cloth were resuscitated, with the proviso that they should not apply to the cheaper qualities below the value of four marks per piece. Two years later the law was amended by a new Act, of which the preamble set forth the interests of the various parties concerned: the weavers, scattered over the face of the country, and producing in their cottages the raw, undressed fabric; the dyers, fullers, shearmen, and other craftsmen who, as the names of their callings imply, completed by their several processes the manufacture of the finished article, and in whose interest the prohibition of the export of unwrought cloth had been made; and the exporters, merchants who stood to lose by the restrictions imposed. But let the statute-book speak for itself and throw light on the most ancient of our manufactures as practised four centuries ago:
‘Which act, [that of 1511–12, fixing the limit of cheap cloths at 4 marks] put in execution, shall not only turn to the abatement of the King’s customs, but also grow to the utter undoing of his subjects the clothmakers and merchants conveyers of the said cloths, forasmuch as wool is risen of a far greater price than it was at the making of the said act; for where a cloth was then commonly sold for 4 marks, it is now sold for 5 marks; and also, by the said act, the merchants should be bound to dress every white cloth above the value of 4 marks on this side the sea after they have bought them; which white cloths so dressed when they be brought into the parts beyond the sea and there by the buyers of them dyed and put in colours, then they must be newly dressed, barbed, shorn and rowed; and so they shall be less in substance by themself, and the worse to the sale, and sold for less price by 10 or 12 shillings apiece beyond the sea, than if they were at first undressed.’
Accordingly it was now enacted that every white cloth under the price of five marks might be exported undressed, but that all of greater value must undergo complete manufacture at the hands of English craftsmen. The continuous increase in the bulk of the precious metals in circulation, and the consequent rise in prices, rendered a new alteration necessary in 1535. An Act of that year repeated the above preamble almost word for word, but fixed the price limits of ‘cheap cloths’ at £4 for white cloths and £3 for coloured.[[105]]
The Easterling merchants, in common with other exporters, were included in the scope of these Acts. That they considered them as an infraction of their liberties is proved by a complaint on the subject addressed to King Henry from Lubeck in 1517.[[106]] But it was idle for them to expect exceptional redress in a matter which affected English merchants as hardly as themselves. Economic change was producing terrible problems of beggary and unemployment, and it was essential to maintain a certain amount of protection for English industry.