2. These privileges extend to no certain persons or towns, but they admit to be free with them whom they list, to the annual loss to the customs of nearly £20,000.
3. Even were such privileges good according to the law of the land, which they are not, they had only been granted on condition that the merchants should not avow or colour any foreign goods or merchandise; a condition which the merchants have not observed.
4. For more than a hundred years after these alleged privileges were granted, the Hanse merchants exported no goods except to their own countries, nor imported any but the produce of the same; whereas now they do so to the Low Countries, Flanders, and elsewhere, contrary to the terms of a recognisance made in the time of Henry VIII.
5. These privileges, which were at first beneficial to the merchants, without any notable injury to the realm, have now by their exceeding of the same grown so prejudicial to the state that they may no longer without great hurt thereof be endured.
6. The treaty of reciprocity, made after the forfeiture of the alleged privileges by war, in the time of Edward IV, whereby the English should have similar liberties in Prussia and other places of the Hansa, has been daily broken, especially in Danzig, by the prohibition of Englishmen to buy and sell there: and though divers requests for redress of such wrongs have been made, no reformation has ensued.
Wherefore, until the merchants can prove better and more sufficient matter for their claim, all their liberties and franchises are seized and returned into the king’s hands; reserving to the merchants the ordinary privilege of trading, common to those of other nations.[[124]]
The privileges thus lost were considerable, arising principally from the adjustment of the duties. On all foreign wares coming into the country, wines excepted, the Easterlings paid only 3d. in the £ as subsidy or poundage, while Englishmen paid 12d. and other foreigners 20d. For the export of cloth Englishmen paid no subsidy, the Easterlings paid 12d. per piece, and other foreigners as much as 6s. 4d.[[125]] Here the English exporters had a slight advantage, but insufficient to neutralize the discrimination of 9d. in the £ on imports. The 12d. per cloth paid by the Hansa was not very ruinous when compared with the value of the goods—the average price of a piece of cloth for export being about £5. To the other foreigners the cloth duties proved almost prohibitive, with the result that in one year the Hansa shipped 44,000 cloths out of England as against 1,100 shipped by all other aliens.[[126]]
The great offence of the Easterlings was undoubtedly this successful competition of theirs with the Merchant Adventurers in the cloth export to the Low Countries. It would seem that, although they had practised it to some extent as far back as the time of Henry VII, they had enormously increased their operations during the last years of Henry VIII and throughout the reign of his son, a period in which the English had been in bad odour with the Imperial Government. But the Merchant Adventurers claimed a monopoly in this direction quite as ancient as that of their rivals—dating back, in fact, to the reign of Edward I, if we are to believe Thomas Gresham—and they can hardly be blamed for striking hard when the turn of political intrigue put it into their power to do so. The numerous lists of grievances against the Easterlings all emphasize the unprecedented increase of this branch of their business, and when, under Mary, their liberties were partially restored, it was with special safeguards against their selling cloth in Antwerp. If they had been prepared to recognize that their day of power was past, and peaceably to forgo this traffic, they might long have continued unmolested in London, dealing on favourable terms in the special products of Germany and the Baltic. But their obstinate insistence on a treaty close on a century old, and embodying privileges more ancient still, granted when social, economic, and national conditions had all been widely different, was certain not to pass unchallenged in the new age of national awakening.
The new edict was rapidly put into execution. On February 27 the Council sent letters to the customers of London and Hull ordering them to exact from the Easterlings the ordinary customs as paid by other aliens. No trace can be found of similar instructions being sent to Lynn, from which it would appear that the Hanse dépôt at one time existing in that place had already been abolished. On the following day the expected ambassadors arrived from Hamburg and Lubeck to plead their cause, the task of dealing with them being committed to the Lord Chancellor and a committee of nine. On May 1 an answer was delivered which confirmed the former judgement in all points. The Government was determined to stop the Hanse export of cloth, and strict injunctions were issued to prevent any one else from ‘colouring’ their goods. Later, after renewed representations from the ambassadors, or ‘orators’ as they were styled, they relented so far as to allow the export at the old rates of a certain quantity of cloths, not exceeding 2,000 in number, which had been purchased before the restraint.[[127]] An entry in the king’s journal noting the above concession, concludes with the following words, which seem to signify that the Government was still disposed to negotiate: ‘... in all other points the old decree to stand, till by a further communication the matter should be ended and concluded.’ Again, in October, it was resolved by the Council, ‘that the matter (of the Hansa) shall be more fully heard in the Exchequer’. Second thoughts were evidently giving rise to misgivings as to the possible disadvantages of open war with the League.
The Hansa, in fact, never accepted defeat nor relaxed their efforts to secure a reversal of the decree. On September 7, 1552, Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland, wrote to Edward VI on behalf of the citizens of Danzig, setting forth the intolerable burdens to which they were subjected and desiring the restoration of their ancient liberties.[[128]] But on the main point the Government held firm. No agreement was arrived at, and the ‘restraint’ continued until after the death of Edward, which event took place in July 1553.