A few notes are necessary with reference to the affairs of the Staplers. During the reign of Henry VIII the Staple continued to conduct its business in the time-honoured manner. All wool for the consumption of the north of Europe was exported to Calais from London and other ports, while that intended for the Mediterranean was sent, at double duties, by the Italian merchants of London into the Low Countries, and thence via the Rhine to Italy. Occasionally English subjects, not belonging to the Staple, obtained licences to export wool ‘beyond the Straits of Marrok’, the duty payable being usually the subject of special arrangement with the Crown.

It would seem that, in 1544, an attempt was made by some of the Staplers to export wool to Italy themselves, probably by the overland route, and that this was stopped by the Company. This at least is the most probable inference to be drawn from a curious letter written at Venice by one Henry Bostoke to John Johnson, merchant of the Staple of Calais.[[182]] The writer refers to the success of the voyage, ‘having long since made wholesale of our goods to an honest reckoning as the occasion required; not perceiving but that we should have made better reckoning hereafter if the laudable ordinance of our Company had permitted the continuance of this said voyage, whereof the impeachment, I beseech Jesus, may not in process of time be more prejudicial to the whole generality than now disprofit to our masters in particularity’. The letter is very vague, the writer refraining from stating the nature of his commodities and the route by which they had reached Venice; but the reference to ‘our’ Company addressed to a merchant of the Staple is fairly conclusive, and indeed there was no other company which could have exercised jurisdiction over Englishmen in Venice. The Merchant Adventurers concerned themselves only with the Low Countries and did not interfere with the doings of their members elsewhere, while the Englishmen who traded in general cargoes to the Mediterranean were free-lances without any incorporation.

The keystone of the whole system of the Staple was the retention of Calais, so conveniently placed for buyers from France, the Netherlands, and Germany. An Act of 1515 provided that the Mayor and Fellowship of the Company should retain the customs and subsidies on all wools from England, paying the king £10,000 yearly in lieu of the same. The Company were to defray the expenses of the Staple, the town, and the fortifications, while the king was to pay the wages of the garrison. This Act, which was to endure for twenty years, superseded one of similar import passed by Henry VII. At its expiry another was passed in 1535–6, the preamble of which shows that the defences of the town had fallen into great decay and weakness. Corruption was rife, and the merchants were inevitably niggardly in their expenditure on them, for they trusted that in case of danger the whole power of the country would be put forth to save them. The system of farming the duties was continued, but in course of time the bargain ceased to be profitable to the Staplers, owing to the decrease in the shipments of wool. In 1551 a petition on the subject complained of the great burdens imposed on the merchants and of the increasing competition of wool sent from Spain to the Netherlands.[[183]] The payments due to the king, it was represented, amounted to more than the receipts from the customs. The remedy suggested for Spanish competition was to allow only low-priced wools to be shipped to Calais, to prohibit absolutely any export to other places, and to be content with a reduced custom, so that the clothmakers who had been draping Spanish wool might get ‘as good pennyworth’ at Calais as they had been getting from the Spaniards.[[184]] The customs were not reduced, but the suggested restriction of non-staple export was carried out, and in the reign of Mary the Italian merchants were on the point of quitting London in despair of obtaining leave to buy wools.

CALAIS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
From Cott. MS. Aug. I. ii. 70.

The monopoly which had endured for so long was gradually breaking up under the stress of changing conditions; and the loss of Calais in 1558 dealt it a blow from which it never recovered. The amount of wool exported was in any case bound to decrease with the growth of home manufactures,[[185]] so that the decay of the Staplers’ business must not be regarded as a commercial loss to England: it was simply a diversion of the channels of wealth into a new direction. Long-rooted organizations die hard, and the Staplers survived precariously for many decades after the fall of Calais, holding their marts at various places in the Low Countries; but in course of time England, far from continuing to export wool, became a wool-importing country, the native output being insufficient to keep pace with the growth of manufacture. The completion of the change is marked by an Act of 1660, prohibiting all export of wool, and containing no mention whatever of the once mighty Staple.

CHAPTER IX
FRANCE, SPAIN, AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

The trade between England and France during the first half of the sixteenth century falls into two divisions: the local cross-channel traffic between Normandy and Brittany and the southern ports of England, and the wine trade with Bordeaux. There was at that time no regular commerce between England and the Mediterranean coast of France. Of the two sections above mentioned the second was by far the more important, since Bordeaux was the outlet for the merchandise of southern France, which could not be obtained elsewhere, while the northern seaboard of that country, similar in climate to the south of England, differed little from it in agricultural products, and had, if the weaving of sail-cloth in Brittany be excepted, no surplus manufactures to dispose of. Hence the elements of an important commerce with it were wanting.

The Bordeaux trade was one of the oldest channels of English enterprise beyond the seas. The town itself, coming under the authority of English kings with the accession of Henry II, in 1154, had survived all the vicissitudes of war until 1453, when the defeat of Talbot at Chatillon involved its permanent transference to the Crown of France. During the three centuries of English rule continual commerce was maintained with Bristol, London, and the intervening ports on the English coast, and the taste for Bordeaux wines became a national habit. As the cloth manufacture increased in England, another valuable commodity, used in dyeing and known as Toulouse woad, was also in demand, and was obtained exclusively from Bordeaux. The loss of the town at the disastrous close of the Hundred Years’ War did not, like that of Calais in 1558, involve any diversion of trade, since it did not coincide with any industrial or economic changes such as those which exterminated the wool export. The Bordeaux trade, therefore, was continued, but seems largely to have passed out of English hands during the Wars of the Roses, which, or the rumours of which, recurred sporadically from 1455 until the accession of Henry VII.

It was natural that in a period of unrest and anarchy commercial interests should be neglected by governments engaged in a struggle for bare existence; and thus we find the preamble of Henry VII’s Navigation Act of 1489 lamenting the great decay of English shipping engaged in the wine trade. It has been said that preambles to Acts of Parliament invariably exaggerate the grievances which they design to amend, but this one at least must have had some foundation in fact, as is evidenced by the diminished volume of Bristol trade at the beginning of Henry’s reign and the rapid recovery of English shipping which resulted from his policy. The Act itself, which extended and rendered permanent a temporary measure of 1485, provided that Gascony wines and Toulouse woad should only be imported into England in English, Irish, or Welsh bottoms manned by crews of the same nationalities. Its importance cannot be over-estimated. It remained in full operation for more than sixty years, and, besides producing a mercantile revival, it provided a training-ground for the seamen and navigators whose services were so essential to the defence of the realm in the stormy times of the sixteenth century. It must be remembered that, in the days when the Mediterranean trade was in its infancy, the voyages to Bordeaux and Spain were the only ones habitually made by the English outside the North Sea, and that they demanded the use of larger ships than were commonly employed by traders from east-coast ports. In addition, such a policy had its moral significance; it was a blow to foreigners, and it gave Englishmen a sense of privilege which was gratifying to their pride; it supplied at once a cause and a testimony of the relations of enthusiastic admiration which undoubtedly existed between the Tudor sovereigns and their seafaring subjects.