Early system of conducting business with Russia.
It is not a little curious now to look back to the early history of that trade and the mode whereby it was conducted, nor is it either uninteresting or uninstructive. The correspondence between the Company and its agents in Russia furnishes ample means for showing how it was conducted, and provides, probably, the earliest specimens extant of the English mode of conducting business with foreign countries, and of the care and precision with which it was carried on. Nothing can be clearer than the Company’s letter of instructions and bill of parcels,[89] containing as it does in the shortest possible space all that was necessary for the guidance of their agents.
The benefits conferred by the Merchant Adventurers upon England.
To the Company of Merchant Adventurers, and more especially to its first governor, Sebastian Cabot, England is deeply indebted. They were among the earliest traders who gave an impetus to her over-sea commerce, aiming as they did to make England a depôt for foreign produce, and her ships the carriers by sea for the merchants of other nations as well as their own. “For we must take care,” remarks the Company in one of those letters to its agents, “to utter good quantitie of wares, especially the commodities of our realme, although we afford a good peny-worth to the intent to make others that have traded thither, wearie, and so to bring ourselves and commodities in estimation, and likewise to procure and have the chiefe commodities of that country in our hands as waxe and such others, that other nations may be served by us and at our hands.”[90]
It was by these means that England obtained her mercantile pre-eminence, achieving her maritime superiority by such methods rather than by any complicated scheme of legislative enactments, and in this she was assuredly far more indebted to the discoveries and wise policy of Sebastian Cabot, than to the so-called “celebrated Navigation Laws of Oliver Cromwell,” a hundred years afterwards. Barrow in his history frankly owns that Cabot’s knowledge and experience, combined with his zeal and penetration, were the means, not only of extending the foreign commerce of England, but of keeping alive the “spirit of enterprise which even in his lifetime was crowned with success, and which ultimately led to the most happy results for the nation”;[91] and Campbell observes “that with equal justice it may be said of Sebastian Cabot, that he was the author of our maritime strength, and opened the way to those improvements which have rendered us so great, so eminent, so flourishing a people.”[92]
But the Merchant Adventurers, besides leading the way to and developing the trade with Russia, were instrumental in the establishment of the whale fishery of Spitzbergen, and in the equally great, if not more important, fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland. Nor were their efforts confined to discoveries of new sources of wealth at sea, for, besides their extensive commercial operations with the interior of Russia where they had established various agencies, they entered into trading relations with Persia. Writing to one of these agents, they remark, “We have further hope of some good trade to be found out by Master Anthonie Jenkinson, by reason we do perceive by your letters, that raw silk is as plentiful in Persia as flax is in Russia, besides other commodities that may come from thence.”[93]
The Steel-Yard merchants partially restored to their former influence.
Cabot loses favour with the court,
The untimely death of Edward VI. (6 July, 1553), while it operated as a severe check on the advancing commercial prosperity of England, was no less inauspicious to the fortunes of Sebastian Cabot, who had given to it the first great impulse. The generosity of the youthful monarch, his ingenuous and enterprising spirit, and his fondness for maritime affairs, offer a melancholy contrast to the sullen bigotry of Mary.[94] Without one spark of feeling for the commercial interests of the people whom she had been called to govern, or one thought about their happiness, she deputed all such matters to her husband, who reduced Cabot’s pension one half, and materially curtailed the influence he so long possessed, it may be with some gain to his own peace of mind in his now declining years, though to England’s loss. Foreign traders with England had now their former special privileges partially restored, while the Steel-Yard merchants, bringing the influence of Germany to bear upon Philip II., were thus enabled to obtain relief from the Act passed by Edward VI. They were not, however, satisfied with these changes in their favour, for “at an assembly of the Houses at Lubeck, an Edict was published against all Englishmen, forbidding all trade or commerce with them.”[95]
and dies at a very advanced age.