The trade of the Turkey Company declined during the seventeenth century from many causes, one of which was the rivalry of the French and their success in underselling the English goods. The Company finally closed its history in the year 1825.
The Levant Company was another trading Company established under Elizabeth. By opening up direct communication with the Levant, England procured all the productions of the East without the intervention of Venice. Only one more vessel was sent to London from Venice after the establishment of the Company, and this with a rich cargo and many passengers was wrecked and destroyed on the Isle of Wight.
For the repulse of the Spanish Armada, London contributed thirty-eight vessels, and the Society of Merchant Adventurers, ten. In 1591, or perhaps in 1589, the first voyage from London to the East Indies was undertaken. The expedition of 1591 consisted of three ships, of which one was never heard of again; and the other two lost many men from sickness. The expedition, however, led to the formation of the East India Company in a.d. 1600, with a capital of £72,000 in 1440 shares of £50 each. Their first fleet, consisting of five ships and 480 men, reached Sumatra and the Straits of Malacca, where they captured a Portuguese ship of 900 tons laden with calicoes. They settled a factory at Bantam and sailed homewards, returning to port in two years and seven months after starting.
The trade of the country was greatly advanced by the immigration of many Flemings, Dutch, Walloons, and French Huguenots, who brought over with them their own trades. They were judiciously distributed about the country, care being taken that they should neither interfere with the trade of the place nor crowd too much together. Thus at Sandwich alone there were 350 Flemish families in the year 1582; they carried on the manufactory of bags. In Norwich, Dutch and Walloons settled and made serges and silks and bombazines. Bone lace was taken to Honiton from Antwerp. In London the Flemings settled at Bermondsey, where they made felt hats and did joiners’ work; at Bow, where they had dye-works; at Wandsworth, where they worked in brass; at Mortlake and Fulham, where they made tapestry. In other places workers in steel and iron, window-glass painters, cloth fullers, cloth-makers, and many other craftsmen were planted and carried on profitable industries. Among other things, sail-making was introduced into England for the first time. The pawnbroker’s shop was also opened in this reign. It began with the establishment of seven banks in as many towns, to be known as “Banks for the relief of Common Necessity,” which should lend money on pledges. This Bank is alluded to by Shakespeare when Sir John Falstaff urges his hostess to pawn her cups and her hangings. “Glass,” he says, “glass is your only drinking: and for thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal or the Germans hunting in water work, is worth a thousand of these bed hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries.”
The monopoly system by which the Court rewarded favourites at the expense of trade and the people was regarded by Elizabeth with favour, as an easy way of bestowing favours costing herself nothing. Many of her monopolies she withdrew as manifestly injurious to trade, yet she left many which weighed heavily upon the enterprise of the country. These monopolies were multiplied in the next two reigns, and greatly assisted to bring about the unpopularity of Charles.
Cunningham is of opinion that the borrowing of money for trading purposes was not a common practice; he bases this opinion on the very high rate of interest demanded by the usurer. There can be no doubt that usury was strictly forbidden by the Church, by the Ordinances of the City of London, and by public opinion. Yet a case quoted by him (Growth of Trade, p. 325) shows that men not only wanted to borrow from time to time, but that Christians, not Jews, were willing to lend on interest. In that case the lender wanted interest for a loan of £10 for three months, which amounted to 80 per cent per annum. The usurer could not get his claim allowed. Yet it is difficult to understand how business could be carried on at all except in an elementary way, if there was neither credit nor borrowing. But was the rate of interest too high for trading on borrowed money? There is every reason to believe that the profits of trade were enormous. Malyns, in his Centre of the Circle of Commerce, gives a table showing the profits of the trade in spices, silk, indigo, etc., early in the seventeenth century. They range from 150 to 250 per cent, i.e. goods bought at £100 would sell for £250 up to £350. Of course there must be set off against this apparently huge profit, losses by wrecks and pirates and the expense of the shipping. Borrowing, Cunningham thinks, was necessary to meet taxation. Since taxes were not regular, but irregular; and could not be provided for because no one knew when a tallage would be imposed or how large a percentage would be demanded, the merchant or the landowner, though perfectly solvent, might not be able to lay his hand at once on the amount demanded. A person of to-day whose estate might be worth £120,000 would find it, very possibly, difficult to meet, within a few days, the King’s demand of one-fifteenth, that is £8000. If he could not realise in time he must borrow. If all the usury was confined to the lending of money to meet a sudden tax, or to a monastery for the building of a church, or for a baron to raise a force, what becomes of the popular hatred of the Jews, first as money-lenders, and of the Caursini and the Italians who were licensed by the Pope, next? And if there was no borrowing by the merchants, what was the meaning of that crowd which, after the massacre of the Jews in York Castle, rushed to the Cathedral, where they brought out the Jews’ bonds—their own bonds—and burned them all? Cunningham, in a note, enumerates the demands of certain Russians against the Jews of the present day. These demands express the popular belief concerning their practice, not the truth. One would most unwillingly accept prejudice for proof, especially in the case of the race which has endured so much prejudice for so many centuries. Cunningham says, very justly, that the real objection against the Jews was that they made their money by lending it on security, which left them no risks which could be foreseen. The common people, however, did not understand the objection; they saw that the Jews practised a trade which the Church and the State would not allow to Christians; they saw that the Jews grew rich rapidly; that they were protected by the King; that they waxed insolent and sometimes insulted the Christian religion; and if they lent a Christian money they demanded an enormous, a ruinous, interest for it. Deep, indeed, must have been the popular hatred of the Jews, since Shakespeare could stir the blood of his audience by the spectacle of a Jewish usurer, three hundred years after there had been Jews in the land.
THE TOWER IN 1553
From a drawing by Wyngaerde. E. Gardner’s Collection
The business of the daily life, as well as that of the mercantile life, cannot, in fact, be carried on without money-lending. Works cannot be undertaken; credit cannot be secured; cargoes cannot be bought; ships cannot be laden; unless money can be obtained by advance. The banishment of the Jews; the disappearance of the Italians; took away the usurers and money-lenders by profession. There were as yet no banks to make advances on security; and money-lending was still, as it remains to this day, an occupation held in the greatest loathing. The money-lender, therefore, disguised his calling. Thus Hall (Society in the Elizabethan Age) furnishes a sketch of the usurer of the period. His name was George Stoddart; by trade he was ostensibly a grocer, but really a money-lender. His bargains took the form of bets. Thus he sends J. Klynt his furred nightgown for 4s. 5d., to be paid on the day of Klynt’s marriage: he gives R. Leds a ring called a ryboys, which he values at £1:13:4, to be paid on the day of his marriage or else at his hour of death. For a rapier he charges 40d., to be paid at his day of marriage or else not. He gives a man £400 on the condition that during his lifetime the borrower shall pay him £80 a year. He lived for ten years, and so doubled that small capital of £400. It would be interesting to know what, if any, great City fortunes were made by this style of money-lending.
The increase of trade and of shipping in the Port of London is indicated by a passage in Camden, when he speaks of the multitudes of ships “as a very wood of trees, disbranched to make glades and to let in the light: so shaded is it with masts and sails.”