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THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

THE GERMANS IN
ENGLAND 1066-1598

BY
IAN D. GOLVIN

WITH MAP OF HANSEATIC LEAGUE

LONDON
"THE NATIONAL REVIEW" OFFICE
14 TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1915

$^ 13.5b 4

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE,
CAPTAIN GERALD MOYNA OF THE ROYAL SCOTS
FUSILIERS, WHO DIED FIGHTING IN FLANDERS, THE
26TH SEPTEMBER I915, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

PREFACE
This book must bear the stamp of a haste which only
the urgency of war can justify. It was written in a
few months in the intervals of my daily work, and if
it has any merits, it is as a rough sketch and outline
of its subject. As usual, I found the British Museum
unfailing in its courtesy and in its resources. I have
to thank Mr. Ferdinand de Mera for his invaluable
assistance in translating German authorities and in
vestigating crucial points in the Hanse Recesse and
other German archives, and for his map of the roads,
towns, and Kontors of the Hanseatic League. To Miss
Thompson I am indebted for transcripts from Tudor
manuscripts at the British Museum, to Mr. Claud
Mullins for researches in the London Guildhall Library,
and to Mr. J. S. Sandars for a revision of my proofs.
The head of Queen Elizabeth, who expelled the Ger
mans from England, was reproduced by the courtesy
of the Medal Department of the British Museum.

CONTENTS

OHAP. PAGE
Introduction  xi
I. " The Natural Ally "  1
n. The Price of a King  9
m. Simon de Montfort  21
IV. The_Hahseatic League  32
V. The Camel in the Tent  45
VI. The House of Fame-— Back View  57
VH. The Germans Rule the Sea  63
V±ll. The First Hague Convention  72
IX. The Merchant Adventurers  82
X. The Sacred Friendship  95
XI. Warwick the King-maker  104
XII. " We have made an End of the English " . . . 1 19
X1LT. The First of the Tudors  128
XIV. The Germans make an Enemy  150
XV. " A Purposed Overthrow "  155
XVI. Alliance with Russia  175
XVLT. Phtld? and Mary  185
XVLLT. A Game of Chess  196
XIX. Checkmate  212
Conclusion  226
APPENDICES
Appendix I. The Angevtns and Germany . . . 233
H. The Hanse Towns  235
„ UT. The German Share in English Trade
and Preference in English Customs 239
„ IV. The Augsburg Decree .... 244
„ V. Sebastian Cabot  245
„ VI. The " Baye " m Hanseatic Documents 247
Authorities  249
Index  25 1
ix

INTRODUCTION
When these present hostilities began, there was a pre
vailing belief that our relations with Germany had
always been of the friendliest order, and many people
were even surprised to find how bitterly the Germans
hated England. Some of the newspapers described the
naval engagement off Heligoland as our first fight with
our " cousins " on the sea, and the German newspapers
were full of talk about the Stammverwandt which we
were said to have betrayed. And yet, as I have written
this little book to show, our sailors were fighting the
Germans all through the Middle Ages, and these sea-
fights were not mere piracies and accidents, as some
historians suppose, but the symptoms, as I might call
them, of the long, fierce, and irregular conflict which
was waged between Germany and England for sea-
power and commercial supremacy.
Unless we understand this conflict, the history of
England, from the time of the Angevins to the time of
the Tudors, is mere sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It is like a jigsaw puzzle which cannot be made into a
picture because half the pieces are missing. But when
we come to understand that the Germans were always
interfering in English policy for their own ends, when
we find them bribing a Chancellor, financing an in
vasion, and raising or pulling down a dynasty, then
much that was formerly obscure becomes clear. We
begin to see the hidden springs and inner motives of
what was before a mere orgy of civil and foreign wars.

xii THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
As I hope to show, there were two main motives of
German interference in English policy, the one political
and the other commercial. The main motive on the
political side was to secure the assistance of England
in the constant wars between France and the Empire,
and also in the conflicts between the Empire and the
Pope and between the Empire and Venice. Those wars
with France, in which we reaped so much glory and
shed so much blood for ends so barren and unprofit
able, were fought less in our own interests than in the
interests of Germany, which promoted and fomented
them. The Germans came to look upon English assist
ance so much as a matter of course that when an
English king was found who refused to assist them, an
aggrieved King of the Romans set about to finance an
Enghsh Pretender more amenable to German influence.
Thus Perkin Warbeck wrote to the King of the Romans
in January or February of 1496 : " Were the Duke
of York (i.e. Perkin) to obtain the Crown, the King of
the Romans and the League (the Holy League) might
avail themselves of England against the King of France
as if the island were their own."
But we should not understand the poHtical motive
of German policy unless we realised the commercial
motive. And here we come at once to that strange
and obscure power in mediaeval Europe vaguely known
to English readers as the Hanseatic League. Now I
have seen it said that this League of cities was not
native to Germany, but I do not think that this objec
tion will be sustained upon a review of the evidence.
The League certainly had its origin in Germany, and
as certainly its ruling city was Lubeck. It was always
the policy of the League to keep secret its extent and
its membership ; but of all the cities which are known

INTRODUCTION xiii
to have belonged to the League, it is difficult to find
one which could not be described as German. The
stock exception is Dinant ; but it is doubtful if Dinant
was in the full sense a Hanseatic city. As will be seen
from the notes on the point at the end of my book,
there is evidence that Dinant was regarded by the cities
as an outsider, and its share in Hanseatic privileges
was probably given in order to obtain for Germany a
port of entry into France. Bruges and Bergen were
no more Hanseatic cities than London and Novgorod.
They were Kontors or dep6ts, the economic serfs and
thralls of the League, without either membership or
voice in its pohcy. The League had its house in these
Kontor cities, and its council of merchants to do its
business and represent its interests, just as England
has its houses and its merchants in Hong-Kong ; but
just as Hong-Kong has no seat in our English Parha
ment, so Bruges had no place in the Hanse Day at
Lubeck. The German " merchant " in Bruges might
go to Lubeck as our Consul or the chairman of our
Chamber of Commerce at Hong-Kong might come to
London. He would be heard at the Day, and his opinion
on Flemish pohcy would carry weight ; but the town
of Bruges itself, its mayor and its aldermen, had no
place in the League : Bruges was a foreign city to be
wheedled and bulhed into subservience* but never to
be admitted into partnership.
So with Novgorod, Bergen, Venice, Stockholm, Lon
don ; the Germans were established more or less firmly
in all these towns, and influenced to a greater or less
degree their fortunes and their policy ; but the towns
themselves had no place in the League — there was
never any question of admitting them to membership.
The case of the Polish towns is different. Dantzig was

xiv THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
from the beginning in the inner circle, and enjoyed all
the privileges of membership; but Dantzig was by
nature and origin a Prussian city : its first Protector
was the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, and it
transferred its allegiance to Poland late in the day and
for its own purposes : in all essentials it remained a
Prussian city. And so with the other cities along the
Baltic shore as far as Riga and Reval : they were in
their origin German trading colonies, outposts of the
League, and remained in pohcy and character foreign
to their immediate surroundings. So we may suppose
it was with Cracow, and possibly with those Saxon
colonies which remain to this day in the south-east of
Hungary, a foreign element in the Magyar State. They
were the advance guards of a great commercial system
which in substance as in origin was German.
And so if we go over the list of Hanseatic cities we
shall find that almost all are German — if indeed we can
call the Prussian a German. What were the chief Hanse
atic cities ? — their names are sufficient answer : Lubeck,
Dantzig, Bremen, Hamburg, Brunswick, Cologne. And
we should find if we went more into detail that round
Lubeck, Dantzig, Brunswick, and Cologne all the minor
cities form themselves : they are the four " Thirds "
into which the League for some purposes is divided.
The League, then, is accurately described as a
federation of German cities. So it was understood in
the Middle Ages. In the English charters its house
in London is called " Gildhalla Teutonicorum " ; and
when the King of Poland sent an ambassador to London
on behalf of the Hanse, Queen Elizabeth replied that
if the League was not Prussian it was nothing.
" Men of the Emperor " and " Easterlings " are
names which both described the German merchant

INTRODUCTION

xv

before the Hanseatic League could be said to exist,
and the two names possibly represented the two great
divisions of German trade — the Men of the Emperor
being merchants of Cologne and of the Rhine, the
Easterhngs of Hamburg and the Baltic. However
that may be, we shall find that Cologne was settled
in England before Lubeck. Tradition dates the Guild
hall of the Colpgners in London from the Norman
Conquest ; but, as we shall see, there is evidence that
the origin of those extraordinary privileges of the
German merchant which are to be the staple of this
Uttle book is even further back in our history. The
famous letter of Charlemagne to King Offa of Mercia
amounts to a treaty of commerce on a basis of reci
procity : " You have also written to us about your
merchants. We would have them enjoy our protection
and defence within our realm . . . according to the
ancient custom in commerce. . . . Show hke favour
to our merchants. . . ." On both sides the traders
are to appeal to the justice of the country they are in.
The significance of this letter to us is that Germany
has something which is a necessity to England — com
mand of the pilgrim and trade road of the Rhine. Safe
conduct on that road was in the hands of the Emperor,
and, under the Emperor, of Cologne and the German
princes. The Germans have always been a practical
people, and it is not to be supposed that English pilgrims
were allowed to use this road for nothing. Indeed our
whole story teaches that when the German has some
thing that the Enghshman lacks, the Englishman has
to pay a very heavy price for it.
But the Men of the Emperor and the Easterhngs
also commanded certain commodities of importance to
England. The ancient exchange of Europe rested on

xvi THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the same basis as the exchange of China to-day — weight
of silver. The German pound-weight of silver was the
standard for all Europe, and " pound sterling " is a
corruption of "pound easterhng." The ransom of
Richard Cceur de Lion was estimated in the Cologne
weight of silver, and the measure of Cologne was prob
ably the measure of the Easterhngs, the standard of
all Germany. Now Germany set the standard in silver
because Germany commanded the supply. The silver
of " Beame," of which we hear so much in mediaeval
trade, is silver from the mines of Bohemia.
But besides their command of silver, and therefore
of exchange, and of trade routes, the Germans con
trolled sea-power outside the Mediterranean. And here
we come to the secret of the power of the Baltic cities —
the head and centre of the Hanseatic League. Hemp
for ropes, flax for sails, pitch for caulking and cordage,
timber for masts, all these things came from the Baltic,
and the cities which commanded these commodities
commanded the sea. And if we add to these command
of the Baltic corn-supply, command of the salt-fish
trade, and the supply of wax, the necessities of hght
and rehgion, we shall be able to estimate the " pull "
which the Baltic cities had over the rest of Europe in
the Middle Ages.
And Germans would not have been Germans if
they had not got full value for all these advantages.
There was, as we shall see, a time when the German
cities could pass a law that Enghsh foreign trade was
to be carried only in German ships, and this monopoly
was at other times so well recognised that an Eng
lish Government could forbid its subjects to engage in
oversea trade. By skilful and usurious use of these
manifold sources of power the Germans estabhshed

INTRODUCTION xvii
themselves like a flourishing mistletoe in the clefts of
our Enghsh apple-tree. The tale of their privileges is
staggering to consider. They had their fortified Guild
hall with its wharves and store-houses on the river
side ; they were free of most, if not all, Enghsh taxes,
both municipal and national, and paid less in customs
than native Enghshmen ; they had not only their
own court and aldermen for the government of their
own affairs, but had special judges to settle their dis
putes with natives ; they were above Enghsh juries
and Enghsh law ; they were exempt especially from that
ancient custom of " hosting " which prevailed not only
in England but throughout at least Northern Europe ;
they held their houses in London and other ports in
freehold ; they had control of one of the gates of the
City of London, and were free to go out and in with
out paying municipal duties ; they dealt not only
" in gross " but in retail, in defiance of Enghsh
custom. They were thus favoured not only over other
foreigners, but over Enghshmen. Their advantage over
other foreigners was so overwhelming that even the
trade of the Venetians with England languished and
dwindled almost to nothing, and their advantage over
Enghshmen was substantial enough to make the deter
mination to end it one of the chief forces in our mediaeval
politics. Here, then, we come to the main thread of
our story — the struggle between the German and the
Englishman for Enghsh trade. This great struggle,
which may be traced from the time of Henry III to
the time of Elizabeth, seems to me one of the chief
factors in our Enghsh history, and yet it has been
almost ignored by our Enghsh historians. I do not
know of a single Enghsh historian who has treated the
&

xviii THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
subject as a connected whole. Welsford, over whose
early death I shall never cease to mourn, touched
upon it in that book of gold, The Strength of
England, but did not fully realise its importance ;
Anderson, in his wonderful Origin of Commerce, which
remains to this day our best economic history, tells
the story on its commercial side with his accustomed
erudition, but the political side is out of his sphere.
The Germans understand its importance ; but Lappen-
berg and Sartorius, the chief historians of the Hanse
atic League in England, have not even been translated,
and of those who deal with periods, hke Schanz, Pauh,
and Schulz, none, as far as I know, has been given
to the English reader.
The cause of this neglect I do not trouble to
investigate. Our Enghsh historians have been in
general superior to trade ; our economists superior
to history. Some have marched triumphantly in the
wake of our glorious campaigns in France, or those
parts of them which are glorious ; they have been so
dazzled with the fair frontage of our Palace of Fame
that they have not spared a glance for its kitchen
premises ; others have concerned themselves in our
civil wars and our wars of union ; and most have been
preoccupied with certain specific factors in English
history — its constitutional and its religious quarrels.
To me the one is the fine flower, the other the faint
shadow of human affairs. I do not gather from his
story that Simon de Montfort concerned himself much
in the constitution of the Enghsh Parhament : his
ends were more practical, he led the anti-foreign, and
especially the anti-German, party in England. Matthew
Paris understood this well enough, but the modern
historian almost leaves it out of account. He learnedly

INTRODUCTION

xix

discusses constitutional problems for which Simon
probably cared little or nothing, and leaves unexplored
the practical questions of protection and patriotism,
for which Simon and his party cared a very great deal.
And so down to the reign of Elizabeth. Froude has
nothing to say of the Germans and whole volumes of
the Spaniards. Yet our archives show clearly that the
struggle with the Spaniard covered a deeper and more
ancient conflict — between the English and the German
trader. When even an Enghsh statesman can talk of trade
as a sordid bond, it would be foohsh to quarrel with
Enghsh historians for leaving it out of account. And
yet, as it seems to me, these trade relations with Ger
many must be understood if we are to understand our
English history. I put the motives of man thus, in
order of their strength : (1) Blood, that is race or
nationality ; (2) patriotism, or love of land and country ;
(3) interest, or the means by which man hves in trade
and commerce ; (4) religion, which is the hope and
refectory of his soul, but as a motive uncertain and
incalculable in its influence, and much used as a colour
to disguise interest ; and (5) politics, including all
constitutional questions, which are merely the means
or instruments for attaining these other ends. Now it
is the proper business of the historian to understand all
these motives and to explain their influence on events,
for if the historian deals merely in events alone he
signifies nothing. And yet if we read our Enghsh his
tories of the Wars of the Roses, it might be supposed
that some at least of these motives were not then in
operation. Events, in fact, are not so much explained
as narrated. Let us, for example, take what is the
crux and centre of these wars, the action of Warwick

xx THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
in transferring his allegiance from York to Lancaster,
the flight and return of the King-Maker, the flight and
return of Edward IV, and the Battle of Barnet in which
Neville died. From the Enghsh historian we might
suppose that Warwick was merely an unscrupulous
noble, who acted through some pique or personal
motive, ambition, or mere caprice. But if we apply
our German key to these events, we find that Warwick
fought Lubeck at sea ; that Edward was made king
on the " anti-German ticket " ; that Edward, in the
absence of Warwick, came to an understanding with
the Hanse ; that Warwick's invading army made an
anti-German demonstration in London ; that Edward
fled to Flanders and returned in German ships ; and
that German influence was thrown into the scale for
the defeat of Warwick, just as it had been used for
the defeat of de Montfort. If Enghsh historians say
little or nothing of all this, it is not forgotten by the
German historians. Thus Pauli, for example : " When
Edward IV was driven out they (the Hanseatic League)
had to decide whether Henry VI should keep the
throne or lose it again. . . . They helped the Germanic
element to victory. If Henry VI had succeeded in
retaining the Crown . . . the sea-power wielded by the
German merchant would have gone to Rome . . . and the
whole development of West European commerce would
have been different. Thus the Germans freed them
selves from a very serious danger, and at the same time
forced the King under an obligation to the Hanse."1
In the opinion, then, of one of the greatest of German
historians, at this crisis in English history an Enghsh
king was a mere puppet in German hands, and the
Wars of the Roses were part of the conflict for German
1 Pauli, Die Eansestddte in den Roaenhriegen, p. 177.

INTRODUCTION xxi
commercial supremacy in England. And the contem
porary Dantzig chronicler is just as explicit : " In
the year 1469 there was great discord in England
amongst the barons, one of the reasons being the
(German) merchant." 1 Here then is a motive for the
Wars of the Roses, which puts all the chief actors in
a new and surprising Hght. Warwick is a patriot who
fights against the German domination on sea and land ;
Edward betrays the cause of Enghsh trade and ship
ping for German money ; Warwick remains true to
his principles and drives Edward from the Throne on
which he had placed him ; Edward is restored by the
German power, and replaces the German merchant in
his position of privilege.
These motives being known, the Wars of the Roses
no longer seem mere feudal anarchy, but take their
place in Enghsh history as part of the great struggle
for economic independence and sea-power, which is the
substance of our narrative. As Simon de Montfort,
so Warwick the King-Maker — they were both national
heroes who died fighting the Germans in the cause of
protection. And just as the London merchant was
defeated by the German merchant when the King of
Germany restored Henry III to the throne, so the cause
of Enghsh trade was laid in the dust when German ships
carried Edward IV from Flanders to the port of Raven-
spur. The restoration of Edward IV was followed by
tne most shameful treaty ever signed by an Enghsh
king, T mean the Treaty of Utrecht. " German power
is more firmly estabhshed in England than ever," was
the opinion of Lubeck. " We have made an end of
the Enghsh," said the envoys of Dantzig. In the
Treaty of Utrecht we have the spectacle of an Enghsh
1 Dantzig Chronicle to 1469, p. 6.

xxii THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
king, not only exempting German traders from all the
customs paid by Enghshmen, not only placing them
above the justice of English courts, but making England
the instrument for punishing the one German city
which had deserted the Hanseatic League and espoused
the cause of York. Cologne was deprived of all privi
leges in England until such time as the Hanseatic ban
should be removed.
Henry VII, that wary and politic prince, did not
dare to challenge directly the power of the German cities,
although he must have been sorely tempted thereto by
the intrigues of Germany against his throne. How far
these intrigues were the work of the cities and how far
the work of the German king, I have found it impossible
to determine. But it is certain that the German traders
in London were suspected of a connection with the
Perkin Warbeck invasion, and Busch admits that they
were probably the go-betweens. Maximilian's motive
is plainly declared in his correspondence with Perkin,
and in the despatches of the Venetian Ambassadors.
He found Henry VII slack in the traditional Enghsh
role of picking the German chestnut out of the French
fire. But the cities also had a reasonable motive, for
the Tudor policy was founded on the support of the
Enghsh interest both in trade and manufacture. The
English Parliament which welcomed the first Tudor
to the throne marked its affection by granting the
King a poll-tax on foreigners, and Henry's Navigation
Acts, his encouragement of cloth manufacture, his
charter to the Merchant Adventurers, and his alliance
with Denmark were all indirect blows at the Hanseatic
League. Yet the state of Enghsh shipping and the
insecurity of his throne forbade him to do more than
lay the foundations of that great national pohcy which

INTRODUCTION xxiii
in the hands of Ehzabeth was to shatter in pieces the
German power.
We shall not understand the mercantile policy of
the Tudors unless we reahse that this greatest of English
dynasties rested upon the organised power of the
Merchant Adventurers, and that the Merchant Adven
turers were engaged in a truceless and deadly struggle
with the Hanseatic League. Who has sung the praises,
who has even told the tale, of the Merchant Adven
turers ? To some it may appear " sordid " : those
who dare not face the realities of hfe like to pretend
that there is no such thing as trade. To me it is one
of the epical subjects of our history, this conflict be
tween the English and the German merchant. Why
should we allow the German a superiority in organisa
tion when it is matter of history that Enghsh organisa
tion defeated German organisation ? For the Merchant
Adventurers were nothing less than the organisation
of Enghsh trade to fight the Hanseatic League. " The
Company of the Merchant Adventurers," says Wheeler,
" consisteth of a great number of wealthy and well-
experimented merchants dwelling in divers great cities,
maritime towns, and other parts of the realm, to wit,
London, York, Norwich, Exeter, Ipswich, Newcastle,
Hull, &c. These men of old time linked and bound
themselves together in company for the exercise of
merchandise and seafare, trading in cloth, kersey, and
all other . . . commodities vendible abroad." And
Wheeler always speaks of the Germans as the inveterate
enemies of his Society. It is true that we had great
merchants even before they were organised on national
lines. In the thirteenth century there were the Thornes,
who took part in the Crusades, opened out a trade in
the Mediterranean, and under the name of " Spina "

xxiv THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
settled in Italy and financed the popes. In the four
teenth century there were Richard and Wilham de la
Pole, high in the councils of Edward III, and Richard
Whittington, our nursery Dick, who owned a cat and
heard the bells of Bow singing " Turn again, Whitting
ton," from Highgate Hill. He was, in fact, a great
Enghsh merchant, and his praises are worthily sung
in the Libell of Enghsh Pohcy. Then in the fifteenth
century there were such merchants as Geoffrey Boleyn,
the great-great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth ; Baran-
tyn, Cotton, Thomas Smith, Thomas Terry and
Thomas Baker, of London; Roger Thornton, of
Newcastle ; Tavern er of Hull, a pioneer of English
trade in Italy and the Levant ; the Jays of Bristol ;
and that great Bristol fish merchant, W. Cannyngs,
who employed eight hundred sailors and ten ships to
trade with Iceland and Prussia in defiance of the
Hanse. Such were a few of the Merchant Adventurers, and
if I have treated them rather as a corporation than as
individuals, it is not that I forget that they were men
as well as merchants. But their chief significance to
us is that they organised themselves on national lines
to do battle with the German merchant, and carried
the commercial war into Flanders and Brabant, into
High Germany, into the Baltic, to Iceland, and even
into Russia, the jealously guarded trade preserves of
the German Hanse. These Merchant Adventurers were
from their very nature and purpose in conflict with
the Germans : they existed to challenge the supremacy
of the League, for they were leagued together to carry
Enghsh cloth overseas in their own ships and sell it
in the mart towns of the Continent. In this they dif
fered from the Merchants of the Staple, who shared

INTRODUCTION xxv
their franchises with foreigners and were content to
sell our raw material to the Flemish weaver.
But among all these Enghsh merchants I give the
palm to Thomas Gresham. And his chief title to great
ness was not that he founded Gresham College or the
Royal Exchange, but that he " practised " with King
Edward VI and " my Lord of Northumberland " to
break the power of the German merchant in London.
The problem before Gresham and his English contem
poraries was to induce the Government to resume those
privileges which placed the German in a position more
favourable than the Englishman — in other words, to
secure a reform of the tariff. But the German was
strongly entrenched, not only because he had great
alhes on the Continent, not only because his " scraps
of paper " had the sanction of authority and antiquity,
but for a more important reason. The Steelyard, as
Anderson puts it, served as a sort of bank for the
Enghsh kings. The Enghsh Government was in a
chronic state of indebtedness to the German cities, and
to destroy the influence of the German it was necessary
to secure the financial independence of the Monarchy.
And so it came about that in the time of Edward VI
and Ehzabeth we find Gresham employing all means
to induce his fellow-merchants to lend money to the
Crown. Thus, for example, old Stow tells us in his
Survey of London : " King Edward VI borrowed money
of Anthony Fugger and his nephews, who were vastly
rich German merchants and bankers of Antwerp. And
the city was bound with the King for payment. As I
find, anno 1551 in the month of April, a recognisance
made from the King to Sir Andrew Jud, Lord Maior
of the City, and the Commonalty of the same, that
the King shall discharge them, their successors, lands,

xxvi THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
possessions, and goods whatsoever, as -well beyond the
sea as on this side, from payment of certain sums of
money Flemish, which they stood bound for to the said
Anthony Fugger and his nephews to be paid at Ant
werp." And Stow goes on to tell how Queen Ehzabeth
" thought of laying aside this custom of taking up
money from foreign merchants and bankers, and con
cluded it better to borrow of her own subjects. . . .
This counsel, that famous citizen, Sir Thomas Gresham,
her agent, gave her." According to the same authority,
Gresham had great difficulty in inducing the Merchant
Adventurers " to borrow for the Queen." Not until
the Secretary of the Queen's Council (probably Cecil)
" wrote to the Merchants to complain of their behaviour "
did they lend the Queen money. This transaction of
November and December 1569 was made the more
necessary because " Duke d'Alva " had closed Antwerp
to English trade. Now Stow states as the reason for
this change in royal pohcy "that her own subjects
might have the benefit of the interest of the money so
lent her rather than strangers " — a very good reason
as far as it goes ; but we know from Gresham's letter
to Queen Elizabeth, which I quote elsewhere,1 that
Gresham's real object was that the Queen should have
no temptation to restore the " usurped privileges " of
the Hanseatic League.
Besides lending the Crown money, Gresham " prac
tised against" the Germans in the Courts of Law.
I have devoted a whole chapter to the once famous,
but long-forgotten, suit of 1551, in which a stout jury
of Merchant Adventurers found that the Germans
had forfeited their privileges by " colouring " the
1 The letter will be found among the Appendices to Burgon's Life of
Gresham.

INTRODUCTION xxvii
goods of certain " sledded Polacks." 1 It was a curious
verdict, for the jury found as part of its true bill that
Enghsh merchants should have a substantial preference
over " all foreign merchants, not native," in the English
customs. In other words, the verdict was founded
upon sound Protectionist principles. Needless to say,
the Germans were shocked at such a court and such a
finding — " contrary to laws divine and human and the
statutes of this realm and the express words of their
ancient privileges." Yet it happened that there were
no Germans at that time on the Privy Council, and
when the appeal was heard before that august tribunal,
it was unanimously decided that substantial justice
had been done.
It might have been more heroic if the Germans had
been defeated in battle rather than by loans and a
suit at law, but it is characteristic of this strange and
obscure struggle that the mortal blow should have
come in this way. For the blow was mortal. It is
true that " bloody Mary," as part of the marriage
settlement with Phihp, restored, or endeavoured to
restore, the German privileges, but Gresham continued
to " practise " with the Privy Council, and the German
power in England remained effectually broken.
It was for Queen Elizabeth to carry the war into
the enemy's country, and for her merchants to fight
the Germans in their own markets of Stade, Emden,
and Hamburg. I have already told the readers of the
National Review the story of the last stage of this great
conflict, how the Germans supphed Phihp with money,
munitions, sailors, soldiers, and even ships for his
Armada, and how sixty Hanseatic hulks loaded with
contraband were captured at one fell swoop by Drake
i "He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice." — Hamlet.

xxviii THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
in the Tagus. And yet even at this final and desperate
climax of the struggle, Germany and England did not
come to open blows, but fought each other with tariffs
and trade interdicts. The expulsion of the Germans
from their Steelyard in 1599 was but the final check
mate in a long game of expulsions, embargoes, tariff
wars, and excommunications of which my last chapter
gives an all too inadequate sketch.
I have hopes, nevertheless, that my story is neither
sordid nor dull. If fighting is wanted, I can produce
sea-battles and the sack of cities to prove that German
and Englishman were far enough from living at peace
in the Middle Ages. The German methods were then
as now : they sank our harmless merchantmen and
drowned our poor fisherfolk. In the time of Richard
II, and again in the time of Henry III, there was even
open war between England and the German cities.
And why is Wenyngton forgotten, that stout man of
Devon, who, with an inferior force, attacked the Lubeck
fleet and brought it triumphantly into the Solent %
Most of these battles between Enghsh and German
merchants and sailors have been condemned by the
lofty historian as mere acts of piracy unworthy of
chronicle, yet they were part, heroic if obscure, of the
long and stern fight waged by Enghshmen for economic
liberty. And Willoughby and Chancellor also I may
justly call heroes, who circumnavigated the North Cape
to circumvent the German and his ally the Spaniard.
Willoughby, who died in a desolate harbour of Lapland,
and Chancellor, who secured our first alhance with
Russia, are worthy of something more than a grudging
remembrance. And if we seek the heroic, I boast at
least two figures as illustrious as any in our history,
the first and the last of the barons, the soldier-states-

INTRODUCTION xxix
man Simon de Montfort and the sailor-statesman
Warwick the King-Maker. They both died by German
conspiracy, and they were both remembered as heroes
and patriots by their fellow-Englishmen.
And yet I am wilhng to concede that the English
protagonists in this struggle were generally men more
of brain than of brawn. Warwick, certainly, if not
Leicester also, was greater as a statesman than as a
warrior; Gresham won his victories by "practising,"
and so did his good ally, Burghley, the first and by a
long way the greatest of the Cecils. His descendant,
Lord Robert Cecil, is now in the Foreign Office. If
he reads this httle book he will find, what he perhaps
does not now reahse, that his ancestor defeated the
Germans by giving protection to the Enghsh trader.
He might also learn from this story that the Elizabethans
did not deal in half-measures. When they blockaded
Flanders they did not relax the blockade to let Ger
many do its Christmas trade with Spain. They were
whole-hearted in the struggle, and their design was for
the wealth and strength as well as the honour of England.
I am conscious that there are many faults and
omissions in this book, because it was written in haste
and with an imperfect equipment of knowledge. I have
drawn freely upon secondary authorities when they
were available — to this I make open confession ; but
I may add with a good conscience that, wherever pos
sible, I have tested these authorities by their primary
sources. I have found that Lappenberg is generally
to be trusted where lying does not serve his country,
but that Sartorius is a higher and more equitable court.
Busch, like Lappenberg, takes the German side. Schanz
is great, but only as an economist. Reinhold Pauli
has the style and method of an illustrious historian.

xxx THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Anderson is fair, like Sartorius. As for the primary
sources, there is endless material in the great Hanse
Recesse (the archives of the League), in Rymer's
Foedera, in the Venetian archives edited by Brown,
and in our own State papers.
To those Enghsh students who may care to trip
me up and pursue the subject farther than I have gone,
let me say at once that they are sure to find many
mistakes in this little book. But in extenuation, at
least for my errors of omission, let me say that, if I had
allowed myself to be tempted down all the seductive
avenues and enchanted glades of this subject, I should
never have got to the end of my journey. In parti
cular I had to refuse to go far into the reigns of Richard
II and Henry VIII, not because they would have
yielded httle, but because in my judgment, though
important, they were not decisive.1
And here let me say a word in guidance as to nomen
clature. The Germans in England are at various
stages called " Men of the Emperor," " Easterhngs,"
1 In particular, I refused to allow myself to enter upon the relations of the
Hanseatic League with Scotland, although I found evidence of the great
influence of the German cities on Scottish history before the Union of the
Crowns. Thus, for example, on 11th October 1297, a month after the battle
of Stirling Bridge, Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, " the leaders of
the army of the realm of Scotland," wrote to " the Mayors and Commons
of Lubeck and Hamburg " that their country had been " recovered by war
from the power of the English." Why did the Scottish leaders write to these
cities ? Because the Hanse, for purposes of its own, was supplying them
with arms, and probably financing them. Mr. Evan Barron, in his Scottish
War of Independence (pp. 69, 70), quotes this letter, which is preserved in
the archives of Lubeck, but fails to explain it. He would add to the value
of a fascinating book if he went further into this connection. Scotland's wool
was probably carried in German ships to Flemish looms. Had the Germans
a Kontor in Scotland ? Stirling, at once the head of the navigable Forth and
a central and commanding point on the road from North to South, would have
suited the German merchant very well. Was Stirling the town of the Easter-
lings ? Berwick had at one time a " Flemish " garrison. Why ? The Cheviots,
like the Ochills at Stirling, would be important to the Flemish weaver. And
why did the German cities supply Wallace (and later Bruce) with arms ?
Was it merely in the way of trade, or was there the deeper motive of weaken
ing England and getting Scotland into their power ? These, like many other
problems no less absorbing, " abide our question."

INTRODUCTION xxxi

<i

Almains," " Flemings," and " Dutchmen " ; the
Hanseatic League is called the " Steads," the " Towns,"
the " Hansa," the " Hanse," the " mesne Hanse " ;
their Guildhall in London is called " Gildhalla Teu-
tonicorum," the Steelyard, and the Stilhard. These
various names have confused even such authorities as
Lappenberg and the editor of the Acts of the Privy
Council. The term " Hanse " was used of any company
of merchants : the Merchant Adventurers in the time of
Edward VI divided themselves into the " old Hanse "
and the " new Hanse," and the index to the Acts of
the Privy Council confuses a quarrel between these
two with the greater conflict between the Steelyard
Merchants and the Merchant Adventurers. As to Ger
many itself, it is usually called Almaigne, with many
variations of spelhng, and sometimes Dutchland. In
theory the King of the Romans only became Emperor
when he was crowned by the Pope ; but in later
practice at least the custom was more honoured in the
breach than in the observance. I have not boggled
over all these niceties, but have striven only to give a
rough and living outhne sketch of the relations between
Enghshmen and Germans in my period.
And I have set the limits of my period for this
reason mainly, that they include the rise and the fall
of the German power in England, and all the stages of
the first great conflict between England and Germany
for supremacy in trade. I hope the story of our first
great struggle with the Germans may have its lessons
for us who are engaged in the second. For in the first
great struggle the Germans were beaten, and they were
defeated because England organised herself for victory.
IAN D. COLVIN.

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER I
" THE NATURAL ALLY "
That redoubtable Hamburger, Dr. Lappenberg,1 sur
mises that German traders came to England before the
first German invasion. From our knowledge of German
method, we may regard this as probable ; but we are
upon firmer ground when we reach the letter from
Charlemagne to Offa, King of Mercia, preserved by the
Venerable Bede.2 The Emperor complains that Eng
lish traders have been palming themselves off as pil
grims, thereby evading " the fixed tolls in the regular
places." He nevertheless promises security and justice
for Enghsh merchants, and asks for reciprocity. When
Eadgythe, daughter of King Athelstan, married the
Emperor Charles the Great, " the German merchants,"
as Lappenberg remarks, " must have found them
selves in a very favourable position in England."
Our preferential policy seems to begin with Ethelred,
nicknamed " the Unready," who flourished, if the
term mav be used, between 978 and 1016. A docu-
ment of his time, relating to the institutions of London,
refers to the German merchants as " subjects of the
Emperor (homines imperatoris), who arrive in their
1 Urkundliche Geschichte, p. 3 et seq.
2 Bcedae, Hist. Ecc., I, iv. c. 22.

2 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
ships." The proclamation testifies that these people
are worthy of the same good laws as the Londoners
themselves (bonarum legum digni), and gives them
a preferential status over other foreigners, who are
also named — Frenchmen (Ponthieu), Normans, Flem
ings (Hogge), and people of Liege (Liittich) and
Brabant (Nivelle). The subjects of the Emperor were
allowed to buy our chief products, wool and tallow, on
board their ships, " whereby probably the payment of
certain market duties was avoided." They were not,
however, allowed to buy before the citizens — a position
to be reversed in later times. The Portreeves were
forbidden to put upon them any trading fine, a remark
suggesting friction between foreign and municipal
policy. On Christmas Eve and at Easter-time the men
of the Emperor were to pay a bounty of two pieces of
grey and one piece of brown cloth, 10 lb. of pepper,
five pairs of men's gloves, and two small barrels of
vinegar. To whom these httle gifts were made is not
clear ; but Lappenberg surmises that they went to the
City authorities. And Lappenberg is no doubt right ;
for, as we shall find later, the German merchant in
mediaeval times had a regular scale of these perquisites,
ranging from a keg of sturgeon for the Lord Mayor to
a dried stockfish for the humble clerk of the customs.
Lappenberg also surmises that as these gifts were
made in the winter, when there was no sea-going, the
German merchants had already the right to hold
property on the banks of the Thames, and lived in
London at least through the winter months. But this
is to go further than the book : if the Germans win
tered in London, we may suppose that they were
" hosted " in the houses of the London citizens. All
the evidence goes to show that they did not succeed

"THE NATURAL ALLY" 3
in breaking through this custom before the Norman
Conquest. King Canute further improved the aheady happy
position of the German merchant in our midst by
arranging a marriage between his daughter and the
son of Conrad II, who became the Emperor Henry III.
Freeman, who never grows tired of belauding the
Germans and abusing the French, tells us that, in the
time of Edward the Confessor, " The German connec
tion was cultivated by the patriotic party as a counter
poise to the French tendencies of the King." x German
bishops were much in fashion, their, promotion being
apparently one of the main characteristics of Enghsh
patriotism in those days. Harold followed the same
\line of policy : " All the foreigners promoted by Harold,
or in the days of his influence, were natives of those
kindred Teutonic lands whose sons might still almost
be looked upon as fellow-countrymen." Freeman is
not, however, quite comfortable about this German
ising of the Church of England : he makes the point
that " one whose blood, sjpeech, and manners had not
wholly lost the traces of ancient brotherhood would be
more acceptable ... to England than a mere French
man " ; but nevertheless " its results were not wholly
satisfactory." " I know of no reason to believe," he
goes on, " that any of these Lotharingian prelates
proved actual traitors to England ; but they certainly
did not, as a class, offer the same steady resistance to
French influences as the men who had been born in the
land. . . . Still something was gained." 2
1 Norman Conquest, vol. ii. p. 57.
2 Ibid., p. 81. Ealdred, the Archbishop of York, was not a German ; but
he had no doubt a " sacred friendship " with the German Emperor, for he
spent a whole year at Cologne, and reformed the English Church on " the
well-ordered churches of Germany." He surrendered York to William, to
the disgust of that staunch English city.

4 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Our excellent Freeman is again a little disturbed by
the remarkable circumstance that, although Harold
had been in close and constant alliance with Germany,
William of Poictiers, the Norman chronicler, boasts
that the German Emperor promised William his sup
port in the Conquest. " It is," he says, " utterly im
possible to see what interest either the young king or
his successive archiepiscopal advisers could have in
supporting the claims of Wilham against the claims of
Harold." 1 Lappenberg furnishes the answer : " Wil
liam," he says, " was vigilant and indefatigable in
engaging to his interest some of the most influential
men at the Imperial Court, for which object the means,-
irresistible in those times, were supplied him from the
wealth of his newly acquired dominion. The chief
councillor of the Emperor, Adalbert, Archbishop of
Bremen, was by his largesse bribed to intrigue for the
security of the munificent conqueror." 2 A German
archbishop who takes a bribe from Wilham on the one
side, and German bishops who surrender to Wilham
on the other — that is not the sort of coincidence
which encourages the detached historian to take even
Freeman's estimate of the patriotic value of German
ecclesiastics. But when we look for the causes of great events, we
shall generally find that there is something more sub
stantial than even a gift or a comphment to an arch
bishop. William was a great soldier of fortune, and
being also a statesman, he understood the sources of
power. And the centre of power in his time was the
German Empire. The emperors aimed at universal sove
reignty : their claim was only disputed by the Popes.
The history of the Normans in Italy is too obscure to
1 Freeman, vol. iii. p. 309. 2 Lappenberg, Norman Kings, p. lis.

"THE NATURAL ALLY" 5
afford any certain evidence, but nearer home we find
a clue. William diligently sought an alliance with
Flanders. Now Flanders was even at that time vital
to Germany. It was a main outlet and a main inlet
of German commerce : its harbours were crowded with
the ships of the Baltic, Genoa, and Spain. The Flemish
cities were aheady wealthy, and with their wealth was
bound up the prosperity of Cologne and the Rhineland.
" The Flemish Count," says Freeman, quoting William
the Chronicler, " was in name a vassal of the Roman
Emperor ; in truth he was the stay and glory of his
counsels. Rarely did he condescend to visit the Im
perial Court ; when he stooped so far, Counts, Mar
quesses, Dukes, the mighty Primates of the German
Church, even Kings themselves, looked on him with
wonder and admiration." One of the main routes of
pilgrimage and overland commerce passed from the
great city of Bruges1 to Cologne, and so up the Rhine
to Mainz, and from there either to Constantinople by
way of Budapest, or by Augsburg, Innsbruck, and the
Brenner Pass to Venice and the Mediterranean. We
shall see later how this great road influenced the
commerce and pohtics of Europe. In the meantime,
I only name it to show how Cologne depended on the
Netherlands. Wilham, then, wooed Matilda of Flanders. The
Pope opposed this marriage on grounds so obscure that
the canonists and historians have been fighting over
them ever since. To me as a plain man it seems obvious
that the Pope opposed the marriage because it allied
the Norman power with the Empire, an alliance dan-
1 Even in Canute's time Bruges was a world market. The Encomium
Emmce, written about 1042, says : " Hoc castellum (Bruggense) Flandrensibus
incolis incolitur, quod turn frequentia negociatorum, turn affluentia omnium,
quae prima mortales ducunt famosissimum habetur."

6 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
gerous both to Italy and Rome. However that may be,
the masterful William had his way : he married the
lady, and the Pope's consent was given afterwards.
Now, this marriage is important to us for several reasons.
It gave Wilham three things necessary to conquest —
ships, money, and men. " The Flemings above all,"
says Freeman, " the countrymen of Matilda, pressed
eagerly to his standard, and they formed an important
element in the Conquest and in the settlement which
followed it."1 Wilham's own ship was a gift from
Matilda. The German Emperor at that time was a
mere boy : the power of the Empire lay in the hands
of two clerics, one our simoniacal friend, the Archbishop
of Bremen, the other the Archbishop of Cologne. The
latter, we may surmise, stood with Flanders ; the
former was of special importance to Wilham, because
he controlled the trade of the Baltic, from which came
ships and all that was necessary to shipping — pitch,
hemp, flax, sails, masts, and timber.
But why was Flanders so deeply interested in the
conquest of England ? The romantic historian will
reply that Matilda was a loving and dutiful wife. No
doubt she was, although mahcious poets of the time
suggest that William was practised in the gentle art
of wife-beating, and kicked and cudgelled her into the
marriage.2 But there must have been other reasons.
Now we know that even in the ninth century the
Flemish weavers looked on England as their wool-
farm, and that England was then to Flanders what
the Southern States of America are now to Lancashire.3
We know also that Italy was a competitor for English
1 Freeman, vol. iii. pp. 312, 381 et seq.
2 Ibii., vol. iii. p. 655. He anticipated his rights under English Common
Law. Sec Blackstone, vol. ii. Bk. 3, c. 2.
3 Welsford, Strength of England, p. 27.

"THE NATURAL ALLY" 7
wool, and we shall see later the fierceness and wide
effects of this competition. So it may be that Flanders
hoped by the alliance and the Conquest to confirm her
hold on the wool supply, which was Vital to her exist
ence.1 And this would furnish a further explanation for
the hostility of the Pope to the Norman-Flemish match.
I lay no great stress on these arguments. The main
fact is that William conquered England, and that the
Norman and Angevin kings maintained a policy of
friendship with Germany and hostility to France. The
alliance was both commercial and political. " The
merchants of the imperial havens," says Freeman,
quoting Wilham of Poictiers, " brought goodly things
. . . among their precious wares, and strangers of
Teutonic birth had settled in the land to practise the
gainful craft of the goldsmith and the moneyer."2
And again : " The rivahy between France and England
which began under Rufus went on under Henry. And
thus early in the strife Henry turned to the natural
ally of England in such a struggle, to the ally with whom
in after days we shared in defeat at Bouvines and in
victory at Waterloo. Close alliance with Germany,
the old policy of iEthelstan, Cnut, and Harold, was no
less the pohcy of the first king of the stranger dynasty
who had the least claim to be looked on as an English
man." 3
The citation of Harold, as we have seen, is unhappy :
" the natural ally of England " had refused him help
1 It might be argued that there was also a secret treaty for the supply of
mercenaries between William and the Count of Flanders. There was certainly
a standing arrangement frequently renewed between the oounts and the
Norman and Angevin kings, by which the counts received 500 marks a year
and undertook to place 1000 mounted men at the king's service when required.
Ramsay ( The Angevin Empire, p. 36) says that these treaties of retainer
" came into vogue with the Conquest."
2 Freeman, iv. p. 85.
3 Ibid.; vol. v. p. 178.

8 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
in the hour of need, and had cherished and supported
his enemy. Let us now set ourselves to discover how
this natural alliance was confirmed by marriage, cemented
in free trade, and maintained through some hundreds
of years by those Teutonic adepts in the " gainful
craft of the money er," the merchants of the German
cities.

CHAPTER II
THE PRICE OF A KING
William of Malmesbury tells us that, in the time of
Henry I, London was visited by merchants of all coun
tries ; but chiefly from Germany, " whose ships also
went to York." x This commerce was no doubt strength
ened by one of those marriages so much in favour with
the practical-minded Lappenberg as being good for
German trade. Adeliza, the daughter of Henry I, was
wedded at Mainz on 7th January 1114 to the Emperor
Henry V. The match was made the pretext for a heavy
exaction of money from the English taxpayer — an art
of which our Henry was a master. " It is even hinted,"
says Freeman, "that Henry of Germany took Hemy
of England as his model of government, and that he
specially sought to imitate him in the success with
which he contrived to wring money out of his people." 2
This "first Enghsh bride of the Caesars," as Freeman
poetically calls her, returned to England as a widow
in 1126, to lead the party in revolt against Stephen.
Stephen, we are told, was a good and gentle prince,
but he was so unfortunate as to fall out with the Church,
and his action in imprisoning several bishops, because
they built too many castles, was justly reprobated.
Matilda gained the enthusiastic adherence of these
persecuted prelates, and was acclaimed Queen on the
1 De Gestis Pontificorum, Prolog. I, II, and III.
2 Freeman, vol. v. p. 184. Freeman forgets Eadgythe.
9

10 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
distinct understanding that she would never again
marry a foreigner— a promise she incontinently broke
the following year.1 The Londoners, who had at that
time a strong prejudice against foreign influence, took
the side of Stephen. They asked 'Matilda for the
restoration of the laws of Edward,2 but asked in vain ;
and the Dowager Empress, after an eight years' struggle,
lost all by her arrogance that she had gained by her
courage. Her chief claim to memory is that she was
the mother of Henry II, first and greatest of the
Angevins. And now we come into a region of our subject in
which documentary evidence is more frequent and more
definite. And this evidence enables us to read not
only forwards but backwards. The first document is
a letter written for Henry by Thomas a Becket, his
great Chancellor, in 1157, only three years after his
(Henry's) coronation. It is addressed to that famous
Emperor, Frederic Barbarossa, and was carried to the
Imperial Court at Wurzburg, along with many costly
presents, by a special ambassador. The letter promises
German subjects safety of commerce : " Sint inter nos
et populos nostros dilectiones et pacis unitas indivisa,
commercia tuta." This offer, as Lappenberg surmises,
was accompanied by something still more definite — a
charter of royal protection for the " house of the Cologne
merchants in London," their lives and their goods.
The King proclaims that the Cologners are to be treated
1 She married Geoffrey of Anjou, although, in the vulgar phrase, " she
was old enough to be his mother."
2 The old Enghsh law forbade foreigners to live in the City except as
" paying guests " of the citizens, who received a commission on their sales.
Ethelred evaded this law when he gave the Men of the Emperor permission
to transact business on shipboard. This custom, for which Londoners stub
bornly fought all through the Middle Ages, was called "hosting." (Cf. E.
Lipson, Economic History of England, vol. i. pp. 457, 458.)

THE PRICE OF A KING 11
as his people and his friends, and they are given leave
to sell Rhine wine in the London market.1
These documents will repay study. They show that
Cologne had aheady a Guildhall in London, and it
follows that, although it has not been preserved, there
must have been an earlier charter. Such German
privileges, as we shall see, were reaffirmed in every
reign, and sometimes several times in a single reign.
We may assume, then, that Henry II was not granting
new privileges to the Cologners, but merely affirming
old ; and this is the more likely, as we find in the Bruns
wick archives a boast of the Cologners of commercial
privileges in England, given in the time of William the
Conqueror, " before all other Germans."
Now we know that Bremen had a price, and that
WiUiam paid it. Is it possible that he also paid a
price for the benevolence of Cologne, and that this
price was these commercial charters, which put the
merchants of Cologne on a level with the merchants of
London, and, in fact, estabhshed free trade for the
Cologners in England ? These were no ordinary privi
leges. The people of Cologne were definitely put on
a level with the King's subjects ; they were given the

1 " Henricus . . . precipio vobis quod custodiatis et manutenatis et pro-
tegatis homines et cives Coloniensis, sicut homines meos et amicos, et omnes
res et mercaturas suas et possessiones, ita, quod neque do domo sua London,
neque de rebus, neque de mercaturis suis, aut aliquibus aliis ad eos spectanti-
bus, injuriam ahquam vel contumeliam eis faciatis, neque fieri permittatis ;
quia et omnia sua sunt in custodia et proteccione mea. Et ideo ferniam
pacem habeant faciendo rectas consuetudines suas, et nullas exigatis ab eis
novas consuetudines vel rectitudines quas faeere non dabeant nee faoere sole-
bant. Et si quis super hoc maligno forifecit, plenam eis meam sine dilatione,
justioiam fieri faciatis. Testibus rioardo de Luci et Willielmo filio Adelmi,
dapifero apud Northampton."
The wine lioence reads : " Conoedo ut homines Coloniensis vendant vinum
suum ad forum, quo venditur vinum franoiginum, scilicet sextarium pro iii
denariis." A third charter of Henry II, dated St. John's Eve, 1175, extends
the royal protection granted to the citizens, merchants, and men of Cologne
to all the dominions of the king in Franoe and England.
Lappenberg, Urkundliche Geschichte, pt. II, p. 4.

12 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
right to hold property in London, and were not to be
affected by new customs. By this last-named pro
vision they were placed in a position more favourable
than the Enghsh themselves. In course of time, as
customs rose, the Germans continued to pay the old
rates, German trade was thus given a preference not
merely over other foreign trade, but over goods im
ported by the King's own subjects.
What favour Henry received in return for these
grants we do not know ; but it is safe to suppose that
the " gainful moneyers " of Cologne financed his wars
in Wales and in France at the exorbitant rates of in
terest then prevailing. Henry II was a firm behever
in the " natural " policy of England. His daughter
Matilda married Henry of Saxony and Bavaria. To
keep the friendship of the Emperor, he took sides with
Barbarossa against the Church in the Schism — which
was " more than English feeling could support " — and
narrowly escaped serious trouble with the Pope. He
was a great king, and it was, no doubt, a magnificent
policy, but I cannot find that it added much to the
wealth or the security of England.
And if England had no cause to thank Henry for
his friendship with Barbarossa, still less had she cause
to rejoice over Richard's connection with Germany.
The tale has been often told : it is the theme of song
and legend ; but I confess I do not find it romantic.
The main facts are soon stated. Richard, from 1190
to 1192, was crusading in the Mediterranean and Pales
tine. The German Empire was using the Crusades to
establish its supremacy in the Balkans and the Near
East. The Emperor Barbarossa perished in the great
march through Hungary, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and
Asia Minor. But his son, Henry VI, laid claim to

THE PRICE OF A KHNG 13
Sicily ; Isaac, a Greek cousin of LeojWd of Austria,
had been established in Cyprus ; and Conrad of Mont
ferrat, who was cousin both to the EnrWror and the
Duke of Austria, had been made King W Palestine.1
In those days there was a common belief t\hat English
men had tails, and Richard had to deny t\he soft im
peachment in the streets of Messina. His Imethod of
meeting the insult was to sack the town. \Again, at
Acre, Conrad was blamed by the soldiers for \the exe
crable provisioning of the army. Richard's \soldiers
marched to a song with the anti-German refrain of
" Curse the Marquis and die." 2 Richard insulted
Leopold of Austria and called the Germans contu
melious names. In this and other ways, as Ram\say
says, " he challenged the hostility of Henry VI and the
German party in Palestine." 3 When Conrad was mu<r-
deredby the assassins of " the Old Man of the Mountain,'"
the Germans affected to believe that Richard was behind >
the crime. In these circumstances it was unfortunate
that our King should have found himself shipwrecked
at the head of the Adriatic, and should have elected to
go home by the overland route. On 20th December
1192 he was arrested by Duke Leopold in the suburbs
of Vienna. The Duke was not at war with England, and had no
legal title to make the King his prisoner. For laying
hands on a Crusader he was excommunicated by Celes
tine III. But the Duke and his suzerain, the Em
peror, were firm believers in real politik, a science not
1 A few years later, as part of the same vast projeot, Count Baldwin of
Flanders was made Emperor of Constantinople in defiance of the Pope's
commands, Constantinople being then a Christian city.
2 " Tunc Marohisum detestantur
Subtracto solamine,
Per quern escis defraudantur
In famis discrimine."
3 The Angevin Empire, p. 282 et seq., by Sir J. H. Eamsay.

14 THE (GERMANS IN ENGLAND
much affected foy the niceties of law. The Duke put
his prisoner hy? the castle of Durrenstein, and held him
for ransom. f'The Emperor gently, but firmly, pointed
out to Leopcbld that, being his overlord, his Caesarean
Majesty ha</»i a right to a share in the windfall. On
14th February 1193 a treaty was made at Wurzburg
by which 'the ransom was fixed at 100,000 marks, to
be shared, equally between the Emperor and the Duke.
Richard/ promised, as part of the bargain, to give the
hand o*f his niece, Eleanor of Brittany, to one of the
DukeTs sons, on whom the Duke's portion was to be
settled. In the meantime Savaric, Bishop of Bath,
who/ claimed to be a cousin of the Emperor,1 was sent
by/ an anxious country to intervene on their King's
e&ialf. He was followed by the Abbots of Boxley and
lobertsbridge ; but they interceded in vain. On 23rd
jfVLarch Richard was handed over to the Emperor, and
r brought before the Diet. "The King," says Ramsay,
" was formally charged with having supported Tancred in
his usurpation of Sicily, in derogation of the Emperor's
rights; with having unjustly deprived Isaac of his
kingdom, and instigated the murder of the Marquis
of Montferrat. The insult to the Duke of Austria,
and Richard's general behaviour to the Germans in
Palestine, formed another count in the indictment.
We are assured that he made a spirited defence, at
the close of which the Emperor gave him the kiss of
peace, saving the ransom, to which Richard agreed.
The total revenue of England at that time is esti
mated by Ramsay at something under £20,000 ; and
1 The learned Stubbs dived deep into Savario's genealogy but failed to
trace the connection, so it may be that Savario belonged to the genus eoolesi-
aBtioal snob, not unknown even in these days. It is certain, however that
he had a saored friendship with the Emperor, who afterwards made' him
Chanoellor of Burgundy.

THE PRICE OF A KING 15
100,000 marks he puts at £75,000. So that England
and Richard's other territories were faced with a demand
that can only be compared with the war indemnity
put on France by Germany in 1871. On April 19th,
however, the light-hearted King wrote home to Eleanor
and the justices that " the terms made with the Em
peror are well worth the money." x On the same date
the Emperor also wrote an exhortation to England to pay,
" and thereby show their faith in their King." Eng
land responded nobly. Clergy and laity paid a fourth
on all rents and movables ; gold and silver plate were
melted down, and the host was elevated in pewter.
The Cistercians offered their wool. In the meantime
the Emperor, evidently an adept in the " gainful craft
of the moneyer," had raised .the ransom to 150,000
marks, the extra 50,000 being in commutation of
mihtary service in Sicily, rashly promised by Richard.
In the new treaty of 29th June the Emperor's share
has risen to 130,000 marks, and Leopold's has shrunk
to 20,000. In the meantime, also, John and his ally, Philip of
France, neither of whom was anxious for the King's
return, offered the Emperor a subsidy to keep Richard
prisoner. The Emperor had pledged himself to release
the King on 17th January 1194, and had received a
large part of the money on that condition. But the
new offer was too tempting to be refused, and when
the 17th January arrived Henry postponed his de
cision until 2nd February.
The German princes, we are asked to believe, were
shocked at such perfidy. Alternatively, they had a
quarrel with the Emperor over the murder of the
Bishop of Louvain, of which Henry was shrewdly
1 Roger of Hoveden, ed. Stubbs, vol. iii. p. 202.

16 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
suspected. He now displayed a disturbing tendency to
defy them and rely on an alliance with Phihp and John.
They were consequently anxious to procure Richard's
freedom. When, therefore, the Emperor seemed dis
posed to postpone the release of Richard until the
following Michaelmas, the Electors protested. Richard
obhgingly came to their assistance ; a compromise was
patched up ; the affair of the murder was buried in
oblivion upon the one side, and upon the other Richard
was released. " Thus," says Ramsay, " on Friday the
4th February the King was fairly set free, after more
than thirteen months of most unjust detention.1 But
even then he was required to leave hdsta^ges for the
unpaid balance of his ransom. Nor were the German
magnates too proud to accept douceurs for their kind
offices in the matter."
But this is not the end of the story. The Arch
bishop of Cologne had been Richard's chief ally and
friend in the negotiations. The ransom was fixed in
marks " in the weight of Cologne " ; and, according
to Lappenberg, Cologne gave Richard assistance — prob
ably by way of credit. When Richard arrived at the
city on his way home, the Archbishop preached a moving
sermon on a text not altogether complimentary to the
Emperor and his subjects : " The Lord hath sent His .
angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod,
and from all the expectation of the people of the
Jews" (Acts xii. 11). Cologne also, it was evident,
expected its douceur. The Archbishop accompanied
Richard to Antwerp, and on the way, either in the
1 To reconcile Richard and his people to the ransom, the Emperor had
promised to crown him King of Aries. The Emperor having no power over
that territory, it seemed an easy thing to grant ; but the promise was never
theless broken, so that all England got out of the arrangement was the restora
tion of a picturesque but avaricious and immoral monarch.

THE PRICE OF A KING 17
town or duchy of Louvain, procured the royal signature
to a freibrief, or privilege, to " his beloved Cologners, in
which he releases them not only from their yearly pay
ment of two English shillings for their Guildhall at
London, but also from all other taxes to the King,
payable either from persons or goods at London or in
any other part of England."1
In such auspicious circumstances was made the first
recorded grant of complete free trade in England. It
will be noted that all restrictions are swept away with
a courageous stroke of the pen. Even the rent of
their Guildhall is removed, and they are liberated both
from customs and poll tax. Their traders are no longer
confined to London, they are admitted to every part
of the country. And not merely Cologne, for it is sur
mised by the learned Germans who have studied the
subject that Cologne represented in this matter a
confederation of German cities, which used its Guild
hall and traded under its shadow. The probabilities
of this view we shall examine later.
1 Stubbs makes some difficulty about the date of this charter, " Louvain,
February 6," and supposes that it must have been granted at Cologne, cf. his
edition of Roger of Hoveden, vol. iii. ; but the dooument is quite clear on
the subject, and may be given here if only because it shows that even at that
time the Bernhardi family took a benevolent interest in England :
" Riohardus dei gratia rex angliae, dux normannise, aquitanioe et comes
andigauiae, archiepisoopis, abbatibus, oomitibus, baronibus, justiciariis, vioe-
oomitibus, ministris et omnibus Balliuis et fidelibus tocius anglie salutem.
Sciatis, quod nos quietos olamasse dilectos nostros ciues de Colonia et mer-
candisam suam de illis duobus solidis, quos solebant dare de Gildhalla sua
London, et de omnibus aliis consuetudinibus et demandis, que pertinent ad nos
in London et per totam terram nostram in anglia. Conoessimus eoiam eis
saluum ire et saluum venire in totam terram nostram et quod libere possint
ire ad ferias per totam terram nostram et emere et vendere et in villa London,
et ahbi. Quare volumus et firmiter precipimus, quod predicte ciues de
Colonia prenominatas libertates et liberas consuetudines habeant per totam
terram nostram anglie. Testibus H(enrico) Luce de louanio. Ganfrido de
Sey. Thoma filio Bernardi. Wilhelmo de stagno. Wilhelmo de sancte
marie Ecclesia. Datum per manum W(ilhelmi) Elyensis episcopi apostolice
sedis legati, canceUarii nostri, apud Louanium, vi. die februarii anno quinto
Regni nostri." — Grosses Priviligienbuch des Stadt Koln, i. 55, reprinted in
Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Koln, ed. Dr. Leonard Ennen and Dr. Gottfried
Eckertz. B

18 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
In the meantime let us pass on to consider the price
paid by John for his privilege of sharing with our
"natural ally" the defeat of Bouvines. We have
seen aheady how Henry, attracted by the dazzhng
prospect of an alliance with the Empire, had supported
the anti-pope, to the disgust of his subjects. John in
the same cause fell deeper into the ecclesiastical mire.
His alliance with the Empire, necessary to its quarrels
with France, brought upon his subjects the spiritual
terrors of excommunication, and upon himself disaster
and defeat. But although he was willing to do much
for Germany, John hesitated for some time before he
confirmed Richard's privileges to Cologne. London
was giving trouble. We have seen that in 1191 it had
asked Matilda for the English laws of Edward, and it
was already showing that illiberal hatred of foreigners
for which it has been condemned by all our broad-
minded historians. In 1191 it had demanded from
John its independence, and promised him its support
upon that condition. Lackland, who was always
ready to pay with promises, had then granted municipal
self-government.1 It was as easy for John, the protector,
to grant London a commune as it was for Richard, the
absentee king, to grant Cologne free trade. But when
John became king he had to reconcile these two grants,
a more difficult business. On the one hand, Cologne
was most helpful to his nephew, Otto, son of Duke
Henry the Lion and Matilda of England, and the hope
of the family. It was at Cologne in 1198 that Otto
was elected King of the Romans — in other words, King
of Germany — and it was the Archbishop of Cologne
who crowned him at Aix la Chapelle. On 4th June 1202
we find John writing a letter of thanks to the citizens
1 Ramsay, The Angevin Empire, pp. 313,^317.

THE PRICE OF A KING 19
of Cologne for the services they had rendered to his
nephew. Two years later he repeated his thanks, and
exhorted them, as they had started Otto on his career
of good fortune, to help him to the imperial crown,
the pinnacle of his ambitions. In the meantime he
gave them protection for their goods and possessions,
including the Guildhall, but ignored his brother's free-
trade charter, and insisted that Cologne should pay
taxes in England as heretofore. On 25th December
1205, the imperial crown being still withheld from the
nephew, the uncle gives Cologne a letter of protection
for their wines and goods in London. But he not only
demands payment of the duties, he adds the condition
that they remain true to King Otto. Yet the crown
still dangled in the future : the party of the Hohen
staufens were active both in Rome and in Germany.
John lavished English money and English trade privi
leges in the great cause. In 1206 we find him grant
ing one Hildebrand of Saxony safe conduct for himself
and his goods throughout England.1 Otto himself had
visited England in the same year. In March 1209,
Duke Henry of Saxony, Otto's brother, received 1000
marks from the London treasury,2 and in August
500 marks, as the first instalment of a pension, and
on his appeal the merchants of Utrecht were granted
safe conduct in England. Such lofty arguments were
not used in vain. On 4th October 1209 Otto was
crowned in Rome, John paying the expenses of the
ceremony.3 But the glory was transient. Eighteen
months later the Hohenstaufens triumphed ; Otto
was excommunicated and Frederic elected. Evidently
the bribes must be enlarged and repeated. On 24th
1 Lappenberg, Vrkundliche Geschichte.
2 Fcedera, vol. i. p. 103. 3 Ramsay, The Angevin Empire, p. 435.

20 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
July 1213, John at last confirmed all rights to the
merchants of Cologne, making only one exception —
" saving the rights of London." These, said the King,
were beyond his power to dispose. London, evidently,
was not enthusiastic about the " natural ally." But
Otto's difficulties are pressing, and Philip of France is
making headway. Two days after the new grant to
Cologne, John commands his civil servants to give safe
conduct to the merchants of Bremen. For the first
time the great northern town enters our story. There
is still a condition. The safe conduct is granted
"against payment of dues." We shall presently see
how that condition also disappears as the natural
alhance grows in strength and power. But the King
of England is still in a position to make terms. In
1214 he orders the citizens of Southampton to allow the
merchants of the Emperor free passage — as long as
they do not trade with the enemy. Nevertheless the
people of England are restive. On 7th April the King
gives orders for the protection of German merchants
"from such ill-treatment as they had been receiving
from the men of Taunton."
Thus we see in the reigns of Richard and John the
merchants of Germany, north as well as south, firmly
established in the ports and capital of England. Eng
lishmen are aheady hostile ; but the Germans are under
royal protection. What England gains in return we
may briefly note. Otto and John are ignominiously de
feated at Bouvines ; the people of Cologne desert them
both. John and Otto, failures as monarchs and men,
die unregretted, nothing left of all their dreams of
empire and power. But their debts and their obh
gations to the German merchants remain.

CHAPTER III
SIMON DE MONTFORT
" This Simon, Earl of Leicester, as numbers asserted, wrought many
shining miracles."— Florence of Worcester.
And now we come to the long and lamentable reign of
Henry III. He also was a firm believer in the " natural
ally," and not only had a sister to make a German
marriage, but a brother to make a German Emperor.
France is still the enemy, Germany is still the friend.
We have seen that Cologne deserted the cause of Otto
and John after Bouvines, and we may dimly surmise
that trouble between Cologne and London followed.
Henry came to the throne in 1219 ; in the fourth year
of his reign he either restored or renewed to Cologne
its charter to occupy its Guildhall in London.1 In
1230 he gave the Brunswick merchants a letter of pro
tection to trade in England. On 8th November 1235
he renewed the privileges of the Cologners, not only
for its Guildhall, but for the whole of England, with
a further letter of protection for the fair of Hoyland
in Yorkshire. He also again released them " from the
payment of these two shiUings which they were wont
to pay out of their guildhall in London, and from all
other customs and demands which pertain unto us
either in London or in any other place in our dominions ;
and that they may safely resort unto fairs throughout
1 " Cives Colonise reddunt computum de xxx marcis pro habenda saisina
de Gildhalla sua in Londonia, in thesauro liberaverunt et quieti sunt — Magnus
Rotulus anno regni 4 Henrici III. — R. Madox, History of the Exchequer, I, i.
p. 414. 21

22 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
our whole kingdom and buy and sell in the City of
London." x In fact, he restored the treaty of Richard.
At this time negotiations are proceeding for the
marriage of the King's sister with the Emperor. In
1237 Henry gives special privileges to the Gothlanders,
another example of the growing importance of the North.
In the mid-year of the century Lubeck sacks and burns
Copenhagen, and several London merchants who are
robbed and injured appeal to their city for protection.
Negotiations follow, and on 1st August 1251 a treaty
is concluded between London and Lubeck. The treaty
is a curious document, for it is witnessed, among others,
by Arnold, an Enghshman yet " Alderman of the
Alemaynes," a merchant of Ghent, a merchant of
Bremen, and seven Cologne merchants. The Germans
at this time, it is plain, are acting together ; they have
their own alderman in London, a citizen of London,
but paid to look after their interests. Of this arrange
ment more later. In the meantime, it is to be noted
that the arrangements having been concluded, the City
of London cordially invites the City of Lubeck to send
their merchants and their merchandise to London and
other places in England.
Considering the treatment Copenhagen and the
London merchants had just received, the invitation might
seem a little rash ; but again " considerations of higher
pohcy," as Lappenberg says, were influencing events.
The King's brother, Richard, Count of Cornwall, was
all-powerful in London. His tin-mines not only made
him enormously rich, but brought him into close con
tact with the merchants of Germany, who then as now
controlled the metal market. That patriotic chronicler,
Matthew Paris, tells us that the Earl made a " shameful
1 Hakluyt's trs., vol. i. p. 323.

SIMON DE MONTFORT 23
profit " out of a monopoly on exchange, having the
power to levy a tax on any business transaction, how
ever small, as well as on anyone undertaking a journey.1
Richard was, in fact, an adept in the " gainful craft of
the moneyer." He was also ambitious, and as he had
wealth and power, even the imperial crown did not
seem beyond his reach. Owing to certain loan trans
actions, to which Paris refers,2 his weaker brother was,
so to speak, in his pocket, and it was easy to use the
pohcy of England for the furtherance of his aims in
Germany. Hence, it is surmised, the invitation to
Lubeck. In the spring of 1257, Richard's sagacious
policy was rewarded : he was elected King of the
Romans by the German princes assembled at Frankfort
on Main. " The money cries," wrote a contemporary
satirist, "it is for my sake that Cornwall is married
to Rome." " When the Earl took his departure from
England," says Paris mournfully, " there was carried
away with him, never to return, seven hundred thousand
pounds, blood-stained by many crimes, besides his
daily increasing revenues in England, which also fol
lowed him. By such means was England robbed and
reduced to pitiful want, whilst foreigners gloried in her
shame." But Paris did not know, or does not state, all that
was going on behind the scenes. Richard left Yar
mouth on 27th April, and was crowned by the Arch
bishop of Mayence at Aix la Chapelle on 17th May.
Between election and coronation Henry granted a royal
charter to Lubeck 3 for a period of seven years. But
1 Matthew Paris (Rolls Series), vol. iii. p. 230. 2 Ibid., p. 115.
3 Hakluyt translates it thus (vol. i. p. 325) : " Know ye that at the instant
request of our well-beloved and trusty brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall,
being of late elected King of the Romans, we have received under our pro
tection and defence, and under our safe and secure conduct, the citizens of
Lubeck in Alemain (Germany), with all their goods and wares, which they

24 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the Liibeckers were not yet squared. They were, in
fact, trifling with the claims of Alfonso, King of Castile,
and weighing trade in Spain against trade in England.
The Bishop of Lubeck, however, had a most satisfactory
interview with Richard on the 6th of October at Speyer,
and the matter was arranged to their mutual satis
faction. Richard visited England shortly afterwards,
and returned with an edict from his brother (given on
15th June 1260), assuring " the merchants of the
Alemannic Empire, who possess at London the house
commonly called the Guildhall of the Teutons, of royal
protection for all those liberties and customs which
they enjoyed in his time and the times of his ancestors."
Thus there was satisfaction on both sides : the Germans
were secure in England, and Richard was secure in
Germany. The camel had got fairly into the tent. It
was now not only Cologne that had its Guildhall in
London, but " the merchants of the Alemannic Empire."
The exact measure of their privileges does not appear
in this document. What they were we shall see in good
time ; for the present we must follow our story.
And now appears, " in shining armour," that austere
and terrible yet benignant figure, Simon de Montfort.
It is strange that he should have led a movement
against foreigners, since he was by birth a Norman ;
and yet it will be remembered that Normans in those
days still regarded Normandy and England as one
country. And although he was an aristocrat, he was
yet a friend of the commons. As early as 1249 we find
him writing to the King from Gascony : "lam hated
shall bring or oause to be brought into our kingdom. We have also granted
unto them that of all their goods and merchandise nothing shall be seized
unto the use of ourselves or of any other without their own oonsent, but that
they may freely sell and exeroise traffic therewith, acoording as they shall
think expedient."

SIMON DE MONTFORT 25
by the great people of the land because I protect your
rights and those of the poor people against them."
As Simon married the King's sister, both Richard of
Cornwall and the Emperor Frederick II were his
brothers-in-law. Nevertheless we find him, on his
return to England, taking the side of the Barons and
the common people,' who were for the moment united
against both the Imperial and Roman policy. To
examine this pohcy would take us deep into the great
quarrel between the Popes and the Hohenstaufens then
dividing Europe.1 Sufficient to say that Rome tempted
Henry with the crown of Germany for his brother, and
of Sicily for his son. Both were expensive ; for the
privilege of fighting the Hohenstaufens in Sicily Henry
promised Alexander 135,541 marks. Over and above
this sum his debts — largely to his brother Richard,
and therefore to Germany — ran to 350,000 marks.2
He extorted illegal amercements from London ; he
stole his sister's jointure, and when Simon protested,
aspersed her honour to excuse his fraud. He repudiated
his debt to Montfort for the wars in Gascony. By turns
he stormed at and fawned upon his brother-in-law.
" I have great dread of thunder and lightning," the
King once said to the Earl, " but, by God's head, I
fear thee more than all the storms in the world." And
he had reason. The Earl placed himself at the head
of barons, knights, and commons in a campaign against
the foreigners, who were eating up the country. By
the provisions of Oxford of 1258, " both Poitevin and
Savoyard were banished the realm of England. After
their expulsion the crooked and extortionate dealings
1 See Appendix I.
2 In a single year (1244) Rome drew from England 60,000 marks, equal
to £720,000 now in point of expense of living. — Adam Anderson's Origin of
Commerce.

26 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
before mentioned gradually came to an end."1 And
Matthew Paris describes how the nobles guarded the
seaports, re-enacted Magna Carta, demanded equal laws
for rich and poor, and made the King promise to consult
them on national affairs. After the Parhament they
met in the house of the Preacher Brethren at Oxford.2
" There," says Matthew Paris, these Mediaeval Diehards
"renewed their oath and confirmed their determina
tion, that they would not allow themselves for hfe or
death, or for their possessions, for hatred or love, or
for any reason whatever, to be beat from or weakened
in their design of purifying from ignoble foreigners
the kingdom which gave birth to themselves and their
ancestors, and of regaining proper and commendable
laws." We are not surprised to hear that Henry, son
of Richard, King of Germany, " wavered and said
that he would on no account take such an oath with
out the advice and permission of his father." " Where
upon," continues the chronicler, " he was told plainly
and publicly that, even if his father himself would not
agree to the plan of the Barons, he should not keep
possession of one furrow of land in England."
It i's plain that things were becoming uncomfortable
for the foreigner. The Oxford Parliament did not
confine itself to the interests of the nobles. On the
contrary, it passed several resolutions favouring the
Londoners at the expense of the foreign commercial
interest. The citizens of London detested the " Guild
hall of the Teutons," because it defrauded them of their
ancient civic rights. By the age-old custom of the
1 Florence of Worcester, ed. Forester, p. 331 et seq.
2 Grossteste, the patriot Bishop of Lincoln, Chancellor of Oxford and head
of the Franciscans, was Simon's devoted friend and wise counsellor. His
Preacher Brethren, the Salvation Army of those days, kept the Earl in' touch
with popular feehng.

SIMON DE MONTFORT 27
City, foreign merchants lived in the houses of the citi
zens, who acted as their agents and took a commission
on their sales. The foreigners, although permitted to
trade, were thus kept under control ; but when the
Germans got their Guildhall, this custom, and all that
it meant to the English guilds, was set at naught.
Hence the demand of the Londoners for " the laws of
Edward" and of Magna Charta (ch. xli), for equal
treatment for all foreign merchants and " for buying
and selling by the ancient and right customs."
Not only so, but the Oxford Parliament of 1258 was
Protectionist. One of its resolutions decreed " that
the wool of the country should be worked up in Eng
land and should not be sold to foreigners, and that
everyone should use woollen cloth made within the
country and not seek over-precious raiment." 1
Here, then, begins the Parliamentary protective
pohcy in England, as far as we have knowledge, with
Simon de Montfort, Bishop Grossteste, and the Barons
at Oxford. Taken all in all, we may call it a national
pohcy — England for the English, no foreigners in con
trol, the rights of the cities over their own trade, pro
tection for English weavers, support of home industry,
justice and constitutional government. Was it Simon
de Montfort, or was it Grossteste, or was it Adam
Marsh, the Franciscan friar, who looked into the future
and saw an ideal England — its people united in agri
culture and industry, enjoying their own wealth, pro
tected by their customs, independent of the foreigner,
with a government enthroned on the national will ?
Perhaps it was all three who lived three hundred years
before their time.
1 Walter Hemingburgh, ed. 1848, i. 306, quoted by Welsford and Mac-
pherson.

28 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
It is plain that the Provisions of Oxford and West
minster were most alarming to Germany. If they
struck at the Guildhall of the Teutons, they also struck
at the trade on which it lived ; for, as we shall see,
the German trader carried the English wool to Flemish
looms, and sold the finished article in England and
elsewhere. The Provisions of Oxford struck at the
whole system.
In 1259, as we have seen, the King of Germany
was back in England, an unloved and suspected guest.
Matthew Paris says, that before he was allowed to enter
he was forced by the Barons to swear not to interfere
in English affairs. " The people wondered much," he
goes on, "that the Germans should give him liberty
to go to England with his son and Queen, the objects
most dear to him, and had not retained at least one
of them as a sort of hostage. . . . For their object
was, as they had in great measure done, to drain him
of all the rest of his money."
Paris is right in substance, but wrong in fact. The
Germans sent Richard to England to re-estabhsh their
Guildhall and check the anti-foreign and protective
pohcy of the Earl of Leicester. This is clear from the
edict to which we have aheady referred, secured by
Richard on the eve of his return. It is also clear from
the unpopularity of Richard in London, as shown by
Paris and that strange old ballad :
" The Kyng of Alemaigne bi mi leaut6
Thritti thousand pounds asked he
For to make the pees in the countrie." 1
Richard posed as a pacificator : he was recognised
by Englishmen as an enemy. In 1260 the Pope gave
1 Wright's Political Poems (Camden Society).

SIMON DE MONTFORT 29
Henry a Bull to absolve him from the Provisions of
Oxford, and there followed open war between the
King and the foreigners on one side, and Montfort and
his Norman-Enghsh party on the other. The Pope and
his ally, Richard, used the two allied weapons of boycott
and interdict. The National Party was excommuni
cated ; commerce with England was forbidden. Mont
fort rephed by stopping the export of Enghsh wool,
organising a fleet, and exhorting Enghshmen to wear
Enghsh cloth. " Great," says Pauli, " was the lamen
tation of the commercial classes on both sides of the
water when the nimble guardships of the Cinque ports
began to search foreign vessels for goods of all kinds
as well as for papal mandates and contraband of war." x
Montfort, it is plain, relied on national feeling and
the weaving interest for his support ; but he went too
fast in prohibiting the wool export. There had been
cloth woven in England from before the Conquest, but
it was coarse and undyed. The patriot wore this cloth
as the badge of his party, and Montfort exhorted the
nation " to live comfortably of their own without
foreign cloth." 2 A handle was given to the enemy when
Montfort appointed his son, Henry, Warden of Dover.
It was Henry's duty to stop the export of wool in accord
ance with the protective policy ; and he was accused
by the exporters of diverting the wool to his own use.
The charge is repeated by Thomas Wykes, a Royalist
chronicler, who calls Henry " Lanarius," or wool-
merchant. Pauli regards the charge as " unsupported
and extremely doubtful " ; but Professor Prothero,
who has forgotten both the papal interdict on trade
1 Simon de Montfort, by Reinhold Pauli, Eng. trs., 1876, p. 173 et seq.
2 Cf. Welsford, Strength of England, quoting Thomas Wykes (a chronicler
hostile to Montfort).

30 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
and the counter-embargo on wool, accepts the slander.1
To the plain man the whole affair is as clear as noonday.
The Enghsh looms were unable to absorb the wool-
crop ; smugghng must have been carried on wholesale.
Simon appointed his son as a man he could trust, and
the disappointed wool-broker set the scandal going.
But here lay the danger of the Montfort pohcy : it
ahenated the wool magnates, who depended for good
prices on the looms of Flanders and Lombardy. More
over, foreign trade was in foreign hands : wax, which
came in German ships from the Baltic ; wine from
Cologne and Bordeaux ; pepper from the Mediterranean
— such things were stopped, and rose in price. The
foreign shippers joined with the great wool magnates
against Montfort. Their united forces were too strong
for him. Prince Edward, the greatest soldier of his day,
and the King of Germany led the royalist army. In
August 1265 the Earl of Leicester found himself sur
rounded at Evesham. " By the arm of St. James ! "
he exclaimed, " they attack wisely ; not of themselves
but from me have they learned that method ; let us
commend our souls to God, since our bodies are theirs."
" And thus ended," says Paris, " the labours of that
noble man, who gave up not only his property, but
also his person, to defend the poor from oppression,
and for the maintenance of justice and the rights of
the kingdom."
The end is soon told. A Parliament was held at
Windsor in Michaelmas, 1265, to which the citizens of
London were invited. London had been fortified with
barriers and iron chains ; but with smooth words the
King's messengers persuaded her citizens to leave their
defences. When they arrived at Windsor they were
1 Professor Prothero's Life of De Montfort, a learned book.

SIMON DE MONTFORT 31
thrown into prison, and as another part of the coup
d'etat a royahst army was thrown into London.1
And this dark story has an appropriate sequel. In
1271 Guy, son of Simon de Montfort, found Henry, son
of Richard, King of Germany, in the Church of St.
Lawrence at Viterbo, and slew him, because the father
of Henry had slain the father of Guy.
1 Florence of Worcester, ed. Forester, p. 338.

CHAPTER IV
THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE1
We have now come to a point in our road at which
we may take a wider view. It is already clear that
" the Guildhall of the Germans in London " stands for
something of power in its mediaeval world. And when
Lappenberg speaks complacently of the " common
stronghold won in England " as " the weighty result
of well-directed efforts and the dexterous use of the
election of Richard of Cornwall," we are almost forced
to ask by whom these efforts were directed. And this
brings us face to face with that great, secret, and for
midable organisation known vaguely to most Enghsh
readers as the Hanseatic League. The German Hanse,
then, was a confederation of German cities, of which
the exact strength and constitution is even now not
quite decided. For no_ outsider was allowed to know
the secrets of the German Hanse ; and when perplexed
monarchs asked its ambassadors whom they repre
sented, they were put off with evasive answers. No
one ever could say exactly how many and what cities
were members of the League. The Russians spoke of
it proverbially as " the Seventy Cities," or " the Seventy-
1 My chief authorities for this chapter are : Georg Sartorius, Geschichte des
Hanseatischen Bundes (Gottingen, 1808) ; Dr. J. M. Lappenberg, Vrlcundliclie
Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg, 1851) ; Wilh.
Stieda, Hansisch - Venetianische Handelsbeziehungen im I5ten Jahrhundert
(Rostock, 1894) ; Dr. Dietrich Schafer, Die Hanse (Leipzig, 1903) ; Dr.
Arnold Kiesselbach, Die wirtscliaftlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Hanse und
die Handelsstelung Hamburgs bis in die zioeite Ilalfle des liten Jahrhunderts
(Berlin, 1907). See also map and Appendix II.
32

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 33
seven." A modern authority x puts the number as high
as ninety-six. Nor are the scholars united on the
origins of the League. Even the name is uncertain.
The earhest mention of the deutsche Hanse (dudesche
hense) is in a document of 1358, a trading interdict
against Flanders drawn up by Lubeck. But long before
the word hansa was used in England to describe a civic
or a trading federation. I suppose it to be connected
with a word used in Scotland to this day — " hansel,"
which means a gift on the signing of a bargain.2 It
may be that the name came from England, and it is
certain that the League generally spoke of itself merely
as the gemeine Stddte (the common cities), and of its
merchants as the gemeiner Kaufmann.
Perhaps in the purpose of the federation might be
found its origin. The cities leagued together to push
their foreign trade. Probably their merchants met in
foreign cities, and there discovered their common
interests. Certain it is that in Flanders, in Russia,
in Denmark, in Norway and Sweden, and in England,
the League had its organisation in close touch with
the. parent towns, although these countries had no
membership in the League, but were rather its economic
. vassals or serfs.
And if the unifying force came from outside, the
directing force was at the centre. Lubeck stood at
the head of the Baltic towns ; it was also the seat
of government of the whole confederation. As early
as 1226 we find it a freie Reichstddt (a free Imperial city),
treating in sovereign style with the neighbouring Powers
of the Baltic. And it is clear from the whole history of
1 Hansische Geschichiblatter (Leipzig, 1874), p. xxxi.
3 " Auncel quasi handsal weight, an ancient kind of balance, consisting of
scales hanging on hooks fastened on each end of a beam or staff which a man
lifts up on his hand or forefinger," &c. — Chambers's Dictionary. C

34 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the League that the German Baltic towns were the main
stay of its strength. They had on one side a monopoly
of the Russian trade ; on the other, control of the Baltic
Sound. They thus controlled the chief means of sea-
power — timber, both for masts and planks, bowstaves,
pitch, hemp, and flax. Not only so, but at Nov
gorod they came into touch with a great route which
brought to their Kontor the furs and fine wools, the corn,
wax, and horses of Russia and Siberia, and the silks
and spices of Turkestan and China. On the western
side they had a monopoly of the herring fishing then
centred in the Baltic ; they produced vast quantities
of salted stockfish, a necessity in Cathohc Europe ;
they were the carriers of the corn trade ; they had
control of the iron mines of Scandinavia. It may be
that through Russia from China they discovered the
secret of villainous saltpetre : their ships are said to
have been the first to carry guns in Europe.
The merchants of these Baltic towns were called
Easterhngs, either because they were supposed to come
from a region vaguely known as Eastland, or because
they dealt with the East through Novgorod. The
freedom to trade at that Hanseatic Kontor was the
test of the~trtce Hanseatic. On the Stddetag (city day)
at Lubeck in 1366, it is laid down as a fundamental
rule that no trader can enter Novgorod if he is not
in jure et hansa Theutonicorum comprensus. " Others,"
says Kiesselbach, " may be tolerated in the federa
tion ; but unless they are entitled to do the Russian
trade they can never become full-blown members."
The Hanse in Gotland was merely the advance guard
of the Baltic towns. In the thirteenth century it
was ruled by the four towns — Lubeck, Wisby, Dort
mund, and Soest, the same four towns that origin-

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 35
ally controlled the affairs of the Novgorod Guild.
Lubeck and Wisby together managed Novgorod in
the first half of the fourteenth century, and in the
latter half Riga, originally a colony of Bremen, is ad
mitted to the partnership. When, in 1366, Lubeck
proposed to bring certain affairs of Novgorod before a
general meeting of the towns, Wisby protested that these
affairs were in the hands of Wisby and Lubeck alone,
and the towns of the German Netherlands struggled
long before they were admitted to the inner circle of
the Novgorod trade. Lubeck and the Baltic towns
stood, therefore, as a league within the League. In
1259 Lubeck, Wismar, and Rostock unite in a treaty
for the protection of sea-routes ; in 1265 they decide
to hold annual meetings ; and in 1283 Lubeck, Wismar,
Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Stettin, Demmin, and
Ankiam conclude a treaty on the safety of their land
routes and the protection of certain princes.
And with these Baltic cities we must include certain
cities of Prussia and Pomerania, closely alhed by
interest and situation. In 1200 Bremen built a wall
round Riga, and must have been deeply pledged to the
Russian trade. Hamburg, which was given the sove
reign right to coin money early in her history, formed
a league with Lubeck in 1241. Dantzig, Elbing, and
Konigsberg, according to Werdenhagen, are included in
a league of twelve Baltic cities as early as 1169. Minor
combinations form and reform, according to the in
terests and policies of the cities. There are, nevertheless,
rough divisions, called " thirds " in some documents,
to which is later added a " fourth third " by some
others. Anderson divides the League into four : the
towns of the Baltic shore from Lubeck, and including
Hamburg ; Dantzig, with the Prussian and Livonian

36 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
towns ; Brunswick, with the towns of Saxony and
Westphaha ; and Cologne, heading the quarter of the
Rhine. These, however, are divisions at some periods,
and combinations at others. For some objects also
they unite ; for others fall apart. They were bound
together by no Zollverein, nor even by a common
sovereignty. The Order of Teutonic Knights looked
after their interests in Prussia : we find the Grand Master
on their behalf negotiating treaties with Enghsh kings.
The Emperor was their ultimate protector, the Im
perial Diet their court of appeal in foreign policy. But
Cracow, a Hanseatic town, and later Dantzig, were
under the King of Poland.
The towns were often stronger than the princes who
gave them protection and the kings who granted them
their privileges of foreign trade. Even in Germany it
was their custom to hold castles in pledge for loans ;
Lubeck had sole control over the fortifications of the
Swine to its mouth. We hear vaguely of great battles
fought by the Knights with the Wendish " pagans " for
the right to trade in Russia. In the Baltic they are
said first of all to have combined against the pirates.
The story is doubtful. When Waldemar III attacked
Wisby, the centre of Baltic piracy, in 1361, the Hanse
towns (allying themselves with Sweden) rephed by
destroying Copenhagen in 1362, and the Danish fleet
in 1364. In 1348, when Denmark tried to collect toll
from Hanse ships passing through the Sound, the Hanse
made war on Denmark, defeated its navy, and took
possession of the five provinces of Schoenen for sixteen
years by way of indemnity. Other prizes of victory
were favourable tolls in the Sound, and special privi
leges in the herring fishery. A little later they made
an ingenious treaty with Denmark and Sweden on the

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 37
subject of piracy. If a Danish or Swedish castle were
taken by the pirates and retaken, it should remain in
the custody of the Hanse as security for the expense
of the operation. The working out of such an arrange
ment naturally led to misunderstandings, and Norway,
Sweden, and Denmark united under Margaret in revolt
against the League. The League defeated all three,
took King Albert of Sweden and his son into their
custody, and seized Colmar and Stockholm. From this
time onwards, for a hundred years, Denmark was in
the power of the Hanse, and could not so much as
elect a king without the permission of Lubeck.1 The
struggles of the Danes to free themselves from the
Hanseatic net are the origin of that ancient friendship
with England, which has been so much under-valued
and misunderstood in this country.
" In those times," says Anderson, speaking of 1400,
" the Hanse towns were so potent that they presumed
to deem all other nations navigating the Baltic Sea
to be invaders of their rights." They enlarged their
dominion over Sweden and Norway. In 1348 German
freebooters from the Baltic sacked Bergen and destroyed
a small settlement of Enghsh traders. The act was
repudiated by the Hanse, and some of the " Victualler-
ing Brothers " were afterwards hanged at Hamburg ;
but, as we have seen, and shall see, the relations
between the Hanse and the pirates are close and
equivocal. In any event, the practical result was
that Bergen passed under Hanse domination, and was
for centuries a German Kontor.
And now let us look at the position of the League
in Flanders, for here we shall find the key to much
1 Cf. Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn, p. 236, for an astonishing account of
the grovelling dependency of Denmark on the Hanse, and its spasmodic
efforts to shake off this terrible domination.

38 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
that is dark and mysterious in the history of Europe.
The position of Flanders is much the position of a com
munity that flourishes and thrives on the rich soil of
some active volcanic region : it prospers, but is never
theless unhappy, for great eruptions keep it in terror ;
landslides overwhelm it, fissures gape for its destruc
tion, and forces gigantic and overwhelming disturb its
peace and threaten its existence. The port of Bruges
was the staple and centre of Western Europe : it was to
the North Sea what Venice was to the Mediterranean,
and was indeed linked with Venice by the overland
route of the Rhine and the Brenner, as well as the sea
route by way of Gibraltar. To their Kontor at Bruges
the Hanse ships brought the wools of England and
Spain to be made into cloth in the surrounding towns.
When the cloth was made, it was again exported by the
German merchant, who carried it either oversea or by
overland routes throughout Europe.
Those who would know the history of Europe must
know its roads. Trade-routes are the key which open
most of history's doors. From Flanders the roads of
Europe open out hke a fan. The French-Flan der s-Italy
road is the best and most ancient : over it passes the
great traffic between the rich agriculture of Champagne
and the rich industry of the Netherlands ; but Cologne,
the Palatine, Saxony, and Austria are the enemies of
this road, and seek to divert its Mediterranean trade
through Germany and across the Brenner. The great
German road bifurcates, and its eastern branch is the
pilgrim's highway along the valleys of the Danube to
Constantinople and Palestine. But Rome grows more
attractive than the holy places, and Venice acts as
middleman to the Near East, so that again the Brenner
wins. From the North and the Baltic the Hanseatic

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 39
commerce moves along the sea, but also by way of
Middle German towns like Erfurt and Halle, which stand
as links between the Baltic and the Rhine. And so
also we find link upon link of Hanseatic towns with
Cracow its outpost in Poland. Bruges and, later, Ant
werp are the seaports to which all this vast system
converges : 1
" For Flaundres is staple as men tel me
To alle nacions of Christiantee."
And so it is not surprising that on Flanders concen
trated the whole German trade — from the Steelyard in
London, the Kontors of Russia, the Schoenen and Bergen,
and the German " table " in Venice. And so it came
about also that the affairs of the German Guild at
Bruges became the centre of interest of all German
towns from Livland and Gotland to the Rhine. Very
early in our story we see the German towns collaborating
in the management of Flemish affairs. In 1252-53 a
town councillor of Lubeck and a notary of the Council
of Hamburg appear as the spokesmen of the German
interests in Flanders. In 1280 Lubeck, as the head
of the German towns, punishes Bruges by transferring
the Kontor to Aadenburg. At the end of the same
century we find Lubeck conferring with the Wendish,
Saxon, Westphalian, Prussian, and Livlandish towns
on the French-Flanders war. The town council of
Lubeck again puts the screw on Bruges in 1305 and
1307-9, insists on the setting up of Hanse weights,2
transfers Hanse trade from Bruges to Dordrecht in
1358, and brings it back in 1360. This transfer of
trade, a most powerful weapon, is carried through by
1 Cf. F. Rauers, Geschichte der alien Handelsstrassen (1907). This eloquent
passage on trade-roads is, I must confess, chiefly loot from the enemy.
2 The Hanse weights at Bergen are still a municipal curiosity ; they are
said to be fraudulent, but on that point I have no sufficient evidence.

40 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Lubeck, and the resolution is signed by Goslar, Ham
burg, Rostock, Stralsund, Wismar, and Brunswick,
" the towns of our third of all merchants of the Roman
Empire of Germany of the German Hansa which at
Bruges in Flanders resides." The German Hanse in
Flanders was, in fact, the microcosm of the parent
Hanse in Germany, the agents of its towns and of its
commerce, and the servants of its policy. It consults
with the parent cities even on such distant questions
as the condition of the Novgorod and Bergen Kontors,
and the Norwegian and Danish disputes of 1367. And
not only does the German Guild in Flanders communi
cate with the parent cities about trade : the Duke of
Flanders consults Lubeck as to the pohcy of Flanders
in the Wars of the Roses. Flanders, like Denmark, is
in the hands of the Hanse, and finds its only refuge in
the division of interests which sometimes divides Cologne
and the Baltic cities.
The desperate position of Flanders lies in this, that
it is the focus of the rivalries of Germany, France, and
England. Its Duke owes allegiance to both France
and Germany, and has besides a treaty with England.
When England and the Emperor are at war with
France, England uses Calais to cut off French wool
from Flemish weavers, and Flemish cloth from French
buyers ; if the Duke of Flanders sides with France,
the Flemish towns are cut off from Enghsh wool.
French Flanders pulls one way, German Brabant an
other. But Germany generally decides, for Germany
has the biggest pull upon Flemish trade. Germany
puUs most of the strings in the Netherlands : that is a
fact to be remembered.
" The main artery of Venice," says Stieda, " is its
commerce with Germany." Genoa, its old rival, de-

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 41
pended chiefly on France, and was beaten in the conflict
when the French developed Marseilles. The Germans
had the use but not the ownership of a palace in Venice,
the famous Fondaco, and there sat at two tables. At
the Suavian or Regensburger table were Regensburg,
Ulm, Augsburg, Biberach, Ravensburg, Konstanz,
Vienna, Enns, Linz, Gmunden, Salzburg, and Laibach ;
at the Nuremberger table, Nuremberg, Cologne, Basle,
Strassburg, Speier, Worms, Mayence, Frankfort-on-the-
Main, and Lubeck. One book-entry will serve to show
the ramifications of the trade : in 1420, 2000 lb. of
amber rosaries are still unsold at the German house
in Venice, and ships from Lubeck via Bruges are
bringing more.
And Germany seeks to control Venice not only in
trade but in pohtics. In 1411 the Emperor Sigismund
goes to war with the Republic for various reasons, but
chiefly to preserve " the best and easiest way into
Italy through the same country of Friaul." On 12th
February 1412, he prohibits the Hanse cities from all
intercourse with Venice. The prohibition is not popular
in Germany, but it is liked even less at Venice. After
three years of war the Venetians pay the Emperor
200,000 ducats, and give him free passage into Italy.
The war breaks out again, and the Emperor recom
mends his cities to take either the trade-route through
Hungary to Constantinople, or to go by Genoa and
Milan. These two towns eagerly welcome the Ger
mans, testify to their own honesty, their lower duties
and their perfect freedom of sale. But the road by
Constance is inconvenient, and the Hanse begs the
Emperor to make peace. It is a drawn war, and the
Emperor removes the interdict in 1421. At another
time we hear of an imperial army pursuing a pohcy of

42 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
frightfulness and gouging out the eyes of Venetian
subjects.1 But my reading of the Venetian archives is that it
was less the Emperor than the German cities and the
German trade combination that subordinated Venice
to German interests. The overland road from Flanders
to Venice was, of course, in German hands. We hear
sometimes of Cologne, sometimes of the Count Pala
tine, sometimes of the Emperor seizing Venetian mer
chants on the road ; the object may have been either
ransom, as in the case of Richard, or pressure in some,
commercial quarrel. But when we see an Enghsh
Government deeply in debt to the Hanseatics, forbidding
Venetians to trade east of Southampton, we are able
to put two and two together.2 Venice starts with an
independent policy designed to favour her sea-going
trade. In 1317 the Flanders galleys, a State-protected
venture, made their first voyage, and year by year
those rich argosies brought to the Enghsh market
Venetian glass and cloth, Itahan earthenware, currants
and preserved fruits, sugar and molasses, coral beads,
Maltese cottons, silks and yarns, saltpetre, and the
precious merchandise of the Nearer and Farther East.
" On reaching our coasts," says Brown,3 " they gener
ally repaired to Camber before Rye, or the Downs,
where they parted company ; those destined for England
proceeded to Sandwich, Southampton, St. Catherine's
Point, or London, creating in our English marts as
great a sensation as ever did the arrival of the Indian
1 Cal. State Papers (Venetian), vol. ii. p. 164.
2 Adam Anderson, under date 1378, mentions an English statute permitting
the " merchants of the West " to trade with Southampton, paying the usual
customs ; but forbidding them to trade with any place in the East exoept
Calais. These Western merchants are specified as of Genoa, Venice, Catalonia,
Arragon, in contradistinction to the Easterhngs, who were thus given their
sphere of monopoly in English trade.
3 Cal. State Papers (Venetian), vol. i, Introduction.

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 43
fleet at Calcutta some sixty years ago ; while their
consorts continued their voyage to Sluys, Middle-
burg, or Antwerp. On the homeward voyage they
reassembled either at Sandwich or Southampton.
London was almost deserted by them in the latter
half of the fifteenth century."
Brown does not mention the explanation of this
dechne ; but such an edict as that of 1378 helps to
explain it. The overland route was in conflict with
the sea-route, the Venetian galley with the pack mer
chant of the Rhine. The Venetians began bravely.
In 1331 we have a proclamation of the Senate, often
repeated, " in favour of the galleys for the Flanders
voyage, to the effect that Enghsh and Flemish wool
imported into Venice overland do pay 25 per cent.
duty until after the return of the said galleys, but
thenceforth 3 per cent." But by 1339 we find the
Germans already enjoying a preference in the Venetian
market :
" AU wools imported into Venice ; namely, French,
Burgundian, and Enghsh, to pay ten livres gross
per thousand weight, namely, such as shall be bought
by the drapers manufacturing at Venice. German
wool to pay six livres."
And if we ask how the Germans came to enjoy this
preference over the French, the Flemish, and the Eng
hsh, we can only answer by such methods of force and
combination as gave them a preference in the Sound
of Denmark and the custom-house of London. They
were strong enough to make it so.
And now that we have gone the complete circle,
what do we find ? That the Hanse is a combination
of German towns, from seventy to ninety all told ;
that its centre of power is Lubeck ; that it has a mono-

44 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
poly of the trade with Russia ; that it has Denmark
and the Sound in its power ; that it has a monopoly
in Iceland ; that it drives the Enghsh from Bergen ;
that it has command of the sea-carriage of the north,
the source of sea-power before steam, and the boundless
wealth of its sea-fisheries ; that it influences the com
merce and politics of Flanders ; that it has, as we
shall see more in detail presently, a favoured position
in England, not only over foreigners but over Enghsh
men ; that it has a preference in Venice ; and that it
pushes a trade route through Hungary 1 and the Balkans
to Constantinople. " While this federal union was
strictly preserved," says Anderson, " the Hanseatics
were in a manner actual sovereigns of these northern
seas, as well without as within the Baltic ; and their
ships being very large, they became the general carriers
for a great part of Europe, and their huge vessels were,
moreover, often hired by princes in their wars." This
is only part of the truth. We shall see the League
enthroning and dethroning kings, Danish and Enghsh,
blockading and boycotting towns and whole countries,
holding fortified places, and keeping one of the gates
of London, setting afoot invasions and revolutions,
standing behind governments and monopolising the
trade of nations. And the main theatre of the rise
and decline of this great and mysterious power will
be England. England raised them high, and England
threw them down.
1 There are Saxon colonies in the south-east of Hungary oalled even to
this day Hanseatic.

CHAPTER V
THE CAMEL IN THE TENT
Now it happened, says the Arabian fabulist, that a
man was asleep in his tent. A camel which lay outside
pushed the tip of its nose between the cloth and the
ground. " The night is cold," said the camel ; " allow
me, I beseech you, to lay only my head under your
sheltering roof." The owner, being half sunk in
slumber, granted the camel's request. But the camel,
having got his head into the tent, pushed quietly for
ward until his neck, his shoulders, his hump, his hind
quarters, and even his tail were within, and the tent
being too small for man and camel, the wretched owner
was forced out at the other side.
And so we shall find with the Germans in England.
Cologne, the nose, was followed by Lubeck, the head ;
and the head being inside, the whole body of the
Seventy German cities were soon comfortably installed
in the Guildhall of the Teutons, and not only there,
but throughout England. The process is called, in
these latter days, pacific penetration.
It is possible not only to trace but to explain this
growth in power, especially if we keep in mind the
nature of the kings and governments under which the
process took place. Henry, as we have seen, was a
weak and treacherous king, much under the influence
of the Pope and his brother, the elected King of Ger
many. The Germans helped him to defeat Simon,
and two years after the battle of Evesham, in 1267,
45

46 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the Duke of Brunswick prevailed upon him to confirm
and define the privileges of Lubeck. This Henry did
in the following articles :
" That neither they nor their effects in our Do
minions shall be arrested but in certain cases, saving,
however, the customary duties to the King.
" As far as in our power they may have and enjoy
their corporate and joint privileges (habeant hansam
suam) yielding 5s. for the same in hke sort as the
burghers and merchants of Cologne enjoy the same and
have in times past held and paid for the same." x
These rights are to continue as long as Lubeck
remains under the protection of the Duke of Brunswick.
But why should the Duke of Brunswick be able to
secure such rights for his subjects ? The answer is
simple. He had just married a niece of the Queen of
England. For such was Henry's nature : he never
could give anything to a subject, or refuse anything to
a foreigner. " England," says Matthew Paris, " was a
vineyard without wall or watchman, open to the pil
laging of every vagrant."
And speaking of walls, we find that about this
time the Germans were estabhshing themselves on the
walls of London City. How it came about that
foreigners should have gained the privilege of holding
one of London's gates we can only guess. Probably,
when the Londoners took the side of Simon, the Ger
mans in their Guildhall were the secret agents of Henry
and Richard. And it was convenient for a king who
was at chronic war with the citizens to have foreigners
in charge of one of the gates. However that may be,
it is nearly certain that they held Bishopsgate in the
time of Henry III ; for in 1282, only ten years after
1 For this charter, see also Rymer's Fcedera, vol. vi. p. 839.

THE CAMEL IN THE TENT 47
Edward came to the throne, they are being sued for
allowing the gate to fall into disrepair. Edward was
not the man to neglect his defences, and his Barons of
the Exchequer gave judgment against Gerard Marhod,
Alderman of the Hanse, with six other merchants of
Cologne, Triers, Trivon, Hamburg, and Munster, for
the expense of the repairs. To avoid distraint the
Germans paid 210 marks to the City, engaged to uphold
the gate in future, and promised also to bear a third
part of the charges in money and men to defend it.
As part of the bargain they were granted leave to
store the corn they imported for forty days before sell
ing it, no doubt to enable the Germans to " hold on for
a rise " — although the Lord Mayor reserved the right to
prohibit the operation " on account of scarcity or other
reasonable cause." In 1305 London gave them a more
important concession : " On Tuesday, next after the
feast of St. Michael, in the 33rd year of the reign of
King Edward (1305), it was awarded and agreed that
the Alemains x belonging to the Hanse of the merchants
of Alemaine shall be free from paying two shillings on
going in and out of the gate of Bishopsgate with
their goods, seeing that they are charged with the
safekeeping and repair of the gate aforesaid."2 Not
only so, but they were relieved from paying muragium
or wall-tax for the same consideration ; and a little
later Hanse merchants were exempted from muragium,
bridge-tax, and pavagium (paving-tax) in every part of
England.3 The Germans thus held Bishopsgate for
at least two hundred years.4 And if we make a balance-
1 Alemains, of course, being Norman-French for German.
5 Letter-book C, folio Ixviii (Guildhall).
3 Lappenberg, Stahlhof, p. 18.
4 I may here give the sequel of this story of the wall : " On the 5th March
1460, the said merchants (of Alemaine) appeared on summons before the
Mayor and Aldermen, and were asked, as they had often been asked before, to

48 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
sheet of the arrangement, we find it may be stated
thus :
On the debit side the Germans agreed to (1) maintain
the gate, which they habitually failed to do, and (2) to
contribute to the cost of its defence — in ordinary times
nil. On the credit side they obtained (1) exemption from
wall-tax ; (2) the right to store corn for forty days ;
(3) exemption from octroi ; and (4) free lodging for
at least one German in the Gatehouse.1
Here let me say a word or two of their principal
seat of power in England, the famous Steelyard. The
word, of course, does not mean a yard in which steel
is kept, as Sartorius and Lappenberg suppose, but the
steel arm of a weighing-machine. It is used in Scot
land, and, I daresay, in some parts of England also,
to this day in this sense. In an old Scotch weaving
deliver up the keys, so that the gate which had fallen into decay might be
repaired. This they refused to do. . . . Notice being sent to the merchants
to attend at the gate, they were asked to dehver up the keys, and on their
refusal, the Mayor ordered new keys to be made, took seisin of the gate, and
expelled the merchants of Almaine." — Letter-book L, pp. 13-14 (Guildhall).
1 The history of Bergen might be compared with the history of London :
" At the same time (1270) the merchants of many cities of the northern parts
of Germany, apparently now acting as a confederated body . . . obtained leave
from the King of Norway to fix the staple of their northern trade at the city
of Bergen. At first their commerce was restricted to the summer months
(from 3rd May to 14th September), and the citizens were not allowed to hire
their houses to them for more than six weeks, to which, however, three were
added for bringing in their goods, and three more for carrying out their re
turns. In process of time the vandalic cities of Germany obtained permission
to establish a contoir in the city ; and in consequence of that indulgence the
bridge was covered with twenty-one large houses or factories, each of them
capable of accommodating about a hundred merchants or factors, with their
servants ; and they were bound to keep their houses and also the bridge in
repair, and to perform watch and ward in that quarter of the city wherein they
hved." — Macpherson's Annals, vol. i. pp. 420-1.
As to the Gatehouse, read the following extract from Calendar of Letter-
book E (Guildhall) : " 6 April, 11 Edward II [a.d. 1318] grant by John de
Wengrave the Mayor, Stephen de Abyndone . . . Aldermen, to John le Long
the Easterhng of the upper part of the gate of Bishopesgate together with a
certain turret on the east side of the said gate for hfe, subject, however, to
the condition that in times of disturbance the Ahnaines of the Hanse shall
safeguard the upper part of the gate acoording to the terms of the compensation
made thereon with the Mayor and Commonalty."

THE CAMEL IN THE TENT 49
viUage I know well there is in the market-place an iron
platform, with a beam and weights underneath, on
which carts are placed on market-days, and it is called
the Steelyard.
The " factory," then, was in Danegard Ward on
Thames Street and Windgoose Alley, and was originally
caUed the GuildhaU of the Germans (Guildhalla Teu-
tonicorum). It had spacious wharves on the river, and
consisted of a whole group of buildings strongly forti
fied. The place grew with the growth of their trade.
Thus in the sixth year of Richard II they rented a
large neighbouring house belonging to Sir Richard
Lyons, who had been killed in a riot — possibly for
selhng bad meat to the troops. The building actuaUy
called the Steelyard was acquired later from one John
Rainewell, and the freehold of these and other premises
from Edward IV in the Treaty of Utrecht.
The affairs of the Steelyard, both in business and
disciphne, were managed by a German alderman,
assisted by a German Council. Hanse government was
strict, and Hanse laws were drastic. When the German
merchants first came to England they seem to have
lived on the monastic system, which they may possibly
have adopted from their friends and protectors, the
Teutonic Knights. They slept in monastic cells ; they
were not allowed to marry — whoever married or lived
with an Enghsh woman " lost the Hanse," became,
that is to say, an outcast. Even a housekeeper or
charwoman was forbidden. The sentence for taking a
woman into the place by night or day was a heavy fine,
or even loss of merchant rights. Such rules were no
doubt designed to keep the Germans attached only to
the Fatherland. It was against Hanseatic pohcy to
allow any Kamerad (master) or Geselle (assistant) to
D

50 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
break away from the brotherhood and discover its
trade secrets to the strangers on whom they lived.1
But these archaeological details do not concern our
story so much as the practical power which the pos
session of this fortified port conferred. As a general
rule foreigners were not permitted to live on the wharves ;
but the Germans were an exception. The Steelyard
had the most extensive privileges regarding the handhng
of wares — " a testimony," says Lappenberg, " to the
honesty which the custom authorities found amongst
the Germans of the Steelyard." To their fortified
wharf, as we shall see later, the Germans denied access
even to the custom-house officials, and it was not until
the reign of Elizabeth that their use of this privilege
to cheat the customs was effectually stopped.
But how did the Germans contrive to obtain such
good terms ? We have seen that they bribed the
King. Did they also bribe the Corporation ? It is a
question which may be answered. In 1282 the Hanse
was confirmed in its right to have an alderman who
acted as a judge in their disputes with the citizens of
London, the only condition being that this alderman
should be elected from amongst the aldermen of London.
This English alderman had to swear that he would
1 Sartorius, ii. pp. 609-610, gives the best account of the interior govern
ment of the Steelyard. As to the observance of these rules, the archives show
scandalous breaches in the latter days of the institution. By the sixteenth
century the place had become the Ritz or Appenrodt of Tudor London. " Let
us goe to the Stilliard and drink Rhenish wine," says Nash. " I come to entreat
you," says one of Webster's characters, " to meet him this afternoon at the
Rhenish winehouse in the Stillyard. Will you steal forth and taste of Dutch
bun and a keg of sturgeon." But this was when the Hanse had fallen into
decay, and the merchants were trying to raise the wind by developing the
hotel busmess. Holbein had covered the walls with allegorical pictures, and
German waiters ran about serving their customers with Rhine wine, German
beer, and delikatessen. " Who would let a cit. . . breathe upon her vernish,"
says Nabbe in his Bride, " for the promise of a dry neat's tongue, and a pottle
of Rhenish at the Stilliard, when she may command a blade to toss and
tumble her." Reference to the archives of London crime in the Middle Ages
shows that the mediaeval prostitute was Flemish or German.

THE CAMEL IN THE TENT 51
safeguard the interests of the City ; but upon the
other side he received from the Germans an annual
honorarium of fifteen gold nobles delicately wrapped
up in a pair of gloves — " which," says Lappenberg,
" seems to have served excellently to gain an influential
citizen to represent their interests." By 1344 the
Mayor himself (John Hammond) was " Alderman of
the Almains," and no doubt acting with that austere
regard for the interests of London to be expected from
a man subsidised by the Germans.
Nor was this aU. The Germans extended their
system of bribery to the whole Corporation. It became
a system so well recognised that the recipients were
not ashamed to put the transaction in writing. Thus
in Letter-book K (Guildhall), p. 46, under date 20th
February 1426, we find this amazing entry :
" Grant by . . . the Mayor, Aldermen, Sheriffs and
Commonalty to the Merchants of the Hanse of Almaine
within London to have their Aldermen and aU their
liberties as formerly granted . . . and further, that the
said merchants shall be quit of aU custom, &c, payable
on merchandise on condition that they pay yearly to
the Sheriffs for the time being the sum of 40s., and to
the Mayor for the time being two barrels of best herring,
one barrel of sturgeon, and. a hundredweight of good
and clear Pohsh wax, or their value in money pre
scribed." And Wheeler in his Treatise of Commerce
(1604) accuses the Germans of bribing the cufetoms
officers of the smaUer ports of England with a stock
fish or a keg of Rhenish wine.
In those unenlightened days there were no party
funds to offer an easy and convenient machinery of
corruption ; but it must be admitted that, with such
means as they possessed, the mediaeval German supported

52 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the free trade system as effectively as his latter-day
descendants. The Hanse had many ways of influencing the course
of trade. The foundation of its system was the grants
it secured from needy kings of preferential rates, not
only over other foreigners but over natives. In the
earhest charters we often find the condition that such
duties as they are to pay are not thereafter to be in
creased. And this clause gave them a good plea for
exemption when old duties were heightened or new
duties laid on subsequent to the grants. The Parva
Custuma, for example, was part of a great settlement
made in 1303 by Edward I with all foreign merchants.1
On the one hand, he gave them the right to wholesale
trade in all the markets of England, " without paying
wharfage, pontage, or pannage," and many privileges
of denizenship, freedom from arrest, speedy justice and
recovery, standard weights, and so forth. In particular
he gave them a king's judge in London to try their
cases, and ordained that the juries, in all except capital
cases, were to consist half of men of the place in which
the case was tried, and half of foreign merchants. In
return for these privileges he laid down a scale of
additional duties to be paid by foreign merchants,
caUed the Parva Custuma. Now, it is evident that
the Hanse brought their special charters to bear upon
this general law, and so gained preferential rates over
other foreigners ; but it is more remarkable that, as
time went on, not only did they secure this preference
over foreigners, but over Enghsh merchants in the
ports of England.
Thus the graduated tax on the export of cloth was
1 The Carta Mercatoria, called by Hakluyt " the great Charter to all Out
landish Merchants, to wit, of Almaine, France, Spain, &c," vol. i. p. 327.

THE CAMEL IN THE TENT 53
levied at three different rates, the lowest rate being
on German merchants, the middle on Enghshmen, and
the highest on foreigners other than Germans. On the
ordinary cloth of assize Hanse merchants paid Is. the
piece, natives Is. 2d., and aliens other than Hanse
merchants 2s. Qd.1 Thus in the cloth export trade
the Germans were in a privileged position, not only
over foreigners, but over Enghshmen. The Antiqua
Custuma, which was a hereditary royal tax on the
export of wool and leather, treated Englishman and
foreigner ahke. Parhament in its subsidies sometimes
strove to differentiate against the foreigner ; but here
also the German found ways and means of evading the
extra tax. He usually pleaded his " ancient privi
leges," with complete success. He was an expert, as
we see in many cases, both in Venice and London, in
the art of false manifests. He knew the price of every
customs clerk, and he could obtain entry into the
Staple, the great wool guild which handled, under
Government supervision, the wool trade with Flanders.
The Hanse was, indeed, so strong upon the sea that
it could, and did, at times claim a monopoly of our
foreign trade. Its general principle, which it had
learnt from the Venetians, is shortly expressed in the
formula : Hanse goods on Hanse ships. Richard II
tried to imitate this policy, but failed ; Edward IV
again attempted to enforce it, but was bought by the
Germans and aUowed it to drop ; Henry VII took it
up in earnest, and estabhshed Enghsh shipping. But
there were times in which the English Government so
completely acquiesced in the German monopoly that
it forbade Enghshmen to export staple goods. Thus
1 Cf. Ramsay, Lancaster and York, vol. i. p. 149, and Appendix III to this
volume.

54 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
a statute of Edward III provided that all staple wares
were to be brought to a staple town in England, where
custom was to be paid ; " and then they shall be ex
ported by merchant-strangers only, and not by the King's
subjects, who are to take an oath not to hold any staple
thereof beyond seas." *
But the Germans did not confine their interference
to the " Municipalities, the Customs, and the King."
They had Enghsh justice subordinated to their interests.
In the treaty of 1437 between that miserable king,
Henry VI, and the Grand-Master of Prussia, the mer
chants of the German cities were " indulged with the
option of having any causes wherein they should be
concerned tried with dispatch, and without the bustle
and formality of a lawsuit, by two or more judges to
be appointed by the King."2 In the more famous
Treaty of Utrecht (1474) there is the same provision :
" The Hanseatic merchants in England shall not hence
forth be subject to the Lord High Admiral's Court or
jurisdiction ; but in controversies about maritime
affairs, &c, shall have two judges allotted to them by
the King for determining the same." 3 As King Ed
ward IV was deeply in debt to the Germans, and, in
fact, owed his crown to their assistance, it is easy to
imagine with what impartiahty these judges were
appointed. We may be quite certain that there was
always among the lawyers, who hived and swarmed in
the Inns of Court, a mediaeval Lord Haldane or a Lord
Reading, who could be trusted to appreciate the German
point of view in a case at law.4
1 Edward III, Statute of the Staple (1353), also John Smith's Memoirs of
Wool, pp. 30 and 41. J
2 Fcedera, vol. x. p. 66.
3 Anderson, vol. i. p. 501 ; Fcedera, vol. xi. p. 792, &o.
* Our present High Court would have suited admirably, for since the
outbreak of war it has distinguished itself by throwing over Magna Charta

THE CAMEL IN THE TENT 55
I may have more to say presently of the English
staple towns : in the meantime I mention them only
to show the strength of the German position in English
trade. As part of Edward's policy eleven English and
four Irish towns were given a monopoly of the sale of
wool.1 At aU of these towns there were courts for
setthng questions between buyers and sellers. This
court consisted of two Englishmen and four aliens,
" whereof two shaU be of Germany and two of Lom
bardy." Thus Enghshmen were put in a minority
against the foreigner in their own town. The two
foreign markets for English wool were, of course,
Flanders and Lombardy, but the mention of " Ger
many " in the statute shows that Flemish wool-buying
was in the hands of the Hanseatic League. And as
the League had also a strong pull in Italy, it is safe to
suppose that the four foreigners worked together under
German control against the two Englishmen, when
any question between alien and native fell to be de
cided. Thus both in Courts of Admiralty and in Courts
Merchant, the German was in the happy position of
having his own judges ; and if there should be an
appeal to the King, he was no worse off, for he was the
King's banker.
Here, then, are the sources of German influence in
England. The Germans commanded the North Sea
and the carrying trade, and could starve England
and English Common Law in favour of the Hague Conventions, and deciding
(1) That a German registered in this country is a " king's friend," and has the
rights of a British subject ; and (2) that a registered company whose capital
and shareholders are German is an English company, and has the right to sue
in our English Courts. Lord Reading could not have been more " impartial "
if he had lived in the time of the Hanseatic League.
1 For England, Newcastle-on-Tyne, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster,
Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, and Bristol. For Wales, Caer-
marthen. For Ireland, Dublin (then called Deyvlin), Waterford, Cork, and
Drogheda, 27 Edw. III. In a later Act (36 Edw. Ill), gallant Uttle Wales is
left out and Hull added to the English list.

56 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
either by stopping Baltic corn, when there was a bad
Enghsh harvest, or by stopping her commerce with
Flanders. They financed the Enghsh Government and
influenced the royal pohcy. They had a preference
in the English customs, overwhelming as against other
foreigners, and substantial as against Enghshmen.1
They had freedom from municipal taxation — gate
toUs, road taxes, and so forth. The King sometimes
compelled them to contribute to his special levies for
wars ; but if they paid, it was always under protest
and without prejudice to their privileges.2 They some
times farmed the English taxes, and must have gained
thereby great powers both in finance and trade. And,
lastly, being a great organisation, covering Europe as
well as the chief centres of trade in England, they had
the knowledge, the wealth, and the combination to
defeat any mere local competitor. " Always trading
in a body," says Anderson, " they easily ruined single
traders by underselhng them." 3 And this is true not
only of the trade " in gross," but of retail trade in at
least some branches. We find them at one time setting
up in London as fishmongers, after a desperate fight
with the Enghsh Guild ; and the archives of London
are full of complaints by " the Trade " that the Ger
mans have gone into the liquor business. In such
circumstances it is not, after all, surprising that an
Enghsh party grew up sworn to the expulsion of the
foreigners. Of this party, which began in failure with
Simon de Montfort, and ended in victory with Sir
Thomas Gresham and the Cecils, we shall have more
to say as our story develops. But we might call it
here the anti-German Party, the Party of Patriotism,
the Party of Protection.
1 See Appendix III. 2 Ibid. 8 Anderson, vol. i. p. 496, under year 1470.

CHAPTER VI
THE HOUSE OF FAME — BACK VIEW
If we inquire into the policy of the three Edwards, we
shall find the same influences at work as we have seen
from the Conquest. The kings want money ; the
Germans want trading rights ; the two come together,
and the deal is made. Thus, for example, in November
1280, Edward I is forming a great army for the invasion
of Wales, and sending his agents not only through all
England, but into the neighbouring countries, to buy
munitions of war. Is it a mere coincidence that on
the 17th of that month he confirms the merchants of
Germany in aU their privileges, and promises that " he
will not himself do anything nor permit others to
do anything to infringe them " ? x The union of the
British Isles under one crown is a great cause, but it
needs money : the customs are even pledged for loans
to the foreigner, Itahan or German. In 1307 the King
is unable to pay his debts to the merchants of Brabant,
and he allows them to pay themselves from what is
due to them from the Nova Custuma.2 And so we
might find the explanation of the famous Carta Merca-
toria of 1303. We see the process even more clearly
in the reign of that glorious prince, Edward IIL In
the year 1335 he is paying the Emperor Lewis of
. ' Bavaria a subsidy of 300,000 florins ; the Electors of
Cologne, Palatine, and Brandenburg are his pensionaries ;
1 Fcedera, vol. ii. p. 161. s Ryley, Plac. Pari., p. 327.
57

58 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
to the Duke of Brabant he pays 60,000 pounds sterling —
all to help him against the King of France.1 And in
the same year, at York, he passes an Act protecting
" merchant-strangers " against the " grievous dam
ages " done to them by " some people of his cities,
burghs, ports of the sea, and other places," who refuse
to aUow these merchant-strangers to sell their " wines
and other things ... to any others but to them
selves." It is therefore enacted " that all merchant-
strangers, as well as denizens, may freely buy and sell
corn, wine, flesh, fish, and all other provisions ; wools,
cloth, and all other vendible wares from whencesoever
they come, as well in cities, burghs, towns, ports, fairs,
and markets, having franchises, as in all other places."
The only reservation which the " judicious prince "
allows himself to make in this free trade charter to the
foreigner is " that no merchant-stranger shall carry
any wines out of this realm." As for the franchises and
exclusive charters of the Enghsh cities, " they are
herein declared to be of no force." 2
Truly a judicious prince. And when we look at his
exploits in war we cannot sufficiently admire him. In
1359 he transports 100,000 men to Calais in no less
than 1100 ships. What if his grudging Commons
complain that he has destroyed Enghsh shipping by
keeping aU his merchantmen mobilised for six months ?
His victories are immortal in English history ; his
defeats are immortal in the histories of France. But
glory has its seamy side. The Palace of Fame is fair
to see ; but the broker's man is generally to be found,
somewhere in the back premises — the obscure but real
occupier. AU those German princes and the German
ships in which the invading armies are conveyed cost|
1 Fcedera, vol. iv. p. 777. 2 Statutes, i. 270. /

THE HOUSE OF FAME— BACK VIEW 59
money. Edward III pawns his jewels, he pawns his
crown, his second-best crown, his Queen's crown, his
Queen, his infant son, and two of his earls.
In 1339 he pawns his crowns to Cologne and Trier,
and borrows 54,000 florins from three burghers of
Mechhn. He enters into a close alhance with the
cities of Brabant, and spends a regal Christmas at
Antwerp. When he proposes to depart, his creditors
remind him that his debts amount to £30,000. He
therefore leaves his Queen, his child, and the Earls of
Derby and Salisbury as pledges against his return. A
little later Cologne threatens to foreclose on the crowns,
as the time in the bond has elapsed. On 14th February
1342 Edward writes to the Council of Cologne begging
for an extension, and promising early payment tlirough
a Flemish money-lender with the strangely familiar
name of Montefiore. In the meantime (1338) he has
granted to Cologne confirmation of aU their trading
privileges in England.
Another of his accommodating friends is the Hanse
atic, Tidemann von Lymbergh. To him and to John
von Wolde he pawns, on 14th February 1343, half
of the duty of 40s. per sack of wool which the mer
chants had agreed to pay to the King. In 1344 he
pawns the great royal crown with two German mer
chants caUed Clippink, and two others called Ativolde.
About Easter, 1346, he gives Tidemann his second crown,
which the said Tidemann keeps for three years and
returns on 17th February 1349. On 18th April 1346
Tidemann von Lymbergh, the four Clyppingen, Johan
von Bek, and Tidemann Spisenhagel receive on behalf
of the German Guild a special copy of the Hanseatic
privileges, probably because for the moment there
was nothing left to pawn. In 1347 the King pledges

60 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
with Lymbergh several golden jugs and cups and gem-
encrusted ornaments. On August 25th of the same
year he confirms an agreement between Lymbergh and
the Black Prince, by which the tin mines of Cornwall
are pledged to the German for three years. In 1348
the King sets up this mediaeval Rothschild as a landed
proprietor, with manors on a thousand years' lease
in Somerset, Wilts, Southampton, Bucks, Northampton,
Cambridge, Suffolk, and Normandy.1 A little later the
invaluable Tidemann is again renting the wool-tax
(subsidium lanarium) from the King. And we may
be certain that where Tidemann had his finger, it was
not merely Tidemann, but the other German merchants
of the Hanse behind him.
It will not, perhaps, surprise my Enghsh readers
if I say that at this time feeling is running high against
the Germans. It is aggravated when English mer
chants are turned out of Flanders. The Hanse is
blamed for the eviction, and the King has to bow before
the anti-German storm. On 30th July 1351 he issues
an order confiscating German goods in England. It
sounds hke a policy of thorough, but does not bear
inspection. The goods of Tidemann and Oliver von
Reule are declared to be exempt. And a little later
we find further evidence of the King's real attitude.
On 15th November a writ is issued to the sheriffs,
" notifying that the King had taken under his pro
tection Hildebrand Sudermann, who had been charged
with procuring the death of Richard Curteys, a Bristol
1 Calendarium Botulorum Patentium (Edw. Ill, p. 157, Tertia Pars., 13) :
" Rex confirmavit Tidemanno Lymbergh pro mille annis quamplur' maneria
viz. de Norton in Somers' de Connoke in Wilts de Rannuberidge in Southton
de Mershe in Buok de Grafton in Nortnon de Derneforde in Cantabr' de
Cretinge et Milkelfield in Sufi' parcelT Priorat' de Wilmington quae fuit Cella
Abbathise de Greston in Normania."
Also p. 159, Prima Pars. 3 and 10 : " Pro Tidemanno de Lymbergh de
quamplur' manerijs, prout antea.

THE HOUSE OF FAME— BACK VIEW 61
merchant, . . . and of insulting the English nation ;
and commanding proclamation to be made against
inflicting any injury upon the said Hildebrand or
other merchants of the Hanse of Almaine."1 And a
httle later the situation is entirely cleared up. On
20th August 1352 the King issues a writ to the sheriffs
" to make proclamation to the effect that, notwith
standing a recent order of the King for the arrest of
merchants of the Hanse of Almaine and their goods, the
said merchants were to be allowed free intercourse
with England, with the exception of Hildebrand Suder
mann." 2 In other words, Sudermann has been banished
as a scapegoat, the storm has blown over a httle, and
the King thinks it safe to revoke his temporising order.
Nor was Tidemann von Lymbergh the only German
to rise to greatness in the reign of this judicious prince.
A certain Hanseatic called James or Jacob Doseyn
provided ships and munitions for the siege of Calais,
and found so much favour in the eyes of the King that
popular rumour in England made him the source of
aU the privileges of the Easterhngs. Then there was
the redoubtable John, the Iron Count of Holstein, whose
doughty deeds gained for him the thanks, and prob
ably something more substantial than the thanks, of a
grateful monarch.3
Altogether Edward's reign was a glorious but ex
pensive example of Freeman's pohcy of the " natural
aUiance." With all his victories this judicious prince
ended by losing everything in France save Calais. In
spite of all his gifts and charters, the Emperor and
1 Letter-book F (Guildhall), p. 236. 2 Ibid., p. 248.
3 For this httle sketch of Edward's financial pohcy I am chiefly indebted
to Anderson and Lappenberg. Their original authorities, to whom I have
occasionally referred, are Rymer's Fcedera, Kalendars of the Exchequer, Kalen-
darium Botulorum Patentium, and Abbravatio Botulomm Originaliam ; Fabyan's
Chronicle and Presbyteri Bremensis Chronica Holsatioe.

62 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the subsidised German princes failed him in his hour
of need. He reduced France to a coinage of leather ;
but he himself died in a poverty no less desperate,
leaving a kingdom without a navy, with an oversea
trade almost monopolised by the Hanseatic League.
Yet there are several things which reconcile us to this
judicious prjnce. He encouraged the cloth industry
in England, if for no better reason than to force Flanders
into an alhance against France. And when he went
to Coblentz to beg the Emperor to allow the princes
(whom he had aheady paid) to fight against France,
he yet refused to kiss the Imperial toe.

CHAPTER VII
THE GERMANS RULE THE SEA
While the Germans were thus establishing themselves
in England, they were also making themselves masters
of the sea. The Baltic was their base of operations,
ideal because supphed with all things necessary to
sea-power in those days ; Denmark their tributary ;
the Sound their fortified gate. When Enghsh ships
sought to trade in the Baltic, they found all the forces
of the Hanse arrayed against them. With English
pertinacity they maintained a trading settlement at
Danzig, but held it on an insecure tenure, which was
constantly being interrupted. At Lubeck, in 1286, the
towns actuaUy debated whether the English should
not be altogether prohibited from saihng in the Baltic.1
The majority of the towns thought the measure impolitic,
but found ways and means of making things impossible
for Enghsh traders. Not only so, but they proceeded
to drive the Enghsh out of Norway and to enforce a
monopoly of the trade to Iceland. Now the trade
with Norway was vital to the east coast of England,
because Norway was the only source outside the Baltic
from which the shipowners of Hull, Boston, and Lynne
could get their equipment. Enghsh traders dated
their settlement at Bergen from a grant secured to them
a few years after the Conquest ; and they fought the
Germans through centuries for their right to remain
1 Liibecker Urkundenbuch, Part I, Nos. 485, 486.
63

64 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
there. Repeatedly expelled by German force and in
trigue, they always returned; and as Norway even
then feared and hated German influence, they were
always welcomed by the Norwegians. But the Nor
wegians were helpless to protect their friends against
their enemies. In the thirteenth century the Germans
had been given the right of permanent residence, and
free export and import in Bergen, and the Enghsh
expeUed. They returned, and King Eric II " favoured
them in their disputes with the Germans." x Yet they
were again expelled in 1312. How it is done is explained
clearly enough in a letter of 1312 from Edward II to
the King of Norway.2 The Enghsh King complains
that Haquin has suffered several English merchants
to be imprisoned and their goods to be seized, to the
value of £310, at the instigation of certain Eastland
merchants, " who," says our King, " by all possible
means strive to obstruct the advantages of the said
English merchants." " Those Easterhngs," as Ander
son explains, " were the Hanse towns on the south
shore of the Baltic Sea, who in those times were in
great naval power, from Lubeck up to Narva, and seem
on many occasions to have acted so arbitrarily, as if
none but themselves had a right to trade to the ad
jacent countries of Norway, Denmark, Poland, and
Sweden." And this is only one of many such out
rages. Another cause of complaint is the help Germans
are giving to Scotland. In 1297 we find William
WaUace appeahng to Lubeck for assistance against
Edward I, and a little later Edward I complains that
Flanders is supplying Robert the Bruce with arms.
1 Lappenberg, Stdhlhof.
2 Fcedera, vol. hi. p. 449, quoted by Anderson, vol. i. p. 281.

THE GERMANS RULE THE SEA 65
Then Edward II writes to the Earl of Flanders and the
magistrates of Bruges that certain Easterhngs had
used the port of Swen as a base for operations against
" his people of Scotland and elsewhere." 1 The Ger
mans even come into the eastern ports of England and
cure their herring, in defiance of local custom. They
hsten to no protest, and obey no injunction. The King
of Norway urges the King of England to take measures ; 2
but the King of England is helpless. The King of Eng
land urges the King of Norway to take strong steps,
but the King of Norway can do nothing.
Things come to a head in the reign of Richard II,
the Londoners' King, as he is contemptuously called.
Richard depended on the support of the democracy.
He was a freeman of the Taylors Company ; he gave
the Fishmongers a charter to protect them in their
own markets ; he was even suspected of supporting
a rising of the peasants in Norfolk. Unfortunately,
however, he is not quite his own master : in the first
year of his reign he pawns his three crowns for 10,000
crowns. The Londoners come to him with their com
plaints : " Their grievous clamours against the hberty
aUowed to foreigners to be housekeepers in that city
or to be brokers ; and to buy and sell all manner of
wares, by retail as well as by wholesale. . . . By which
grievances the merchants of London are greatly im
poverished, the Navy impaired, and the secrets of the
land discovered to our enemies by those strangers,
and by other stranger spies received into their houses."
Richard comphes with these " unreasonable and im
politic remonstrances of the Londoners."3 They lend
him money ; he redeems his crowns, grants foreign
1 Fcedera, iii. p. 131. 2 Ibid., i. p. 654.
3 Anderson, vol. i. p. 366. E

66 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
merchants all their former privileges, and rebukes his
unreasonable subjects, " who will not suffer merchant
strangers " to seU their goods, " whereby they are
sold much dearer than if those foreigners were per
mitted to sell them." We need not blame Richard
altogether : he was not strong enough to carry out the
national pohcy of his supporters, and his whole reign
is a see-saw between Free Trade and Protection, ac
cording as the King or the Germans had the upper
hand.1 We can almost see the poor King, with the
foreigner pulling at one sleeve and the Englishman at
the other. In 1381 he passes the first Navigation
Act : " That for increasing the shipping of England of
late much diminished none of the King's subjects shall
hereafter ship any kind of merchandise, either outward
or homeward, but only of ships of the King's subjects,
on forfeiture of ships and merchandise, in which ships
also the great part of the crews shall be the King's
subjects." In the foUowing year the Act is practically
annulled : " Where no ships were to be had merchants
might export or import ih foreign ships." In 1381,
the very year of his Navigation Act, he grants " un-
hmited hberty both to aliens and denizens to export
wool and wool-fels, as well as leather, to any country
whatever except France " ; and in 1382 he grants
liberty to all merchant strangers "to come into the
realm as well within franchise as without . . . without
the obstruction of any whatever."
The patriotic party had " Reciprocity in Germany "

Mr.

1U1JJUHB1UIO, Iio offljc vu jj. rzvrx, uuw lu uuimeUL UiltS MUrUgglO Ot tU6 liOnGiOn
gilds with the measures carried out by Parhament during Richard's reign
The victualling gilds were adherents of the king, while the non- victuallers',
who were free-traders, were associated with the opposition of John of Gaunt."
John of Gaunt was, of course, John of Ghent.

THE GERMANS RULE THE SEA 67
as one of the principal planks in their platform.1
And Richard did his feeble best to support them in
their claim of equal treatment in the Baltic. The
result was war — one of the most disastrous ever fought
by England. It began in an irregular fashion, charac
teristic of all our troubles with the irregular power of
the Hanse. In 1387, according to the German version,
English sailors had looted six Prussian ships in the
port of Swen, in Flanders.2 The Master-General of
Prussia, one of the protectors of the Hanse, thereupon
seized Enghsh merchants and their goods in the ports
of Elburg and Dantzig. According to Enghsh reports
— which, of course, the Germans said were false — the
English prisoners were barbarously treated, " cast into
lothsom prisons, drenched in myre and water up to
ye neck, restrained from al conference and company
of men, and also that their meat was thrown into them,
as a bone to a dog, with many other enormities."3
Naturally, there was fierce indignation in England, and
King Richard seized some Prussian merchants at Lynne.
1 " In 1390 a petition was presented urging that merchant strangers repair
ing to England should be treated as Enghsh merchants were treated abroad.
This was to be the watchword of the anti-alien party throughout the fifteenth
century. For the moment the reply was unfavourable ; merchant strangers
were to be " well and courteously and rightfully used," so that they might
have the greater courage to repair to England. However, in 1393, the King
felt himself strong enough to reverse the proceedings in favour of aliens, and
once more re-impose the old disabilities upon them." — Lipson, Economic His
tory of England, p. 455.
2 The port of Swen (or Swin) was, of course, Sluys, and was, by the way,
the centre of the Hanseatic contraband trade in arms with Scotland. It is
noteworthy that the articles looted were chiefly " armour and weapons."
3 Chaucer about this time wrote a little poem to one Bukton, advising
him not to marry (according to Tyrwhitt, Peter de Bukton was the King's
escheator for Yorkshire in 1397), and he pointed the moral by a reference to
the German treatment of prisoners :
" Experience shall thee teaohe ; so may hap
That thee were lever to be taken in Frise,
Than eft to fall of wedding in the trap."
The Germans are marvellously true to type. In the sixteenth century an
Englishman described the Hamburgers as " uncivil in manners and without
all mercy where they are masters," and we know how they treat prisoners
to-day.

68 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
The result of this fracas was a Prussian embassy
to England and an Enghsh embassy to Prussia, with
a treaty of mutual indemnity and privileges.1 This
hopeful treaty was concluded in the year 1390, and
seems to have made exactly no difference in the pohcy
of the Hanse and the private war between German
and Enghsh sailors. What England suffered in this war
we are told in painful detail by the documents of the
negotiations which followed.2 Most serious was the
sack of Bergen, where the merchants of Lynne had
their ancient settlement.3 Whether or not the Hanse
was concerned in this affair is in some doubt. The
German version lays all the blame on the notorious
Victualling Brothers, who are aUeged to have de
stroyed Hanse as well as Enghsh property.4 Lappenberg
adds that the pirates of whom the English complained
were hanged in Hamburg in 1402. On the other hand,
it is certain that the Victualling Brothers belonged to
the Hanse towns of Wismer and Rostok, by whom they
1 The most important article provides : " That all lawful merchants of
England whosoever shall have free licence and authority, with all kinds of
ships, goods, and merchandises, to resort unto every port of the land of Prussia,
and also to transport all such goods and merchandises up further into any
other place in the said land of Prussia, and there with all kinds of persons
freely to bargain and make sale, as heretofore it hath from ancient time been
accustomed. Which privilege is granted in all things and by all circumstances
unto the Prussians in England." — Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 23.
2 Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 55 et seq.
3 " Item pitifully complaining the marchants of Lenne doe avouch, verifie,
and afSrm that about the feast of S. George the Martyr, in the year of our
Lord 1394, sundry malefactors and robbers of Wismer and Rostok and others
of the Hans, with a great multitude of ships arrived at the town of Norbern
(North Bergen) in Norway, and took the said town by strong assault, and also
wickedly and unjustly took al the marchants of Lenne there residing with
their goods and cattels, and burnt their houses and mansions in the same
place, and put their persons into great ransoms : Even as by the letters of
safe conduct dehvered unto the said merchants it may more evidently appear,
to the great damage and impoverishment of the merchants of Lenne : namely^
imprimis they burnt there 21 houses belonging unto the said marchants, to
the value of 440 nobles. Item they took from Edmund Belgetere, Thomas
Hunt, John Brandon and from other marchants of Lenne, to the value of
1815 pounds."
* Cf. Albertus Krantzius, quoted by Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 68.

THE GERMANS RULE THE SEA 69
were first employed. It is also certain that when the
Scandinavian Powers attacked these pirates, the Hanse
towns protected them. And I shall show later that
the Hanse habitually used the freebooters as allies,
who could be repudiated when found inconvenient,
and even hanged when pohcy demanded it. But Lap
penberg admits that the Hanse was actively hostile
to the Enghsh settlement in Bergen ; so, without com
mitting myself too far on this obscure controversy, I
may at least say that, if the merchants of Lynne
thought that the Hanse merchants had something to do
with the affair, they had in the circumstances some
excuse for their suspicions.
And, after all, the sack of Bergen was only one of
the many grievances set forth by the Enghsh am
bassadors. The list runs into several pages of Hakluyt,
and gives abundant cause to show that " frightfulness "
was as well understood by the Germans in those days
as in these. I shall not weary my readers with more
than a mere summary of the outrages charged against
the " malefactors of Wismer and Rostok and others
being of the societie of the Hanse," in the space of five
years. We begin them with the ship Godezere (200
tons) of Newcastle-on-Tyne, with a cargo of cloth.
She is taken in 1394, and two of her company kiUed.
The ship is valued at £400, and the cargo at 200 marks.
In the same year they take two ships of HuU, the
Cogge and the Trinitie, the one with cloth worth £200,
and the other with a mixed cargo of " oyle waxe and
werke," worth £300. In 1401 they capture a Zeland
ship chartered by John Hughson of Yarmouth, with
hides, butter, masts, spars, &c, and in 1405 a small
Yarmouth ship. In 1395 and 1396 they seize five
fishing vessels belonging to Cley, " and one of the

70 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
said master's mates they mahciously drowned." In
1395 they capture a whole fleet of six fishing vessels
from Wiveton, belonging to one Simon Durham. The
chief of them, called the Dogger, must have been a
vessel of some size, for it had a master and twenty-five
mariners, all of whom the Germans " mahciously
slewe." They treated the crew of another of these
Wiveton boats in the same manner, and those of a
third they " beate and wounded." But the chief loss
was suffered by Lynne :
" Item pitifuUy complaining that upon the 14th day
after the feast of St. George (1394) as four ships of
Lenne, laden with cloth, wine and other marchandises
were saihng upon the maine sea, with all the goods
and wares contained in them, for Prussia, sundry
malefactors of Wismer and Rostok, with others of the
Hanse, being in divers ships, came upon them, and by
force of armes and strong hand took the said ships,
with the goods and merchandises contained in them ;
and some of the people which were in the said four
ships, they slew, some they spoiled, and others they
put into extreme ransomes. And carrying away with
them those four ships with the commodities and mar
chandises therin, they parted stakes therewith, as
these listed, to the great impoverishment and losse
of the said merchants of Lenne, namely in cloth of
Wilham Sileden, Tho. Waterden, Joh. Brandon, Joh.
Wesentra and other merchants of Lenne to the value
of £3623, 5s. lid."
With these and other losses the poor town of Lynne
must have been almost ruined. Nor was this the sum
of the Enghsh injuries. There is a long list of mer
chants of Hull, York, London, Colchester, Norwich,
Yarmouth, and Lynne who were travelling, apparently

THE GERMANS RULE THE SEA 71
in German ships, and were seized and robbed and put
up to ransom.
Such outrages drove the feeble Richard into a feeble
war. Margaret of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark was
then in revolt against Hanseatic domination, and Richard
sent to her aid an expeditionary force of three ships
of Lynne, described as " large and warhke," but all
too few for the purpose in hand. Margaret was de
feated, and the Hanse, with its ally and protector,
the Grand-Master of Prussia, set about bringing England
to terms. The process was one of blockade. In 1398
the Grand-Master denounced the Commercial Treaty
of 1388, withdrew Prussian merchants from England,
and turned all English merchants out of Prussia. The
boycott that followed was well calculated to bring
England to her knees.
In the midst of these troubles and confusions, Henry
of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, and a good friend
of our " natural ally," succeeded in deposing the King.
We may say of Richard what Chaucer said to him :
" AU is lost for lack of steadfastness." 1 He had a
national pohcy, he was a good patriot in intention ;
but he either lacked the means or the strength of mind
to carry it through. Probably the German and Free
Trade party, led by John of Ghent, was too strong
for him.
1 " A Ballad sent to King Richard." Chaucer, as Comptroller of Customs,
must have had a great deal to do with the Germans, but does not refer to
them often. His knight had gone to the wars in Prusse to fight the Lithuanians,
whom the Germans, for their own purposes, represented as pagans, and we
have seen his reference to the hardships of the prisons of Frisia. His Merchant
was plainly a Merchant Adventurer, and an anti-German :
" He would the sea were kept for anything
Betwixte Middleburg and OreweU."

CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST HAGUE CONVENTION
Henry IV begins his reign with the usual homage to
the anti-German party. In the first year of his reign
he takes up the cry of Reciprocity in Germany : " That
whereas the privileges and freedom of commerce granted
to the German merchants in England were on condition
that the Enghsh should enjoy the hke in Germany,
wherefore the said Master-General and the said Hanse
towns are thereby summoned, either personally or by
deputies, to answer before this King and his Council
for the said injuries, and to make due satisfaction for
the same." And he goes on to bring against the Hanse
that charge of " colouring," which in the end is to prove
fatal to their privileges : " That the said merchants
of the Hanse towns shall not, under pretence of their
own privileges in England, shelter the merchants of
other foreign parts, whereby the King might suffer in
his customs ; otherwise the King in Council declares
that, in case of such practices or colourings, he will
absolutely revoke and annul their said charter of privi
leges ; which declaration the King directed to be
registered in Chancery."1 The proclamation has a
robust ring — and yet it hardly bears scrutiny ; for
whereas Enghsh merchants had been turned out of
Prussia, and Prussian merchants withdrawn from Eng
land, the other German towns were still represented
1 Anderson, i. 396-7 (1399).
72

THE FIRST HAGUE CONVENTION 73
in the Steelyard, and no doubt carried on such trade
for the Prussian towns as Lubeck desired or per
mitted. Moreover, the Baltic continues its war on
Enghsh commerce, and by 1403 Henry and his subjects
are in a mood for peace. The King writes effusively
to the Grand-Master, " wishing with all our heart that
the ancient friendship and love . . . may persevere
in time to come, and that sweet and acceptable peace
... be nourished and maintained." In the mean
time, while the ambassadors of both countries " intreat
about the foresaid injuries," he begs for a truce " until
the feast of Easter next ensuing ... all molestations
and injuries which may be offered ceasing on both
parts," and also that his subjects may have free pas
sage to Sconia " for the providing of herrings and of
other fishes there." In a postscript he reveals the im
potence of England at sea : he has been unable hitherto
to convoy the German messenger back to Prussia
because " of the continual assaults of the Frenchmen
and Britons against us and our kingdom."
The great Conradus de Jungingen, Master-General
of the Teutonic Knights of the Hospital of the Blessed
Virgin of Jerusalem, replies " from our castle of Marien-
burgh on 16th July, 1404." The letter is suave and
pleasant, but firm : " Moreover, whereas your Highness
hath further requested us that the prohibition of your
subjects' access unto our dominions might, until the
feast of Easter next ensuing, be released, we answer
(under correction of your Majesty's more deliberate
counsel) that it is far more expedient for both parts
to have the said prohibition continued than released
until such times as satisfaction be performed on both
sides unto the parties endangered, not in words only
but actually and really in deeds, or by some course of

74 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
law or friendly composition." As for the fishing in
Sconia, he had been fighting Margaret — no doubt a
delicate reminder of the three ships — but a truce was
concluded, and " far be it from us also that our sub
jects being occupied in wars, should in any sort willingly
molest or reproach any strangers, of what lands or
nations soever, not being our professed enemies."
We gather aheady that the Hanse will have the
best of the negotiations, and we are not disappointed.
The Master-General had begun by presenting a claim
for 19,120| nobles for moral and material damages.
The Enghsh ambassadors, Wilham Esturmy and John
Kingston, go to Prussia and present a counter-claim for
4535 nobles. The Master-General rephes with a further
claim for 5100 nobles. The negotiations, which begin
in 1403, are postponed and transferred first to Dord
recht in Holland, and then to the Hague, in order to
get the valuation of " other indifferent merchants of ,
good credit." By 28th August 1407 the Hanse claim
has grown to 25,934-§- nobles, which is to be compromised
for 8957 nobles. The King must give his answer by
16th March following " to the Aldermen of the Mer
chants of the Hanse residing at Bruges : otherwise
from thenceforth all league of friendship shall be dis
solved between the realm of England and the land of
Prussia." A claim made by Dantzig to be settled at
Bruges — it gives some idea of the power of the Hanse
and the difficulty of getting " indifferent merchants " to
adjudicate. Little wonder if the English claim has
been written off at 764 nobles, " which," as the English
ambassadors remark, " will be very hard and extreme
deahng." By this time there are new complications. Enghsh
sailors have taken three Livonian ships, with a cargo

THE FIRST HAGUE CONVENTION 75
of wax and furs, and have drowned 250 men. The
claim against this is naturally high, £8037, 12s. Id.,
reduced after haggling to £7498, 13s. lOd.
The Hanse towns present their separate bills for
their separate injuries, and they also present a long
hst of grievances on behalf of the Hanse of Almaine in
England. Whereas, under their charters, they are
" privileged not to undergo any other burthens or
impositions, but only to pay certain customs " ; they
had been constrained in the time of Simon de Moreden,
Mayor of London, to pay " fifteenths, tallages, and other
subsidies, contrary to the liberties of their charter."
They had appealed successfully to the Privy Council,
and had paid without prejudice an hundred marks
sterhng conditionally on an entire and perpetual de
liverance from such payments. Nevertheless, the King's
officers had recently demanded " tallages, fifteenths, and
other subsidies," and when the Germans refused to
pay, had " arrested the goods of those said merchants."
They had also been compelled to pay certain customs
and subsidies " more than their ancient customs."
And especiaUy they complained of changes in the
customs on wool. Whereas under their privileges they
were bound to pay only the ancient customs plus
" xk?. more than the home born merchants of England
were wont to pay," they were now being compelled to
pay " a certain imposition called pence for the town
of Calais, namely, for every sack of wool 19d. more
than the merchants of England do pay, to their great
loss and against the hberty of their charter."
Then, as to customs on imports, by their charter
they were only bound to pay an ad valorem duty of
" 3d. for the worth of every pound of silver," which
was to be paid on the amount of their manifests (" the

76 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
letters of their masters and of their companies "), or,
faihng manifests, on "the oath of their attorneys,"
the Enghsh customs officers were now putting their
own valuation on the goods, and charging accordingly —
" scanning about their fraight and expenses particu
larly disbursed in regard of the said goods and mar-
chandise, to the great hindrance of the said marchants,
and against the tenor of their charter."
In the same way they were being compelled to pay
more than they ought on the export of small-cloths and
kerseys. Then there was the pitiful case of Nicholas Crosse-
haire, a Prussian " of their societies," who brought a
cargo of bow-staves and other merchandise to Sandwich,
where he paid the customs, and had afterwards trans
ferred a parcel to London, where custom dues were
again demanded. Nicholas offered security, but re
fused to pay until the question was decided. He even
got a brief from the King absolving him from payment.
Nevertheless the goods were kept on shipboard, to
their damage, until the London customs were paid.
" Another of their company," Peter Herston, was
similarly treated over a cargo of cloth, bought at
Bristol for Prussia, when the ship touched at London.
Then the officers of the petty customs were making
charges for schedules and cockets and the seahng
of cloth ; they procrastinated over details, and there
were cases of over-charges at Southampton and New
castle. Altogether, you wiU say, the usual grievances of
foreign merchants. Yet the document seems to indi
cate something more — a quiet, persistent hostility of
Englishmen, showing itself in a hundred trifles. It
comes out clearly in the first complaint : " Of late,

THE FIRST HAGUE CONVENTION 77
those that are free denizens in the cities, boroughs,
and villages within the foresaid kingdom, do hinder and
restrain all others that be strangers, foreigners, and
ahens, that they neither can nor dare buy and sel
with the marchants of the Hanse aforesaid, to their
great hinderance and losse." Englishmen might be
compelled by the " natural alliance " between kings and
loans to submit to German privileges ; but they re
sented them nevertheless, and in their own quiet and
patient way made their resentment felt.
The Enghsh ambassadors put their counter-griev
ances — a much more formidable list. Whereas Ger
man merchants could trade freely in England, " the
said common society of marchants (the Hanse) by
their pubhke and dehberate common counsel did ap
point and ordaine that no society in any cities, townes,
or places, neither yet any particular man of any such
society should in any wise admit any marchants of
the realme of England resorting unto their cities or
other places for marchandise to enjoy intercourse of
traffike." This exclusion was fortified by " grievous
penalties of money." The boycott had been enforced
so strictly that certain Enghsh merchants, who had
gone with their ships to one of the principal German
towns, could not even buy meat and drink, much less
sell their cloth. Not only were there " grievous
pecuniary mulcts," but the cloth itseU was forfeit if
the prohibition to trade was infringed. And not only
so, but the Hanse, designing " an utter extirpation
and overthrow of English merchants," had ordered all
Hanseatic merchants to leave England and forbidden
all Enghsh trade. The boycott had not been confined
to Germany and England :
" Item that the said society aforesaid hath ap-

78 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
proved divers very unreasonable statutes and ordi
nances made and pubhshed by merchants of the same
society residing in the kingdoms of Norway and Swed-
land, to the great prejudice of the kingdom of England,
and the marchants thereof : and as yet both covertly
and expressly do approve the same, unjustly putting
them in daily execution."
Lastly, there was the charge of " colouring." Under
their privileges and indulgences the Hanse were not to
" avow any man which is not of their company, nor
shaU not colour his goods and marchandise under their
company . . . under the perpetual frustration and
revocation of the foresaid privileges." " Yet the con
trary unto all these provisoes hath bin every yere, for
these twenty yeres or thereabout notoriously practised
and committed," both by the General Council and by
particular Hanse cities, " to the great diminution of
his Majesties custome." The ambassadors therefore
demanded to know how many and which were the
Hanse towns — a question often put, but never, as far
as I know, answered.
By means of these dull and long-protracted negotia
tions we are now in the year of our Lord 1408. On
the 26th March of that year Henry IV offers to settle
the matter by paying 8957 nobles to the Prussians,
and " 22496 nobles, sixepence, halfe penny, farthing "
to the Livonians by three equal payments within three
years after Easter. The Prussians and Livonians are
asked to pay 766 nobles and 4535 on the Enghsh claims
within one year. As for the people drowned, " we will
cause suffrages of prayers and divers other holsome
remedies profitable for the soules of the deceased," on
condition that the Grand-Master did the same for the
souls of Englishmen.

THE FIRST HAGUE CONVENTION 79
The Grand-Master replied that any arrangement
must be subject to further claims being made against
England before the King of the Romans. Otherwise,
with a good deal of rigmarole, he accepted on behalf
of his Prussians and Livonians the sums mentioned.
As for the Enghsh claims, the Grand-Master agrees
to the payment of 766 nobles, but makes no mention
of the second and larger claim, except to say that
" other hke summes," which are sufficiently proved,
will be paid, like the first, by the Treasurer of Dantzig.
The reply is dated from " our castle of Marienburgh,"
27th September 1408.
King Henry, in a letter which may fairly be described
as gushing, accepts the Grand-Master's reply, and pro
poses a " perpetual league between the two countries."
This is prehminary to the formal treaty signed at
London on 4th September 1409, on which only a few
words remain to be said. The treaty is for mutual
trade, subject to " all rights and customs due in regard
of their said wares and marchandizes." The Hanse
privileges being renewed, it is obvious that this does
not mean reciprocity, since English merchants in Ger
many enjoy no such privileges. There is an intimation
that all claims have been settled on both sides by
agreement to pay certain unspecified sums ; but " be
sides the sums due unto the said Master-General "
there is a long new list of grievances " against himself
and divers other of his subjects of Prussia," which
are to be settled separately. These amount in the
aggregate to 5353 nobles, of which 2025 nobles are
claims on people of Calais and Bayonne, then British
possessions, which are to be paid by various Enghsh
men who are named. Thus Tulburie and Terry of
Hull are to pay 82 nobles to Matthewe Ludekensson

80 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
of Dantzig ; Sir Wilham de Ethingham, knight, " who
was Vice-Admirall for the Sea," is called sharply to
book for 114 nobles to John Halewater, also of Dantzig,
and so forth. The inhabitants of " Scardeburgh " are
to pay 800 nobles of English money for injuries and
robberies to John Gruk of Dantzig ; and people of
Blakeney, " Crowmer," Plymouth, Dartmouth, Calais,
and Bayonne are all mulcted in various sums. The
heirs of Lord Henry de Percie the younger are to pay
838 nobles for corn and grain bought by Lord Henry
in 1403 from the great procurator of Marienburgh for
the use of the castle of South Berwick.
On the English side, John Marion of Wersingham
is to be paid 200 nobles for damages received from a
Prussian named Eghard Scoff.
Now, if we make a little sum of this treaty, we
find that while the Germans get the enormous sum
for those days of 34,781 nobles out of England, England
only gets from Germany 966 nobles, and this although
upon the record the Germans had done much more
harm to Englishmen than Enghshmen had done to the
Germans. Moreover, the Germans have secured 1 a
renewal of certain valuable customs, preferences, and
trading privileges, well defined by charter and the
courts, whereas the Enghsh have only secured the
ordinary footing — none too good — of the foreigner in
Germany. There must have been a pull somewhere. Where
was it % In the first place, the Germans had sea-power :
they controlled Scandinavia and the Baltic — the main
source of sea munitions in those days. In the second
place, they controlled the Baltic corn supply, which
was necessary to an England largely given up to sheep-
1 Cf. Henry^V's embassy of 1415, mentioned above.

THE FIRST HAGUE CONVENTION 81
farming. In the third place, they controlled Flanders,
England's chief market. But, in the fourth place, they
financed ambitious kings, like Henry IV and Henry V,
in those glorious wars with France, which yielded so
little and cost so much.

CHAPTER IX
THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS
The pohtics of the Middle Ages had their parties much
as ours, and were naturally divided upon certain great
questions. The foreigner, and all who depended on
foreign imports and lived on foreign money, were on
the one side ; the Englishmen who depended, on manu
facture, on shipping, on fishing, and on agriculture
stood upon the other. On the one side was law, on
the other side custom ; on the one side Enghsh guilds,
on the other the cities of the Hanse and of Lombardy.
On the one side was wool, on the other side cloth.
When wool was the staple export of England, the
foreigner prevailed, because those who sell raw material
are in a weaker position than those who sell the finished
article. And our judicious prince, Edward III, did one
great service to England, which must stand to his credit
against aU his wasteful victories : he protected the
Enghsh cloth industry against Flanders. If we were
to inquire into his motive, I fear we would find it no
higher than this — to force the Flemish towns into an
aUiance with England against France. When he
brought his staple from Bruges to Calais, and from
Calais to Westminster ; when he stopped the export
of Enghsh wool and gave safe-conducts and bounties
to Flemish immigrants, he did it all that Flanders
might give free passage and support to his armies, in
spite of the allegiance the Count of Flanders owed to
France. 82

THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 83
But what, after aU, is the motive so long as the
policy is good? And Edward's policy re-estabhshed
the Enghsh cloth industry. I say re-established, be
cause Enghsh cloth was woven before the Conquest,
and Enghsh weaving was already important in the
time of Simon de Montfort. But, as we have seen,
in the time of Simon Enghsh cloth was a coarse article,
which the gentlemen of the patriotic party wore as a
mark of patriotism — much as the Duchess of Sutherland
set a fashion in Harris tweeds.1 Simon, we may be
certain, wore the cloth himself ; but Edward III was
not quite of Simon's mettle, as witness his statute :
" That none should wear any cloth for the future but
such as was made in England, except the King and
Queen and their children." Between Simon and Ed
ward there was a notable decline in the cloth industry,
as was natural with the triumph of the Free Trade and
Foreign Party ; but the divine accident of Edward's
ambitions revived it.2 Enghsh cloth became a great
competitor with the cloth of Flanders, and although
Flanders stopped its importation by a long series of
prohibitions, from the time of the Angevins to the
time of Ehzabeth, the industry went on, extending,
improving, and refining. For a long time Flanders
kept its hold upon the cloth-finishing trade, and fought
desperately to stop every English advance from the
half-finished to the finished article ; but in the process
of time English weavers learned every secret of their
1 That Simon's Parhament saw the need for importing weavers from
Flanders is shown by the proclamation that " all workers of woollen cloths,
male and female, as well of Flanders as of other lands, may safely come into
our realm there to make cloths — upon the understanding that those who shall
so come and make such cloths shall be quit of toll and tallage and of payment
of other customs for their work until the end of five years." — Lipson, p. 396,
who quotes De Antiquis Legibus Liber, 126, 127, 135-137 ; Riley, Chronicles
of London, 132, 141, 142.
2 His preambles always set forth that the measures were taken " in view
of the decay of the art of weaving " (cf. Lipson, p. 399).

84 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
wonderful craft, and even in silks our London weavers
rivalled the looms of Cologne and Lyons.
In the beginnings of our story we find the party
conflict raging between the exporter of wool and the
maker of cloth. Simon fell, it has been surmised,
because he ahenated the wool magnates by his whole-
hogging protection of the weaver. A poem, which is
put down to the reign of Edward IV, but might have
been written at any time from Henry III to the fif
teenth century, shows the clamour of the loom for the
prohibition of wool export : 1
" Let not our wool be sold for nought
Neither our cloth for they must be sought,
And in special restrain straitly the wool
That the commons of this land may work in full."
If wool must be sold, the poet goes on, let it be the
coarsest and the worst. Let there be an ordinance to
protect spinners, dyers, weavers, and the alhed trades,
and to prevent " a strange mene " from robbing the
poor artisan of his profit :
" For in these days there is a usance
That put the poor people to great hindrance
By a strange mene (foreign crowd) that is late in the land
Began and used as ye understand."
After describing the tricks of these foreigners, the
poet proceeds :
" By merchants and cloth-makers for God's sake take keep
Which maketh the poreylle (poor) to mourn and weep.
Little they take for their labour but half is merchandise
Alas ! for ruth it is great pity ! "
Now the wool export trade was in the hands of the
1 Wright, vol. ii. p. 282. Its title-motto is noteworthy : " Anglia propter
tuas naves et lanas omnia regna te salutare deberent." I have modernised the
spelling.

THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 85
Staple,1 half guild and half tax-farmer, protected by
many royal charters because furnishing the King with
most of his revenues. The Merchants of the Staple
admitted foreigners to their privileges, and as they
were exporters of the raw material and importers of
the finished article, they naturally leaned to the Free
Trade side. They held their mart, sometimes in Bruges,
sometimes in Calais, sometimes in the staple towns of
England. They sold wool, wool-fels, hides, lead, and
tin, and bought foreign merchandise.
The Merchant Adventurers, on the other hand,
sprang direct from the cloth trade. Wheeler2 says
they were originally known as the Brotherhood of St.
Thomas of Canterbury — Canterbury, of course, being
the traditional cradle of the English weaver, and St.
Thomas his patron saint. Moreover, in London, down
to 1526, the minutes of the Merchant Adventurers were
kept in the same books as those of the Mercers' Com
pany — and the Mercers dealt in silks. If a merchant
desired to trade in wool as well as in cloth, he had
to be a freeman both of the Staple and the Merchant
Adventurers' Company, which shows how closely the
two corporations corresponded with the raw material
and the finished article.
We may take it, then, that the Merchant Adventurers
were formed to organise a foreign market for English
cloth in English hands, and their design must at once
have brought them into sharp conflict with the Ger
mans. Indeed, I think it would be found, by a com-
1 The derivation of the word is so simple that it has escaped the learned.
A staple or hook of steel was used for dragging the bales of wool over the
warehouse floor. The traders in wool were therefore called staplers, and the
wool trade the staple trade. In course of time the Merchants of the Staple
exported a few other commodities, like tin and lead, and imported cloth ;
hence the term " staple trade " was gradually extended and the original
meaning lost.
2 Wheeler, Treatise of Commerce, p. 10.

86 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
parison of the rules and constitution of the two organisa
tions, that the English Company was a copy of the Hanse.
Thus, for example, no freeman of the Merchant Ad
venturers was allowed to marry a woman born out of
the realm of England. And the Navigation Laws of
Richard II and Henry VII, which, I take it, were
inspired by the Merchant Adventurers — what are they
but a statutory form of the Hanseatic rule of " Hanse
goods in Hanse ships" — which, indeed, the Germans
copied from the Venetians ? Then the Company, like
the Hanse, was an organisation of towns. London was
the chief ; but besides London there were Merchant
Adventurers' Guilds in Bristol, York, Norwich, Exeter,
Ipswich, Newcastle, Hull, Boston, Devizes, Sahsbury,
and Yarmouth. According to Wheeler, the Freemen
numbered some three thousand, so that they were
an organisation of national importance. It was said
by their enemies that their whole business was managed
by forty or fifty London merchants, and it would
seem that London had the chief say in matters of
national policy ; but the other towns had a voice in
the general management, and some of the towns, like
Bristol and Hull, for example, had separate charters.
Their business being to find a foreign market for English
cloth, they naturally concentrated their directing power
at the seat of government — and London may be called
the Lubeck of the Merchant Adventurers, without any
disrespect to so powerful a port as Bristol. The field
of operations covered by their charters was between
the Somme in France and the Scawe in Denmark :
they were the " mercatores in partibus Hollandie,
Selandie, Brabantie, et Flandrie," and their method
was to hold fairs in one, or at most two, towns within
that area — in other words, they sought to establish

THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 87
what the Germans called Kontors. Their affairs in
these mart towns were administered by a governor, a
deputy, and twenty-four assistants, and with this
governor and court all the Enghsh towns corresponded,
on such subjects as price, quantity, quahty, means of
shipment, and so forth. Not only so, but the court
had powers under their charters to settle disputes,
either between themselves or with strangers who
accepted their jurisdiction ; and Wheeler tells us that
they had charters not only from the kings of England,
but from the rulers of Flanders.
But it will be asked, If England was the manu
facturing rival of Flanders, how did it come about
that its Counts aUowed this formidable organisation to
settle in its midst ? Not without a struggle, certainly.
Wheeler tells how Edward III found an opening for
the Adventurers in Calais, and how the trade so created
induced "Lewes, Earl of Flanders," to give them a
charter in 1358. This charter gave them access to
Bruges ; but the Flemings, " through wealth and ful-
nesse of bread," drove them out, and they were fain to
settle in the town of Middleburg. This place, being
" full of salt and filthy ooze, stench and noysome
savours," bred agues, and the Enghsh accepted the in
vitation of Antwerp, then a poor and simple town,
which offered them privileges. There, and at the town
of Bergen-op-Zoom, the Adventurers established them
selves, and by the sale of cheap Enghsh cloth made
Antwerp the rival of Bruges. The fact is that the
weavers of Flanders were betrayed by the seaports
of Brabant : the Netherlands, having no national
trade pohcy, were unable to protect themselves against
the treachery of one of their towns. Wheeler boasts
that the Adventurers made Antwerp the " pack-house

88 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
of Europe " ; but it was at the cost of the Flemish
weavers. Thus the Merchant Adventurers began, and as they
attacked new markets, they branched out into new
companies, all linked children of the same parent, and
acknowledging its authority. Russia, " Eastland,"
Spain, and Turkey— all these had their branch com
panies of Merchant Adventurers.
But everywhere the chief enemy was the German
Hanse. In England, as Wheeler claims, the Adventurers
were " the principal obstacle to the bringing of the trade
into strangers' hands only," and he chiefly blames the
Germans for the troubles of the Merchant Adventurers
in the Netherlands : " The Easterhngs continue still
in their pride of heart and indurate malice." Without
them Antwerp could not have given trouble. And if
they fought the Enghsh in Antwerp, how much more
in Bruges, the chief depot of their trade.
Thus we see that the Enghsh took a leaf out of the
German book, as the Germans themselves had learnt
their trade secrets from the towns of Lombardy. They
united the chief ports and cloth centres of England
in a National League, or Trust, or Hanse, which fixed
prices, controlled output, and opened markets over
sea. Like the Germans, they organised themselves for
foreign commerce, and we shall find in the struggle
between these two organisations the master-key to
many secrets in our Enghsh history.
Now these merchants were caUed Adventurers be
cause they adventured oversea with their cargoes of
cloth, and they had accordingly a naval pohcy. We
find Chaucer's merchant expressing it in two fines :
" He wold the see were kept for anything
Betwixte Middleburg and Orewell."

THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 89
And this pohcy is set out in detail by another poet, the
author of the Libel of English Policie.1 Who the
author was we have no knowledge, but he wrote in the
reign of Henry VI, after the German Emperor Sigis
mund visited England in 1416, and before he died in
1438. This we know, because the writer refers to
Henry V in the past tense, and tells us that " Sigis
mund the great Emperour, wich yet reigneth," when
he was here on a visit, gave a valuable piece of advice
to " King Henry the fift," when he had seen the two
towns of Calais and Dover :
" Keepe these two townes sure, and your Majestee
As your tweyne eyne, so keepe the narrowe see." 2
And this is the text of the Libel :
" Cherish Marchandise, keepe the admiraltie
That wee bee Masters of the Narrowe see."
The poet shows us the trade of Europe passing up
and down the Enghsh Channel, and centring in Sluys,
the port of Bruges. There go the Spaniards, as to their
staple fair, with their figs, raisins, wine, wool, iron,
goatskins, saffron, and quicksilver.
" For Spain and Flanders is as eche other brother,
And neither may well live without other.''
The Spaniards sell their merchandise to buy " fine
cloth of Ypres that named is better than ours " ; but
what, after all, were Flemish cloth without Enghsh
1 Reprinted in Wright and Hakluyt.
2 There is a tradition in South Africa that the Emperor Wilham gave Lord
Roberts his plan of campaign, and there is probably as much truth in the
one story as in the other. But it is pleasant to beheve that a German Emperor
showed us how to fight the Germans.

90 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
wool ? Neither Spain nor Flanders could live without
England :
" They may not liven to maintain their degrees
Without our English commodities
Woolle and tynne : for the woolle of England
Susteineth the Commons Flemmings I understand."
As for Spanish wool, which was draped in Flanders, it
was useless unless our stronger wools were mixed with it.
So with the Portuguese : they depended on the
Flemish, and the Flemish depended on them :
" For Flanders is staple as men tell mee
To all nations of Christiantie."
So also with the Bretons, who were great sea-rovers,
and were always raiding our Norfolk coasts. And so
with Scotland, whose wools had to pass by England
into Flanders. If the Enghsh only kept the sea, they
would soon have peace with Scotland :
" Wee should right soone have peace for all her hosts,
For they must needs pass by our English costs."
Then the poet proceeds to deal with " the commo
dities of Pruce and High Dutchmen and Easterhngs " :
" which might not be forborne
Out of Flanders but it were verely lorne,"
because they brought in " the substance of the beere,"
and it was well known that two Flemings could drink
a " ferkin full of good beerekin " :
" Now Beere and Bakon bene fro Pruse y brought
Into Flanders as loved and far y sought :
Osmond, copper, bow-staves, Steele and Wexe,
Peltre ware and grey pitch, Terre, Board and flexe,
And Colleyne threed, Fustian and Cauvas
Card, Bukeram : of olde time thus it was."

THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 91
They also brought silver wedges " out of the lands of
Beame and Hungarie," and they loaded with woollen
cloth. Also they
"... adventure full greatly unto the Bay J
for salt that is needful withouten nay."
And therefore :
" If they would not our friends bee
Wee might lightly stoppe hem in the see
They should not passe our streames withouten leve,
It would not be, but if we should hem greve."
Having settled with the Germans, the poet passes
on to the Genoese, the Venetians, and the Florentines,
who came in their carracks and galleys to England and
Flanders. The Genoese brought cloth of gold, silk,
and pepper, and other good merchandise, and loaded
Enghsh wool ; the others brought spicery and groceries,
sweet wines, and
" Apes and japes and marmusets tayled
Nines and trifles that little have avayled."
For these they got our good cloth, wool, and tin, so
that the land was impoverished by their trade.
And then the poet has a fling at foreigners in general
— " of such lands and of such nations." They were spies
and agents of the enemy ; they spread false rumours :
" Also they bere the gold out of this land,
And suck the thrifte away out of our hand
As the waspe sucketh honie fro the bee."
They played tricks with our exchange, to their profit
and our loss : they bought our Cotswold wool on
credit, and got cash for it at Bruges. They had " free
dom and franchise " to trade over all England — more
1 See Appendix VI.

92 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
freedom than the English could get. They should be
given only forty days to unload and forty days to load
their ships, and they should
" Goe to oste, as we there with hem doe
It were expedient that they did right soe
As we doe there."
In other words, let us have reciprocity : our merchants
have to " host " when they go abroad, they should
do the same when they come to England. Here almost
certainly the poet is referring to the Hanse towns,1 for
he goes on to urge a strong Navy, and refers, as a
dreadful example, to the evil fate of Denmark :
" In Denmarke were full noble conquerours
In time past, full worthy warriours :
Whiche when they had their marchants destroyed,
To poverty they fell, thus were they noyed :
And so they stand at mischiefe at this day.
This learned I late will writon, this no nay.
Therefore beware."
Again the poet goes back to the standing grievance :
" What reason is it that we should goe to oste
In their countries and in this English coste
They should not soe ? but have more liberty
Than we ourselves."
Why, in other words, should they have Protection and
we Free Trade. There was bribery at work :
" Gifts and fests stopen our policie."
But we were the fools, not they. We always had the
worst of it, therefore we must have reciprocity, either
" hosting " in our country or Free Trade in theirs.
Take the position in Brabant. Englishmen had only
1 " The which Parliament (1440) ordained that all merchant strangers should
go to host with Enghshmen . . . except the Easterhngs." — Chronicles of
London, ed. Kingsford, pp. 146-147.

THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 93
fourteen days to unload at their marts, and fourteen
days to load ; if they remained longer, everything
was forfeit. Yet if Enghshmen were to withdraw from
these markets they would collapse.
What, then, was our true policy ? To govern the
sea, and suffer none to pass into Flanders without our
permission. Then all nations would be our friends :
" But we be frayle as glasse and also brittle."
We were backshders from grace. We allowed " Lom
bards and other fained friends " to colour merchandise.
They had friends in high places ; but
" Beware yee men that bere the great in hand
That they destroy the policie of this land."
It was shameful that there was no law against such
practices as colouring.
Then the poet touches on Ireland. He is all for
union, because Irish harbours might be used by the
enemy — as, indeed, they were shortly afterwards.
Wales also should be kept well in hand. But the great
thing, after all, was the Navy. King Edgar had been
strong on sea, and King Edward III and King Henry
V, they knew how to build and maintain a strong
fleet. " The sea well kept," if we did that, other
countries would not dare make war upon us. " The
end of battle is peace," and " power causeth peace
finally " :
" Kepe then the sea that is the wall of England :
And then is England kept by Goddes hand
That as for any thing that is without
England were at ease withouten doubt,
And thus should every lond one with another
Enter common as brother with his brother."
And here the poem ends with a fine apostrophe to

94 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
peace, and the peace of God that passeth understanding,
which is to be obtained not through weakness, but only
by the strength to maintain it. As for the man who
wrote it, if he was a poor poet he was a great statesman
and a good Enghshman. But we may take it that the
policy of the Libel was not the work of one brain : it
was the traditional policy of the Patriot Party in Eng
land — the policy of Simon de Montfort ; the policy of
Richard II ; the policy of London, of Bristol, of the
Merchant Adventurers ; the policy of York ; the
policy for which Warwick was to die, and which Edward
was to betray.

CHAPTER X
THE SACRED FRIENDSHIP
When that unfortunate monarch, Henry VI, made his
first State entry into London, on the 21st February
1431, John Lydgate wrote a courtly poem describing
the procession. The Lord Mayor goes past in red
velvet, followed by his sheriffs, aldermen, and free
men of the Guilds. Then come the foreigners :
" And for to remember of other Alyens
First Jeneueyes, thoughe they were straungeris,
Florentines and Venycyens,
And Esterlings, glad in her maneres,
Conveyed withe sergeauntes and other officeres
Estatly horsed, aftyr the Maier riding,
Passid the subarbis to mete with the Kyng."
The Easterhngs had, in fact, very good reason to
be " glad in their manners." They were supreme at
sea, and on land they were also supreme. On the 10th
May foUowing the Privy Council gives these " Mer
chants Dalmaigne " exemption from an increase on
the customs levied upon foreign merchants, the increase
being held to be in contravention of the ancient German
privileges. " With such conscientiousness," says Lap
penberg complacently, " which safeguarded the rights
of foreigners and of natives, the happy conditions of
the Hanse seemed unlikely ever to be disturbed."1
1 " Conscientiousness " is an excellent word, and its operation may be
traced throughout this period. In 1418 the sheriffs of London, who had rented
from the Treasury the royal subsidii from the town and county of Middlesex,
tried to make the Germans pay certain new duties on wine, salt, builders'
95

96 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
There was, in fact, only one circumstance which
threatened to disturb these happy conditions, and it
was this, that the English people, both on sea and land,
found the German domination intolerable, and were
determined to make an end of it. Yet it must have
seemed a hopeless struggle. Edward III had actually
forbidden Englishmen to engage in oversea trade.
In 1416 Henry V, after his glorious victory at Agin-
court, had sent a briUiant embassy to the honourable
society of the German Hanse of the Holy Empire —
" honorabilis Societatis Hansse Teutonicae sancti Im
perii " — in order to renew in solemn state all their old
privileges in England. In 1428 the English had again
been driven out of Bergen, by the inevitable " free
booter," Bartholomew Voet. They were endeavouring
to maintain a precarious hold on the Baltic trade, but
found themselves enveloped in endless disputes between
the Grand-Master of Prussia and the towns of Dantzig
and Elbing. In 1423 the Enghsh Navy was sold at
one courageous stroke of the pen by order in Council.
In 1452 two ships, " rotten and useless, practically
constituted the Royal Navy of England." Shortly
after the death of Henry V, Enghsh merchants com
plained to the Enghsh Parhament that their ancient
settlement at Dantzig had been forcibly dissolved, and
that they had been vilely entreated both there and at
Greifswald. The Germans in London took up the case
of their countrymen before the Privy Council, but at
the same time recommended Dantzig to treat the English
with a little more tact. Evidently English feeling was
wood, wax, tar, flax, oakum, and other goods. The Germans successfully
resisted the demand on the strength of their " ancient privileges," with the
aldermen of London as backers. In 1427 the attempt was repeated in con
nection with other duties — on rice and similar imports. The Mayor, G. Reyne-
well, and the rest of the Council supported the Germans in their claim of
exemption.

THE SACRED FRIENDSHIP 97
running higher. In 1432 the House of Commons was
petitioning the King to make German merchants in
London responsible for damages to Enghsh merchants
in the Baltic. The King had just confirmed all Han
seatic privileges — no doubt for the usual cash considera
tion — and he conscientiously dechned to agree to so
barbarous a proposal. At the same time the Prussian
Grand-Master was promulgating an order expelling all
Enghshmen from Germany, and the Hanse towns were
prohibiting the importation of English cloth. In 1434 a
Hanseatic embassy, consisting of the Mayors of Cologne,
Lubeck, Hamburg, and Dantzig came to London, and
were quietly settling all grievances with the Enghsh
Government, when the Enghsh merchants riotously
intervened with their complaints. The King, to soothe
the ruffled feelings of both parties, transferred the
negotiations to the Hanseatic stronghold of Bruges,
and the Hanse threatened to withdraw altogether from
England. In 1435, as an earnest of his good intentions,
Henry permitted the Germans to sell their fish in the
Enghsh markets, in spite of the ancient charters of
English fishmongers. Negotiations dragged on until
13th January 1436 with no result, " notwithstanding
the good intentions of the King." In the meantime
(1434) the Flemish had forbidden the importation of
Enghsh cloth, and troubles followed which made the
negotiations at Bruges impossible. The Hanse had
forbidden Gothland to trade in the North Sea, and
Holland in the Baltic.1 The Dutch joined with Scandi
navia in revolt against the League, but were signally
defeated by 1435.
Negotiations therefore languished at Bruges, and by
1 One of many pleasing illustrations of that glorious prinoiple of " hberty
of the seas," for which the German submarines, according to Bethman-Hollweg,
are now sinking neutral vessels. G

98 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
1437 the German ambassadors were back in London.
That redoubtable Mayor of Dantzig, Heinrich Vorrath,
had instructions from his city " to demand much of
the Enghsh and to concede nothing." 1 On the other
hand, the English merchants were clamouring for the
abolition of all Hanseatic privileges. Their trade in
Iceland had just been stopped by an interdict of Eric
VII, acting, as the English beheved, at German insti
gation. They were shut out of the Baltic, out of Ger
many, out of Flanders. It was not reasonable ; it
was not fair.
The King, always weak-minded and sometimes
imbecile, might have yielded to the prejudiced clamour
of his subjects ; but fortunately for the Germans,
sacred friendships stood firm in their support. Car
dinal Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, was
President of the Council, and he made an eloquent
speech on behalf of the Germans. After describing
the ancient and sacred character of the charters on
which the Hanse based its claims, and the lack of any
precedent for the claims of the Enghsh, he ended with
a lofty and eloquent peroration addressed to his un
reasonable countrymen : " Give up these new claims,"
he said, " and do not force this kingdom into a new war
with countries and towns without which we cannot get
along, and with which our merchants must keep up
relations in order to make profit." 2
The battle was won for Germany. On 22nd March
1437 a treaty favourable to the Hanse at all points
1 Th. Hirsoh, Dantzig1 a Handelsund Gerverbegeschichte unter der Herrschaft
des deutschen Ordens, p. 110.
2 Chronic of Detmar the Franciscan (a Lubeck chronicler), edited by Grautoff ,
Part II, p. 75, who makes the cardinal end his, speech thus : " Ghevet over
de nyen vunde, unde maket unsem ryke neu nyen orleghe myt Landen unde
steden, der wy nicht entberen konen und dar unse koep man van noet weghen
verkeren moet."

THE SACRED FRIENDSHIP 99
was signed in London, and confirmed by the King on
7th June of the same year.
Now, it is worthy of note that the head of the Com
mission on the English side was Wilham, Bishop of
Lincoln, a sacred friend of the Cardinal and of Germany.
On 17th June, ten days after the royal signature had
been affixed to the new German charter, the house in
Windgoose Lane, next to the German Steelyard, is made
over by the German widow, Johanna Bokeland, to
Henry, Cardinal of England, and William, Bishop of
Lincoln. " It may not be justifiable," says Lappenberg
musingly, " to draw conclusions affecting the honour
of the Cardinal and the Bishop." x
The treaty of 1437, between King Henry VI on the
one side, and Paul Rusdorfe, Master-General of the
Teutonic Knights of Prussia, and the pro-consuls and
consuls of the communities and cities of the Teutonic
Hanse on the other, is described as " a renewal of all
the privileges granted by either contracting party for
one hundred years backward, in commercial and
1 Yet Lappenberg grants that after all Shakespeare may not have been
so far out in that famous death-bed scene in Act iii. of the Second Part of
King Henry VI :
Cardinal. Bring me unto my trial when you will.
0 ! torture me no more ; I will confess. —
Give me some drink ; and bid the apothecary
Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.
King Henry. O thou eternal mover of the heavens,
Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch !
0, beat away the busy meddling fiend,
That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul,
And from his bosom purge this black despair !
Warwick. So bad a death argues a monstrous hfe.
It is not, perhaps, extravagant to suppose that the German house in Wind-
goose Lane may have been one of the trifles which weighed a httle on the
Cardinal's conscience in those self-revealing moments.

100 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
nautical concerns, and of the duties and customs on
both sides, now agreed to remain on the ancient foot
ing." It is also a readjustment of the debt : " Nine
teen thousand two hundred and seventy-four nobles
and a half were agreed to be paid in annual sums of
five hundred marks sterhng, or one thousand nobles
yearly/' The Germans are given special judges, to be
appointed by the King, and the position of Englishmen
in Germany is left much as before.1
The unequal struggle continued, the unreasonable
Enghshmen still demanding full and actual reciprocity.
In 1439 the King passes a statute exempting " les mer-
chauntz de Hanse dalmaigne " from certain " grievous
restrictions placed upon them in England." Im
mediately after, Parhament empowers the King to
rescind all Hanseatic privileges until the complaints
of the Enghsh in Prussia and Dantzig have been satis
factorily answered. Yet the royal edicts protecting
the Hanse continue to issue in endless succession. On
12th February 1446 the customs officials of Boston
are recommended to remember a Hanseatic charter
of 1317. The Enghsh reply is that at the present
time the Germans are turning the English out of the
Norwegian trade. Thereupon Henry Spicer of Derby
is given certain rights against the Hanse in England
for damages done to him in Norway. The German
merchants point out that by their charters they are
not responsible for the misdeeds of other Germans,
and the rights given to Henry Spicer are thereupon
revoked.2 In the same year the Hanseatic League
1 Anderson, vol. i. p, 458 ; Fcedera, vol. x. p. 66. ' I do not go into the
details of this instrument, as they may be more profitably considered when
we reach the Treaty of Utrecht, an even more complete monument to the
abihty of our " natural ally."
2 March 20, 1447.

THE SACRED FRIENDSHIP 101
passes a law that no Enghsh goods are to be carried
except in Hanseatic ships. This evidently precipitates
another storm, and Henry tides over the difficulty by
granting the Hanse safe conduct for three years, " pro
vided they pay the customs and other dues."
The German plan is, as before, to prolong and pro
tract negotiations through an endless maze of claim
and counter-claim. On 24th July 1448 a royal rescript
commands Sir Robert Shottesbroke and Sir John
Beck, with the Magister Richard Caunton, Archdeacon
of Sahsbury, to meet the Hanseatic ambassadors at a
convenient place and settle the difficulties.1 In the
following year they are at the " convenient place " of
Lubeck ; but the Lubeck Council refuses to negotiate
alone. The Hanse is convened, but only the Prussians
arrive ; the other German cities stay away. The Eng
lish envoys are hurt by this slight, but nevertheless
proceed with the negotiations. The Hanseatic deputies
reply that they are unauthorised to act for the absent
towns. After a long diplomatic sparring-match it is
agreed to transfer the negotiations to Deventer, and to
allow two years' truce for the negotiation of a settlement.
" These hopeful peace overtures," says Lappen
berg, " were unexpectedly destroyed by the violently
hostile sentiments of the Enghsh." As a matter of
fact, the Baltic towns and their allies, the freebooters,
had been scouring the seas of Enghsh shipping, and
when the English complained, the Hanse as usual
disavowed all .liability. In those circumstances, on the
3rd April 1449 the King gave royal letters patent " for
the cleansing of the sea, and rebuking of the robbers
and pirates thereof," to an illiterate but valiant man of
Devon called Robert Wenyngton.2 On 25th May this
1 Rymer, Fcedera, I, xi. p. 217. 2 Paston Letters, No. 68.

102 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
sailor reports that he had met with a fleet of a hundred
great ships of " Pruse, Lubycke, Campe, Rastocke,
Holond, Selond and Flandres " between Guernsey and
Portland. " And then," pursues Wenyngton, " I came
aboard the Admirell and bade them stryke in the
Kyngy's name of Englond ; and they bade me skyte
in the Kyngy's name of Englond ; and then I and my
felerschyp sayd but (unless) he will streke don the
sayle that I wyld oversayle him by the Grace of God,
and (if) God will send me wynd and wether. And dey
bade me do my wurst because I had so few schyppes
and so smale that they scornyd with me."
As a matter of fact, God did send him a good wind,
and there was a sharp engagement, in which the Ger
mans "schotte at us a jm: (1000) gownys (guns) and
quarell (cross-bow bolts) without number and haue
slayne meny of my felyschep and meymyd (maimed)
allsoo." The Germans surrendered, and Wenyngton
asks for instructions, as he had brought them into the
Solent (" within Wight "). He adds that, as they had
done him and his fellowship so much harm, he and his
company were " avesyd ... to drowne them and slee
them." In the meantime he begs his correspondent to
come to Southampton and see the sight, " for I der
well sey that I haue her at this tyme all the cheff
schyppys of Duchelond, Holond, Selond and Flaundrys,
and now hyt were tyme for to trete for a fynell pese
as for that party s."
Far from leading to a " fynell pese," this gallant
action only led to fresh trouble. By way of reprisal,
Lubeck seized a big English ship laden with cloth, and
asked King Christian of Denmark to act as umpire for
the division of the spoils between the cities. Chris
tian, a young and spirited monarch with a sense of

THE SACRED FRIENDSHIP 103
humour, decided that the ship had been taken in his
territorial waters, and appropriated both ship and
cargo, selling the freight for what it would fetch at
Copenhagen. At this the ire of the Liibeckers rose to
such a pitch that they not only arrested the Enghsh
merchants who had come to lay their complaints, but
Dr. Caunton, the Enghsh ambassador. The Hanseatic
towns pretended to intervene on their behalf ; they
were allowed out on parole, and most of them— in
cluding Dr. Caunton, I am ashamed to say — took
French leave.1
These events were not altogether welcome to the
more thoughtful of the Hanse towns, and especially to
the Kontor in London. They had all the privileges
they could hope for in England ; and the Enghsh,
although a patient race, were becoming unmanageable.
A terrible enemy had risen up against them, no less a
man than Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to
history as the King-Maker.
1 For these events, see Detmar's Chronicle, edited by Grautoff to 1451.

CHAPTER XI
WARWICK THE KING-MAKER
We might call Warwick the Simon de Montfort of the
fifteenth century. He led the Party of York, and the
Party of York was the Party of Protection, the Party
of the Merchant Adventurers, the Party of the Mercers
and Cloth-makers, the Party of the Iron-founders, the
Party of the Sailors — in short, the anti-German Party.
The weak-minded Henry, as we have seen, was com
pletely under the control of a Free Trade Party,
which had its spiritual home in Germany, and the
result was a situation which England found intolerable.
The York Party gradually gathered power in Court
about the middle of the fifteenth century, and forced
upon the King a more robust pohcy. By skilful diplo
macy the town of Cologne was detached from the rest
of the League : the South German city was offered all
the privileges of the Hanse in England. She accepted
the position after vain attempts to bring the Baltic
to reason, and made a separate peace. Lubeck was
faced by the dreadful position of a divided League,
and in 1456 the Baltic cities made a truce with England
for eight years.
In 1457 Warwick, already Governor of Calais, was
made Admiral of the Fleet. Dantzig, as usual, was
breaking the peace by covert attacks on Enghsh com
merce. Warwick struck back, and he struck hard.
104

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 105
He first showed his mettle in a desperate fight with
the Spaniards. This naval battle, the greatest since
the time of Edward III, took place on Trinity Sunday,
the 29th May 1458, and is described by John Jernyngan
in a letter to Margaret Paston.1 There were twenty-
eight sail of Spaniards, among them sixteen " great
ships of forecastle." Warwick attacked them with
five ships of forecastle, three carvels, and four pin
naces, and after fighting all day the English drew
off, " well and truly beat." Lappenberg confuses this
heroic action with Warwick's attack on a Lubeck fleet
a few weeks later.2 But the second affair was a much
tamer business. The Lubeck fleet was returning from
the " Bay " 3 with a cargo of salt, when Warwick came
down on it. Like Wenyngton, he ordered the Germans
to strike their sails " in the King's name of England,"
and when they refused he took six of them into
Calais. The Germans were furious, and the action being,
to say the least of it, irregular, the Lancaster Party
seized upon it as a means to bring about the ruin
of the Admiral. The King summoned Warwick to
Rochester. On 31st July a commission of the Lan
caster Party was appointed to go into the affair.4
Warwick was ordered by the King — or rather by the
Queen — to resign his post. He replied that he would
only resign it to Parliament, from whom he had received
it. There were hot words, and even blows, and Warwick
returned to Calais.5
Now this fight with the Germans, while it brought
1 Paston Letters, vol. i. p. 428.
2 Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, p. 71. 3 See Appendix.
4 Fcedera, vol. xi. pp. 374, 415.
5 As a solatium to the Germans, the privileges of the Hanse were confirmed
on 5th December 1458.

106 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Warwick disgrace at Court, made him the hero of
England. Henceforth he was —
" that noble knight and flower of manhood,
Richard, Earl of Warwick, shield of our defence."
From that time on there was open war, Warwick
fighting with Calais for his base ; and when he re
turned to England in the following year, Kent, London,
Sussex, and Essex flocked to his standard. In the
wars which followed, York was slain, and Warwick
made York's son, Edward, King of England.
There have been various views of Edward IV. He
has been called a great patriot, a great king, a great
statesman. And as to Warwick, he is generally repre
sented as an unscrupulous and ambitious noble. Let
us see how the facts stand. Edward is put on the
throne by the same Enghsh interest as made Simon
de Montfort supreme two hundred years before. The
Yorkist cause is the cause of the people of London,
the mercers and the artisans, the cloth- workers of Kent,
the iron-workers of Sussex, the agricultural interest
of the home counties. It is the protectionist cause.
Among the first actions of the King is to deprive the
German Hanse of its privileges in England. On 29th
April 1463, Parliament passes an Act enforcing upon
the Hanse the same duty on wine and wool as paid
by Englishmen, and a double duty on tin.1
In the same year Parliament passed a whole series
of protective measures. It decreed that the impor
tation of cutlery and ironware was forbidden during
the King's pleasure, and the importation of wrought
1 Statutes of the Realm, vol. ii. p. 392. The Parliamentary duty which
before had not been levied on the Germans is not to be confused with the
" ancient custom " on wool, which was a royal and hereditary tax.

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 107
silk for five years ; the export trade in wool was limited
to Englishmen, and the first corn-law was passed — ob
viously against cheap corn from the Baltic. No corn
was to be imported until the price was high enough
to allow Enghsh farmers a profit. In the following
year the importation of woollen cloth was forbidden.
Thus the mercers of London, the cloth-workers and
iron-workers of Kent and Sussex, and the English
farmer, were protected against the cheap products of
the German Empire — the corn of the Baltic, the iron
ware of Germany, the cloth of Flanders, and the silk of
Cologne. Nor was the shipping interest forgotten. In the
second year of his reign, Edward gave a " large charter "
to the English merchants trading in the Netherlands —
the Merchant Adventurers, in fact. In 1463 he even
passed a Navigation Act to compel English exporters
to use Enghsh ships.
Here certainly is the patriot programme of a patriot
King. And yet, if we look closer into his pohcy, the
needle of the compass is seen to be wavering violently,
as if there were two opposite forces in conflict. Even
in 1463 there is a temporary renewal of Hanseatic
privileges, which may either be a mere move in a diplo
matic conflict with Germany, or a partial surrender to
German influence. In 1465 envoys from England meet
the Council of Lubeck at Hamburg. Lubeck demands
a large sum for alleged damages to her shipping, but
the Enghsh refuse. " They disputed the damage, and
said that the present King could not be held responsible
for the Acts of his predecessors." 1 There was a dead
lock, yet on 4th March 1466 Edward renews all the
Hanseatic privileges. " According to the English,"
1 Detmar's Chronicle, vol. i. p. 285.

108 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
says Lappenberg, " the King had received a consider
able sum of money from the Hanse." x
Now, it is to be remembered that in 1465 Warwick
had gone on an embassy to secure the friendship of
France — a policy directly opposed to the Hanse, with
which France was at war. In 1467 Warwick again
goes to France on a similar mission, and returns to find
that Edward has betrothed his sister to the Duke of
Burgundy. In July .1468 the marriage takes place at
Bruges, the centre of Hanseatic influence, and Edward
is committed to the Burgundian and German combi
nation. When the French ambassadors come over,
Edward is openly rude to them, and Warwick tells
them privately that the King is governed by traitors.
Lubeck all this time is squeezing England. In 1468,
at Hanseatic instigation, the Danes capture four Eng
lish ships. There is a storm in England, and many
Germans are arrested in London. On 1st May 1469,
the Hanse shuts out English cloth from Germany, and
recalls the Hanse merchants from England. At the
same time the Privy Council condemns the Easterhngs
to pay £13,520 in their first great case with the Mer
chant Adventurers as compensation for losses sustained
at the hands of the Germans at sea. In spite of the
King there is a state of war with the Hanse, Cologne
excepted. Edward's secret favours to the Hanse have
led to trouble with Warwick. By the middle of 1469
there is open rebelhon. " In the year 1469," says the
Dantzig Chronicle,2 " there was great discord in England
1 " King Edward IV of England calling in question the vahdity of the
powers of the ancient charter of German merchants of the Steelyard in London,
they made him a present of a large sum of money for the renewal of that
charter." — Anderson, vol. i. p. 488. Anderson is silent as to his authority,
and there is naturally no mention of the payment in Rymer and the Hanse
Recesse. 2 P. 5 (for 1469).

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 109
amongst the lords, one of the reasons being the Mer
chant (i.e. the Hanse). The Cologners had set up for
themselves and left the others in the lurch. Also the
King of England had made enemies of many great
lords, who were the Queen's friends and brothers
(i.e. the Lancaster Party), and had them or their knights
beheaded as traitors. As for Warwick and his friends,
who had helped to make him King, he treated them
with contempt (do hild er nichts doruon). Therefore
Warwick hated him greatly, and as for many nobles
and the common folk who hated the German merchant
(gemeine Volk die aufden deutschen Kqffmann hagerden) —
they went with any lord who did what they wanted.
So there came about this discord among the nobles."
This is contemporary evidence, and it shows (1)
that the rebellion of 1469 concerned the Hanse, and
(2) that Warwick stood with the common people against
the Germans and the King.
A confused conflict follows. By the end of 1470
Warwick has fled to France. Now, as we have seen,
the party of Lancaster is traditionally the German
party in England, and at this time Margaret, the Queen,
an exile in France, is promising Lubeck anything and
everything for German assistance against Edward.
As early as June 1463 Henry VI, at that time hidden
in a castle in North Wales, had sent an envoy to the
Kontor at Bruges. This messenger, WiUiam Cosinot,
Lord of Montreuil, in Picardy, was advised at Bruges
to write to Lubeck, and on 30th June he writes to the
great city, begging for threefold help — money, soldiers,
and guns. In exchange he promises any security the
Hanse may desire — including a bond on the Enghsh
customs — if they will only help the King against his
rebellious subjects. He invites them to negotiations

110 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
at Bruges, and asks them to forgive the rude Latin
of a soldier. In August Queen Margaret herself is in
Bruges, obviously on the same errand. But the Hanse
temporises : probably they hope to get more out of
Edward. By 1469 they have broken with England.
On 1st May Lubeck recalls the Hanseatic merchants
from the Steelyard, leaving the rebel Cologne in pos
session. On 31st May 1470, Lubeck takes another
step : a Hanseatic decree prohibits Enghsh cloth in
Germany. In August 1470, the Hanse again discusses
the prohibition of English cloth; it is found difficult
to enforce, the trade being extremely profitable. But
the policy must be enforced, and the Master of Livland,
the Grand-Master of Prussia, the Kings of Poland and
Denmark, the Dukes of Burgundy, Cleves, and Gueldres,
and the Bishops of Bremen, Liittich, and Utrecht are
notified accordingly. The King of England is also to
be informed. In short, the whole terrific machinery
of the Hanse boycott is set in motion against England.
And, further, Cologne is expelled from the League.
Strong measures certainly. But Lubeck is still
negotiating not only with Margaret, but with Edward.
Margaret is now in France — which is obviously against
her chances. From her Duchy of Bar, at St. Michel on
the Meuse, she writes a desperate letter to Lubeck on
1st May 1470, urging upon the Hanse a common revenge
upon England— that is, upon the cause of York— and
proposing a meeting between her counciUors and the
Hanseatic aldermen at Bruges. Lubeck considers this
letter at a full meeting of the Hanse, but postpones
a decision till its next meeting, on August 24th, St.
Bartholomew's Day. "And also," says the Minute,
" the most gracious princess, Margaret, Queen of Eng
land, and her son Edward wrote to the envoys of the

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 111
council and asked for help for England. Upon this
nothing was finally resolved but left over for Bartho
lomew's Day. Letters were written, mutatis mutandis,
to Madame the Queen, and to the Lord Duke of Bur
gundy." For the Duke by this time is courting the
Hanse on behalf of Edward IV, and it is for this
reason that Liibeck postpones its decision. On 25th
April 1470 the Duke writes from Lille to the Hanse
aldermen at Bruges that he has been appointed by his
brother(-in-law), the King of England, as mediator
" concerning what had happened between him and you "
(angande den geschillen wesende twischen eine unde
juw), and he admonishes them " to discuss this matter
amongst yourselves, and also to let your friends know,
so that from your side also we should receive the neces
sary authorities and credentials." 1
The merchants at Bruges refer the matter to the
Hanse at Lubeck, and the Duke writes to Lubeck from
Middleburg, on 26th May, advising the assembled depu
ties to accept him as intermediary. King Edward, he
says, has left the matter entirely in his hands, and has
agreed to the truce, so that what remains to be arranged
is a meeting between both parties. Lubeck replies,
requesting the Duke to keep up his relations with the
Enghsh, and promising that they would decide the
matter on St. Bartholomew's Day, after which they
would despatch their own envoys. Again an envoy of
Reval, reporting to his town on 28th June, mentions
this offer of mediation, and adds that the Kings of
France and Scotland also are asking the Hanse for
a permanent peace. " All this," he says, in an illumi
nating sentence, " is the result of the freebooters,
otherwise it would have cost a great deal of money
1 A copy of this letter is in the archives of Cologne.

(

112 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
to arrive at this result, which we are now almost certain
to secure." x
Thus, on the very day2 that Lubeck considers the
petition of Margaret, it also considers the petition of
Edward. In particular, there is a letter from the Duke
of Burgundy. Charles is very much surprised to hear
that they had again sent from sixteen to eighteen war
vessels against England, since they had led him to
expect that they had suspended the matter until St.
Bartholomew's Day. It was most awkward, because
his own ships had combined with King Edward's against
the common enemy (France and Warwick). Therefore,
to avoid unpleasant complications, they really ought to
recall their ships and consent to a meeting with the
Enghsh — that is, with Edward.
Upon this the Hanse decided to empower its agents
at Bruges to negotiate with the Duke of Burgundy.
The instructions are very clearly defined. First of all,
he must know whether the English are prepared to
recompense the Hanse towns for the losses they have
suffered, and to give full security against a recurrence
of their misdoings. Furthermore, as a conditio sine
qua non, he must demand restitution of all privileges.
The Enghsh must have credentials empowering them
to make good all damage ; on the other side, the Hanse
representative is to commit himself to nothing with
out reference to the Towns ; the meeting is to be held
at Bruges ; the war may be stopped before Candlemas,
1 The exact words are : " Dat maken de ulliggers, it solde anders groet
gued kosten, dat id dar to gueme, dar it nu hght vol to komon sal." Pauli
misconstrues this rather obsoure piece of old German, turning it into mere
nonsense. He makes the envoy say that they did not dare give a definite
reply to both parties, fearing the great expense of the war, and so let the free
booters go on. What the envoy meant was that the freebooters were serving
the ends of the Hanse, without any expense to the Hanse itself — a confession
that those pirates which the Hanse so often disavowed were in effect their
secret allies.
2 St. Bartholomew's Day, August 1470.

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 113
with an extension for ships on the high seas ; and the
next Hanse day is to be convoked not before Easter,
1471. Such, then, was the position when Warwick fled to
France. The Germans were negotiating both with
Margaret of Lancaster and Edward of York, and they
were also forcing matters upon the sea. But it is plain
that their policy was already shaped : it was to come
to an agreement with Edward through the Duke of
Burgundy, and throw Margaret over. For Edward
was in England, and Margaret only in France. Ob
viously the Hanse looks upon Edward as pliable : it is
Warwick who is the real enemy. Then comes the
flight of Warwick.
" Also," says Weinreich, " in the same Lent Warwick
fled from England into France, and the Duke of Bur
gundy went to sea with great force to get him out of
France. Henry von der Neere was Admiral of the Fleet.
On St. James's Day Von der Neere sailed against France
with all his ships, the Easterhngs among them, who
served the Duke of Burgundy." In a note to the
chronicle we are told that this Flemish-German fleet
defeated Warwick on July 2nd, and secured thereby
the commerce of the Netherlands.1
It is clear, then, that Warwick was still the enemy
of the Hanse, and that his alhance with France was
directed against the German power. In other words,
he remained true to the Yorkist pohcy.
Warwick was a statesman, and he acted swiftly.
He made peace with his old enemy, Margaret, and formed
a league with the French King. In fact, he mobihsed
the exiled cause of Lancaster against the Germans,
who had aheady forsaken that cause. He could have
1 Caspar Weinreich's Danziger Chronik, p. 6. H

114 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
had little difficulty in persuading Margaret that she
could hope for nothing from Lubeck, for, as we have
seen, the Hanse had kept her dangling ever since
1463. This rearrangement of parties being made, Warwick
again invaded England. The Enghsh Navy was be
hind him ; the cloth-makers of Kent flocked to his
banner. An anonymous London chronicler shows how
the invasion was directed against the Germans in Eng
land : x " And in September (1470) the Duke of Clarence,
the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl
of Oxford, with divers gentlemen, landed at Dartmouth,
in Devonshire ; to whom drew much people of every
county ; and the people of Kent made an insurrection
in Kent, and came to London ; where in the suburbs
of the City and other places, as Saint Catherines and
Radclyf, they robbed and despoiled divers Dowchemen
(Germans or Flemings) and their beer-houses. And the
said Duke and his company made, as he came into the
landward, his proclamations in King Henry's name,
who at that time was prisoner in the Tower of London.
And when they drew towards King Edward, then being
at York, he fearing them, and also had but a small people
about him in comparison with the Duke and his com
pany. Wherefore seeing he could not make his party
good with them, and also some of his own folk about
him were not very fast to him, he with a few horse took
the next way over the Wash in Lincolnshire, where some
of his company were drowned, and he escaped with great
jeopardy." The Queen went into sanctuary at West
minster, and " divers bishops and many others that
were King Edward's friends also went into sanctuary
places for their safeguard. . . . And then, again, many
1 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, p. 183.

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 117
Dutchmen, and also some Enghshmenfor a big bonfire
beer-houses, were despoiled and robbed, te the victory.
burnt ; but the Mayor and the citizens kcanders as the
of the city. And upon the 12th day of i.to Dantzig
Tower was given up by appointment. And7 that the
Henry was taken from the place where heTanse had
prisoned and lodged in the King's lodgings." WDuke of
was beheaded, and King Edward and his b&nce —
Gloucester attainted by Parliament as traitors. have
In the meantime Edward has fled to Flandmch
Commynes,1 our best authority for the events whiide
follow, says that Edward left Lynne without money
or treasure, and with only the clothes and armour he
and his men wore, in two Dutch ships and a small
English boat. And he adds : " At this time the
Easterhngs were the enemies of England and of France,
and had several ships of war on the sea. They were
feared by the Enghsh, not without cause, for they were
good fighters, and in this very year they had done great
damage to England and taken several ships." There
were seven or eight of these German ships hanging
about Lynne when Edward started out, and they pur
sued the King's little flotilla. They did not catch him,
however. He anchored in the harbour of Alkmar, in
Friesland. The bigger German ships lay outside,
waiting for high tide. Fortunately for Edward a
Flemish nobleman, Herr von Gruthuyse, otherwise
Louis de Bruges, happened to be at Alkmar at the
time, and forbade the Hanseatic ships to touch the
English King. He assisted Edward to land, and
convoyed him to the Hague, where he became the
guest of Charles the Bold. Now it is clear that Edward
had not a penny left. He had come to Flanders in
1 The Memoirs of Messire Philippe de Commynes, Book III, chap. v.

114 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
had little diffici'les the Bold, according to Commynes,
could hope for-inced that he could do nothing for his
seen, the Hw, yet secretly he lent Edward the sub-
1463. a of 50,000 St. Andrew florins to prepare
This resionary force. Just as secretly he chartered
again inv Hanseatic ships (quatarze navires Ostrelins),
hind hiined, which promised to serve Edward for the
banne^e to England, and for fifteen days afterwards.
the ias a great help, says Commynes, considering the
lannes.1 th With his Flemish money Edward had, besides, char
tered several ships of war at the harbour of Veere in
Walcheren.i He put out of Flushing on the 2nd March
1471, and landed on the 14th near Ravenspur. When
he landed, according to our London chronicler, he had
with him only five hundred " Dutchmen " and as many
Enghshmen. But the magnates of Yorkshire rallied
to his standard. He defeated and slew Warwick in
the great battle of Barnet, which opened the way to
London. On the very day of the battle Margaret had
landed at Weymouth ; she was defeated at Tewkes
bury. Edward, Henry's only son, was executed after
the battle. Warwick's vice-admiral, Fauconbridge, at
tacked London with his sailors ; he was defeated,
retired to make war on the sea, and was in the end
captured and beheaded. The day Edward entered
London, Henry VI was murdered in the Tower, and
thus Edward was restored to his kingdom.
There were great rejoicings in Flanders over Ed
ward's return. Bruges, which had given £25 to Herr
von Gruthuyse for his expenses in entertaining the King,
paid the messenger who brought the glad tidings six
1 Edward Hall's chronicle for this period is merely a free translation of
Commynes.

WARWICK THE KING-MAKER 117
gold florins ; and there is a further bill for a big bonfire
in front of the sheriff's house to celebrate the victory.
But it was a victory not so much for Flanders as the
Hanse. Their merchant in Bruges writes to Dantzig
on 26th February 1471, expressing his joy that the
soldiers and freebooters now serving the Hanse had
been permitted to enter the service of the Duke of
Burgundy, and to fight against England and France —
that is to say, against Warwick. Here, then, we have
the position. The Duke of Burgundy is in close touch
on one side with King Edward, and on the other side
with Lubeck. The Hanse allows its ships and its men
to be used for the invasion of England in the cause of
York, although their public and traditional policy is
the support of Lancaster. When they restore King
Edward, they are, and have been for some years, at
open war with the Yorkist government of England.
At the same time they turn their hostile forces against
both Warwick and Lancaster. There is one plain ex
planation of the whole business ; it confirms the earlier
reports that Edward had sold himself to the Hanse,
it explains the rupture between Warwick and Edward,
it accords with Edward's traditional character as a
spendthrift and a voluptuary. It is that Edward had
betrayed all that the cause of York stood for, and
had sold himself to Germany. If this explanation be
accepted, it is Warwick that is faithful to the cause
of York — that is to say, to the cause of Enghsh ship
ping and Enghsh industries. Edward is the traitor.
There is evidence that Edward contrived to keep at
least some of his party in the dark as to his double
dealing. Warwick, as we have seen from his remark
to the French ambassadors, had no illusions. Thomas
Cook, the Mayor of London, understood it also. When

118 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Edward landed he fled, but was captured by Paul
Beneke, the Hanseatic admiral.1
Pauli, the great German historian, concludes from
these events that interest drove the Hanse to make
this sudden change in its policy, to throw over Lan
caster and accept York. " In a short time," he says,
" success proved that they were right. With a dynasty
at Westminster depending on the House of Valois
neither the Hanse nor Flanders could have lived at
peace, and the Hanseatic merchant in London could
hardly have recovered his privileges. The trident
which he (the German) had carried up till now could
never be permitted to fall into the hands of that Romanic
Power which enslaved both body and soul. The whole
development of West European commerce would have
been different if Flemish, Dutch, and Easterhngs had
not been prepared to put Edward back on his throne,
notwithstanding the conflict the latter had to settle
with the English Government." And Lappenberg
makes the point still more clear. " Justly," he says,
" was the Hanse delighted over the return of King
Edward. It had furthered this return, because it saw
in this event the surest means to re-establish peace and
its privileges." The Germans, in fact, put Edward
on the throne because Edward was ready to betray
England, and the fall of Warwick was the victory of
Germany.
1 " And also in the same Lent (1471) Paul Beneke took the Magdalen
of Dieppe, and the Swan of Caen. On this he took prisoner the Mayor of
London, whose name was Thomas Cook." — Caspar Weinreich's Danziger
Chronik. Robert Fabyan, the chronicler, confirms Weinreich, although he confuses
Hanseatic and Flemish : " And in this season also pSir Thomas Cook before-
named, avoyed the lande to haue sayled into Fraunce. But he was taken of
a shyp of Flaunders and his sone and heyre with him, and so sette there in
pryson many days, and lastly was delyveryed unto Kynge Edwarde."

CHAPTER XII
" WE HAVE MADE AN END OF THE ENGLISH "
King Edward is on the throne of England, but England
is at the mercy of the Germans. And the Germans
have no mercy. Edward sends two Enghsh merchants,
H. Bentley and W. de Bristowe, to make a formal
peace. By order of the towns, Hamburg is proposed
as the meeting-place. Bergen and Bruges act as inter
mediaries. The peace meeting is representative, but
merely prehminary. " The negotiations," says Lap
penberg complacently, " are very favourably influenced
by the damage done to Enghsh commerce by Paul
Beneke, the Dantziger. Hamburg and Bremen also
send ships and men to the shores of England to do as
much damage as they can." On 5th May and 10th
December 1472, the King gives- credentials to his am
bassadors. By 21st May 1473 there is an agreement
that negotiations are to be opened at Utrecht on July
1st ; in the meantime a truce is asked for by England,
and granted by Lubeck. By 6th October an Act of
Parhament stops hostilities against the Germans, and
empowers the King to restore all Hanseatic privileges.
The negotiations are renewed in July, and then ad
journed to December. The King's credentials are not
wide enough. The King enlarges them, and his Par
liament renews the Hanseatic privileges. Only on 28th
February 1474 is the treaty concluded at Utrecht.
We are told by Lappenberg that Edward was
119

120 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
" willing to conclude peace from the outset," and that
it was only a question of putting the Hanseatic con
ditions in a form acceptable to England. This is
curiously confirmed by the King's instructions to his
ambassadors at Utrecht, dated 20th December 1473.
The King instructs his ambassadors " to aske of thaym
more than was asked before " ; but if " they of the
Hanse wol willfully remaine in thaire first opynions,
there might faile a brache of alle the hole matier,
whiche God forbede : therefore the Kinge wolle (wills)
that his said oratours rather than brake, put the
oratours of the Hanse in comforte and hope, that at
thaire comyng into England they shal have the residue
of thaire ententis accomplished in such wise as of reason
they shal be content." x
What could ambassadors do with such instructions ?
Nothing save what Lappenberg says they did : " The
negotiations were slow — step by step only the Eng
lish ambassadors receded." The King had betrayed
them : if they showed themselves stubborn on any
point, there was Beneke of Dantzig in the background
with his terrible ships.
Now this treaty, which is the perfect flower, the
rare and refreshing fruit, of the " Natural Alhance,"
will repay a careful examination.2 Here, then, are the
terms of the treaty :
" I. AU past injuries and complaints shall be buried
in oblivion, and all injuries and violences shall be ab
solutely foreborne for the future.
1 Cotton MS., Nero, Bk. IX, fo. 68, British Museum.
2 The original transcript is in the archives of Lubeck. It is given in full
in Lappenberg, and in Fcedera, vol. xi. p. 792, &c, and it is summarised by
Anderson, vol. i. pp. 500-2. To look at the bargain as a whole, we should also
include the Enghsh Treaty of 1473 with Denmark, in which there is a proviso
" that the English shall not resort nor trade to Iceland." — Fcedera, vol. xi. p. 735.

"AN END OF THE ENGLISH" 121
" II. For the greater safety of the merchants and
people of the Hanse Society, King Edward agrees to
grant his charter or obligation, in the strongest terms,
and shall also get it confirmed by Act of Parlia
ment, that no kind of damage shall be done to their
persons or goods, by reason of any sentence or de
termination of the said King and his Council, for
reprisals, &c, on account of matters done prior to this
treaty. " III. The merchants of England may freely resort
and trade to the countries and ports of the Hanse
League, as the Hanseatic merchants may to England,
with their ships and merchandize freely to sell the same,
and purchase others there, without paying in either
country any more than the ancient duties and customs
on any pretence whatever.
" IV. All the privileges and immunities of the
Hanseatics in England are hereby renewed, and shall
also be confirmed by Act of Parhament, and the Eng
hsh shall enjoy all their ancient immunities at the
Hanse towns as formerly.
" V. The Hanseatic merchants in England shall not
henceforth be subject to the Lord High Admiral's Court
or jurisdiction, but in controversies about maritime
affairs, &c, shall have two judges allotted to them by
the King for determining the same.
" VI. That the Steelyard in London, in its utmost
extent, shall be confirmed to the said German mer
chants, as also the Steelyard at Boston, and that a
like house be assigned for their use at Lynn, near the
Waterside. " VII. That the ten thousand pounds sterling,
liquidated to be due by the King to the said German
merchants, shall be paid or deducted out of the customs

122 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
and duties on their merchandize, till the whole sum
be discharged. " VIII. If any city of the Hanseatics shall hereafter
separate itself from the general union, the King of
England shall cause all the privileges of that separat
ing city to cease in England, until they be reunited to
the League.
" IX. The said German merchants of the Steelyard
shall have the possessing and keeping of the Gate of
the City of London, called Bishopsgate, as by ancient
agreement between that City and them.
" X. The King shall provide that the woollen cloth
of England be reformed, both as to the quahty of the
wool and the length and breadth of the cloth.
" XI. The said Steelyard merchants shall be at
hberty to sell their Rhenish wines by retail, as well
as by wholesale, according to ancient custom."
Now, there is a fallacious appearance of recipro
city about the first block of four articles which might
deceive the unwary. In reality all that the Enghsh
obtained was a repetition of the terms of the treaty
of 1437, which they by experience had found useless.
" Although," says Lappenberg, " these articles had in
times gone by proved to be of very little value, on ac
count of their muddled wording, over them the whole
peace was almost shipwrecked." The Enghsh envoys
insisted upon them as a minimum ; Dantzig refused to
accept them. And Dantzig's argument is illuminating :
if they were conceded the Enghsh might demand the
right to trade with Russia, Poland, and Livland.
Dantzig even refused a compromise suggested by the
other German towns, the addition of a clause that the

"AN END OF THE ENGLISH" 123
Englishman should rank in his rights behind the citizen.
The Enghsh were even prepared to declare that Dantzig
could interpret the articles according to its former
habit.1 But this also Dantzig refused to accept. Not
until two years afterwards did Dantzig accept the treaty
— and then with the reservation that Englishmen should
be treated like non-Prussian Hanse cities, and should
pay customs and duties like all other foreign merchants.
In actual practice she did not concede even so much.
Englishmen, as they complained long afterwards, were
treated in Dantzig worse than all other merchants save
Jews ; but more of that later. As to Dantzig's refusal
to sign in 1474, the truth probably was that she found
the freebooting business too profitable to be abandoned,
and trusted to get her goods smuggled into England
under the false manifests of friends in the other German
cities. But she was also nervous about the Russian
trade, and Riga, her satellite at that time, was not
allowed to sign until 1500.
But the financial terms of the treaty show how
hoUow was the pretence of equahty. Thus the Privy
Council, in 1569, had condemned the Germans to pay
£13,520 as damages to the English merchants. This
claim is wiped out, but the counter-claims of the Ger
mans are liquidated at £10,000. And even this sum,
enormous in those days, did not represent the whole
advantage, for it had been originally fixed at £15,000,
but was reduced on the pledge of the King " to hold
free from damage every member of the Hanse who had
reason to sue any of his subjects for offence, arrest,
1 " Die Engelschen hadden doch siick des begeven, dat de can Dantsiike
sulcke articule solden mogen duden unde interpreteren na erer olden wonheit."
— Hanse Recesse, ii. In. 138, par. 84, also 189 (p. 399). Perhaps the most amazing
example of " save face " in the history of diplomacy.

124 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
loss of ships, wares, or other goods." In other words,
the King pledged the justice of his courts as part of
the liquidation.
As to the form of payment, there was a double
advantage, for until the amount in full was paid the
Germans paid no customs at all, and therefore had a
great advantage in business over Englishmen and
foreigners alike. The royal rescript by which this
article of the treaty is carried into practice informs
our customs officers that "concedimus et licentiam damus
mercatoribus Hanse theutonice . . . quarum omnium
mercandisarum sic adducendarum vel educendarum
custume et subsidia juxta earundem ratam et quanti-
tatem custumarum et subsidiorum tantum et non
ultra . . . ad, summam decern millium librarum in
toto se attingent." Up to this amount the Germans
were to hold the customs money in their own hands —
" in manibus suis propriis habeant et retineant." 2
For years this arrangement gave the Germans free
trade in England. Both Richard III (on 5th De
cember 1484) and Henry VII (on 29th June 1486)
confirmed the edict.
A minor provision of the treaty states that the sum
of £484, lent to the King by German merchants released
by him from prison, is to be repaid to the Germans,
excluding the Cologners. And this brings us to the
most fascinating article in the treaty, Article VHI.
It covers a miserable story of shame and dishonour,
which must now be told.
In the negotiations of Utrecht, the Hanse was
represented by deputies from the Kontors of Bruges,
London, and Bergen, and particularly by envoys from
1 After a Hamburg copy compared by Lappenberg with the King's command
to his servants at Boston (3rd June 1475).

"AN END OF THE ENGLISH" 125
Lubeck, Hamburg, Dantzig, Dortmund, Deventer, and
Campen. Cologne was conspicuous by its absence.
Now Cologne, as we have seen, played a peculiar part
in the Wars of the Roses. To get to the beginning of
it we must go back at least to 1450. On the Hanse
Day of that year there is sharp division between Lubeck
and the northern towns on the one side, and Cologne
on the other. Cologne, it is clear, does not approve of
the piratical policy of the Baltic : she is not interested
in sea supremacy, and thinks the attacks on Enghsh
shipping dangerous to German trade in England. In
fact, she is all for peaceful penetration. The position
is frankly explained by the historian of the Rhine city.
" Denmark and the Wendish towns," says Dr. Ennen,
" sought to use the wild troubles of the White and the
Red Rose to destroy English commerce in the Baltic.
English merchants had for a long time experienced
manifold maltreatment on the sea at the hands of
Lubeck, Rostock, Dantzig, Wismar, and Stralsund. In
1468 the Enghsh ship Valentine was held up by 400
armed men, looted and taken to Copenhagen. Six
Enghsh merchantmen on their way to Prussia were
attacked by two big Dantzig ships and a few smaller
Hanseatic vessels at a time of complete peace, and
overpowered and robbed. The King commanded the
aldermen and all members of the Guildhall (the German
Steelyard) to come to Westminster. They were all de
clared prisoners, on the suspicion of having informed
the Wendish towns of the departure of the captured
merchantmen, and were made responsible for the
damage of £20,000. The Cologners succeeded in estab
hshing their innocence, and on condition that they
would in no way assist the rest of the Hanse, they were
liberated and put in possession of their goods and their

126 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
rooms in the Steelyard. In return for this exemption
they became surety for Edward IV for £20,000, and
lent him in cash £1000.x
We seem to trace the master-hand of Warwick in
a series of skilful negotiations with Cologne, which begin
about the time his party is gaining influence in the
councils of the King. Thus, on 24th September 1452,
the King writes a friendly letter to Cologne, complain
ing of the misdeeds of Lubeck. Cologne is offered all
the privileges of the Hanse if she will only make a
separate peace. This she does. The Baltic cities are
faced by a divided League, and in 1456 they make the
eight years' truce referred to in the last chapter.2
Thus Cologne had been the ally of the Yorkist cause
against the rest of the Hanse. But when Edward was
restored by the Baltic cities he was faced by the neces
sity of throwing his old friend over. The Hanse put
the case bluntly and forcibly : Edward was to choose
one or the other — " De Stede seden, wolden de Engel-
schen de Coiner hebben, so mosten se der anderen stede
entberen, wente de Coiner scholden wyken edder se
wolden wyken." 3 In vain the Cologners represented
their past services to the King, and even tried to form
a party among the cloth-workers in Parliament against
the Hanse. The country was helpless : the King had
sold himself. At first the King refuses to ratify the
decree of excommunication, but he is forced to give way.
And the miserable man contents himself with instruct-
1 Geschichte der Stadt Koln, by Br. Leonard Ennen, Stadt Archivar, vol. iii.
p. 708 et seq. The following curious hst is given of those who intervened with
the King on behalf of Cologne : Thomas of Beaufort, Primate and Cardinal of
England, Archbishop of Canterbury (a great compromiser, no doubt), part of
the Privy Council, the Duke Adolphus of Geldern, the Archbishop Ruprecht
of Cologne, and John, Duke of Cleve.
2 That Warwick was responsible for this pohcy I infer from the fact that
in 1470 he put Cologne in sole possession of the Steelyard, and that in 1470
Cologne was excommunicated by the Hanse.
3 Hanse Recesse, ii. 7, n. 34, § 53.

"AN END OF THE ENGLISH" 127
ing his ambassadors to avoid the specific mention of
Cologne in the treaty, as that would hurt his honour.1
The Hanse graciously concedes the point : the article
is framed to cover Cologne without mentioning it, and
the King's honour is saved. In a secondary contract,
which is mainly a commentary on the application of
the articles, it is stated that the Cologners are deprived
of Hanseatic privileges from the 1st August.2
And now, when we consider the whole treaty — the
surrender of English justice ; the surrender of the
Enghsh customs ; the surrender of all the claims of
Enghsh shipowners and Enghsh merchants ; the sur
render of the freeholds at London, Boston, and Lynn ;
the surrender of Bishopsgate and the renewal of the
municipal privileges in London ; the renewal of every
thing against which the Yorkists had fought ; the be
trayal of Cologne, which had risked everything in the
cause of York — when we consider these things, we are
fain to admit that the ambassadors of Dantzig were
justified in their boast — " We have made an end of the
Enghsh." 3
1 Hanse Recesse, ii. 7, n. 107. Cologne crawled back into the Hanse on
the Hanse Days at Lubeck (Whitsun, and 8th September 1476).
2 Ibid., ii. 7, n. 142, § 11 ; 143, § 5.
* Letter to Dantzig from the envoys of the Council : " Welck allent to
herten nemende, hebben wh eynen ende myt den Engelschen gemaket, des de
stede, so uns duncket, na legenheit der sake wal myt eren mogen bekant
siin." — Ibid., ii. 7, n. 161, p. 375.

CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS
" With the happy event of the Treaty of Utrecht,"
says Lappenberg, " we have reached the high-water
mark of the Hanseatic, perhaps the German, influence
in England." And he adds that, by " the traditional
wisdom of the English statesmen," this influence lived
on for more than half a century. What he really means
is that the traditional neediness of the Enghsh kings
and the power of the Hanseatic navy left England at
the mercy of Germany. Warwick, the only great
statesman that England possessed at this time, died
fighting the Germans. Edward IV was the Charles II
of the Middle Ages : money and pleasure were the two
ends for which he lived. He drew a pension from
France, raised loans from the Germans, and forced
benevolences out of the London merchants — thus con
triving to do without the Parhament he had betrayed.
As for Richard III, his " traditional wisdom " was
chiefly displayed in the murders of which he made a
fine art. His King, his brother, his two nephews, and
his wife, all fell to the traditional wisdom of this states
man, who improved even in the rude Middle Ages
on the methods of such moderns as a Crippen or a
Smith. No, the Enghsh had been betrayed by their Govern
ment, and were fain to trust to their own resources.
The Treaty of Utrecht had hardly been signed before
the sailors of Bristol and Hull were fighting the Germans
128

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 129
in Iceland. The perfidious and piratical people of
Hartlepool attacked a Lubeck and Hamburg ship off
the Enghsh coast, and when the Hanse closed Norway
to English trade the English replied by robbing German
ships on the high seas. All these German grievances
were brought before the King and duly visited, we may
be certain, upon the transgressors. In the meantime,
under our free trade pohcy, England had fallen into a
bad way. In 1482 Parliament granted £6000 for the
relief of decayed towns. In 1484 Richard granted Hull,
which had suffered terribly at the hands of the Han
seatics, a partial relief from export duties, " in conside
ration of its ruin, decay, and poverty." He did not
dare to touch the Hanse, but he made at least some
concession to the strange Enghsh prejudice against
foreigners. In 1483 he signed an Act, which began
by observing that, " whereas merchant strangers of the
nation of Italy, as Venetians, Florentines, Apulians,
Sicilians, Lucaners, and Catilians (!) do in great numbers,
keep houses in London and other great cities and
Burghs, taking warehouses and cellars for the mer
chandise they import, and where they deceitfully pack,
mingle, and keep their said merchandise till their prices
greatly advance — and they likewise buy here our
native commodities and sell them again at their plea
sure ; and do not employ a great part of the money
coming thereof upon the commodities of this realm,
but take it oversea to divers other countries, to the
King's great loss in his customs, and the impoverish
ment of his subjects . . . and do buy in divers places
of this realm great quantities of wool, woollen cloth,
and other merchandise of the King's subjects, part
of which they seU again here," they were to be pro
hibited from selhng in retail, and were to export all
I

130 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
their wool and woollen cloth and other Enghsh mer
chandise beyond sea through the Straits of Morocco.
They were to lay out their money in Enghsh com
modities. They were not to set up as master handi
craftsmen in England, they were not to take Enghsh
apprentices. They could, however, go into the retail
book trade. Now, there may be several explanations
of this measure against foreigners who were not Ger
mans. It might have been a concession to the Hanse,
who were jealous of Italian commerce ; but this is
unlikely, as the statute seems to favour the Gibraltar
route. Or it might have been a concession to the
English Merchant Adventurers and the Protection
Party in England, and this is the more hkely, because
there are other Acts of the same year protecting the
cloth trade, and a very large number of other trades.
One omnibus measure prohibits the importation of goods
produced by " girdlers, pointmakers, pinners, pursers,
glovers, joiners, painters, cardmakers, wiremongers,
weavers, homers, bottlemakers, and coppersmiths."
It is plain that the cause of Protection is not dead.
And there were other signs and portents that must
have caused the League, even at the height of its power,
a little uneasiness. In 1478 their monopoly at Novgorod
was attacked by the Russians. In 1494 the Hanseatic
properties at that famous Kontor were confiscated.
The Russians, like the Danes and the Enghsh, were a
patient people, but the Hanse had brought them to
the limits of their patience. Venice, the great depot
of the German Mediterranean trade, had been hit hard
by Lisbon, whose great sailors circumnavigated Africa,
and diverted the trade of the East from the Mediter
ranean to the Atlantic. Spain, by the discovery of
America, brought about another revolution in the trade

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 131
of the world, shifting more and more the centre of
wealth to the South and West. The sailors of the
" upstart towns " of Holland had long been fighting
the League in a rough alliance with the sailors of Eng
land, and certain Dutch discoveries in the fine art of
pickhng herrings had deprived Germany of its valuable
monopoly in the salt-fish trade. The herrings, too,
had shown themselves fickle in their habits, and shifted
their ground from the coasts of Germany to the coasts
of England. Denmark was in revolt. A Danish trading
company had been founded to fight the Hanse, and in
1475, in support of this movement, Christian I dis
solved the German Hanse in Denmark. In 1470 the
Swedish Regent forbade the election of Germans of the
Hanse as Swedish town councillors. These arrogant
symptoms of revolt were sternly suppressed by Lubeck,
but it was clear that neither Scandinavia nor Russia
was as docile as of old.
Worse still, England settled both her wars with
France and her Wars of the Roses. In 1485 Henry
VII killed Richard on Bosworth Field. In 1486 he
married Elizabeth, and ended the long feud between
York and Lancaster. France had sheltered him in his
exile. He had no reason either to hate the French or
to love the Germans. Even before his coronation he
announced a truce with France, and promised an Anglo-
French commercial alliance. By 17th January 1486
he had concluded a three years' treaty with France,
and as France was then at war with Maximilian, this
did not promise well for the " natural aUy." The
English merchants crowded in upon their new King
with long complaints of Hanseatic privileges and Han
seatic tyranny. They represented that English traders
had been expelled from Bergen, from Iceland, and from

132 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Burgundy, and they complained of the bad treatment
received in the towns of the Hanse. But Henry was a
wary monarch ; he knew the Hanseatic power and his
own weakness. With an empty treasury and without
a navy it would have been madness to attack the
greatest sea-power in Europe. He called the Hanse
merchants before Parliament to answer the accusations,
and on 9th March 1486 he confirmed the Hanseatic
charters and the Treaty of Utrecht. But the English
merchants persisted : when their first accusations were
answered they brought more. They asserted that the
Hanse had fitted out pirates in the harbours of the
Netherlands to raid English commerce, and they ac
cused the Kontor at Bruges of being behind the free
booters. The Germans in London rephed that the
pirates were in the service of the King of Denmark.
The English rejoined that the Easterhngs changed their
nationality to suit their convenience.
The King still temporised. The Steelyard proposed
a conference, and in October 1487 the King agreed.
The English merchants had before them the dismal
prospect of negotiations without end, carried on by
the Germans with that slow and devious cunning which
had defeated so many English embassies. But the
German cards were now in clumsy hands. That in
domitable old lady, Margaret, Dowager-Duchess of
Burgundy, widow of Charles the Bold and sister of
Edward IV, was bent on restoring the fortunes of the
House of York. Her nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of
Lincoln, and his friends were ready for any desperate ad
venture. Her stepson, Maximilian, King of the Romans,
was chafing because England was no longer a mere
tool in his hands against France. Both he and the
Hanse failed to realise that the Tudors had come to

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 133
stay, and they set about to plot for Henry's downfall.
" And so in the year 1487," says the Dantzig chronicler,1
" there was a new discord in England between their
King Richmond and the lords of the country, so that
some of the lords went from England to Zeeland, and
there by the help of Charles of Burgundy's old lady
(olden Frauen) fitted out a powerful expedition — 19
ships full of weU-armed men, to sail to Ireland. The
son of the Duke of Clarence, the brother of the before-
mentioned old lady, was there, and they wanted to
bring him with a great force to England, to drive out
Richmond and to be king under his name of George."
Weinreich is not quite accurate. The pretender was
in reality Lambert Simnel, who called himself Edward
of Warwick, and pretended to be the son of George,
Duke of Clarence. Now Maximihan — and probably the
Hanse — was deep in this conspiracy. Two thousand
German soldiers, under the command of an experienced
leader, Martin Schwarz, were placed at the pretender's
disposal. The force landed in Ireland on 5th May
1487. Lambert was borne in triumph through the
streets of Dubhn, and crowned King of Ireland with a
crown taken from an image of the Virgin. The German-
Irish army crossed over to Lancashire, and was defeated
at Stoke on the 16th of June. The views of Henry on
this affair are revealed in a conversation with the
Spanish ambassador in 1488 : " Henry enumerated all
the ill turns the King of the Romans had done him. . . .
The King of the Romans had sent his excuses for all
that had happened, and threw the blame on his step
mother. Henry had rephed that he could not accept
these excuses." 2
1 Caspar Weinreich, Danziger Chronik, p. 65.
8 Berg. Cal. England and Spain, vol. i. pp. 10, 11.

134 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
And this story is fully confirmed by the reply of
the Enghsh ambassadors to the complaints of Cologne
at Antwerp in 1491 : " Martin Schwarz had by force of
arms invaded England, &c, for which cause the King
had fallen out with the King of the Romans, and had
issued a proclamation prohibiting, on pain of confisca
tion, the merchants of these countries to export."1
Now a plot which fails is always inconvenient for
the plotters, and Henry, although he moved warily,
knew how to strike. Towards the end of 1486, when,
as Henry well knew, the conspiracy was being hatched,
Henry issued his famous proclamation prohibiting, the
export of cloth to the Netherlands. The Germans
represented that this was done in order to obstruct
their commerce,2 and the learned Schafer regards it as
the English answer to the Danish-German freebooters.
The no less learned Schanz holds that it was not directed
against the Hanse, but against the King of the Romans
and Burgundy.3 Probably its effect was calculated on
all three. Henry did not want to quarrel openly with
the whole German power, but he could give them a
hint that he was not to be trifled with.
Whatever Henry's intention, the effect of the inter
dict was felt and resented by the Hanse. The Cologne
and West German trade felt it most, and in the Han
seatic archives we find many complaints as to the re
striction of their liberties. Henry's reply was what we
have seen. If the King of the Romans chose to finance
pretenders to the Enghsh crown, he could not expect
1 " Martinus Swarts, manu armata invasit regnum Anglie, etc., qua de
causa rea habuit dissentionem cum rege Romanorum, unde fecit proclamare,
quod merces harum terrarum non deberent adduci sub pena oonfiscationum." —
Hanse Recesse, iii. 2 S., 523, footnote c.
2 Ibid., iii. 2, n. 109.
3 Dr. Dietrich Schafer, Die Hanse (Leipzig, 1903); Dr. Georg Schanz,
Englisches Handelspolitik (Leipzig, 1881).

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 135
English trade for his subjects. The reply of the Hanse
was to organise a great contraband trade into the
Netherlands by way of Hamburg, and here we touch
upon an argument for a national trade pohcy which
finds no place in the learned treatises of the economists.
Whereas the Hanse sought by all means to set England's
foreign pohcy at naught, the Merchant Adventurers
assisted the King. Thus Francis Bacon, in his history
of those times : " The Merchant Adventurers, being
a strong company at that time, and well underset with
rich men, did hold out bravely, taking off the com
modities of the kingdom, though they lay dead upon
their hands for want of vent." That is to say, the
Enghsh merchants with their capital took the strain
of the boycott off the cloth-workers, and helped Henry
to carry through a daring stroke of pohcy.
These interdicts of trade between Flanders and
England lasted for some years. They were renewed
as Margaret and Maximilian dealt stroke after stroke
at the Enghsh throne. We find Henry writing to
Lubeck, in October 1487, that he had removed the
prohibition. But the very next year the export to
Burgundy is again prohibited, and Hanseatic merchants
have to bind themselves not to export any more goods
to Flanders. Let us see how the thing works out.
Perkin Warbeck, a Fleming of Cologne descent, is
adopted by the Germans as the new pretender. In
1493, in the city of Vienna, Albert of Saxony presents
Perkin to the King of the Romans, and the young
rascal goes in great state to the funeral ceremony of
the Emperor Frederick III. "In February 1493,"
says Busch, " he (Perkin) had already from Flanders
entered into relations with confederates at Westminster,
and there seems to have been some suspicion that on

136 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
this occasion the Hanse merchants were prepared to
act the part of a go-between." Henry, in reply, stops
all commerce with the Netherlands, expels the Flemish
from England, and transfers the staple for English
cloth, tin, thread, leather, and so forth from Antwerp
to Calais. This time Henry's injunction covers subjects
to the countries of the King of the Romans, which does
not, however, cover the Baltic, and the Hanse mer
chants remain in London. The Hanse renew their
contraband trade. " It brought," says Lappenberg
with pride, " the greatest profit to the Hanse, which
now became the sole agent for imports and exports."
The Londoners are furious ; Merchant Adventurers,
mercers, cloth-workers and cloth-sellers, who have lost
their work for the national pohcy, rise in a body against
the Germans. In the middle of October the crowd,
united by a secret oath, enter the Steelyard and ransack
its chambers and packing-rooms. The Germans, after
a desperate struggle, throw the invaders into the street ;
but the 'prentices and artisans, with clubs and lifting-
jacks, hammer at the doors until the Mayor of London
arrives with an armed force, quells the riot,1 and takes
eighty of the rioters into custody. The Steelyard is
saved — the Mayor, it may be, is not unmindful of his
cask of sturgeon ; but the King intervenes, not to the
advantage of the Hanse. The Germans have to pay
surety of £20,000 against their undertaking not to
export any goods into the harbours of the Netherlands.
The most they can do is to send their Cologne com
merce by the costly and circuitous route via Hamburg.
1 In the Hanse archives the da e of this riot is given as the 15th October
1493. Hall says " the Tuesday before St. Edward's Day " ; but the 15th
October was the Tuesday after. Cf. Gairdner's Richard III and Perkin Warbeck,
p. 279; also Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles. The London chronicler
evidently seeks to minimise the tumult, no doubt fearing trouble for the City.

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 137
In vain they implore the King to give them an opening
into Flanders by way of Kampen and Groningen.
Not until 1496 does Henry end the interdict with the
famous victory of the " Intercursus Magnus."
And here we may finish the lamentable story of
Perkin Warbeck. When Maximilian enters the Nether
lands in August 1494, Perkin is prominent in his train.
He hves in Antwerp, at the "Hotel des Anglais," in
great pomp as Duke of York, with the white rose hung
over his door. A mob of angry Englishmen tear it
down and have to flee the city.1 Perkin Warbeck
makes Maximihan his heir. In return Maximilian equips
Perkin for his invasion of England. The Emperor's
reason for supporting Warbeck is revealed very clearly
in the correspondence with the Venetian ambassador
in Germany. On 9th June 1495, Contarini writes " that
the Duke of York (Warbeck) is now attacking the
island with 1500 men, independently of mariners. His
Majesty the King of the Romans means to send him a
reinforcement of 800 men, and the Scotch ambassadors
at Worms tell him they hope for certain victory." On
July 7th he mentions a report that Warbeck had
reached England, " whereat His Majesty rejoiced
greatly, as he could dispose of this Duke of York ad
libitum suum." On July 19th " his Csesarean Majesty "
unburdens himself as follows : " With regard to the

1 The Hdtel des Anglais was probably the House of the Merchant Ad
venturers, who had moved to Calais. Molinet (v. 15, 16) gives another version
(cf. Gairdner, p. 283).
Perkin Warbeck was the son of Jehan Warbeque, described in the Register
de la loi of Tournai as a " pireman " of Cologne; his grandfather was Diericq
de Werbecque, his cousin was John Stienbeck of Antwerp. Perkin was placed
at Middleburg with a merchant called John Strewe, and afterward went to
Portugal in the service of the wife of Sir Edward Brampton, an adherent of
the House of York. Perkin was probably a German or Flemish Jew, and
moved from country to country with the freedom and address of that mar
vellous race.

138 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Duke of York we entertain great hopes that after
obtaining the kingdom of England he will soon attack
the King of France ; and to this effect have we received
every promise and certainty from the Duke aforesaid."
Again, on 14th February 1496, Contarini writes to
the Doge : " Were the Duke of York (Perkin Warbeck)
to obtain the crown, the King of the Romans and the
League might avail themselves of England against the
King of France as if the island were their own." The
League here mentioned is, of course, not the Hanseatic
League, but the Holy League. But the Hanse as well
as the German king was interested in the overthrow
of Henry VII. For despite his quiet, moderate, and
reasonable way of treating them, his renewals of their
privileges and his offers of conferences, there was a
subtle and dangerous squeeze in his pohcy. He was,
in fact, slowly but surely making England independent
of the foreigner, and laying the foundations for the
triumph of Ehzabeth. In 1488 he signs a statute pro
hibiting to all foreigners the export of undressed cloth.
This regulation has for its object the encouragement of
cloth-making in England. It hits the Germans hard,
because they have a great trade with Flanders in the
undressed cloths of England, Flanders having fallen
at this time in great part from cloth-making to cloth-
finishing. The Hanse arrogantly tell Hemy that his
policy is bad for his country, and that it is directed
against the German cities. " This matter," they say,
" had been instituted neither for the common good nor
for the promotion of the cloth-working industry, but
merely to drive the merchants of the Hanse out of this
trade in England, in order to satisfy the Londoners, the
inventors of the innovation, and to put in their hands
the trade that is now being carried on by the Ger-

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 139
mans." J And they continue : " Although the English
cloths are not fit to be dressed, and the English Govern
ment know this well, it takes no measures against the
making of bad cloth, but demands that the Hanse
should export only well-finished cloth."
Further, the Germans assert that the Act is ad
ministered severely against Germans and leniently
against Enghshmen, so that the Antwerp merchants are
wilhng to buy undressed cloth from Englishmen, but
refuse to buy it from Germans for fear of getting into
trouble.2 In 1487 an Act is passed prohibiting the importation
of silk fabrics — a concession to the silk industry of
London. We find evidence here that at first the pro
tective policy was applied gingerly as far as the Germans
were concerned. " And such silk," says a document
in the Hanse Recesse for that year, " comes sometimes
into England, although the Act has not been revoked,
as is only right, having regard to the privileges of the
(Hanse) merchant. Still the merchant has great trouble
with the King's officers on account of this silk." 3
But by 1489 the " jealousy " of the Enghsh mer
chants has forced the King to bring the Germans into
line. They are even forbidden to import silk from
Cologne. In 1494 we find that city writing to the
1 " Quod ea res non tam instituta dinoscitur ad communem omnium
profectum, neque ad incrementum generalis officii eorum pannos servantium,
sed potius in occasionem extrudendi mercatores de Ansa ab omni mercatura
in Anglia ut soli Londoniensis hujus novitatis inventores questum exerciant
et soh habeant mercandisas nunc ab Almanis tractatas." — Hanse Recesse, ii.
2, n. 506, § 7, and 161, § 4.
2 " Quod frequentius fit executio ad versus Almanos quam Anglicos similiter
pannos Antwerpiam eocheater, ubi tamen Anghci nullum est discrimen inter
justos et injustos pannos, nam ab Antwerpiensibus dicuntur privelegiati, ut
non teneantur emptoribus de defectibus comparentibus respondere." — Ibid.,
iii. 2, n. 506, § 10, also 161, § 4 ; 508, § 20.
3 " Unde vowol sullyke syde in Engelant Bumwilen kumpt, so nochtant de
acte nicht revoceret en is, alse id sik bilhch na des kopmans privihgien geborde,
steyt de kopman nochtant in groten varen van den officiers des Konynghes
der syden halven."— Ibid., iii. 2, n. 161, § 10 ; 508, §§ 2, 5, 10, 12.

140 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Hanse : " Also the silk which is prepared here in our
town, and which our people always brought into Eng
land on the strength of our privileges, is also not to
be imported : nay, it is daily confiscated by the King's
officers like contraband goods."
Again, in the first year of his reign Henry VII
partly re-enacted the Navigation Law of Edward IV.
Wines from the South of France and woad from Tou
louse are to be imported only in Enghsh ships. It is
a cautious measure, calculated not to hit the Germans
hard enough to give serious trouble. Nevertheless, it
hits the Hanse a little, for we find a reference in the
Hanse archives to a cargo of Bordeaux wine which is
confiscated because the Hanse import it in a non-
Hanseatic ship.
It is nearly always the English merchants who are
behind these prosecutions. Englishmen seem to have
constituted themselves a sort of private police against
the Germans. London cloth-dressers, for example,
have Hanseatic ships stopped before they sail, in order
to have them searched for undressed cloth. When the
undressed cloth is found, the German merchants have
to deposit a guarantee of £600, to be forfeited if they
transgress again. The King is always apologising to
the Hanse for the prejudices of his subjects. He is
forced to do this and that because he can no longer
restrain them. Enghshmen are taking affairs into
their own hands. Several English towns put municipal
limitations on the German free trade charters. The
Mayor of London, in spite of his cask of sturgeon,
fixes the selling price for salt, wine, and grain, and
forces the Germans to offer their staple goods, like wood
and herrings, at the London staple — that is to say,
at the wholesale market. In Hull they are compelled

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 141
to sell all imported goods inside the town, and have to
buy English goods within the same limits. The in
habitants of Hull are indeed so angry with the Hanse,
on account of the recent loss of two of their ships, that
they declare they will recompense themselves with the
first Hanseatic ship that comes into their harbour.
The London Steelyard writes to the German towns in
some alarm, that at Hull feeling is so strong against the
Hanse that the authorities are hardly able to keep back
the citizens. To prevent murder and bloodshed the
Germans are forbidden to go to Hull. In other towns,
too, the Hanse merchants run risks of ill-treatment. In
1490, in the streets of London, several merchants of
Cologne are attacked and seriously wounded. The
assailants remain unpunished, in spite of the efforts
of the Steelyard to bring them to justice.1
All the time the Merchant Adventurers are pressing
their grievances at Dantzig and the other Hanse towns.
The King asks for a peaceful settlement. The cities,
on their Hanse Day at Lubeck in 1487, contemptuously
decline to send an embassy to London, " inasmuch as
things are so bad in that country that people often do
not know who happens to be King." 2 They do not
reahse that at last a King has come to England. Henry,
in his quiet, persistent way, keeps pressing the Hanse
for a conference. In March 1490 he writes to the towns
that he can no longer deny his subjects justice. His
sentiments towards the Hanse are the same as ever,
but he cannot look on while his merchants suffer heavily
day by day. The German Guild in London know the
new situation better. They beg the towns to accede
to the King's request and send ambassadors, otherwise
1 Hanse Recesse, hi. 2, n. 193, 217, 223, 320.
2 Ibid., iii. 2, n. 160, §§ 270-272.

142 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
they will not be able to keep the Kontor going in Eng
land much longer.1
At last Lubeck begins to wake up. It declares itself
prepared to send envoys to Utrecht or Antwerp.
Accordingly a Day is held in Antwerp, in June 1491.
They debate on grievances on both sides. The English
stand firm on their cloth-dressing regulations : "It
cannot be rescinded, because it is in the interest of the
old and honourable Guild of Cloth-shearers." 2
But they promise to investigate a few other of the
German complaints, and add that it is the will of their
King that Hanseatic privileges be maintained. They
complain, however, that the liberties guaranteed to
Enghsh merchants by the reciprocity article in the
Utrecht treaty has not been observed, and they demand
that it be re-enacted in the new treaty under discussion.
Dantzig opposes this demand keenly. If Englishmen
are to be allowed into Dantzig, their status must be
clearly specified. The other Hanse ambassadors take
the Enghsh side. It is evident that the open hostility of
Dantzig to England has become inconvenient. Dantzig
gives way, but in a formal protest declares that, despite
the article, the Enghsh merchants shall not, in their
town, enjoy any more privileges than the non-Prussian
Hanse merchants who trade there. In common with
all foreigners, they are to be allowed Free Trade only
at the " Dominik " Market in August, and as a con
cession they are to be allowed access to the " Actus
Court," from which they had recently been excluded.
All these " concessions " had, in fact, been included in
the rights of English merchants in former treaties, so
that Dantzig made no real surrender after all, in spite
of what Dr. Schanz says to the contrary. Neverthe-
1 Hanse Recesse, iii. 2, n. 311, 340. 2 Ibid., ih. 2, p. 526.

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 143
less, there was some gain : Dantzig was at least com
peUed to reaffirm and define the English position. The
new agreement, in fact, which was concluded on 28th
June, confirmed the Treaty of Utrecht. It is chiefly
important because it shows a more independent atti
tude on the part of the English. If they have yielded
the old privileges, they have not surrendered the new
protection — which, in fact, infringes on these privi
leges — and they agree to the treaty only until the 1st
of May 1492. The counter-claims as to damages remain
unsettled. As to the Baltic, we might perhaps accept
Busch's estimate : " Henry had made an opening,
though that a small one, in the exclusive system of
Prussian trade ; a modest gain certainly, but one which
in connection with his new relations with Denmark
was of some value, as representing the first definite
success of his commercial pohcy towards the North."
It was hardly a success, yet it was not a surrender, and
it contained just a hint of the new Tudor pohcy which
was yet to break the Hanse in pieces.
Further meetings are put off from time to time.
Neither side wiU settle the complaints of the other.
Sometimes the Hanse excuses itself, sometimes Eng
land. The cloth-dressing regulation, leniently enforced
as it seems to have been, is the subject of constant
complaints through two reigns. The embargo on
Cologne silk is no less a grievance. In June 1499 there
is a new meeting at Bruges. The Germans demand
the repeal of the Acts of Parliament, which by protect
ing English industries are alleged to infringe upon
German privileges. Henry declines to repeal his Acts
of Parliament, and he declines to comply with their
demands for damages. As the Hanse refuses to accept
his offer for a mutual settlement, he appoints a judge

144 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
for the Germans at Calais ; but there must be a judge
for the English at Bruges and at Antwerp. From this
time on until 1504 there is deadlock. In that year
Henry VII adjourns the meeting sine die, " because the
Hanseatic grievances are settled." In that year Parha
ment passes an Act which appears to be a surrender to
the Germans. The Act provides that any statutes
which are at variance with the privileges are not to
be applicable to the Hanse. The Kontor in London is
overjoyed, and reports at once to the towns, and the
King writes to Lubeck that he now hopes he has satis
fied the Hanse in every way.
How far the Act was a surrender and how far an
evasion is one of the many obscure points in our story.
Henry VII was a wary king, and it would appear that
he signed two copies of the statute, one in Latin for the
Germans, and one in English for his own subjects.
In the English statute there is a provision which does
not appear in the Latin copy preserved in the Hanse
archives. It is that nothing in the statute shall injure
the interests, liberties, and rights of the town of London.
" We do not know," says Dr. Friedrich Schulz doubt
fully, " if the Hanse knew about the assurance to
London, and what influence it had on the application
of the Act." 1 As far as the archives inform us, German
complaints on the subject appear to cease for a time.
We know also that the exemption was renewed by
Henry VIII, and that it was disliked by Parhament.
Nevertheless, the German grievance on the point is
again open in the reign of Henry VIII, although the
Act remains in force. And if we look at the Act with
a lawyer's eye, we see that there would still remain
1 AVhandlungen, &c. Die Hanse und England von Edwards III bis auf
Heinrichs VIII, von Dr. Friedrich Schulz (Berlin, 1911).

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 145
open the question of whether the statutes of which
the Hanse complained really did affect its privileges.
Over such a bone English and German jurists might
well have taken different views.
There is another point over which the authorities
quarrel. We know that on 31st October 1493, Henry
made the Hanse deposit a surety for £20,000 as a guaran
tee that they would not export English cloth to the
Netherlands. According to Schanz, this money was
declared forfeit on 8th July 1508. Schulz, on the other
hand, is doubtful. If it were forfeit, how is it that there
is no complaint on the subject in the Hanseatic records ?
Such a stone would certainly have made a splash.
Schanz 's view of Henry's pohcy is that, while the King
evaded a war with the Hanse, he still brought force to
bear upon it ; and he sums up that at this time the
outlook for Germans in England was rather gloomy.
Schulz takes the opposite view. Henry, he says, was
the friend of the Hanse, and defended it manfully against
his Parhament, and he triumphantly quotes in his sup
port the persistent refusal of Henry to join Denmark
in a war upon the towns. Henry's words on this point
are preserved in the Hanseatic archives, and are worth
quoting. He dechnes Denmark's proposal " because
the German Hanse, of which the town of Lubeck is no
small part, has enjoyed in this our Realm for many years
its hberties and privileges, and as it now is so it always
was, so long as its hberties and immunities last as much
united in friendship with ourselves as with our pre
decessors." Before attempting to decide between these two
scholars it is necessary to look at Henry's pohcy as a
whole. When Henry was crowned on Bosworth Field
he looked round on a weak and ruined England. For
K

146 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
himself his exchequer was empty, and his crown was
held on the insecure tenure of one victory. In Margaret
of Flanders he had an implacable enemy, and, as he
told the Spanish ambassadors, he regarded Maximihan
also as his secret foe. But Flanders was also the enemy
of the Merchant Adventurers. It was the enemy of
the Enghsh cloth trade, and Cologne was the enemy of
the English silk manufacture. The wealth of Flanders
had rested for centuries on the insecure foundation of
making cloth from English wool. When England began
to make its own cloth Flanders was apprehensive, but
as Enghsh cloth was rough and coarse, and Flemish
cloth the finest in the world — save only, perhaps, the
cloth of Florence — the Flemish consoled themselves
with the hope that Enghsh cloth would have to be
finished in Flanders, that Enghshmen would remain
their mere journeymen, and that they would always
be supreme in the finishing process and in the finer
counts. Now, the Hanse, except for the silk manu
facture of Cologne, was not directly interested in manu
facture. Its interest was trade. It preferred, no
doubt, to carry Enghsh wool to Bruges, and to sell
Flemish cloth in England. There, as an uninterrupted
trade process, lay its largest profits. But its case was
somewhat complicated by the fact that, whereas Eng
lish shippers enjoyed a preference in the export of wool,
German shippers enjoyed a preference in the export
of cloth. Amazing as it may sound, it is none the less
true that under the English customs the Hanse in
England had a substantial preference, not only over all
foreign merchants, but over Englishmen themselves.
The amount of this preference can be definitely stated.1
On every piece of undyed cloth Englishmen paid an
1 See Appendix III.

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 147
export duty of Is. 2d., foreigners 2s. 9d., with an addi
tional ad valorem duty of Is. in the £1, while the Ger
mans of the Hanse only paid Is. all told — that is to say,
they had a preference of twopence against Enghshmen,
and Is. 9d. plus the ad valorem duty against all other
foreigners. On half-dyed cloth their preference over
Enghshmen was again threepence, their preference
over all foreigners was 2s. 5d. plus the ad valorem duty
as before. On finished cloth they had a preference of
4d. over Englishmen, and 3s. Qd. plus the ad valorem
duty over aU foreigners. Obviously they had an arti
ficial reason for being content to export cloth rather
than wool to the Flemish market, and we even find them
siding with the Enghsh against the Flemish in the en
deavour to open the markets of Flanders to the Enghsh
manufacturer. Now, if Henry was as clever a man as he is generally
supposed to be, he would seek to divide the Germans
from the Flemish by this difference of interest. He
would allow the Hanse to continue their export trade,
but he would quietly force them to export first Enghsh
cloth instead of English wool, and, secondly, the Enghsh
finished article instead of the English half-finished
article. Dr. Busch's view is that Henry was afraid of the
Hanse : "He did not dare at once to irritate the
powerful league of the towns, who might support his
enemies, as before they had supported the Yorkist
prince, Edward IV." And this is probably true, at
least of the first years of his reign. And yet there is
no weakness in Henry's policy ; there is even a note
of contempt in his treatment of the Hanse at Antwerp.1
He consistently refuses to allow the Hanse to raise the
1 Busch, England under the Tudors, vol. i. p. 75.

148 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
blockade of Flanders. And this is true of the last
years of his reign. In 1504 he renews the interdict.
The Hanse protests, and particularly Cologne ; but
Henry sets his face like flint, and the Hanse trade with
Burgundy is stopped until the removal of the interdict
in 1506. And even in the North, where he has gained so httle
and acquiesces in so much, the alhance with John of
Denmark must have been felt by the Hanse as a for
midable portent. Henry might reassure them as to
his intention, and disclaim all thought of hostility ;
but if the alhance with Denmark was not against the
Hanse, I should like to know what it was against.
It was, in fact, the foundation of a policy designed
to open the Baltic to Enghsh trade.
The Baltic could wait. Enghsh trade and the Royal
Exchequer were first to be estabhshed. A Spanish
marriage would help both. By aUying himself with
Spain, Henry secured the Straits of Gibraltar for English
shipping, and pushed forward to Italy and the Levant.
Venice was hostile ; but Henry opened negotiations
with Florence, and secured the Italian market for
Enghsh cloth.
We may say of Henry that, if he left for his suc
cessors the actual destruction of the Hanseatic power
in England, he at least forged the anvil on which it
was to be broken. By his navigation laws and com
mercial pohcy he founded an English navy in English
shipping, and he placed the strength of the crown in
the mercantile interest of England. The foundation
of his whole pohcy was the Enghsh cloth trade. He
reahsed that a strong English export of cloth would
make England wealthy at home and a power in Europe.
It would give him a key by which he could open the

THE FIRST OF THE TUDORS 149
doors of every European market. To have a commodity
which other people want is to take naturally a strong
position. But Henry desired not only to create a cloth
industry which should be independent of Flanders, but
to create a shipping industry which should be inde
pendent of the Hanse.
The fight with Flanders had to come first ; the fight
with the Hanse would follow later. In the meantime,
he strengthened the Merchant Adventurers' Company
by vastly increasing its powers. His charter to the
company showed that he regarded it not merely as
an instrument of trade, but as a great weapon of foreign
pohcy. He gave it a national foundation, and almost
national powers. He helped to make it what the mer
chants proudly called it — an English Hanse, an organisa
tion which was to grow in strength until it could fight
the great League on its own ground.

CHAPTER XIV
THE GERMANS MAKE AN ENEMY
Henry VII desired chiefly wealth and strength, Henry
VIII loved pleasure and glory. Henry VII left a full
and overflowing treasury, Henry VIII squandered
every-penny. Henry VII was always thinking of his
London and h^jneicJ^nis^J^
andjoewT^s. If we look for a key to his foreign
policy, we find it now in the desire for a divorce, and
again in some vain dream of the imperial crown. He
makes no difficulty about renewing Hanseatic privi
leges, no doubt knowing the colour of Hanseatic money.
But his people, and some of his ministers, keep up the
fight. Both Wolsey and CromweU are anti-German in
their pohcyT A riot against the foreignersTTas almost
become an annual May-day festivity. The Town Council
of London is petitioned to remove them. A certain
Dr. Bale preaches fiery sermons against them. On
1st May 1517 an anti-foreign riot grows so dangerous
that the King sends guns and troops from the Tower
to quell it. The trade quarrels with the Hanse are
unending. In 1514 we find Thomas More, then Under-
Sheriff of London, and Cuthbert Tunstall, then Master
of the RoUs, negotiating a treaty at Bruges. Only in
1520 are the negotiations concluded. But the end of
one dispute begins another. In 1520 Thomas More
and John Hewester, the Governor of the Merchant Ad
venturers, meet twelve members of the Hanse, and
150

THE GERMANS MAKE AN ENEMY 151
agree to a truce until the following year. In the fol
lowing ytar the King again prohibits the export of
undressed cloth, and the Hanse is again complaining.
In the same year there is a prohibition of the export
of woollens to Flanders. But Henry is by this time
deep in the Reformation, and he is also anxious as to
the fate of his brother-in-law, King Christian of Den
mark, who has been deprived of his crown by Hanseatic
influence. In 1524 two of his Privy Councillors —
Dr. Standish, Bishop of St. Asaph, and Sir John Baker —
are at Hamburg negotiating with the King of Denmark,
the Duke of Holstein, and the Hanse. Henry bestows
on Marx Meier the golden chain of knighthood, and
delights to honour Wuttenmeher, the Mayor of Lubeck.
He flirts with the Lutheran pastors of Lubeck and
Hamburg, confirms the Hanseatic privileges, and renews
the acknowledgment that they are not to be infringed
by Act of Parhament. The .Germans accordingly feel
themselves strong in the reign ofHenry Viii — so strong
that they go out of their way to insult Anne Boleyn at her
coronation: — in Anne .Bolevn they~recognise an enemy,
for she is the great-granddaughter of Geoffrey Boleyn,
one of the founders of the Merchant Adventurers, and
her family is bound up with the trade of London.
On the otherjsulg, Caitherine-^f ATagojL^l^^sjto_the
imperial"- and German interest. No wonder if the
merc£ajcrts^r*the iSteeTyard ^^noT^ike™lhe^ma|ch.
Nevertheless, they are compeUed^Dy~"trieTIord Mayor
to erect a pageant at Grace Church, not far from the
German Guildhall. They choose to represent Mount
Parnassus, on which sit ApoUo and his Muses. The
fountain of Hehcon runs with Rhenish wine — even at
that time the Germans understood the art of advertise
ment. When Anne arrives before this pageant, and

152 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
halts in front, the Muses address her, singing verses in
her praise. But in these flatteries lurks -an insult.
On the very top of Parnassus, which is appropriately
adorned with coats of arms, is the great Imperial eagle,
bearing on its breast the emblems of Castile and Aragon,
the arms of Anne's hated rival. Lower down are the
arms of Henry, and lowest of all the coat which the
heralds have made out for the Boleyns. Anne is well
versed in heraldry, and at once detects the insult.
According to Chapuis, the Imperial ambassador, to whom
we are indebted for the story, she deeply resents the
slight, and on the following day tries to induce the
King to punish the obnoxious Germans. A little later
she is staying at Greenwich, and a large fleet of German
hulks is anchored opposite the palace. The Hanseatic
captains invite Chapuis to dine on board their ships.
When he arrives they hoist the hateful eagles, fire
cannon, beat drums, and make a tremendous din.
ChapjuX_is_dehghted to learn that Anne was intensely
irrigated bytrIe~~deTntmstrattom Agam""she complains^
to Henry, and asks him to punish German insolence.
But Henry refuses to take any steps. An open quarrel
with the Germans would have been too dangerous.
All that Anne can do is to leave Greenwich, and to retire
to Windsor, beyond the reach of German insults.1
Henry was perhaps right in his respectful treatment
of the Germans, although they were certainly wrong
in making an implacable enemy of a clever woman.
The Hanse were at this time giving a most impressive
exhibition of therr~^trerrgtrr: ByThe~Treaty of Nystadt
Denmark had~conceded to Lubeck the right to veto
the election of its kings. A union of Scandinavian powers
F" 1 Anne Boleyn (1527-1536), by Paul Friedmann, p. 200 et seq. Friedmann
takes the story from the despatches of Chapuis, the Imperial ambassador
to Charles V, which are preserved in the archives of Vienna.

THE GERMANS MAKE AN ENEMY 153
ventured to set the rule at defiance. They were assisted
by the Dutch towns, who were prohibited by the Hanse
from trading direct with the Scandinavian ports. Yet
Lubeck was strong enough to form a combination
which drove out the independent King of Denmark,
Christian II, brother-in-law of the Emperor though
he was, and placed Frederick of Holstein on the
throne. When Christian was safe in the dungeons of
Goltorp, Lubeck fitted out a fleet to punish Holland.
In August 1533 a detachment of this fleet, consisting
of five hne-of-battleships and 2200 men, appeared in
the Enghsh Channel, and captured one Flemish and two
Spanish vessels off the Nore. The Lubeck captain,
Marcus Meyer, landed at Rye. He was arrested on a
charge of piracy and brought to London. Anne wanted
to punish him, and to make the Hanseatic merchants
responsible for the damage. The Hanse, of course,
protested that it had no connection with the affair.
Meyer, who was the son of a Hamburg blacksmith, did
not lack audacity. He proposed to Henry an alhance
of England, Denmark, and Lubeck, strong enough to
withstand any enemy, and directed against the Empire.
The idea was fantastic, but Henry accepted it with
enthusiasm. Marcus was allowed to return, and dis
appears from our story. The alliance, like all Henry's
grandiose projects, ended in smoke.
Henry nevertheless persisted in his aims upon the
Empire. In 1543 he sends ambassadors to the Land
grave of Hesse to arrange an alhance with Hesse, Den
mark, Holstein, and the Hanse towns of Hamburg,
Lubeck, and Bremen. In 1546 he sends John Dymock
to Hamburg and Bremen to obtain troops and money.
From such a king, with such a pohcy, it is vain to expect
very much. Nevertheless, his reign has its signs and

154 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
portents. The German Empire is going to pieces.
Lubeck has imprisoned a brother-in-law of the Em
peror, and has robbed Spanish ships. We may agree
with Lappenberg that with Henry VIII the end is in
sight. "With the death of this monarch," he says,
" the luck of the Hanse fell into its grave."

CHAPTER XV

A PURPOSED OVERTHROW
I think I have said enoughto show that the Germans
id the Englishjyrievances wertTsubstantial : (1) that
in England Germans were treated hsUsx^h^TSg^F"
^nerujin^J^Jiliai^^^ were treated
worse than other-foreigners. As to^?eTrraauy7i:he"iread
and front of the offending was the Baltic town of Dantzig.
This great centre of the corn trade had consistently
followed a policy first laid down in the time of its cele
brated Mayor, Heinrich Vorrath, " to demand much of
the English, and to concede nothing."1 Acting upon
these instructions, Vorrath had secured for his group of
towns a full third of the German Guildhall in London,
with all its privileges of trade and customs, and had
given the Enghsh nothing of any value in exchange.
The Dantzigers, as the Enghsh alleged, treated the Eng
lish " worse than any other foreigners, the Jews only
excepted." That Dantzig went too far in the openness
of its contempt for Enghsh power has already been
shown more than once in the course of our story. In
the reign of Edward VI its outrages filled the cup of
Enghsh wrath to overflowing.
We may take up the story in 1547. In September
of that year Thomas Hunt and Thomas Stynt made
their complaint to the Lord Protector, Edward, Duke
1 Thomas Hirsch, Danzig's Handelsund, &c, p. 110.
1S5

156 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
of Somerset, to the following effect. The Hamburg
skipper, Claus Schwarte, on his way to Scotland, attacked
and robbed an Enghsh ship and took a royal standard.
When Schwarte arrived at Dantzig, on the instigation
of the Dantzig burgesses, he hung out this flag from the
window of his cabin, and some Enghshmen, who hap
pened to be in Dantzig, were called to see the show. The
Englishmen took a boat, rowed out to the ship, tore
down the flag, and took it away. Thereupon Schwarte
denounced them before the Mayor for robbing his ship.
The Englishmen were imprisoned. Dantzig is advised-
from London that the Lord Protector is looking into
the matter.
On October 15th the Steelyard writes to Dantzig
that the King and his Councillors are highly incensed
at the way the " rebellious Englishmen " were treated
at Dantzig. Exaggerated reports are going about, and
Dantzig is advised to send a truthful report to the King
and the Protector. Dantzig rephes, asking the Steel
yard to take up its case and explain its treatment of
the "rebels."
How the affair ended we do not know — probably
without satisfaction to Enghshmen — for just about that
time Somerset is financing the Protestant cause in
Germany against the Emperor — a new form of " the
natural alhance," extremely profitable to the towns.
In March he lends 50,000 crowns to the Duke of Saxe,
through Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, to be repaid
by the cities in the merchandise of these parts, "for
the furniture of his Navie, as cables, mastes, ankers,
pyche, flaxe and such other," and on 11th December
(as from 20th June) 1547 he confirms the privileges of
the towns.
Yet the Germans in London are plainly uneasy :

A PURPOSED OVERTHROW"

157

such incidents are bad for trade. Feehng is so aggra
vated in the North that the Mayor and Corporation of
Hull persistently evade the King's commands as to
allowing the Germans their privileges in that port.
Other towns incline to follow this contumacious example.
In April 1551 citizens of London are discovered to be
in conspiracy to attack the foreigners on May Day,
and hardly has the danger been averted when another
plot blows the German Guildhall sky-high.
Upon Jjie^ sijjfane,_wJiat_J^hft_JT^rrrians had to face
was mej^y__a_law case inyoljdn^aZ^iS^iolL^^t^toms

that'liad begri disputed, between the Steely ard jtnd the
colleiffiSrirfor generations. But there]_we?etwo un-
fortunate_cjrcumstances. There wereiioGfomans on
the Pr£y^Cojai£ir^and there waTttt^jetrdon a certain
Thomas Gresham, mercery
^BveryoneTfnTrw«4h^name of Gresham- -the, founder
of the Royal Exchange and of Gresham Colle^ V But few
are aware of his greatest benefaction to London — it
was Gresham who overthrew the Germans. It may be
doubted if the Germans. knew it themselves, for Grgsham
was a discreet gentleman, who workedlor great enf
in a q1fiet way. But when Queen Ehzabeth came to
the throne of England, he disclosed the secret to his
royal mistress in a letter which was preserved by
Burghley and printed by Burgon.1 Gresham explains
to the Queen how the extravagance of her father and
" the great freedom of the SteelyarjL^UiaiL-lecUto a
serious depreciation in the exchange. And he proceeds :
" Now for the redress of these things^ia^-4551 . . .

you^4a4^bT^trigj(King E^wjjui^VL)LjiaIledr me =±a.-be
his agent and reposeclajxiore trust in me^^asjwell for

1 Life of Sir Thomas Gresham, vol. i, App., xxi. See also p. 197 of this
book.

158 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
the payment of his debts beyond the seas as for the
raising of the exchange — being then at 15s. and 16s.
in the pound ; and your money current as it is at this
present being not in value 10s. First I practised with
the King and my Lord of Northumberland to overthrow
the Steelyard, or else it could not be brought to pass
for that they would keep down the exchange by this
consideration : whereas your own mere merchants pay
outwards 14d. upon a cloth custom, they pay (paid)
but 9d., and likewise for aU such wares as was brought
into your realm your own mere merchants paid 12d.
upon the pound, the Steelyard paid but 3d. upon the
pound, which is £5 difference upon the hundred. And
as they the Germans were men that raine all upon the
exchange (query : sell a bear) for the buying of their
commodities, what did they pass to give a lower price
than your own merchants, when they got £5 in the hun
dred by your custom, which in process of time would
have undone your whole realm and your merchants of
the same."
Fortified by this knowledge of the forces working
behind — no less than the King, his Prime Minister, and
the Merchant Adventurers' Company — let us now
proceed to examine the musty old law case, recorded
partly in Latin and partly in Tudor script, which brought
about the downfall of the Germans in England.1
The case was heard in Guildhall before Richard
Dobbes, Mayor of the City of London, and a jury of
stout Merchant Adventurers, trading in the Baltic,
and was decided on 25th November 1551.
We need not go into the evidence very far. It
would appear that a certain Andrew Moore was factor
1 Cotton MS., Claudius, E 7, folio 84. Inquisitions, &c, concerning the
Hansa, 5 Edward VI.

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 159
in London for one Keysiler, a Dantzig merchant. Andrew
Moore died, and his brother Adrian saw his papers.
\mong these papers were letters which seemed to show
L Andrew had been passing off goods consigned
Ercm-^n-Hanseatic merchants as goods of the Hanse,
and thereby defrauding the customs of the difference
between the duties paid by the Hanse and the duties
paid by other foreigners. Besides this evidence there
was the testimony of two Steelyard merchants, Lambert
Romane and Michael Tymerman, who had been ar
rested in the street by Baldwin Smith, an officer of the
customs. In addition to these witnesses there were
certain letters which had been seized on board a Dantzig
ship at Gravesend. The letters do not tell us very much,
beyond showing that all the Germans in London were
in a terrible state of flutter. One of them begins,
" Here is an evil saying * Come in the wind,' " and goes
on to tell how the King's Council have taken up the
matter " verie highlie " and " keep counsell togeather
apase . . . that they may take awaie our priveleges
from us which thinge I yet hope shall not come to
passe." And another tells one John Brand of Dantzig
how, " through Adrian, brother unto Andrew Moore and
an English fellow out of a shereman's (cloth-dresser's)
house, the thing is told out and betrayed and brought
before the King's Counsell, soe that it is now brought
into the hght, and the same knave doth declare unto
the King's Counsell all that he knoweth of our house
and saieth perchance more than the truth. . . i They
intend to put us from our whole priveleges whereunto
by God's leave they shall not come with right." The
writer goes on to protest that the worshipful merchants
were innocent : they " would suffer no such thing, for
they did punish for it as soon as they know it, and

160 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
did forbid him the House." Then there is a letter from
Brant von Holten to his brother, Reignold of Dantzig :
" What belongeth unto Cosselor's and Fensell's hand
lings I fear that the Danskers shall stand with shame
before the King's Majesty and his Counsell, for there
is a servant which hath been much with Andrew Moore,
the same hath betraid it, and Andrew Moore's brother
is taken upon the street vhi daies agoe and was holden
still that we knew not where he was become : now
cometh it out that certain of the King's Counsell caused
him to be taken and within this eight days hath bin
three times before all the King's Counsell, and what they
doe therein and how he is examined and how it will
goe, wee shall know in short time. ... If we scape soe
that wee lose not priveleges thereby, God give us that
wch belongeth unto salvation."
We can imagine with what impartiahty the jury of
Enghsh merchants examined the evidence and arrived
at their verdict. They began in a general way by
enunciating a sound protective pohcy :
" All Enghsh merchants subjects of the King of
England ought to pay for export of every broadcloth
of wool, dyed or not dyed, out of the kingdom fourteen
pence, and for subsidy on every species of merchandise
from foreign parts discharged in the ports of England
according to the value of the merchandise at the rate
of twelve pence in the pound of Enghsh money ; and
all foreign merchants not native ought to pay for
every short broadcloth of wool dyed six shillings and
three pence, for every white short broadcloth five
shiUings and nine pence, and for imports of aU sorts
fifteen pence in the pound according to the worth of
the merchandise."
Having made this general finding on the question

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 161
)f customs, they descend to particulars — particulars
are that, in one case : " Reginald Strusse, at London
^.foresaid, in the parish of All Saints the Greater,
powgate Ward, being possessed of 1380 short woollen
cloths, dyed and coloured, and 59 white short cloths
of his own goods . . . shipped the said cloths in ships
'belonging to Hans Smith, Derek von Ling, Hans Molck,
iMaynard Bremer, Bartholomew Long, Christian Winck,
Orte Guise, Anselm Breckfeld, Hans Grippenstraw, and
other foreigners mentioned, and has defrauded the King
of his customs, for the dyed and coloured cloths, £431,
5s. 0d., and for the white cloths, £14, 7s. 6d., amounting
in all to £445, lis. 6d. of English money." They also
find that two foreigners, Adrian Keysiler and Laurence
Fensel, not being inhabitants of the Steelyard, had con
spired with " Reginald Strusse, Lambart Romane,
Francis von Nuse, Henry von Syth, John Gardo, Antony
EUers, Garrard Gufferod, Andrew von Bergen, Michael
Tymerman, and John Kinkell, German merchants, in
habitants of the Steelyard, to defraud the King of his
customs by causing to be entered in the books of the
collector of customs in the port of London in the name
of Michael Tymerman eight bales of cloth, the true
owners Keysiler and Fensel not having been at any
time members of the Steelyard," by which means the
King lost in his customs and subsidy due from foreigners
to the amount of £70, 12s. Qd.
There are also certain frauds connected with the
export of " bell-metal powder," in which a verdict
against the German merchants is duly returned.
These somewhat obscure cases gave the Privy Council
its opportunity. The whole position of the Germans
trading in England was opened up in the form of
arguments between the Hanse on the one side and the

162 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Merchant Adventurers on the other. The Merchant]
Adventurers7~~whD^call themselves " the merchant
haunting and frequenting the Emperor's base countrie ¦'
of Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Flanders, as alt
other chief ports beyond the seas, chiefly the town o
Dantzig," complain of being " grievously hindered " by
the German merchants of the Hanse, " who have theii
house in the City of London called the Guildhall o:rv
Dutchmen." They had been forced by the German
merchants to keep their marte only in the town of
Antwerp, which had resulted in exceeding heightening
in the price of foreign commodities, much damage to
the wool trade, and the decay of the cities and towns
of England and of the Navy. They complain also that
in the town of Dantzig they are " rigorously handled,
that all other nations, Jews only excepted, be suffered
more hberty than they." Contrary to their privileges,
they are forced to pay tolls and customs, which are
altered from time to time by the will of the Dantzig
customs. They are only permitted to sell their goods
on one day in the week, and that Saturday, and then
only to the burgesses of Dantzig, except once a year
on their Fair Day. They are prevented from buying
the commodities of Prussia at Dantzig, and they are
not permitted to deal one Enghshman with another.
All this they have suffered, although by the privileges
of the Hanse in England they should have been treated
reciprocally. Moreover, the Easterhngs have made a
regular practice of " colouring " the goods of foreign
merchants who do not belong to the Hanse, to the
great loss of " your Majesty's customs." In these
circumstances, the privileges of the Germans ought to
be withdrawn. The Merchant Adventurers go on to
tell how, by their enterprise, they contrived to establish

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 165
four yearly marts in Brabant and Flanders, at Berghan
op-Zoom, Antwerp, and other market-towns. The
Germans, however, dumped such large quantities of
Enghsh cloth on the Antwerp market that the price
had greatly fallen, the market being, in fact, " cloyed "
with Enghsh goods. When the Enghsh merchants
had the Flemish market aU to themselves, they sold
their cloth for treasure, and brought to England large
sums, between £15,000 and £30,000. The effect, how
ever, of the German dumping was that the Flemish
buyers would not pay in money, but in foreign com
modities, to the great loss of England. Another ill
effect of the German interference with English trade
was that Englishmen were compelled, owing to the
glutting of the market, to wait for weeks in the Flemish
market-towns, and some of them had even taken up
their abode in Antwerp, so that their money was being
spent abroad instead of being spent in England. An
other great disadvantage of having so many Germans
in England was that they bought their commodities at
the houses of the weavers, boarded and lodged with
the clothiers, learnt the secrets of weaving, and induced
" hght and idle " Englishmen to transfer the secrets
of their craft to other countries. Thus, for example,
a foreigner had recently sent out six Enghsh workmen
to make kerseys in Brabant. Fortunately these men
had been sent back by " your Majesty's subjects," but
nevertheless they had taught the Brabant people the
art of making kerseys, to the great loss of the Enghsh
weavers. The Germans might in the same way induce
Enghsh weavers to go to Germany and set up a weaving
industry in competition with England.
Another point on which the Merchant Adventurers
insisted was that the Germans had no respect for the

162 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
MeiJity of the cloth they bought. They would buy any
&ind of rubbish. They encouraged the weavers to
turn out cheap stuff. There "had "even "been cases in
which five sundry sorts of wool had been used in one
piece, each sort being coarser than the outside part
which was shown to the purchaser. Such practices
degraded English cloth in the eyes of the world. Again,
the Merchant Adventurers supported the English Navy
by " fraughting and lading the same, and continuing
a great number of your subjects in the mariner's craft."
On the other hand, the Germans, " to the intolerable
decay thereof, ship their goods both inward and out
ward continually in foreign bottoms." Thus, for ex
ample, the Germans had shipped from London in foreign
bottoms no less than 42,897 cloths in one year, whereas
in the same year all other strangers coming to London
had only shipped 1080 cloths. If Enghsh masters
and mariners had been employed to carry these cloths,
they would have made £2333, besides the freight of
the German goods which paid for the cloth, whereas
all this money was lost to English sailors. Lastly, and
here the Merchant Adventurers use an argument calcu
lated to appeal to kings and governments, the Germans
greatly diminished the customs, both with regard to
exports and imports, because they paid only " a quarter
of what your subjects pay." At the great trade con
ference with the German merchants at Bruges in 1521,
the English ambassadors had forbidden Easterhngs to
bring,.into England such fine foreign commodities as
cloth of gold, silks, and all sorts of Snen, spikes, oil,
oilwood, madder, and other fine and rich merchandise,
for the same smaU customs as they had been used to
pay for their own commodities, which were " grose and
gruffe," great in storage and small in value. At that

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 165
" Diet " it was calculated that in this way no less than
£100,000 sterling had been lost to his Majesty's customs ;
yet it was notorious that they had persisted in this
practice, and that their imports of these rich foreign
commodities, on which they evaded the payment of
high duties, was now greater than ever before. -
The Merchant Adventurers admitted that they were
fairly treated at Lubeck, the head town of the Hanse,
but their treatment at Dantzig was a scandal. Whereas
forty years ago they used to pay 2s. 8d. on a pack con
taining thirty cloths, now they were charged Qd. on every
cloth, or 15s. the pack. And on exports from Dantzig v
the officers were continually increasing the customs.
They went on to tell how, by imprisonment and extreme
penalties, they were prevented from trading in Prussia *
outside Dantzig, and had only one Fair Day in the year
besides their Saturday market. They gave details of how
the Danskers had framed their trade arrangements so as
to force Enghshmen to buy only from the townspeople
the flax, the pitch, the tar, the ashes and other wares
which came into the town from other parts of Prussia.
As reciprocity was the basis of trade arrangements,
such enormities deserved to be punished by the for
feiture of the German privileges. In any case, the
Germans should not be allowed to sell our Enghsh
cloths in Flanders. There was an old Act of Edward
IV by which " no Hanse merchant should unpack,
unfardel or put to sale any woollen cloth on this side the
city of Cologne," and the Hanse had been bound in
£41,000 to observe this custom. From these practical
and business arguments the Merchant Adventurers
plunged into a most profound and learned disquisition
on the text of the charters by which the Germans
claimed their privileges, going back to the reign of

166 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Henry III. The best points they made were that
Edward II's charter was conditional, on there being
no " colouring " of foreign goods and foreign merchants,
and that Edward IV's charter was reciprocal. The
Germans had, as a matter of fact, " coloured " goods,
,?s had been shown by recent actions in the law courts,
and as for reciprocity, there was the notorious case of
Dantzig. Then Henry VII had forbidden them to trade
with Flanders, yet they had done so, enjoying on this
trade a preference of ninepence in the pound over
Enghshmen, and twelvepence in the pound over all
h other foreigners. But the pohcy of Dantzig, that was
the worst grievance. To that the Merchant Adven
turers constantly return, and on that chiefly they urge
• the King to take the " pretended " liberties of the
German Guildhall into his hands.
The German reply is a skilful document, although,
as we shall see, it has its loopholes. It begins with a
disclaimer. The Germans in London are but factors
or agents. " The steads of the Hanse " are their
superiors. As for their charters, they had rights in
England long before Henry III. He merely confirmed
them, and they had been confirmed by many Acts of
Parliament. Time out of mind they had brought into
England all manner of merchandise without impedi
ment, and when suits had been brought against them in
the Exchequer they had always been acquitted by
virtue of their privileges and their charters. As to
their recognisance of £20,000 extorted from certain
private merchants of the Hanse by Henry VII in 1493,
that was merely a temporary matter due to variance
between the King and Maximihan the Emperor, and the
Duke of Burgundy. Henry forbade shipping for twenty
days until he heard from his ambassadors ; and if they

" A PURPOSED OVERTHROW " 167
had been bound not to traffic in these parts, so had
Enghshmen and other strangers. When the matter
between the potentates had been settled, the embargo
was removed. How came it to be that their trade was
injurious to England when it had been confirmed by
so many treaties and Acts of Parliament ? They were
simply carrying on their old custom, trading as their
ancient privileges permitted. And here they give an
interesting list of the commodities which they have
brought into the kingdom — corn, flax, wax, pitch, tar,
wainscot, cables, masts, ores, iron, steel, harness,
osmondes, soap, ashes, copper, saltpetre, gunpowder,
coal, silver, bow-staves, stock-fish, salt-fish, linen, cloths,
and other commodities. These goods were a living to
many people in the country, because they were sold in
gross, and the result was cheapness. As for the wares
exported by them, they were chiefly woollen cloths,
for the most part of the coarsest sort, such as no other
nation used, and this trade gave employment to many
of the King's subjects. It was absurd to suggest that
his Majesty was deceived by them in his customs, or
that the navy of England was damaged by the trade.
As to the complaints of the Enghsh merchants in
Flanders, the Hanse reported that it was the " great
multitude and desire " of the Enghsh themselves and
their covetousness that were really at fault. And now
as to the charge of " colouring." The German alder
men and merchants had always sought utterly to ex
tirpate such frauds. The case of Adrian Keysiler had
been much misrepresented. Adrian KeysUer was a
merchant of Dantzig, who was free of the Hanse. He
had sent certain merchandise to his factor in London,
one Andrew Moore. This Andrew Moore died last
July in London, leaving a younger brother, Adrian

168 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Moore. Now it chanced that, after Andrew's death,
certain letters from Keysiler's factor and bookkeeper,
Laurence Fensel, had come to the sight of Adrian Moore
and the German merchants. These letters led them to
suspect that Fensel had shipped to London certain
foreign goods besides those of his master. This being
contrary to their constitution and damaging to the
King, they had immediately sealed up the counting-
house door of the said Andrew in the presence of Adrian
Moore, his brother, until some one sufficiently empowered
to take over Keysiler's goods should arrive. Not long
afterwards Michael Tymerman arrived on his own busi
ness with a commission from Keysiler to take charge
of the goods. He was immediately called before the
German aldermen and merchants, and examined as to
whether he knew that Fensel had done anything con
trary to their privileges. Tymerman rephed that he
knew nothing about the matter. In the presence of
Tymerman and Adrian Moore they had therefore gone
into the whole business of Andrew Moore deceased,
and had read the suspected letters, but finding them
very confused, they had written to the magistrates at
Dantzig to inquire, and in the meantime they had
charged Michael Tymerman on oath not to defraud the
King of his custom.
Now this plausible story has one weak point. It is
an admission that they took no steps to communicate
their suspicions to the customs authorities. But to
proceed. Adrian Moore had told the story to a cloth-
worker's servant, and he had told it to Baldwin Smith,
Deputy Surveyor of Customs at the port of London.
Smith had acted most irregularly. He had apprehended
Moore and examined him, and still kept him away from
his master and friends. He had not only given infor-

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 169
mation to the Privy Council, but he had, contrary to
his commission and the laws of the realm, apprehended
a merchant of the Steelyard at " burse time " in Lom
bard Street, and carried, him to his own house, where
he had examined him " at his pleasure," without any
proper commission. He had also got hold of Tymer
man, and detained him two days and nights in a secret
chamber. When the German alderman required him
to be released, Smith's wife had refused to let him go
in the absence of her husband. Then Smith had gone to
Gravesend and opened a whole packet of German letters
which he found in one of their ships, " disclosing all
their secrets, to their great slander." On such grounds
and by such means he had laid his informations in the
Exchequer. There was the awkward point that the
German aldermen and merchants, after their consulta
tion, had entered 210 cloths under Michael Tymerman's
name, but it was obvious that these goods were in
Tymerman's custody. It was not they who had shipped
them, but Fensel, who had shipped them himself at
his own venture " and peril of sea, fire, and enemies,
being his own proper goods." When he shipped them
they were no longer Keysiler's goods, but his own. As
to the confessions, they had been extorted by an adver
sary in an irregular way, and the whole case was rushed
through, so that they had not had a fair chance of
answering. The Escheator of London, who had ar
ranged the case, was " of the said Smyth's Counsel,"
and he had procured a jury composed of English mer
chants trading with Dantzig and Flanders, who were
" their very adversaries," so that the whole proceedings
were " contrary to laws Divine and human, the statutes
of the Realm, and the express words of their ancient
privileges." Even if the offence had been committed,

170 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
it was unfair to impute to all the towns of the Hanse
an offence committed by one man, without their know
ledge or consent.
The conduct of Dantzig was evidently felt to be
rather a weak spot. The Germans " would be right sorry
that such ungentleness should be done." Obviously
the case could not be defended, but at least it might
be said that negotiations had been proceeding in the
matter since 1542, and the towns were still ready to
discuss the points at issue.
It was now the turn of the Merchant Adventurers.
They pointed out a flaw in the German logic. They
called themselves factors who had no responsibility,
yet a company which enjoyed certain privileges. As to
the charters, the Adventurers' lawyer had gone further
into the matter, for they produced a number of new
points — points which show that then, as now, lawyers
enjoyed a quibble. Thus, for example, in the charter
of Edward I there was no mention at all of merchants
of the Hanse in Almaine, but only of the merchants of
Almaine. Then the King had said concedendas, not
concedimus or concessimus — that is to say, he had given
them a grant in the future tense, which was no grant
at all. Again, while the grants were given to merchants
of Germany in a certain house in the City of London,
there was no proof that the Hanse now occupied that
same house. They might be living in quite another
house. There were a great many other arguments to
the same effect, but the upshot of it all was that the
Privy Council found as follows :
"Their pretended liberties are void, because the
merchants of the Hanse have no sufficient corporation
to receive the same.

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 171
" Owing to the uncertainty of what persons or towns
should enjoy the said privileges, the Hanse merchants
admit to be free with them whom and as many as they
list, to the prejudice of the King's customs of nigh
£20,000 yearly.
" Even if the pretended grants were good, as by the
laws of the realm they are not, they were conditional
upon their not colouring or avowing foreign goods, &c,
which condition they have broken.
" It appears that, for a hundred years after the grant
of their pretended privileges, the merchants of the
Hanse exported merchandise out of this realm only to
their own countries, and brought into this realm only
wares of their own countries, but now they export to
Flanders, Brabant, and places adjoining, and import
wares of all other countries, to the subversion of the
trade of the Enghsh merchants, and to the loss of the
King's customs.
" Whereas the privileges heretofore granted to the
merchants of the Steelyard were reasonably used with
profit to themselves and no enormous prejudice to the
Royal Estate of the realm, now for the reasons above
stated your pretended privileges are grown so preju
dicial to the crown the same may not be longer endured.
" In spite of requests from the King's Majesty's father
and from himself for redress of the grievances of the
Enghsh merchants estabhshed at Dantzig, no reform
hath hitherto ensued.
"In consideration whereof the Lords of the Privy
Council in the King's behalf decree that the privileges,
., liberties, and franchise claimed by the merchants of
the Steelyard shall from henceforth be and remain
seized and resumed unto the King's hands until the
said merchants of the Steelyard shall declare and prove

172 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
better and more sufficient matter for their claim in
the premises, saving and reserving unto the said mer
chants all such and like hberties of coming into the
realm and buying and selhng as any other merchant
stranger hath or ought to have.
" This decree was made and given at Westminster,
24th February, 6 Edward VI." 2
It was a signal victory for Gresham and his Mer
chant Adventurers. At a single blow they had swept
away all the privileges and immunities of the Hanse,
and had done at a stroke what Simon de Montfort and
Warwick the King-maker had failed to do by years of
fighting. But if the victory is a testimony to the skill of
Gresham, it also displays a decline in strength on the
other side. The Germans were, in fact, divided. The
Hanse was in almost open conflict with the Empire.
A little while before, Lubeck had driven a brother-in-
law of the Emperor from the throne of Denmark.
Henry VIII had fomented the revolt of the Lutheran
towns against the Cathohc power. EdWard VI had
remarked in his boyish diary with wonder that the
Emperor meant to punish Bremen and Hamburg.
And in March 1552 we find from another entry that the
Privy Council quite understood the opportunities given
to England by the situation in Europe. " It was
agreed," says the boy king, " that it was most neces
sary to have a mart in England for the enriching of the
same to make it the more famous and to be less in other
men's danger, and to make all things better cheap and
more plentiful. The time was thought good to have it
now, because of the wars between the French King and
1 Acts of the Privy Council.

"A PURPOSED OVERTHROW" 173
the Emperor." No doubt in this entry too we see the
hand of the founder of the Royal Exchange.
But the fight was not over. The decree of the
Privy Council had been issued in hot haste in February
24th. On February 29th Dr. John Rudehus and Dr.
Francis Pfeil from Hamburg appeared before the King.
Evidently it was a neck-and-neck race, and the de
cision had been procured just in time. On March 2nd
the Lord Chancellor, two secretaries, a judge, and four
members of the Privy Council were deputed to reply to
these Hanseatic envoys. By May 1st of the same year
the decree was confirmed, but by May 11th the Germans
had got so far as to obtain a commission to go into
their case.
The reopening of the case was something of a score ;
but the Hanse could hardly have hoped very much
from its constitution ; it consisted of the Lord Chan
cellor and six Privy Councillors, with Dr. Wotton.
CecU, then a rising young pohtician and a strong anti-
German, was secretary. Yet Lappenberg gives the
impression that this commission substantially restored
the Hanseatic privileges, "although," he adds, "they
were hard fought by Sir William Cecil, who wanted
to earn the gratitude of his countrymen for having
suppressed the foreigners." The Acts of the Privy
Council hardly bear out this view. On the contrary,
all that the Germans seem to have secured was an
extension of the low duties while the matter was in
debate, and permission to export on the old terms
certain consignments of cloth and lead that had been
contracted for before the case. In October the Privy
Council issued a decree that their just sentence, which
had been suspended in the meantime, should now be
enforced. The Germans had gained little but delay.

174 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
The fact was that the Enghsh merchants were now
too strong for them. The astute Gresham was using
the credit of the company to do for the Royal Ex
chequer what had long been done by the Steelyard.
" Because," says Sir John Hayward, speaking of the
year 1552, " the King was to make payment of £48,000
beyond the seas, and had but £14,000 towards the
sum, three hundred of the chief Merchant Adventurers
granted to him a loan of £40,000 for three months, to
be levied from the cloths which they were then to
transport after the rate of 20s. for every cloth." This
lesson also the Merchant Adventurers had learnt from
the Germans, that to control the policy of a Govern
ment it is necessary to supply its purse.

CHAPTER XVI
ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA
The merchants had broken the power of the Hanse in
London, but they had still to consider the trade of
the Baltic. After such an open breach the Sound was
hkely to be, as the Americans would say, " unhealthy "
for Enghshmen. Dantzig was certain to retaliate. And
now we are to see the real greatness of our Merchant
Adventurers. They determined to circumnavigate the
North Cape and cut into the trade of the Easterhngs
by way of the Arctic.
It was a great project, and had been propounded
long before by Robert Thome of BristoL In 1513 he
had laid before the King, and in 1527 at greater length,
the idea of a new route to the East. The Spaniards,
he said, hold the Western route, by the Straits of Magel
lan ; the Portuguese the Eastward, by the Cape of
Good Hope. The Enghsh have left to them but one
way to discover, and that is by the North. It would
be shorter by two thousand leagues. And we should
by the way find lands no less rich of gold and spicery,
and also should, " if we may passe under the North,
enjoy the navigation of all Tartary, which should
be no less profitable to our commodities of cloth than
those spiceries to the Emperor and King of Portugale."
As for the cold and the ice, he replied, hke a true Enghsh
sailor : " There is no land uninhabitable nor sea un-
navigable." x
* Hakluyt. 175

176 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Thorne, no doubt, had often discussed the matter
with the Cabots, and now, when the Privy Council
case made the Baltic almost impossible, Sebastian
Cabot laid the idea as a practical scheme before the
Merchant Adventurers. There had been a time when
the London merchants distrusted Cabot as a " for
eigner," but that was a long time ago.1 This time
the Merchant Adventurers trusted Cabot. And not
only the merchants, but the King, the Marquis of
Winchester, and other leading Enghshmen backed
the adventure.
The httle expedition saluted the King at Greenwich
on 11th May, leaving behind it an astute Privy Council
to dangle with the ambassadors of the German Hanse.
In August the three ships were separated by a gale.
Sir Hugh Willoughby, with the Bona Esperanza and the
Bona Confdentia, found his way into the river " caUed
Arzina in Lapland, neere unto Kegor," a desolate land.
There they wintered, and there they died of starvation
or cold. But Chancellor, the pUot of the expedition,
made his way alone, in the Edward Bonaventura, to
the White Sea. He landed in Russia, in the Bay of
St. Nicholas, where the town of Archangel now stands.
Making his way overland, he reached Moscow, where
the Emperor, Ivan Basilowitz, was as glad to see
Chancellor as Chancellor was glad to see him. For the
Tsar had just turned the Germans out of Russia, and
was, no doubt, at a loss how to supply his subjects with
cloth. " Next unto Moscow," as Chancellor told Adams,
" the Citie of Nougorode is reputed the chiefest of Russia
... it is the chiefest and greatest Marte Towne of aU
Moscouie . . . this towne exceeds all the rest in the
commodities of flaxe and hempe : it yeelds also hides
1 See Appendix V.

ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA 177
honie and waxe. The Flemings there sometimes had a
house of marchandize ; but by reason that they used the
like ill dealing there, which they did with us, they lost
their privileges, a restitution whereof they earnestly sued
for at the time that our men were there. But those Flem
ings, hearing of the arrival of our men in those parts.
wrote their letters to the Emperour against them, accus
ing them for pirats and rovers, wishing him to detain
and imprison them. Which things, when they were
knowen of our men, they conceived fear, that they
should never have returned home. But the Emperour
beleeving rather the King's letters which our men
brought x than the lying and false suggestions of the
Flemings, used no iU intreatie towards them."
The Flemings were, of course, the merchants of the
Hanse, and it is surely a very remarkable coincidence
that Enghshmen and Germans, after their quarrel in
London, should continue it in Novgorod, and that
Edward VI and Ivan the Terrible should be at the
same time turning the Easterhngs out of their kingdoms.
And not only so, but when we think of it, from that
time to this the Germans have stood between Russia
and England, slandering Englishman to Russian, and
Russian to Englishman. It would be of service to
both Empires if they kept in mind this good example
of Chancellor and Ivan, who refused to be estranged
by " the lying and false suggestions " of the Teuton.
The result of the conference was that Ivan gave
Richard a letter to his King, written in most friendly
wise : " They shall have their free Marte with all free
hberties through my whole dominions with aU kinds
of wares to come and goe at their pleasure without any
1 Cabot had thoughtfully provided letters in Greek, Latin, Chaldee, and
Hebrew as likely to be understood in those parts. M

178 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
let,, damage, or impediment." The intercourse begun
thus bravely prospered for a time. Chancellor made a
second voyage to the White Sea in the summer of 1555,
taking with him George Killingworth, the Company's
first agent in Muscovy. In 1555 he made his third
voyage, and loaded, in the Edward Bonaventura, at the
Bay of St. Nicholas, " waxe, trane oyle, taUow, furres,
felts, yarne and such hke " — in fact, good Dantzig mer
chandise—to the value of £20,000, with £6000 worth in
the Bona Speranza. Not only so, but he embarked a
Russian ambassador, " Osep Napea," with a train of
twenty-six. Most unfortunately the Edward Bona
ventura was wrecked on the east coast of Scotland, at
" Pettislego Bay," on 7th November 1556, and Richard
Chancellor drowned in endeavouring to save the am
bassador. " The rude and ravenous people of the
country " appropriated the cargo ; but the Ambassador,
nothing daunted, made his way to London, where he
had a magnificent reception. Twelve miles outside
London he was received by " four score merchants with
chains of gold and goodly apparel," on horseback, with
servants in hvery. Four miles from London he was
brought to a merchant's house, and presented with
gold, velvet, and silk. Next day — Saturday, 28th
February 1557 — he was escorted by Viscount Mon
tague, on behalf of the Queen, with three hundred
" lustie knights, esquiers, gentlemen and yoemen," and
one hundred and forty of the " merchants adventuring
for Russia," to the City of London, after being shown
by the way "the hunting of the fox and such hke
sport." At " Smithfield barres," " the first limits of the
liberties of the Citie of London, the Lord Maior, accom
panied with all the Aldermen in their skarlet, did receive
him, and so riding through the Citie of London in the

ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA 179
middle, between the Lord Maior and Viscount Mon
tague, a great number of merchants and notable per
sonages riding before, and a large troupe of servants
and apprentices following, with great admiration and
plausibihtie of the people running plentifully on all
sides," he was brought to his lodging in " Fant Church
Street," where a house had been richly furnished for his
stay. " Feasting and banquetting," sightseeing, " a
notable supper garnished with musicke, enterludes and
bankets," at the Drapers' Hall (on 29th April), occupied
his time until he departed from Gravesend, " not
without expressing of teares," in the " noble shippe
the Primrose, Admiral to the Fleete, on the 3rd of
May." Now the Londoners rejoiced because a friendship
with Russia was the best possible reply to the hostihty
of Dantzig and the Easterhngs. This is made clear
by the trading instructions given to Kilhngworth for
the voyage of 1557. The merchants had sent seven
ropemakers to Russia, and " seeing you have great
plentie of hempe there, and at a reasonable price, we
trust we shal be able to bring as good stuffe from
thence, and better cheape than out of Danske : if
it be diligently used and have a good overseer." The
gravest disadvantage was the dangerous passage and
long freight, which made it unprofitable to carry the
raw hemp and tar ; but the chief cargo was to be
wax, flax, tallow, and train oil, with a special hne in
furs, and inquiry after steel, copper, and Russian
leather. And not only so, but the Emperor of Russia
desired " that such commodities as be in his dominions
shall not pass to Rie, Revel and Poland as they have
done but bee reserved for us ; therefore we must so
lay for it that it may not ly upon their hands that

180 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
have it to sell." Moreover, Leonard Brian, whose
" bringing up hath bene most in Danske and hath good
understanding in making of ropes and cables," has been
sent, and two coopers to make casks for the oil and
tallow. Obviously the design is to cut out the Ger
mans from the Russian trade :
"For we must procure to utter good quantitie of
wares, especially the commodities of our Realme, al
though we affoord a good peny worth, to the intent
to make other that have traded thither, wearie, and so
to bring ourselves and our commodities in estimation
and likewise to procure to have the chief commodities
of that country in our hands, as waxe and such others,
that other nations may be served by us and at our
hands. For we doe understand that the greatest
quantitie of waxe that commeth to Danske, Lubeck,
and Hambourgh, commeth out of Russia. Therefore
if we should buy and they also buy, it would raise the
price there, and would be litle woorth here. And aU
such letters of importance and secrecie as you doe
send by land for any wares or otherwise you must
write them in cyphers."
Obviously, too, there is danger in the undertaking,
and the nature and seriousness of the danger is soon
made clear. Thomas Alcocke, not, I gather, one of the
ten apprentices to the Company who were sent " into
the notable cities of the country for understanding and
knowledge," but a trusted servant of the Company,
undertook a bold journey from Smolensk to Dantzig.
The reason of the journey is remarkable. Gray, the
Company's agent, had discovered that the season in
the North was mild, and the Arctic was not much frozen.
He therefore hoped to get the news home to England,
through Dantzig, in time for a summer voyage to be

ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA 181
undertaken " to discover Cataia " — in other words, to
reach China by the North-East Passage. At midnight,
26th February 1558, Alcocke was arrested in a village in
Poland, and was brought to a town which he calls
" TirwiU." There, " with a payre of fetters clapped
on my legges," he languished for some time. On
Saint George's Day the Marshal told him that the
King had ordered that he should be " delivered out of
prison to depart into England, but no way else." He
added that " I might thanke God that I escaped with
my head, and that if ever there came any more of
us through the land, they should not so doe." They
took almost everything from him, including his sword,
his boots, his money, and " a booke of the Flowres of
godly prayers." He was kept five-and-thirty days more,
and then taken by the Captain into a great chamber,
" to bee examined for letters and of the cause of my
comming through the country. In the Captain's com-
panie was one of the Lordes of Danske " (Dantzig).
Alcocke told them the reason of his journey, which,
he pleaded, would not only be of service to England,
but to all Christian lands. He was next questioned as
to the wares the English had taken to Russia, and
charged with doing a contraband trade in arms : " Then
they burdened mee, that wee brought thither thou-
sandes of ordinance, as also of harneis, swordes, with
other munitions of warre, artificers, copper, with many
other things. I made them answere, that wee had
brought thither about one hundred shirtes of mayle,
such olde thinges newe scowred as no man in Englande
would weare."
All this is written by Alcocke to Richard Gray and
Henry Lane, the Company's agents in Russia. How
the letter was smuggled through does not appear, but

182 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
it contains news that must have made Lane and Gray
start as they read it :
" At my comming hither heere were Ambassadours
from the townes of Danske, Lubeck, Hamburgh, as also
out of Liefland x to desire this King to be their Captaine
and head in their intended voyage, which was to stoppe
all such shippes as shoulde goe out of England for
Moscovia. Whereunto the King graunted, and im
mediately they departed to prepare their shippes. So
that I am afraide that either these our enemies, or the
great warres that we have with France and Scotland,
will be an occasion that you shall have no shippes at
Colmogro this yeere."
The true inwardness of this story will be understood
when it is remembered that Dantzig had, a short time
before, cast off its allegiance to the Grand-Masters of
Prussia, who were thought to be too complaisant to
the Enghsh trade, and had transferred its allegiance
to the Kings of Poland. Poland rewarded Dantzig by
trying to shut Narva to Enghsh trade. King Sigismund
explains his policy to Queen Elizabeth in a letter dated
6th December 1559, remarkable as containing almost
the first printed statement of that campaign of calumny
which has been used ever since to estrange England from
Russia : "... We know and feele of a surety, the Mus
covite, enemy to all liberty under the heavens, daily
to grow mightier by the increase of such things as be
brought to the Narve, while not only wares but also
weapons heretofore unknowen to him, and artificers
and arts be brought unto him : by means whereof he
maketh himself strong to vanquish all others. Which
things as long as this voyage to Narve is used cannot
1 John Luoke, another servant of the Company, was imprisoned by the
Leifelanders in 1559.

ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA 183
be stopped. And we perfectly know your Majesty
cannot be ignorant how great the cruelty is of the said
enemy, of what force he is, what tyranny he useth on
his subjects, and in what servile sort they be under
him. We seemed hitherto to vanquish him onely in
this, that he was rude of arts, and ignorant of policies.
If so be that this navigation to the Narve continue,
what shall be unknowen to him ? Therefore we that
know best and border upon him, do admonish other
Christian princes in time, that they do not betray
their dignity, hberty, and hfe of them and their subjects
to a most barbarous and cruell enemy, as we can no
less do by the duty of a Christian Prince."
Here we see the whole policy of the Hanse and of
Germany laid bare : Russia is to be kept in ignorance,
to be bulhed, browbeaten, and cheated, by means of
superior weapons, superior knowledge, and superior
cunning. Prussia is to fatten on a monopoly of trade
with these inhuman barbarians. If England dares to
trade with Russia, her merchants are to be imprisoned
and her ships are to be sunk. And to enforce this
pohcy the Enghsh Government is to be given the im
pression that Russia is "the enemy of hberty," and
the enslaver of her people. When Enghshmen hear
this story next, let them remember Thomas Alcocke in
irons, and the Lords of Dantzig, and let them remember
the conspiracy of the Hanseatic cities " to stoppe all
such shippes as should goe out of England for Mos-
covia." With such enemies it is no matter for wonder if
Enghsh trade did not prosper in Russia. The Russian
revolt against the German Hanse was subdued by
bribery. " The Dutch nation are free of this," writes
John Hasse from Russia in 1554; "notwithstanding

184 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
for certain offences they had lost their priveledges which
they have recovered this summer to their great charge.
It was reported to me by a Justice of that country, that
they paied for it thirtie thousand rubbles." The dangers
and hardships of the White Sea route and Hanseatic
competition made the enterprise unprofitable. But the
great adventure remains as a heroic chapter in the
annals of Enghsh commerce. It was a magnificent
scheme, well planned and boldly executed. Servants
of the Company explored Nova Zembla and the Sea
of Kara ; they opened a river and caravan route from
Archangel to the Caspian. In 1558 Anthony Jenkinson
reached Bokhara in a vain endeavour to get to China
by the overland route. The faithful Alcocke was mur
dered in Persia in 1566. And the friendship then struck
up between Russian and Enghshman remains tradi
tional to this day, despite the organised hypocrisy of
the German and his ally, the German and Russian Jew.1
1 The sources of this chapter may be consulted in Hakluyt (vols. ii. and hi.),
which contains the reports, letters, instructions and charters of the Russia
Company, and correspondence between the Emperor Feodor and Queen
Elizabeth, and between Lord Burghley and the Emperor's brother-in-law
and " Protector," Boris. The letter from Sigismund II, King of Poland, to
Queen Elizabeth will be found in vol. ii. pp. 485-487.

CHAPTER XVII
PHILIP AND MARY
The fair promise of Edward VI ended in tragedy and
conflict. The boy king died, it is said, of consumption.
Northumberland, with whom Gresham had prac
tised for the downfall of the Hanse, attempted to secure
a Protestant (and Dudley) succession by putting Lady
Jane Grey on the throne. He failed, and he was be
headed. Mary had always boasted of her Spanish
blood, and leant upon the Emperor. The Emperor's
hand was deep in Enghsh politics. He was concerned
in the fall of Somerset,1 and is said to have plotted that
business with Warwick. If Warwick — afterwards Nor
thumberland — practised with the Emperor, then he
must afterwards have practised against him, and the end
of practising against Charles V was usually the block.
Mary depended on the Emperor. The Emperor had
great hopes of Mary. In 1550 he sent a member of his
Council, called Seepper, to kidnap Mary and take her
to Antwerp ; but this promising scheme failed owing to
the vigilance of our fleet. When the practising Northum
berland was defeated and Mary was proclaimed Queen
in London, the Hanse and the Emperor's Party counted
it a victory. Mary was not only a good Cathohc, but,
1 Marin Cavalh, Venetian Ambassador with the Emperor, to the Doge
and Council of Venice (12th January 1550) : " The news of the release of the
Protector of England was heard here with no httle regret, as it will apparently
be the ruin of the Ear] of Warwick, with whom his Imperial Majesty has an
understanding (praticha), and it has been hinted to me on authority, that the
arrest of the Protector and these late risings in London had their root in this
Court."— Cal. State Papers (Ven.), vol. v. p. 298.
185

186 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
it was hoped, a good German, a good " Imperialist.
These hopes may or may not have been heightened
when the Queen made that Vicar of Bray, the Arch
bishop Stephen Gardiner, her Chancellor, and, as we
should say, Prime Minister. "In the Lord Chan
cellor," says Lappenberg, "the Hanse found a man
who had been for many years conversant with their
affairs, thanks to his earlier mission to Hamburg and
Lubeck " — the " sacred friendship," in fact1 — and when
an embassy, consisting of the most prominent coun
cillors of Lubeck, Cologne, Bremen, Hamburg, and
Dantzig, approached the Queen, they were graciously per
mitted to reopen the question of their privileges. In
November 1553 their privileges were confirmed. At the
same time the Enghsh Parhament granted the Queen
a subsidy tonnage and poundage on wines and other
goods, as imported by foreigners, including the Hanse,
and also export duties on cloth, skins, and leather.2
By January 1554 the " Ambassador of the Free
Cities of the Hans " procured an edict from the Queen
exempting the Steelyard from duties and taxes not
in accord with their privileges as granted by Henry
VEIL By March 1st the " Aldermen and the Company
of the Steelyard " had secured the abohtion of the
restrictions on the export of woollen cloth.3
Thus even before the marriage with Philip the
Germans were scoring all along the hne, not with
out murmurs in England. But when the match was
1 Gardiner, however, was unfaithful to his German friends, and seems to
have practised against them in the Privy Council, while pretending to support
them in the Court. Family connections may have had their influence. Gardiner
was "the reputed son of a cloth-worker." Thomas Cromwell, by the way, was
the same, and had been a Merchant Adventurer.
2 Statutes of the Realm, vol. iv, S. 1, p. 218.
3 Imposed in 1535 and 1536, and in 1541 and 1542. It was these restric
tions, no doubt, which prompt the German historians to regard Wolsey and
Cromwell as hostile to the Hanse. They were obviously intended to proteot
the English cloth industry.

PHILIP AND MARY 187
announced, the murmurs increased to open rebellion.
Gardiner, who in the time of Henry VIII had distin
guished himself by opposing the divorce, supporting
the divorce, and advising " a middle course," was now
both supporting the match and practising with the
House of Commons against it. " He managed dex
terously," says Hume,1 "to vote an address to the
Queen praying her not to marry a foreigner."
The men of Kent saw in the marriage the triumph
of their enemies and the final destruction of the cloth
industry. When the imperial envoys landed in Kent,
in January 1554, a crowd nearly killed Count Egmont,
whom they mistook for Philip. When they arrived in
London, " the people nothing rejoicing held down their
heads sorrowfully," and " the street urchins pelted their
retinue with snowballs." At Hampton Court the Queen
had to make a public declaration of her patriotism.
" Fixing her eyes on the ring that had been placed on
her finger at her coronation, she told the envoys to
bear in mind that the realm was her first husband." 2
But by this time the men of Kent had risen, and
were being led to London by Sir Thomas Wyatt. By
the time he reached Deptford he had 15,000 men. He
marched on Southwark, and the City of London seemed
on the verge of embracing his cause. But the Queen
after all was a Tudor. Just as Wyatt was reaching
Southwark she rode to the Guildhall and appealed to
the citizens. As for the marriage, she gave her pro
mise that unless Parliament approved of her choice
she would not wed.
London was saved, and the rebelhon suppressed. " I
will not now tell," says Soranzo, " of the great danger
which then threatened the City of London, as, had
1 Two English Queens and Philip, p. 36. a Hume, ibid., p. 272.

188 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Wyatt succeeded, the foreigners at least would have
been sacked, it being quite certain that the Londoners
had an understanding with him ; nor could any better
means be devised for keeping them in check, as they
had already commenced rioting, than for her Majesty
to go in person through the City to the Guildhall," &C.1
But the match was important to the Emperor for
several reasons. There was, first of all and most
important, the prospect of securing the help of England
against France. But besides that obvious advantage,
there were others. Charles, like most reaUy great
men, was in perpetual embarrassment for money. His
creditors were continually pressing him. On 7th March
1554, when negotiations for the match were in progress,
the Venetian Senate reports that the Emperor had sent
an Ambassador to England to hasten on the marriage,
that he had summoned a Diet at Augsburg for Easter,
and that " in Flanders negotiations were on foot to
obtain from the States of these Provinces a consider
able sum of money." 2
On 22nd July 1554 the Venetian Ambassador with
the Emperor reports from Brussels that the King of
Spain had brought 3,000,000 ducats— 300,000 for the
Queen of England, 1,000,000 for the merchants, and the
rest for the Emperor. A httle later (August 13th) the
same agent reports that the Fuggers had " made a
bargain with the Court " for 150,000 crowns — Brabant,
Flanders, and Holland furnishing a certain quota.
1 Cal. State Papers (Ven.), vol. v. p. 561. Wriothesley's Chronicle gives a
fuller acoount of the affair, and Foxe ( Acts and Monuments, vol. vi. p. 414)
professes to give the actual speech of the Queen. The story of the rising is
well told by J. M. Stone in her History of Mary (p. 275, et seq.) ; and she quotes
these and other authorities to show how extremely critical the situation was
when Mary appealed to Guildhall. Mary escaped only by her courage, for it is
evident from the story that neither London nor the Court, nor even the Guards,
could be rehed upon in so unpopular a cause as this German-Spanish match.
2 C.S.P. (Ven.), vol. v. p. 474.

PHILIP AND MARY 189
On August 18th he goes more into detail. Flanders is
to give 300,000 crowns; Brabant, 200,000; Holland,
Zealand, and other provinces make up the total to
1,000,000. And further, " a bargain (un partito) now
very near conclusion is being treated with German
merchants for 500,000 crowns, to be disbursed by them
forthwith to the Emperor in Spain, his Majesty repay
ing it in these provinces at the end of fifteen months
without any interest, security to that amount being given
on the giuri (the funded debt) in Spain. Of the money
received from England, 100,000 crowns have been dis
tributed to the Imperial Army on account of arrears
without making any inspection."
Now, it is fairly obvious that the Enghsh marriage
was a " bull point " with the Emperor : it not only
brought him money from Spain and from England,
but it pleased the German merchants, whose beloved
Enghsh privileges were trembhng in the balance. The
first result, says Rapin, of the alhance with the Em
peror was the restoration of the German privileges.
It was of special importance to placate the Free Cities
at this time, not only because they financed the Emperor
in his expensive wars, but because of the Lutheran
heresy. " Were it not," says the Venetian Ambassador
at Vienna, " for the Emperor and this King of the
Romans, who do their utmost to preserve what little
rehgion there is in these territories (the Free Towns),
actum esset." *
Such, then, were the reasons which prompted our
" natural ally " to arrange this English marriage. That
they were well understood by Enghshmen is shown by
Wyatt's rebelhon, as well as by the stringent terms of
the marriage settlement. Philip was to have no direct
1 C.S.P. (Ven.), vol. v. p. 42.

190 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
political power in England ; Charles had to content
himself with Mary's secret promise to Renard, that
" notwithstanding the conditions, the will of the Em
peror should prevail in England after the marriage."1
The marriage can hardly be described as a union of
hearts. Egmont, who had received such a rough re
ception in Kent, did his best to make it popular, but
failed. " I should like your Highness to know," he
wrote to Phihp, " that the Emperor has not provided
us with a sou to spend on necessary presents. More
can be done here with money than anywhere else in
the world." 2 Phihp was advised by his friends to put
on a coat of mail under his doublet. " I am not going
to a marriage feast," he said, " but to a fight." His
means of ingratiating himself were perhaps a httle
awkward. The treasure he brought with him was dis
played to all beholders, " in twenty carts containing
four score and seventeen chests, a yard and four inches
long, and it was estimated that when it was coined it
would produce about £50,000 sterling." The Steel
yard merchants were, of course, in great feather : their
accounts show that they spent no less than £1000 on
the wedding festivities. A Dutchman crowed on the
top of St. Paul's,3 and Phihp did his clumsy best to
obey instructions about " unbending " by pledging his
new country in English beer.
Nevertheless, a chill east wind seemed to blow in
the face of the Imperial Prince and his German-Spanish
train. Although the heads of Wyatt and his brave
1 Hume, Two English Queens and Philip, p. 42.
2 Hume, ibid., p. 45.
3 " Then was there one Peter, a Dutchman, stood on the weather-cook
of Paul's steeple, holding a streamer in his hand of five yards long, and waving
thereof stood some time on the one foot and shook the other, and then kneeled
on his knees, to the great marvel of all people." — Stow's Annals, p. 616.
The German " Pageant " was at Gracechurch Corner (ibid.).

PHILIP AND MARY 191
men of Kent had been taken down from their spikes,
their rueful countenances seemed still to mock the
marriage feast. And it was not long before the German
merchants began to feel that they were not getting
value for all the money they had spent in promoting
this natural aUiance. " The Hanseatic Ambassadors,"
says Lappenberg, " had hardly left England when the
Privy Council, at the instigation of the City Council
of London, started again to restrict the import and the
export of the German merchants."
The marriage took place on the 25th July 1554.
On the 23rd March 1555,1 the Ambassadors of the Hanse
appeared before the Privy Council at Greenwich to
complain of the grievous treatment they were receiving
from the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London. The
Germans began by demanding to know if they were,
or were not, at liberty to buy and sell in London :
" Petimus simplici responso." Although they had com
mitted no offence, and in spite of their privileges, " re-
center restituta," the cloth bought by their merchants
had been seized, and they could get neither restitution
nor indemnity. In the third place, the Lord Mayor
was forcing them to pay " quotam salis," contrary to
their immemorial rights. Fourthly, whereas the Ger
man merchants had always been free to pack their
own cloth, " per proprios ministros," the City Packer
and his officials were now intruding daily upon the
Steelyard, contrary to their hberties, and were vexing
them unjustly and intolerably with the maximum
exactions. Lastly, they pleaded that the suit of their
1 This is the date given in the Acts of the Privy Council, vol. v. p. 252,
but may well be a misprint for 1556. H it were so, the correspondence between
the Mayor and the Privy Council given in the same volume would fall into
its natural place. The Mayor arrests German cloth and refuses to give it
up (p. 116). The Hanse Ambassadors therefore appear before the Privy
Council.

192 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
old enemy, Baldwin Smith, Examiner of Customs,
should be quashed " in perpetuum."
The Council answered just a trifle drily. The Mayor
was to give order that the merchants should be allowed
to buy cloth at the Steelyard, " without the said Mayor
or City's interruption or trouble," either to the mer
chants or to the clothiers. The cloth which had been
arrested should be delivered to the German merchants,
but the merchants were bound over to restore it if the
case went against them. The Mayor was not to demand
" quotam salis " of the Germans, but the Packer of the
City or his deputy was to be present at all packings
of cloth in the Steelyard, " and view such cloth as he
suspecteth, and for his paynes shal have for every
shorte packe Qd., and for every long packe 8d." As
for the suit of Baldwin Smith, it was to be " suspended
as it is " — an equivocal expression. The Mayor was
to allow the Germans to import fish, corn, and other
victuals without any " imposition or price " ; but these
orders were to continue only for a year. And at the
same time a reply was made to the Hanse in Latin on
the question of general pohcy. With many expres
sions of regard and desire for the old friendly relations,
the Privy Council reminded the Germans of the mis
doings and abuses which had led to the forfeiture of their
privileges. Their Majesties would shortly state their
intentions on the subject : in the meantime the Hanse
was permitted to export a certain amount of cloth.
But the Germans were reminded of the privileges of
the Merchant Adventurers in Flanders and Brabant,
and were warned not to unpack English cloth in Flanders,
Brabant, Holland, and Zealand. They must also give
English merchants reciprocity in their own territories.
These evidently were not the old privileges. There

PHILIP AND MARY 193
might be a representative of the Empire on the throne,
but on the Council there were Enghshmen who were
determined to protect Enghsh trade. The Hanseatic
Ambassadors, Sudermann and Plonnies, must have re
turned raging at such a result after all the expenditure
and expectations of the Imperial marriage.
And so the fight proceeds. The Mayor sticks to
the German cloth : the Council is just a little dilatory
in ordering its restoration. On 23rd December 1556,
the Privy Council are informed that the Germans are
shipping a large quantity of Enghsh cloth to Antwerp,
with the intention of selling it there, " contrary to the
order taken with the Orators or Commissioners of the
Hanse by my said Lords of the Council on 23rd March
last." The merchants of the Hanse had of late been
bound in a sum of £20,000 to abide by this order. They
had excused themselves from entering the bond, and
had pleaded for latitude to send a little cloth by way
of Antwerp, as there was no direct shipping to Ham
burg. This permission had been given for a small
amount, on a pledge that there would be no " fraud or
covin." As fraud was evidently contemplated, the most
stringent orders were given to the General Receivers
of Revenue to prevent it. On 14th April 1557, the
Steelyard merchants approach the Privy Council with
a most humble request to be allowed to pack and ship
such coloured cloths as they had bought but had not
entered in the Customs House before the end of the
term of twelve months allowed them. There were
not above two thousand pieces, and it would be per
mitted " for this time only." In April another embassy
appears upon the scene, consisting of the Lubeck
Syndicus, Dr. von Vechtelde, and the Cologne Town
Councillor, Hermann Sudermann. Their instructions N

194 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
are " to recapture privileges in England of which they
had been robbed." They make charges against the
customs and against the Judge of the Admiralty Court,
which are duly answered, and on 7th July the Privy
Council " consult upon some convenient answer," which
is duly made in ponderous Latin. It gives them no
comfort, for it amounts to a recital of that dreadful
case in the reign of Edward VI, by which they had
forfeited their privileges.
In making its reply the Privy Council had been
fortified by a whole armoury of " books and writings,"
which are returned, on 22nd August, " sealed upp in a
bagge," to " Mr. Doctour Wootton," probably the sec
retary of the Merchant Adventurers' Company. The
list begins with a " Defensio mercatorum Anglie contra
Hanzianos mense Junij 1558," and ends with " A com
pendious declaracion of injuryes doone to the mer-
chaunts, owners, maisters and maryners of Englonde
by Hans Brandois, Boroughmasters and others naming
themselves Lordes of the towne of Dantezick, 1557." *
And on the 30th August there is an entry 2 which
discloses to us the inner meaning of the whole reign.
" A lettre to Mr. Anthony Hussey, Governour of the
Marchauntes Adventurers, that whereas ambassadors of
the Stedes, that have been here for the matter of the
Stillyarde presently departed hence, he is required in
the Quenes Majesties name to use all the best wayes
and meanes he can to understande whither they take
their journey directly home to their cuntrey orelles
(or else) that they goo to the Kinges Majestie, and to
signifye the certentye hereof with all spede ; he is also
required to write hither from tyme to tyme such oc-
currentes as he shall understande."
1 Acts of Privy Council, vol. vi. pp. 378-9. 2 Ibid., under that date.

PHILIP AND MARY 195
The long fight was won. By the end of August
Queen Mary had taken to her chamber ; in less than
two months she was dead — a poor, lonely, heart-broken
monument to the natural alhance. Philip had deserted
both her and England. He had failed the Steelyard,
and the Germans, who called him a Spaniard, never
forgave him.1
He had failed also in his pohcy of using England
agamst France. " I do not know what to make of
these people," Feria wrote to his master in despair.
Mary made promises, but her subjects defeated them.
In March 1558 she sent Gresham to Antwerp to borrow
£100,000. Gresham, who never failed to get money
when he really wanted it, could only raise £10,000.
" He deserves punishment at your Majesty's hands,"
Feria wrote to the King. London was asked to con
tribute £80,000, but met the demand with endless
evasions. There was no doing anything with these Enghsh.
The whole nation, in fact, had set its face hke flint
against Spain and against the Empire. Although
Wyatt's head had fallen, the men of Kent and the
Merchant Adventurers had won. Mary might grant
privileges, the King might favour the Hanse, but the
Council, the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, the Sheriffs,
the Judges were all in a conspiracy with the whole
country to make the privileges of no avail.
1 In 1561 the Venetian Ambassador with Phihp reports that he was
" thoroughly disliked by the Flemings and hated by the Germans." " More
over, contrary to the custom of the Emperor, he takes no notice of Itahans
and Flemings, and least of all Germans." — C.S.P. (Ven.), vol. vii. pp. 331-2.

CHAPTER XVIII
A GAME OF CHESS
" Observe, by the way," says FuUer, " how God set
up a generation of military men, both by sea and land,
which began and expired with the reign of Queen Eliza
beth, like a suit of clothes made for her, and worn out
with her." And that is true. But her great men were
not only warriors ; they were statesmen and mer
chants, poets and dramatists. Her England was a
sphere, a perfect round, following its own course in
harmony. In the reign of Mary we see a sullen Eng
land, working against its Queen, spying on its King.
Now we see an England full of a sweet accord, working
in unity for great ends. And if we inquire into the
reason of this harmony, we must reach the conclusion
that it is because at last England has a monarch whom it
can trust to the uttermost, whom it knows will always
prefer an Englishman over a foreigner, and an Enghsh
interest over any other interest in the world.
The Queen, let us remember, was a daughter of
Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn was the descendant of a
Merchant Adventurer, and had been insulted by the
Germans. She herself had suffered many things from
the foreigner. And Queen Ehzabeth had this fine
quahty, that she never forgot and seldom forgave an
injury. But apart altogether from her mood and
temper, she derived her whole strength from the Enghsh
Party. Mary had leant upon the Emperor, and was
196

A GAME OF CHESS 197
hated by her subjects. Ehzabeth leaned upon Enghsh
men, and was hated by foreigners. Her greatest work,
as it seems to me, was to make England a country for
the people of England ; her eternal fame is that she
defeated the Armada ; but I imagine that in her own
time she was loved even more because she drove out
the Germans. It is a side of her pohcy that has been
strangely overlooked by the historian. Froude has
nothing at all to say on the subject. But it is never
theless true that she fought as great and as victorious
a fight with the Germans as with Spain.
When she came to the throne in 1558, she received
some exceUent advice from Thomas Gresham.1 Here
it is :
(1) To refine her currency.
"(2) Nott to restore the Stillyarde to ther usorpid
privelidges. " (3) To grant as few licences as you can.2
" (4) To come in as small debt as you can beyond seas.
" (5) To. keep up your credit, and specially with your
own merchants, for it is they must stand by you at all
events in your necessity."
And it was on the point of the German trade that
Gresham laid his greatest emphasis :
" The great freedom of the Steelyard and granting
of licence for the carrying of your wool and other
commodities out of your realm, which is now one of
the chief points that your Majesty hath to foresee
in this your Commonweal ; that you never restore the
' Steydes called the Stillyarde ' again to their privilege,
which hath been the chiefest point of the undoing of
this your realm, and the merchants of the same."
1 Burgon, Life of Gresham, vol. i. App. xxi. The letter was preserved
among the Burghley papers. Cecil shaped his pohcy on Gresham's advice.
2 Licences to foreigners to export wool and undressed cloth.

198 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
Now it is strange and characteristic that, while
Froude,the historian, never mentions Germany, Gresham,
the contemporary, does not mention Spain. To Gresham
the real enemy of England is the Hanseatic League,
the Steelyard, the German towns, and their Free Trade
privileges. And this pohcy is followed by the Queen steadily,
cautiously, relentlessly. The Germans are not so much
driven as gradually squeezed out of England. We
have seen how, in the reign of Mary, the Privy Council
ordained that an official " packer " should watch the
German shipments.1 In 1564 — " Mr. Cecil," by the way,
being at that time secretary — the Privy Council decides
that " some person of credit besides the Packer, should
for the Queen and for the Merchant Adventurers see
the packing of all the cloths of the said Merchants of
the Steelyard for discerning of the colour of the said
cloths," &c. The Privy Council is careful to add that
no offence is meant either to the official Packer or to
the Germans ; but the object of the precaution is
reasonably clear.
The Hanse in the meantime is scheming and plotting
desperately either to capture or intimidate Ehzabeth.
In 1560 Gresham is in Antwerp trying to raise money
for the Queen. He finds Antwerp mysteriously tight ;
but Count Mansfeld, " a German nobleman of the
highest rank and distinction," 2 offers him £40,000.
He accepts the offer with eagerness. The Count
employs one Hans Keck, who takes in Gresham so
completely that he sends him to the Council in Eng-
1 " Foreigners were not permitted to live in the wharfs, with the exception
of the Steelyard, whioh got the most extended privileges regarding the handling
of wares — a testimony to the honesty which the custom authorities found
amongst the Germans of the Steelyard." — Lappenberg.
2 The Unsuspecting Burgon, vol. i. p. 337.

A GAME OF CHESS 199
land. To Gresham's annoyance, Keck lingers in Eng
land, but ultimately returns. In the meantime " the
Countie of Mansfylde hath given marvellous interteyn-
ment to my factor." Gresham is enthusiastic. " Sir,"
he writes to Cecil, " doughtless the Count of Mansfild
is a joylly gentillman and valhant and marvellus well
loved of the nobells and captaynes of Saxony." And
he goes on to describe how Clough, the factor, had been
overwhelmed with honours : " In the presence of all
these nobelmen, there was no remedy but my factor
must first waysse (? wash) alone, and fyrst sett at the
table being marvelously sumtuously served." Not only
so, but the Count offered to give the Queen £75,000 at
10 per cent. — a very low rate in those days. " And
then came the County's Chancellor and presented to
my factor in his master's name a silver standing-cup
of the value of xx lib. ; and the Countess sent him
by one of her gentillwomen a little feather of gold and
silver of the value of x lib. and thanked him for the
paynes he took in his journey." Overwhelming, in
fact !
The Count sent Gresham a letter ; but some things
he would not trust to paper, and one of them seems to
have been that he would lend the Queen even more
than the sum he had named — 400,000 dollars more,
"provided that the Queen would give him the bond
of the Merchants of the Steelyard."
There Gresham drew back, in spite of the silver
cup and the 10 per cent. He would not accept the
condition, and the negotiations fell through.
Since nothing was to be done by guile, other forms
of pressure were brought to bear. In 1563 the Duchess
of Parma forbade the importation of Enghsh cloth into
Flanders. Her pretext was the plague then in Eng-

200 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
land, but her true reason was to force Free Trade
upon Elizabeth.1
It was a measure most formidable to England, even
if it had been taken by Flanders alone, for by that time
England was sending to the Netherlands above 200,000
pieces of cloth per annum, to the value of about 5,000,000
crowns, or £1,000,000 sterling.2 But the Germans were
working in concert with the Regent of the Netherlands.
If they did not inspire, they lent their strength to the
blow. This is shown beyond dispute in a letter from
Antwerp to Cecil : 3 " Has received a letter from the
merchants at Emden, who are informed that, upon
suit from the Low Countries, the Hanse Towns have
consented to the banishment of all English cloth out
of their countries for six years, as well for the great
customs they pay, as also for their privileges." Here
indeed was a blow to Enghsh trade : at two strokes it
was prohibited in its two chief markets, Germany and
Flanders. England, in fact, was excommunicated, as
she had been in the time of Simon de Montfort, and
again in the time of Warwick : the Hanse had launched
1 Cal. S. P. (Foreign), 1564-65, pp. 52-53. Also John Wheeler, Treatise
of Commerce, p. 51 : " Whenas through the complaint of the Merchants of
Antwerp principallie, and of others of the said low Countries, agamst the
raising of the custome of Clothe and of foreign Wares brought into England,
and specially against an Act of Parhament made for the setting of her Majesties
people on worke, by virtue whereof foreign wares, as Pinnes, Knives, Hattes,
Girdles, Ribbin, and such like, were forbidden to be brought in ready wrought,
to the intent that Her Highnes' subjects might be employed in making thereof,
the said Duchesse of Parma, by proclamation forbadd the carying into England
of anie kind of matter or thing, wherewith the said wares might be made,
and banished out of the low countries all manufacture or handie-work as
Bayes, &c, made in England, clothe and kersye onely excepted, which also
shee afterwards forbad to be brought in upon payne of confiscation, under
shew or pretence of infection (for that the plague had raigned very sore in
London and other places of the realm that sommer) but in verie truth the
right cause was, for that shee could not have her will in the above-mentioned
pointes," &c. Another grievance was the English shipping laws : English
men were now compelled to pay higher custom dues if they used foreign ships
— Cal. S. P. (Foreign), 1564, p. 52.
2 Anderson, vol. ii. p. 127. Giucciardini's description of the Netherlands.
3 From John Fitzwilhams, the English agent there, dated 21st August 1564
Cal. 8. P. (Foreign), 1564-65, p. 191.

A GAME OF CHESS 201
its heaviest thunderbolt. But this time there is no
Free Trade Party in England ready to back the foreigner,
and there is a Government with courage to reply blow
for blow. Thus we find a decree of the Privy Council,
on 8th August 1564, " to call earnestly uppon the
Stylliarde to write to Cullen (Cologne) to discharge the
impost set upon our merchants for the clothes they
carye between Empden and Frankeforde, orelles (or
else) some remedy must be taken here. And for the
present shippeng of woolles yt is thought good the same
were staied for a month untill upon furder conference
with the King of Spaines Embassadour resident here,
yt might be more fully understanded to what ende we
shall grow for the differences in the Low Cuntreyes," &c.
Here, then, is the reply to both Germany and Flanders :
the Steelyard is threatened with reprisals, and the
Flemish clothmakers are threatened with the loss of
English wool.
And now let us watch this wonderful game of chess
developing. The Merchant Adventurers, with their
cloth on board ship " for five months together " in the
Thames and the Scheldt, are refused permission to unload
at Antwerp, the Regent's prohibitions being issued
in November and December 1563. By 22nd February
1564 " Anne Countess of East Friesland, and Erdtzard,
Christopher, and John, Earls and Lords of the same,"
have given to the Merchant Adventurers " full pass
port, free abiding and safe conduct in Emden." 1 No
time is lost, it will be seen, and no time could be lost.
" Their merchants break every day," writes Mason to
Challoner on March 23rd, of the Netherlands mer
chants ; and probably the Enghsh were also in a bad
way.2 Earl John is promised a pension of 3000 crowns
1 Cal. S. P. (Foreign), 1564, p. 58. 2 Ibid., pp. 84-85.

202 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
by the Queen and taken into her service, and the Emden
market is advertised all over Germany.1
On May 6th Fitzwilhams writes to Cecil from Ant
werp that the merchants of the Netherlands have been
forbidden to go to Emden to traffic with the merchants
of England. He adds that " they of this town (Antwerp)
would spend a good piece of money to have the traffic
between both countries in the old order again." 2 By
May 9 th Philip is trying to get Enghsh wool into
Bruges.3 By May 27th Antwerp is pressing its Governor
hard for a peace, and is also writing to Cecil desiring his
assistance in restoring matters to their former footing.4
By June 17th there is " good hope " of the English
market in Emden prospering.6 By June 24th, however,
Thomas Aldersey reports from Emden that " the prac
tices are marvellous to keep merchants from them. . . .
Certain Easterhngs persuade others that are willing to
buy that they should forbear . . . the Commissioners
of Cologne hinder other men from giving aid and show
ing friendship. By these means and others the writers
are so straitened that unless the Queen and her Council
provide that her restraint be kept they shall sustain
loss and shame."6 Evidently it is a close thing. By
July 25th, Challoner from Madrid fears Emden will
be frozen in the winter, and wonders if there is a chance
of peace. By August 1st Cecil gives instructions to
treat with the Spanish Ambassador for the opening of
trade on both sides. By August 21st the Hanse have
decided on the banishment of Enghsh cloth for six
years.7 By August 24th there is news that "many
hundreds pf men are gone out of Antwerp to Emden." 8
1 Cal. S. P. (Foreign), 1564, p. 105. 2 Ibid., p. 125.
3 Ibid., p. 129. 4 ibid., p. U2.
B Ibid., p. 158. s Im -; p 164_
' Ibid., p. 191. s Ibid.t p. 192.

A GAME OF CHESS 203
It is a near thing, but the Queen wins. " At length,"
says Wheeler, " when the King of Spain, for all the
instigation of his Netherlanders and Popish Ministers,
saw that hee could not prevaile, and were at a stand, he
and they were glad, and fayne to come to a provisional
agreement, and to accept of such privileges and liber
ties as the said Netherlanders enjoyed in England in
the last year of Queen Marie's reigne . . . and to caU
in all those aforesaid placates, edicts and prohibitions
made against the Englishe, and bringing in of Enghsh
wares." The fight lasted about a year : it was fought
without bloodshed, but it was none the less a great and
glorious victory.
In 1568 this strange war broke out again. The
immediate cause was that a Biscayan ship had been
chased into Plymouth by the French, and that there was
some little dispute between Ehzabeth and Philip over
the ownership of the treasure it contained. The Duke
of Alva seized all the goods and ships of the English
merchants at Antwerp. The Queen rephed by arresting
the Netherlanders and their goods in England. The
trade between the two countries was stopped, and
Enghsh cloth was once more " without a vent." But
Cecil had foreseen the rupture, and had been busy
detaching Hamburg. Even in the previous fight that
city had displayed a " coming-on " attitude, which en
couraged the Enghsh to hope more from her than from
Emden. The Ems was inconveniently close to the
Netherlands border : Phihp acted there as if he were
Emperor. The Drossart of Emden, Ocko Freeze by name,
was " very much inchned to the Spanish Party," and
even the Earl — possibly because his " pension " was in
arrears — had not been altogether satisfactory. On the
other hand, Richard Clough, Gresham's agent, reported

204 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
unfavourably of the Prussian character. " The Ham
burgers," he said, " are a kind of people rude and no
thing inclined to our nature, envious and beggarly both
of goods and wits, incivil in manners and without all
mercy where they are masters." But any port in a
storm. And just as the Germans in the present war
had prepared beforehand their position on the Marne,
so Cecil and Gresham had prepared their position at
Hamburg. In 1566 John Gilpin, the secretary of the
Company, was sent to arrange the matter. On 19th
July 1567 three English envoys signed a contract for
ten years with the Senate of Hamburg. So that, when
the war broke out in the following year, the Enghsh
cloth trade had a snug Hamburg roof over its head.
In April 1569 a great Enghsh fleet of twenty-eight
well-equipped ships, laden with cloth and wool to the
value of 700,000 thalers, left the Thames for Hamburg.
The goods sold so well that the merchants declared
they could do without Antwerp ; and on August 25th
of the same year a second great fleet, convoyed by two
men-o'-war, sailed for the same port. The sum total
of the export to Hamburg in 1569 was estimated at
2,500,000 thalers.1
This was a terrible blow to Spain and to Antwerp.
Phihp saw the wealth on which he depended departing
from the Netherlands, and, what was even worse, he
had a shrewd suspicion that Cecil was using this com
mercial opening to push the Protestant cause in the
North, and to supply the Protestant Princes with the
means for revolt.2 Antwerp, which had been created
by Enghsh trade, which for Enghsh cloth had betrayed
the looms of the Netherlands, and had become by Eng-
1 Bertrand de Salignac, Correspondance diplomatique, vol. i. pp. 154-238.
2 Ibid.

A GAME OF CHESS 205
lish enterprise " the pack-house of Europe," the rival
and successor of Bruges, now saw her chief source of
wealth withdrawn. But to the Hanse the blow was
even more deadly. For years it had been falling into
a slow decay, and living mainly on the hopes dangled
before the Steelyard by the English Government.
Its trade now rested, not on the secure rock of unques
tioned privileges and the favour of kings, but upon
yearly licences served out grudgingly, as charity is
given to strangers. Thus, in 1550-1555, the loading
of 50,000 pieces of cloth was permitted every Easter ;
in 1560-1562, 40,000 ; and in 1570-1575, only 30,000
pieces. As the Enghsh merchant service grew in
capacity to deal with English trade, so the hcences to
German shippers were decreased. Cecil had told Den
mark that he would never restore the Hanseatic privi
leges, because they were injurious to the trade of
England ; but the Hanse continued to scold and to
complain. " They do not seem to comprehend at all,"
says Sartorius, " the spirit which hved in this Queen,
nor the totally altered conditions of Europe, but con
tinued to babble of their ancient priveleges " x — " their
olde antiquated and obsolete privileges," as Wheeler
calls them. But decay is a slow and disregarded pro
cess in empires as in persons : it needs the shock of a
great event to teach a man or a country that he is no
longer what he was. And this great event came to
the Hanse when Hamburg, its chief North Sea port,
made a separate contract with England.
The Hanse Day of 1572 at Lubeck was a day of
recrimination and bitterness. Hamburg had betrayed
Germany : she was false to the Hanse. The contract
1 Georg Sartorius (Geschichte des Hanseatischen Bundes, vol. hi. pp. 360 et
seq.) is my chief authority for the following pages.

206 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
must be annulled. It is easy to imagine lean and half-
starved virtue clamouring agamst the fat and prosperous
traitor. They were all hungry : Hamburg was full of
bread — or, rather, cloth — and she justified herself with
a most irritating complacency. If she had not received
the Merchant Adventurers, they would have gone again
to an outside town, like Emden, and dealt there with
strangers and Hanse merchants alike. By her contract
she had obtained for the whole Hanse a somewhat
larger licence for the export of cloth from London, and
she had also secured protection against the Enghsh
pirates. That, surely, was better than nothing. But
if the Hanse insisted on Hamburg revoking her contract,
let them well consider the consequences, for in that
case, however reluctantly, she would withdraw her
representatives from the Common Council.
It was a terrible moment, and the Hanse was help
less. Everywhere their domination had crumbled ;
everywhere the Queen was prepared. In 1572, the
very year of this painful scene, Elizabeth had concluded
a treaty with Charles IX of France for joint action to
protect their commerce in the Netherlands, Germany,
Prussia, and Sweden. Friendly negotiations had long
been proceeding between Denmark and England for
a treaty of defence against the League. As for the
Emperor, he no longer counted : the glory of the
Empire had departed with Charles V. Philip was the
real head of the imperial family, and the towns never
trusted Philip after his dismal failure to protect their
interests in England.
Still steps must be taken, and there were three things
which might be done — force Hamburg back into the
fold, excommunicate English trade, and supply Philip
with the means to conquer England. Upon this pro-

A GAME OF CHESS 207
gramme they set themselves to work, while Queen Eliza
beth on her side continued the process of slow strangu
lation. By 1576 it was declared at a meeting of the
towns that their annual export of undressed white cloth
had fallen from eight to five thousand pieces per annum,
and licences even for that amount were difficult to ob
tain. It was also reported by George Usemann, the
secretary of the Steelyard, that Ehzabeth's relations
with other Powers made the time for striking opportune.
A strong pohcy would bring her to reason. In 1576
Lubeck decreed that the Enghsh must leave Hamburg.
The Privy Council tried to avert the blow by promising
more licences : they might go so far as 12,000 pieces.
The Steelyard was all for accepting a compromise, but
Lubeck stood firm : a strong policy, said the chief of
the League, is the only way to bring England to reason.
Then Ehzabeth begins to strike hard. All licences for
the export of cloth are revoked ; the Mayor of London
begins proceedings against the Steelyard ; and on 7th
April 1579 all their remaining privileges, except their
freehold rights in the Steelyard and in other ports, are
revoked. At the same time the Queen gives a royal
charter to a company of Merchant Adventurers trading
to Eastland — the very land of the Easterhngs.
Queen Ehzabeth, it will be noticed, always keeps
something in reserve : the Steelyard itself, the symbol
of Hanseatic power, is left to the Hanse, although the
reahty is taken away. For the Queen knows with whom
she is dealing. And the shrewdness of her calculations
is shown by a letter from Hamburg to Bremen of 21st
April 1580 — a nervous, quavering letter : " One ought
not to enrage the Queen — the Steelyard may — which
God forbid— fall into the hands of the Merchant Ad
venturers ! "

208 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
In this same letter a reference is made to the " three
towns chiefly concerned " — a phrase which opens out
a deep conspiracy against the peace of England. In
1579 it is laid down that, in case the Queen should not
give in, Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen are to sit in
permanent committee on English affairs. According to
this resolution, the first measure to be taken is a counter
vailing duty levied on Enghsh ships and wares, equal
to the amount levied on the Germans in England ; the
second step is to treat the Enghsh in the Hanse towns
as hostages, and sequestrate part of their goods : these
proceedings are called caution and contra-caution. If
these do not succeed, the quarrel is to be made the
business of the Empire. And, lastly, the three cities
are to treat with Spain, whose enmity against England
is notorious.1 The enforcement of caution and counter-caution
found the Hanse divided and inefficient. Lubeck, the
brain of the League, is all for severe measures ; Cologne
is won over to the Lubeck view by the Hanseatic
Syndicus ; Dantzig, Brunswick, and the masters of the
Kontors all vote for severity ; but Hamburg is against
all sharp measures, and in practice the towns are too
much interested in the English cloth trade to enforce
the measures.
The towns appeal to the Emperor, and the Electors
assemble at Prague on 8th January 1580. The Hanse
demands the expulsion of the Merchant Adventurers
from the Empire ; they had raised the price of cloth
by about 100 per cent., and they were disgraceful
monopolists, who deserved no mercy. Above all, they
must be expelled from Emden.
1 Sartorius adds that this programme was first sketched out in 1557 and
elaborated in 1579.

A GAME OF CHESS 209
As a result of these representations the plenipoten
tiary of the Hanse, Calixt Schein, Syndicus of Lubeck,
receives a letter from the Emperor to the Counts of
East Friesland, commanding them to expel the Enghsh
from Emden. Rudolf II also writes strongly to the
Queen, and King Stephen of Poland backs him up with
another letter to her Majesty. The Queen's reply gives
no comfort. As for the Count of East Friesland, he
is impenitent, and apphes for help to the Queen. She
hastens to send Ambassadors to Denmark, Poland,
Prussia, and the Emperor.1
Lubeck makes much of the charge that the Mer
chant Adventurers are a monopoly, because monopolies
are forbidden by the laws of the Empire. And a great
controversy is started — Is, or is not, the English Com
pany a monopohst ? The town of Frankfort, asked
for its impartial opinion, replies in a sense favourable
to the Hanse — the Company is a monopoly. The town
of Lubeck is absolutely certain on the point, and sub
mits to the Emperor a report of such length that the
Imperial CounciUors refuse to read it until it is com
pressed into reasonable dimensions. Longston reports
to Walsingham of the " lewd, untrue, and most un-
honest hbels blown and scattered abroad by the Hanse,
stede of Lubeck, and others. ... A man can now come
almost in no company where any talk is had in these
parts of general traffic and merchants, but one piece
is of the Enghsh merchants monypohon."2 The con
troversy travels to England, and is taken up by certain
disgruntled " stragglers " and " outports," well-primed,
as Wheeler insinuates, with stockfish and Rhenish wine.
1 I still depend mainly on Sartorius ; but see also Acts of the Privy
Council and Cal. S. P. (Foreign) for this period.
2 Cal. S. P. (Foreign), 1582, p. 442 ; see also ibid., p. 550, a " Petition of
the Merchant Adventurers touching the Slander of Monopoly their Traffic is
charged withaL" O

210 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
In the meantime George Gilpin is sent to the Em
peror's Court at Augsburg to prepare against the Diet.
On 27th July 1581 he writes to Walsingham : " Great
want generally amongst them of money, many debts
and divers suitors for payment ; credit very small,
charge great and least provision . . . almost all the
Court hispaniolated ; such force have the King of
Spain's pensions whereof most of those belonging to
the House of Austria are provided." He also reports
that the Hanse is making great and continual complaints
against the Adventurers and the Earl of Emden. On
1st or 2nd September 1582, Herle writes that " the
Free Towns will condescend to no contributions before
their griefs are remedied." According to the Venetian
Ambassador in Germany, the Hanse represented that
forty milhons of gold a year was involved in the trade
with England, and that this was imperilled by the Tudor
pohcy of raising the duty from 5 to 20 per cent. On
28th October 1582, Thomas Longston wrote to Wal
singham that the Princes had resolved to send ambas
sadors to England before taking further steps — some
at least of these Princes being in receipt of Enghsh
" pensions " — but after the departure of the Princes,
" through the lewd and unhonest deahng of the
Hanse," x the Diet had passed a decree prohibiting the
Merchant Adventurers in Germany.
The Emperor seems rather to have used this decree
as a threat than enforced it. But the Queen remained
undaunted : she rephed haughtily that, if the Hanse
merchants had grievances in England, the Enghsh
Courts were the only place in which they could be
i Cal. S. P. (Foreign!, May-Dec. 1582, pp. 418-419. Wheeler, however, says
that the decree was obtained " by favour and assistance of the Spanish
Ministers and of the princes and prelates of the Roman rehgion (the most
part whereof were at the devotion of the House of Austrich)."

A GAME OF CHESS 211
redressed. The Merchant Adventurers have learnt by
experience that Germany cannot do without their
cloth, and cheerfully continue their trade. Driven out
of Hamburg in 1579, they again appear at Emden.
This East Frisian town, having been refused entrance
into the League, is a thorn in the side of the Hanse.
Spain and the Emperor making things too hot in Emden,
they are welcomed by Elbing, a Hanse city. The
Merchant Adventurers negotiate for entrance into
Livland, and Enghsh cloth is somehow sold in Nurem
berg. When the King of Poland, at the instigation of
Dantzig, drives them out of Elbing, they begin nego
tiations all over again with Hamburg. Sir Richard
Saltonstall, Governor of the Merchant Adventurers, and
Dr. Giles Fletcher, go to Hamburg to negotiate, but the
City Fathers " held themselves very nice and coy."
The truth is that they have been visited by Dr. Westen-
dorpe of Groningen, who brought glad tidings from
Spain — " of the great preparation in hand and the in
vasion intended by the King of Spain against England,
of which the Hamburgers (it would seem) conceived
no small hope." They therefore excuse themselves,
sometimes by "the unwillingness of their Commons,
otherwhiles by want of authority from the rest of the
Hanse, without whose privity and hking they might
not conclude any such thing."
The decayed, old, down-at-heel town of Stade sees
its opportunity, offers the Merchant Adventurers all
the privileges they can desire, and is at once transformed
into a flourishing city, to the utter disgust and chagrin
of Hamburg and the rest of the Hanse. The cities,
in fact, are beaten at every move, and there now
remains nothing but Phihp and his Armada.

CHAPTER XIX
CHECKMATE
The reader will have noted how power has moved in
Europe, in the course of our story, from north-east to
south-west. The Grand-Master of Prussia has dis
appeared from the stage. He had sunk, in his latter
years, under the suspicion of taking a pension from the
Merchant Adventurers, and Dantzig had thereupon
transferred her allegiance to the King of Poland. His
territories were divided up between the King of Poland
and the Electoral House of Brandenburg. The Teutonic
Order of Livonia lasted a httle longer, but in 1561 Gottard
Ketler surrendered to the Poles. " The resigning of
the records, the great cross of the order, the archives,
the keys of the gates and castle of Riga and all other
prerogatives into the hands of the Poles by the said
Grand-Master was a sad spectacle, and could not be seen
by any lovers of the German name without tears."1
A year or two earher the Russians had driven the
German merchants out of Novgorod : the Hanse Kontor
was shifted to Reval, and the Czar replied by seizing
Narva and opening the Baltic to English, French, and
Dutch commerce. The removal of the staple to Narva
gave a pretext to Sweden, and Eric XIV seized the fleet
of Lubeck as it was returning from that port, and carried
it to Reval and Stockholm. The war which followed
lasted eight years, to the further weakening of the
League.2 Denmark, too, had grown independent. In
1 Thannus, lib. 28 ; Anderson, vol, ii. p. 116. 2 Anderson, vol. ii. p. 104
212

CHECKMATE 213
1553 Christian III raised the toll of the Sound so much
that the great Kontor of Bergen became unprofitable
to Hanseatic commerce, and the Danes took over a
large shee of Hanseatic commerce in the Baltic.1 By
1579 the Danish fleet was disputing the sovereignty
of the Elbe and blockading Hamburg, and the Han
seatic city was fain to purchase peace with a great
indemnity. The " upstart towns " of Holland, which,
like Emden, had been denied entrance to the League,
boldly went to war with the Hanse. In 1511 a Dutch
fleet was attacked in the Baltic by the fleet of Lubeck,
and was partly rescued by the fleet pf Denmark. In
1532 Holland was again at war with the Hanse on
account of assistance the Dutch had given to King
Christian ; and their wars against tfie League being a
revolt from the Empire, they gradually formed them
selves into a pohtical federation in alhance with Den
mark and England against Germany and Spain.
All these things could hardly have happened but
for the discovery of the New World by Spain and
the Cape route by Portugal. Vasco da Gama took the
Turk on his undefended rear, and so reheved the pres
sure on the Empire ; and the Empire, which had been
kept together mainly by fear of the Crescent, lost the
chief reason for its existence. Spain being unable to
finance its vast new trade in America, applied to Antwerp
for assistance, and Flanders financed the Spanish trade.
The Spaniards hved on Flemish credit,2 and possibly
the natural desire of the debtor to burn the creditor's
books may account for the otherwise unaccountable
Fury of Antwerp. However that may be, it is probable
that the financial dependence of Spain on Flanders
led Charles V to make that fatal division of the Empire
1 Anderson, vol. ii, p. 104. 2 Cf. Wheeler, Treatise of Commerce.

214 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
which united Flanders and Spain under Philip. If
Phihp had been a man of genius like his father, he
might with difficulty have reconciled the interests of
Germany and Spain ; being only a man of talent, he was
never supported in his world pohcy by a united Empire.
In 1579 Queen Ehzabeth sent Wilham Harborne to
Constantinople, and completed the destruction of the
Imperial trade system.
In the Middle Ages we saw two great trade routes
from Asia to the West. One had its depot at Nov
gorod, the other at Venice ; the one came by way of
Turkestan, the other by way of the Persian Gulf and
the Red Sea. Both ended at Hanseatic Kontors. But
when Anthony Jenkinson is saihng down the Volga with
cargoes of English cloth to Astrakhan and the Caspian,
when the Turkey Company is doing good business
with Constantinople, and Dutch and Enghsh ships are
competing with Spain and Portugal for the trade of
the East and West Indies, it is obvious that the trade
routes from Novgorod to the Baltic, and from Venice
to Flanders, are no longer in their old position of pre
dominance. Thus everywhere the German trade system is faihng
to pieces ; the Court of the Empire subsists on Phihp 's
bounty, and the Hanse, which once looked to Prussia
for protection, now looks to Spain. Philip was eager
to help. According to Sartorius, he had long pressed
the Cities to join with him in an attack on England,
and the Cities hesitated, not because they loved the
Queen, but because they distrusted the King. But
with the failure of "caution and contra-caution," and
the miserable fiasco of the Imperial BuU, all hesitation
is thrown to the winds, and the Hanse plunges with
zeal into the great project of the Spanish Armada.

CHECKMATE 215
We have seen the date at which this secret alliance
began, and it is easy to trace its progress through the
archives of Venice, Simancas, and England. Thus, in
1586, Hieronomo Lipomano, Venetian Ambassador in
Spain, reports to the Doge and Senate :
" The City of Hamburg, which governs itself as a
Repubhc, and is hostile to the Queen of England on
commercial and other grounds, has sent a letter to the
King of Spain offering him the port of Hamburg, which
is capable of sheltering a large fleet. The King is also
in treaty for the use of another port near Hamburg.
Both will be of service to Flanders and for putting some
check on the Queen of England."
Poland, as we have seen, is now, owing to its con
nection with Dantzig, the close ally and protector of
the Baltic cities. The King of Poland, as we have
also seen, and will see again, is the obedient tool of the
League. With this knowledge we are able to under
stand the significance of a report from the Venetian
Ambassador at Madrid : a
" The King of Poland recommends the King of
Spain if he makes an attack on England to do it seri
ously, first seizing Ireland and the Isle of Wight, as
both of them will afford ports for the fleet. He adds
that it would be better to take no steps at all than to
take them insufficient to secure a victory. And such
great preparations would have the additional advantage
of destroying all hope that the Queen of England might
indulge in her power to defend herself."
Probably it is to this advice that the Marquis of
Santa Cruz refers in the letter he writes to Phihp on
4th November 1587 : " If it be really decided to go to
England itself I would only observe that this Armada,
1 Cal. S. P. (Ven.), vol viii, 24th August 1586.

216 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
even when united with the troops of the Duke of
Parma . . . does not seem to me sufficient to attempt
this enterprise in the very heart of winter. . . . Nor
in my opinion would it be such an easy matter to
take the Isle of Wight, or any other harbour, for the
shelter of our fleet, as is represented to your Majesty
by those who stake nothing on the risk, and have not
been taught the difference between victory and de
feat."1 Burghley is well informed on the secret under
standing, as we gather from a note in his own hand
writing to his friend, the King of Denmark, dated
December 1585 : 2
" To send to the King of Denmark to declare to
him how cunningly the merchants of Dantzig, Lubeck,
and other ports on the east side of the Sound have
this summer-time made great provision of grain and
other victual, and of all things belonging to shipping,
and carried the same to Spain by passing the north
of Scotland and west of Ireland. To require him to
consider how hereby the King of Spain hath been
furnished for his Navy which he hasteneth to lend aU
his forces to annoy us," &c.
Six months later, on 17th June 1586, Matheo Zane,
Venetian Ambassador in Germany, reports that " a
fleet of twenty-five vessels laden with pitch, sails, and
shrouds for a large armament sailed from the German
ports. To avoid the Breton and Enghsh cruisers the
route was laid outside England. The fleet sails for
Portugal, where these supphes are eagerly desired by
the Marquis of Santa Cruz, whose absolute want of
such necessaries makes it doubtful if he would be able
1 Cal. S. P. (Ven.)> vol. viii. p. 322.
2 Navy Records, Spanish War, 1585-1587, pp. 53-54.

CHECKMATE 217
to man his fleet this year and to attack Drake." In
1588, the year of the Armada, we hear from the
same source of "twenty Hamburg ships for Lisbon,"
and the abundant references in the archives show the
enormous extent of these supphes.
Again, in 1586, the Venetian Ambassador in Madrid
secured a copy of an estimate of supplies and ships for
the Armada prepared by the Marquis of Santa Cruz —
who but for his timely death was to have taken
command. The reader who derives his knowledge of
the Armada from James Anthony Froude will rub his
eyes when I say that this estimate includes thirty
German ships and 12,000 Germans. Did these ships
actually form a part of the Armada ?
There is no means of finding out that I know ; but
it is noteworthy that in the squadron of twenty-three
" hulks " commanded by Juan Gomes de Medina two
have obviously Hanseatic names, the Barca de Amburg
(600 tons) and the Barca de Anzic (450 tons). Two
others, the El Gran Grifon (650 tons) and the Falcon
Blanco Mayor (500 tons), which were lost, are called
German.1 I am aware that Van Meteran, who should
have known, caUs these in his summary of forces
" Flemish hulks " ; but in the course of his narrative
he says : " Sir Francis Drake was giving of chase unto
five great hulkes which had separated themselves from
the Spanish fleete ; but finding them to be Easterhngs
(Hanseatics) he dismissed them."2 The contradiction
is rather apparent than real, for the Hanse merchants
1 Navy Records, vol. ii, Appendix G. The squadron was of the following
strength : 23 ships ; 10,271 tons ; 384 guns ; 3121 soldiers ; 608 marines.
2 An act of pohcy on Drake's part, for Burghley was still trying to detach
the German cities from the Catholic interest. On 12th June 1587, for example,
the Venetian Ambassador in Spain reports that Drake had found two Hamburg
ships sailing for Lisbon, but he merely took their powder and some provisions
and let them go on their way, " declaring that they were friends, and charging
them to tell the Marquis that he was waiting for them."

218 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
or Easterhngs were sometimes called Flemish, as we
have frequently seen in the course of this story.
We may take it, then, as proved that there were
Hanseatic ships in the Armada itself, just as there were
Flemish, Venetian, Itahan, Sicilian, and Levantine
ships. For the Spanish Armada was not merely
Spanish : it was the total naval power which King
Philip's dominions and King Philip's friends, including
the Pope and Venice on the one side, and the Hanse
on the other, could put on the sea for the purpose.
But the Spanish fleet is chiefly intended to cover
the invading army, which the Duke of Parma is
preparing in Flanders. Our " joylly " friend, Count
Mansfeld, who had so cunningly tried, to lure Gresham
into the financial meshes of the League, is, by the way,
the Duke's second in command. The Duke's plan is
elaborate. " He deepened," says Van Meteran, " the
channel of Yper, commonly called Yperlee, employing
some thousands of workmen in order to transport
ships from Antwerp and Ghendt to Bruges, where he
had assembled about a hundred ships called hoyes,
being well stored with victuals, which hoyes he was
determined to have brought into the sea by way of
Sluys, or else to have conveyed them by the said
Yperlee . . . into any part of Flanders whatsoever."
In the river of Waten he caused seventy ships with
flat bottoms to be built to carry thirty horses each ;
200 were built at Nieuport and forty-eight ships of war
were concentrated at Dunkirk. " And," Van Meteran
adds, " (the Duke) caused a sufficient number of mariners
to be levied at Hamburg, Bremen, Embden, and at other
places." The Duke of Parma's army is partly
Itahan, partly Walloon, partly Scotch, partly Bur
gundian, partly Dutch, partly Spanish, partly High

CHECKMATE 219
German, and partly Enghsh (no doubt Catholics and
Irish). Almost needless to say, King Phihp is also getting
his financial support from Germany. Thus Hieronomo
Lippomano writes to his Government, on 29th Sep
tember 1586 : " The King is negotiating another loan
in Germany for two milhons of gold at the rate of
200,000 crowns a month in Flanders. There is no
difficulty in the way, except the demand for 8 or 10
per cent., as the Fuggers have recently lent at 7." x
And again, on 18th October 1586 : " The King has
raised another loan from the Fuggers of 500,000 ducats,
to be paid in Frankfort, hah now and half in March,
and a similar loan from Genoese bankers, payable hah
on December 10 in Milan, and half on the same date
in Flanders." The King and the Duke had neglected nothing.
Wheeler asserts that one of the objects of the exclusion
of Enghsh cloth from the Netherlands was to create un
employment and foment labour troubles among the
Enghsh cloth-workers. A peace conference at Bor-
borch had been arranged on the very eve of the attack.
" The Duke of Parma," says Van Meteran, " by these
wiles enchanted and dazzled the eyes of many Enghsh
and Dutchmen that were desirous of peace, whereupon
it came to pass that England and the United Provinces
prepared indeed some defence to withstand that dread
ful expedition and huge armada, but nothing in com
parison of the great danger which was to be feared." 2
But despite all these precautions and preparations the
Armada failed, and the German-Spanish hopes were
1 The Fuggers were the Rothschilds of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
With the increase of wealth rates of interest had sunk since 1560.
2 Just so our Government was " enchanted and dazzled " by the wiles of
Baron Marschal von Bieberstein at the Hague Peace Conference.

220 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
broken into pieces by the guns of our ships and the
iron-bound coasts of the Hebrides.
Even then the King and the Hanse did not quite
despair. On 19th August 1589, the Venetian Am
bassador in Spain reports : " At the Escurial there is
an agent from Hamburg who has instructions from
Dantzig to inform the King that many ships from those
parts have been seized by the Queen of England, and to
complain of her action. This agent is about to return
home by way of Italy ; he is the bearer of a dispatch
whose contents I cannot discover, owing to the secrecy
in which the whole matter is kept." At this time
Phihp was preparing his second Armada, and the
Hanse towns were busy supplying him with a new
outfit. In 1588 Wilham Harborne, our first and
greatest Ambassador at Constantinople, returned over
land to England. At Elbing, Dantzig, Wismar, Lubeck,
and Hamburg he received flattering attentions, and
was congratulated " on her Majesty's victory over
the Spaniard." " Yet," he says, " the Dantzigs after
my departure thence caused the merchants to pay
custom for the goods they brought with them in my
company, which none other town, neither infidels nor
Christians, on the way ever demanded. And notwith
standing the premises, I was most certainly informed
of sundry of our nation there resident that most of the
Hanse towns upon the sea coast, especially Dantzig,
Lubeck, and Hamburg, have laden, and were shipping
for Spain, great provisions of corn, cables, ropes,
powder, saltpetre, harquebusses, armour, iron, lead,
copper, and all other munitions serving for the war.
Whereupon I gather their feigned courtesy proceeded
rather from fear than of any good affection unto her
Majesty's service, Elbing and Stoad only excepted,

CHECKMATE 221
which of duty for their commodities (i.e. English cloth)
I esteemed well affected." x
Queen Ehzabeth rephed with a blow more crushing
than anything the Hanse had so far suffered. On
30th June 1589, near the mouth of the Tagus, a fleet
of about sixty Hanseatic ships were seized by Drake,
and were held by the Queen despite every effort of the
Hanse to procure their release. " Single members of
the Hanse may have suffered before," says Sartorius,
" but such a blow grushed them all completely."
The position of the Germans was now, in fact, des
perate. One last tremendous coup was tried. In 1597
a great embassy rather Flemish than Spanish — for it
consisted of the Earl of Barlamont, Dr. George Westen-
dorpe, and John Van Nickerchen — was sent to Lubeck,
as chief of the Hanse towns, and to Denmark to im
plore them to stop all trade with England and offering
instead free trade with Calais, Graveburgh, Dunkirk,
Sluys, and Antwerp, and the ports of Spain and Portugal.
If the Hanse would only confine themselves strictly to
these towns, the Ambassadors promised them that
England would be brought to her knees and the Hanse
privileges restored. The Decree of the Imperial Diet
at Augsburg forbidding all Enghsh trade within the
German Empire was at the same time to be enforced,
and all Enghsh merchants ejected from Germany. And
Ambassadors from Denmark and Poland were to be
sent to England to frighten Queen Ehzabeth into sub
mission. It was a magnificent project, and a touch of
sanctity was not wanting, for a new peace of Christen
dom and a new Crusade against the Turk were to be
preached (the Queen of England being suspected of
inciting the Turk against the Empire).
1 Hakluyt, vol. vi. pp. 58-59.

222 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
On this comphcated mission what Mr. Algernon Cecil
calls " the gorgeous figure of Paul Dialyn " crosses our
horizon.1 He was the King of Poland's Ambassador,
and his main purpose was to seek the restoration of
the privileges of the Hanse towns and compensation
for the loss of Hanse ships. Cecil gives Essex a hvely
account of the audience :
" There arrived here three days since in the city an
Ambassador out of Poland, a gentleman of exceUent
fashion, wit, discourse, language, and person. ... He
was brought in attired in a long robe of black velvet,
well jewelled and buttoned, and came to kiss her
Majesty's hand, where she stood under the State ;
from whence he straight retired ten yards off, and
then began his oration aloud in Latin, with such a
countenance as in my hfe I never beheld."
The speech was, in fact, a violent tirade on the
injuries done to Hanse shipping by Elizabeth's Navy
and by the Merchant Adventurers, a demand for the
restoration of Hanseatic privileges, and a threat from
the King of Poland, " conjoined," as he was, " with
the illustrious House of Austria," that " if her Majesty
would not reform it, he would."
" To this, I swear by the Living God," continues
Cecil, " that her Majesty made one of the best answers
extempore in Latin that ever I heard, being much moved
to be so challenged in public, especially so much against
her expectation. The words of her beginning were
these :
" ' Exspectavi orationem, mihi vero querelam adduxisti.
Is this the business your King hath sent you about ?
1 A Life of Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury (London, 1915), p. 108.
See also Lansdowne MSS., No. 85, vol. xix., the account by Speed' in his
Chronicle and Wheeler.

CHECKMATE 223
Surely I can hardly believe that if the King himself
were present he would have used such a language, for,
if he should, I must have thought that being a King
not of many years and that non de jure sanguinis sed
jure electionis, immo noviter electus, may haply be unin
formed of that course which his father and ancestors
have taken with us and which peradventure shall be
observed by those that shall hve to come after us. And
as for you,' saith she to the Ambassador, ' although I
perceive you have read many books to fortify your
arguments in this case, yet am I apt to beheve that you
have not lighted upon the chapter that prescribeth the
form to be used between Kings and Princes ; but, were
it not for the place you hold, to have an imputation so
publicly thrown upon our justice, which as yet never
failed, we would answer this audacity of yours in
another style.' . . .
" I assure your Lordship," continues Cecil to Essex,
" that I am not apt to wonder, I must confess before the
Living Lord that I never heard her, when I knew her
spirits were in passion, speak with better moderation in
my life."
The formal reply to this remarkable embassy is
given by Wheeler, who tells us that it was prepared
by a Privy Council consisting of Lord Burghley, the
Treasurer ; Sir John Fortescue, the Lord High Ad
miral ; and Sir Robert Cecil, the Secretary.
It begins by scoring a point against Poland. The
Hanse privileges were given to cities not under Poland,
but under Prussia, and if these cities were not confined
to one kingdom they had no status. But it proceeds
to a stronger position : " Whereas therefore it is plain
that this King of Spain, being an enemy to this realm,
is furnished, armed, and strengthened to continue this

224 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
unjust war with ships, victual, and other warhke pro
visions out of certain cities under Polone and other
maritime cities of Germany," &c. As to Hanseatic
privileges, they could not possibly be renewed.
" If the Hanses should have better conditions than
the proper subjects of the kingdom, it would plainly
follow that the prince of this realm should do his own
natural subjects very great injury contrary to the law
of Nature and Man's law, for by this means his subjects
should become poor or rather destitute of all honest
and profitable traffic and navigation, and the Hanses
should grow opulent and possess the whole trade of
the realm as monopohsts of the whole kingdom."
And now I come to the very last card in the Han
seatic pack — the Augsburg Decree. It had not been
seriously enforced in 1582, and was now (1597) launched
upon the world anew. With all the ponderous volu
bility of which German lawyers are capable,1 it re
cited the Hanseatic privileges, received partly by the
" favour " of Enghsh kings, and partly " with great
sums of money " ; it recounted the enormities and " in
tolerable innovations " of that " monopolish Company,"
the Merchant Adventurers ; and it banned all Enghsh
merchants from the Empire. Ehzabeth's answer was
as might have been expected :
" Ehzabeth by the grace of God Queen of England,
France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c, to
our right trusty and well-beloved the Mayor and Sheriffs
of our City of London, greeting, whereas there hath been
directed a commandment . . . from the Roman Em
peror to all electors, Prelates, Earls and all other officers
and subjects of the Empire reciting sundry complaints
made to him by the Alhed towns of the Dutch Hanse
1 See Appendix IV.

CHECKMATE 225
in Germany . . . the English Merchants, namely the
MM. Adventurers are forbidden to use any traffic of
merchandise within the Empire ... we have thought
it agreeable to our honour in the meantime to command
all such as are here within our realm, appertaining to
the said Hanse towns, situate in the Empire ... to
depart out of our Dominions . . . charging them by
the four and twentieth day of this month . . . they
do depart out of this realm . . . witness our self at
Westminster, the thirteenth of January in the fortieth
year of our reign."
This was the end of the Germans in England at that
time. For a few months negotiations dragged on, but
on 25th July 1598 the Privy Council orders the Lord
Mayor and Sheriffs of London to take possession of the
Steelyard in the name of the Queen, and to evict the
Germans from their houses. Ten days later, still pro
testing, the Germans left. " On the ith August," says
their report, " we at last, because it could never be
otherwise, with gloom in our hearts, the Alderman
Henry Langermann in front and we others after him,
went out of the door, and the door was shut behind us ;
also (we) did not want there to pass the night. May
God have compassion."

CONCLUSION
We have now come to the end of our aUotted task,
which was to trace the German power in England from
its rise in the time of Henry III to its fall in the time
of Elizabeth. Here we push our httle shallop ashore,
for the currents of the stream of European history
grow confused and tumultuous, and aheady in our ears
there is the faint but ominous roar of that great and
shattering cataract, the Thirty Years War. Into that
dark abyss fell what remained of the first German
Empire and the Hanseatic League, to be churned and
broken to pieces. Some have called it a war of re
hgion : I would call it rather the agony of dissolution.
The Empire and the German cities fell together because
their means of hfe had been drawn from them. Ger
many, as we have seen, depended upon certain great
streams and fountains of wealth, the overland trade
routes of Europe and the manufacturing centre of
Flanders. When the roads from Venice to Bruges,
from Novgorod to Dantzig, and from the Black Sea to
Cracow were the highways of world commerce, Ger
many flourished and grew great. When England was
the wool-farm of Flanders, and Germany carried Enghsh
wool to be made into Flemish cloth, and Flemish cloth
to be sold for more Enghsh wool, sea-power was
added to land-power, and her monopoly was complete.
But when Portugal found the way round the Cape of
Good Hope to India, Venice and Constantinople lost in
226 L

CONCLUSION 227
importance, since they depended on the Persian Gulf
and Red Sea routes, which the, Portuguese blockaded.
Germany, forced to resort to the less secure depot of
Lisbon, had to run the gauntlet of the English Channel.
Germany suffered no less when England turned from
wool-producing to cloth-producing, and organised her
trade and her customs for national ends. And when
the Merchant Adventurers of England, under the pro
tection of Tudor power, carried English trade even
into the markets of Germany, gaining for England the
profits of the whole cycle of English trade, the end was
within sight. Moreover, England in her struggle with
Spain for the carrying trade of a wider ocean, cut that
vital line of communications which finked Spain with
Germany and the Netherlands.
" For Spain and Flanders is as eche other brother,
And neither may well live without other."
The merchants of Germany, as we know from
Wheeler, financed the sailors of Spain. Even the
Reformation would not have sufficed by itself to sever
the mutual dependence. Thus George Nedham, in a
marginal note to his Tract on English Trade,1 says that
" no Enghsh shipps maye lade in Spayne, if any Spanyshe
shippe will take in the same lading, besyde the great
trouble, spoyle and injuries don to your subjectes,
their factours and servants for rehgion, and for marchants
of Estland and Germany who be likewyse of our religion
they seldome trouble or medh with them." Where there
was a community of interest, rehgion was not allowed
to interfere with the practical business of life. Only
1 Add. MS. 35207, A Tract cm English Trade, addressed to Queen Eliza
beth by George Nedham (about 1562), setting forth the advantage of trans
ferring it from the House of Burgundy (viz. in the Spanish, Netherlands) to
the Port of Emden.

228 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
when the rehgious difference coincided with a conflict
of material interest did it become the pretext for
war. Foreign policy springs naturally from interest, and
the traditional foreign policy of England, laid down
in the time of the Tudors, may be traced to the con
flict with the Empire and the Hanseatic League. The
alliances between England and Holland, England and
Denmark, England and Russia, the change of the old
hostile relations with France into a friendly under
standing, such were the main lines of a policy designed
to free England from German political and commercial
domination. Since the outbreak of the present war
I do not recollect that any of our politicians have ex
plained to our people the meaning of the "scrap of
paper " on the existence of which they raised their
parrot cries. Burghley, who was more statesman than
pohtician, iUuminated the whole position in a phrase
when he described the Netherlands as " the counter
scarp of your Majesty's Dominions." A statesman,
being a trustee, is false to his duty if he founds his
pohcy on anything but the interest of his country — a
truth better understood in those times than in these.
That nation is in a dangerous case which begins to
prefer ideas over realities. Honour demands the ful
filment, but only interest should dictate the acceptance
of our obligations, and it is neither honest nor whole
some to suggest that action which is founded on
necessity is prompted by altruism. This book is not
written in vain if it explains to my countrymen the
forgotten springs and hidden sources of our foreign
pohcy. When the main roads of European commerce passed
through the centre of Europe, Germany was supreme ;

CONCLUSION 229
when they passed along the Channel, England gained
the mastery. The cities of the Hanseatic League, which
had hnked together the overland routes of Europe, fell
apart. We have seen the League disintegrating in the
reign. of Ehzabeth. Dr. Parkins, one of our agents in
Germany, gave Sir Robert Cecil a vivid picture of their
desolate state in a letter of 17th October 1595.1 " The
Hanses," he says, " are a society of cities, some in the
Low Countries, some in the Empire, some in Poland.
Lubeck is their mother-city, where they were wont to
have their Parhaments every two years, till anno 91,
since which year divers of their cities refusing the
charge of a Parhament, which used to prove nothing
profitable to their purses, there have been none ; others
have separated from the society, and others are stag
gering and faihng from them." Here we see the
crumbhng process well advanced : both cities and
Empire are " staggering and faihng " towards the
abyss of the Thirty Years War.
In the last years of Ehzabeth, even before its end,
the Hanse is becoming a memory and a tradition : it
is hke a toothless old man who babbles of his ancient
powers, his " obsolete priveleges." The enterprise of
the Merchant Adventurers and the protective policy
of the Tudors, working in happy unison, had made
England independent. " As our Commonwealth now
stands they can well be done without," writes an
Englishman about the year 1580,2 " for our own mer
chants are able to furnish the realm with the same
commodities, and that in Enghsh bottoms, and the
merchants of Russia from St. Nicholas (Archangel) and
the Narwa would bring the same and more plentifuUy,
1 Cotton MS., Nero, B ix, fo. 178.
2 A Discourse of the Trade of the Merchants of the Dutch Guild catted the
Hanse. — Cotton MS., Faustina, c. ii, fo. 85-86.

230 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
and that too in Enghsh bottoms, if the Easterhngs did
not." Those cities, once so powerful, sit now in their
neglected chimney-corner, peevish and querulous ; they
complain, but they are not heeded, for " they can well
be done without."
And it was said of them with truth, when they were
estabhshed in England : " Also the Navy of the realm
is by them much hindered, for they only carry com
modities in their own ships."1 So it was appropriate
that when they left the Steelyard should be used for
the English Navy.2
For it was the Enghsh Navy that broke the German
power : it blockaded Flanders ; it cut off Germany
from Spain ; it convoyed the merchant fleets of the
Merchant Adventurers to Emden, Stade, and the
Narwa ; it sailed to the Indies, East and West ; it
even gathered up the crumbs and broken remnants of
the caravan trade at Constantinople, and brought them
also by sea to their ports of destination. The sea-
1 A Discourse of the Trade of the Merchants of the Dutch Guild called the
Hanse. — Cotton MS., Faustina, o. ii, fo. 85-86.
2 Letter of the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor of London (30th January
1599), about the handing over of the Steelyard to the Royal Navy : " Lettre
to the L. Majore of London. Whereas it was founde needfull after the avoyd-
inge and departinge of the strangers, that did possesse the howse of the Stilliarde,
that the said howse should be used and employed for her Majesty's service
for the better bestowinge and safe custodie of divers prouisions of her Navie,
which might very conueniently be kept there ; and thereupon order has bin
giuen heretofore for the storinge and laynge up of diuers of here Majesty's
said prouisions of that place : Now for as much as the Offioers of the Navie
do finde continuallie wante of more stoage, and no plaoe more fitt for it then
that howse ; And your Lordship by a lettre written to us of late has made
some doubt, howe the rente shalbe answered to the Citty for that howse, if
it be dehuered out of your possession into the handes of others ; to satisfie
your Lordship therein, you shall understande, that the Officers of the Navie
shall giue your Lordship and the Citty sufficient assurance for payement of
the rent dew for the same. And therefore wee doe praie and requier you,
without any further scruple or controuersie to cause the possession of the
said howse of the Stilliarde to be dehuered to the Officers of here Majesty's
Navie or suoh of them as shall attende you for that cause, to be used and
employed for here Majesty's seruice aboue mentioned, upon assurance given
by them for payment of the rente. Whioh wee doubte not but your Lordship
will see perfourmed. And so wee etc." — MS. Harley 4182, Register of Council
Causes from ZOth July 1598 until Wth April 1599, fo. 152.

CONCLUSION 231
power of England — it broke Germany once, it can
break Germany twice.
But it must be intelligently used, and it must be
supported by a national trade pohcy. We see Queen
Ehzabeth protecting English cloth and Enghsh hard
ware ; she builds powder-miUs ; she smuggles in Ger
man metal experts to teach her subjects the arts of
smelting, and Itahan alum-workers to make England
independent of Florence in a commodity then essential
to cloth-finishing. Contrast this pohcy with the recent
and present pohcy of England. We had allowed
Germany to renew her supremacy in the metal trade.
In all things connected with arms and high explosives
she had again become supreme. And so in the cloth
trade. She was gradually securing control of the dyes
and even the finishing processes of our Enghsh cloth :
we were again becoming the journeyman of the German
cities. Before the war Germany was regaining the position
she had once held in the days of the Hanseatic League.
Her financiers and her bankers were in the counsels
of our Government, and financed our politicians. We
might find the prototypes of Sir Edgar Speyer and
Baron Schroder in the days of the Plantagenets. We
might compare the pohcy of the late Government with
the pohcy of Henry III and Henry VI. Joseph Chamber
lain, like Warwick, died in a vain attempt to fortify
England against the German danger ; and Lord Roberts
fell, hke De Montfort, in the field against the German
power. The Hague Conventions and the Declaration
of London were a betrayal of the sea-power of England
no less shameful than the Treaty of Utrecht. Like
Richard II, the late Government drifted into war with
Germany without knowing the German power; and

232 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
as in the time of Richard II there are two forces in
England, one working for national ends, the other for
German interests. " If England," says List, " had
clung to laissez faire, she would still be the wool-farm
of the Hansa." And I gather this lesson from our
history, that if we are to defeat the German power
again, as we defeated it before, we must have a national
pohcy : a policy of Britain for the British, with pro
tection for the workman against German labour and
for his produce against German imports. " Cherish
marchandise," that is, found ourselves on the sale of
our own manufactures, and " keep the Admiralty."
" As your tweyne eyne, so keepe the narrow see " — so
the old nameless poet of the Yorkist cause advised,
and so our English story teaches.

APPENDICES APPENDIX I
THE ANGEVINS AND GERMANY
The following extracts from German authorities may help to
elucidate the relations between Germany and England in
Angevin times :
By giving one of his daughters in marriage to Henry the
Lion, Henry II of England had outlined a Guelph policy for
his dynasty. To this principle, which is, in an immeasurable
degree, at the root of the destruction of German unity, the
Italian towns, as well as those of Southern and Northern Ger
many, have to thank for their wonderfully quick growth into
almost autonomous communities. The election of the Emperor
Otto IV, the Guelph who for the first time had pushed aside
the Hohenstaufen, had been carried through by aid of his uncle,
Richard Cceur de Lion, and the Enghsh money paid by him.
The Cologners stuck to Otto to the last ; even after the
battle of Bouvines, where Otto and John were beaten by French
arms and Hohenstaufen pohcy, they clung to him.
When the great Emperor Frederic II died, after a long reign
full of changes, and soon after him his successors had found
their tragic end, there appears among the aspirants to the
throne of the divided empire a Prince from the House of Plan
tagenet as representative of the Guelph idea — Richard of
Cornwall, the brother of Henry III of England. To him the
Hanse is indebted for its recognition in England. Already
King John had endowed the Bremeners with the same rights as
the Cologners possessed — now soon afterwards there follow the
Hamburgers, the people of Lubeck, and the outposts of the
Hanse : Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, and Greifswald. Jealous
233

234 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
of the pushing North Germans, the Cologners grumbled — but,
grumble as they would, in 1260 Henry III issued the great
privilege to all the merchants of Almain who possess at London
the house which is called the Teutonic Guildhall, the Aula
Teutonicorum.1 Eleanor, the wife of King Henry II of England, heiress to
the county of Poitou and the duchy of Guyenne, which was
combined with Gascogne and Navarre, had enriched the crown
of England, to which already belonged the duchies of Normandy
and Anjou, by certain important possessions held as " Lehen "
from the King of France. In the last years of the twelfth
century, Otto, soon afterwards Emperor Otto IV, appears as
Duke of Guyenne and Count of Poitou.
Richard Coeur de Lion, invited by an embassy of the
Archbishops of Cologne and Mayence and other German princes
to assist at the election of a Roman King, had scruples about
going in person, and preferred to send his ambassadors. He
intended that the Imperial Crown should go to his nephew,
the Palatine Henry. Henry not having returned from a
Crusade, and the election being a most pressing business,
he induced the princes to elect the Duke Otto, Henry's
brother. An embassy was sent to the Duke at Poitou with
the news of his election, and from there, enriched by presents
from his uncle, the new King travelled to Germany. Mean
while Richard furthered the affairs of his nephew at the Court
of Rome, where his munificence was most useful to Otto. From
merchants at Placentia he borrowed 2125 marks, which amount
he sent to the Pope, through the Bishops of Anjou and Bangor.
Besides the gifts from Richard, a petition by the German
princes, dated the 29th December 1198, was presented to the
Pope. In this petition they applied for the Pope's confirmation
of the election.
Innocent III thereupon was delighted to declare Otto to
be the worthiest of the princes to bear the Roman Crown.2
Dr. Sudendorf gives information as to the value of money
1 Reinhold Pauli, Der Hansische Stahlhof in London, p. 5.
2 Die Wilfen Urkunden, &o„ by Dr. H. Sudendorf, pp. 1-4.

THE HANSE TOWNS

235

at that time, which will enable the reader to judge the true
amount of Richard's ransom :
English Monet, 1066-1300, and its Kelative Value.
3 marks =2 libera (lb.) (pounds).
1 liber (pound) =20 shillings.
1 shilhng = 12 pfennig.

1 bushel oats

1 horse

1 ox

1 cow

1 sheep

In the year
1150

4J pfennig

12 shillings
5 pfennig

4 shillings
8£ pfennig

1 shilhng
8 pfennig

In the year
1260

1 shilling
7J pfennig

1 pound
11 shiUings

1 pound
7 pfennig

17 shillings

1 shilhng
7 pfennig

Ipig
1 goose
1 hen
1 cock
Daily Wages
In the year
1150
3 shillings
3 pfennig
2 pfennig
In the year
1250
1 shilhng
3 pfennig
4$ pfennig
The " noble," which appears in England in the middle of
the fourteenth century, is worth 80 pfennig or 6 shillings
8 pfennig.1
APPENDIX II
THE HANSE TOWNS
That the Hanse was a German institution is not disputed :
how thoroughly German it was is made clear by the following
1 Die Wilfen Urkunden, &c, by Dr. H. Sudendorf, pp. aai, xiii (Prefaoe) ;
H. Knyghton, Chronic, 1344.
236

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

list from the Hansische GescMchtsblatter (1871-3), vii. p.
xxxi: Alphabetical List op Hanse Towns as compiled by the Han-
sischer Geschichtsverein and published at the Meeting, Lubeck,
May 30 and 31, 1871.

Amsterdam l

Gardelegen

Krakau(Cracow) Soest

Ankiam

Gollnow

Kulm

Soltbomel

Arnheim

Goshar

Lemgo

Stade

Berlin

Gottingen

Lippstadt

Stargard

Bielefeld

Greifswald

Liibeck

Staveren

Bolsward

Groningen

Luneburg

Stendal

Brandenburg

Halberstadt

Magdeburg

Stettin

Braunsberg

Halle

Minden

Stolpe

Braunschweig

Hamburg

Munster

Stralsund

Bremen

Hameln

Nordheim

Tangermiinde

Breslau

Hamm

Nymwegen

Thiel

Briel

Hannover

Oschersleben

Thorn

Buxtehude

Harderwyk

Osnabriiok

Uelzen

Dantzig

Hasselt

Osterburg

Unna

Deventer

Helmstedt

Paderborn

Utrecht

Dordrecht

Herford

Pernau

Venlo

Dorpat

Hildesheim

Quedlinburg

Warburg

Dortmund

Kampen

Reval

Watershagen

Duisburg

Kiel

Riga

Wesel

Erin beck

Koesfeld

Roermonde

Wisby

Elbing

Koln (Cologne)

Rostock

Wismar

Elburg

K61n-on-the-Spree Riigenwalde

Zierixee

Emmerich

Konigsberg

Salzwedel

Ziitphen

Frankfurt a. Oder

Kolberg

Seehansen

Zwolle

Bergen, Bruges, Novgorod were not Hanse towns, but
Kontors ; the Eastern (Pohsh) Hanse towns were German
colonies. The only possible exception is the strange case of
Dinant. Amongst the towns which temporarily belonged to the
German Hanse, there is none of which the conditions and rela
tions to the League would appear more mysterious than this
town, situated on the rivers Meuse and Sambre, in the bishopric
of Liege. The merchants of Liege appear already in Anglo-
Saxon times among the privileged, hke those of Hogge and
Vivelle ; but Dinant is never mentioned. This town obtained
1 Anderson (vol. i. pp. 356-9), following Werdenhagen, does not reagrd
Amsterdam as Hanseatic.

THE HANSE TOWNS 237
for itself from King Edward III in 1329, May 15, a special
recognition for an unlimited period of the privileges granted by
King Edward I to the Spanish and other foreign merchants,
and confirmed by himself (Edward III) on July 8, 1328, for a
term of three years.1 In this document the town is referred to
as the town Dynant in Almayn, the bishopric of Liege having
always belonged to Germany. It is, therefore, remarkable that
this town considered it necessary to obtain for itself a special
privilege while other Hanseatic towns had ceased to bother
about individual privileges. The citizens of Dinant, however,
seem soon to have attached themselves to the German con
federation, at least as far as London was concerned, as we find
it proved, fifteen years later, in 1344, at the Royal Court of
Chancery, that they were members of the German Guildhall,
and as such entitled to share in the enjoyment of the privi
leges granted to the merchants belonging to the same. This
document already proves clearly that under the designation
" Dynanters " are meant not only German merchants living
there. But we cannot find Dinant mentioned at any Hanse-
day nor in any hst of the federated towns. Its merchants seem,
from this, to have incorporated themselves only with the London
"factory." Yet King Edward III gives again, 1359, to the
Dynanters a separate safe conduct.2 In the London statute
from 1437 Dinant appears in our MS. after Cologne, while it is
not mentioned in others. Also, it is missing from the statutes
of the Kontor from 1554.
The number of Dinanters or the importance of their com
merce must, nevertheless, have been for some time great, as they
had a separate hall, and perhaps other buildings in or next to
the Steelyard. When in 1369 the town of London paid to the
King an extraordinary war contribution, it demanded from the
foreign merchants residing at London the sum of £62 sterling —
from which sum the Germans ought to have paid £40, and the
Dinanters £22.
Sept. 8, 1369 : " dat geld scholde denne vorgadderen van
den husen, de in der warde stunden, ... so eskeden se vns lxii lb
1 Lappenberg, Vrkundliche Geschichte der deutschen Hanse, Part II, p. 742.
! Calendarium rotulorum patent., p. 170, No. 10.

238 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
sterl. dat is tho vorstande den Dutschen xl lb, vnd den Dynanters
xxii lb van welkem eskene wy nicht schuldich en weren noch en
synt hir tho gevene, by vreyheyden, de uns de Konynk gesegelt
heft. Vnd vmme des willen dat wy disse vorseiede eskynge nicht
geuen noch betalen en wolden na erem willen, so kamen se vnd
beselgeden (besegelden) vns vnse boden vnd kammern na der
tidt vnde apenden eyn del boden vnd nemen guder daruth vnd
fordertent in the Engelsche gylthalle, dar wart dat gud geprised
und vorkoft. Des worden gesellen ordyneret, de tho dem
konynge reden vnd en (vm) disse sake tho vorstande. Do
antwerde en (enen) de konynk : men scholde vns holden vnse
vryheit. Vnd darup vorfolgenden wy disse sake vor den meyger,
rekorder vnd olderluden van Lunden. . . ." 1
"... this money should be gathered in from the houses
which stood in the ward. ... so they asked from us 60 lb sterl.,
this is to be understood from the Germans 40 lb, and from the
Dynanters 22 lb, from which demand we did not owe anything
nor need we give, by freedom which the king has sealed us.
And because we did not want to pay or give this aforesaid
demand after their will, so they came and sealed up our store
rooms and chambers after the time and opened up the store
rooms and took goods out and carried them to the Enghsh
Guildhall, there the goods were priced and sold. So members
were ordered to talk to the king and make him understand this
matter. The king answered : let us beware our freedom. And
thereupon we followed up this matter before the Mayor, Recorder,
and Alderman of London. . . ."
The MS. ends by saying that they agreed to pay half of the
amount asked for, and this not by force or by their right, but by
their free will.
This unequal proportion seems explicable only by the size
of the buildings occupied by the Dinanters. The name of the
Dynanter Hall was preserved among the Steelyard buildings till
they were burnt down in 1666.
Of the Hanseatic relations of Dinant we hear only once
more. The town, which had become very wealthy through its
commerce and its copperworker3 — the pots and other goods
1 MS. Hamburger Commerz Bibliothek, fo. 73.

GERMAN SHARE IN ENGLISH TRADE 239
were commonly called " Dynanterie " — had particularly inflamed
the ire of the enemy in the war waged by Duke Philip the Good
of Burgundy against the Liegers. Dinant, in 1466, was com
pletely destroyed by the besiegers and by fire.1 Its merchants
took flight to the friendly town of Huy. Being now inhabitants
of this town, they could no more claim their privileges in
England. The Bishop of Liege, however, by negotiations with
the Kontor of Bruges, and later with the Hanse towns, succeeded
in obtaining for them from the Hanse, under the 4th April 1471,
permission to enjoy their privileges for another twenty years.2
After this time the name of Dynant vanishes from the history
of the Hanse, and we come across her in only one other case :
on 9th November 1471, Edward IV permitted the merchants
and smiths (officium batericB) of the town of Middleburg, although
they were not included in the German Hanse, all the prerogatives
and exemptions which they from Dinant had enjoyed in the
whole kingdom before their town was destroyed. Here we
have, then, another quite unexpected recognition of the position
of Dinant in the German Hanse and its prerogatives in England.
MiddlebuTg, however, is not counted among the Hanse towns,
not even in London, as shown in the statute of 1554.

APPENDIX III
THE GERMAN SHARE IN ENGLISH TRADE
The Hanseatic share in Enghsh trade is difficult to estimate,
and must have varied with times and events. Two circum
stances serve to show its extent : (1) that the Hanseatic decree
of trade excommunication brought England to her knees in the
time of Richard II and Henry IV, and (2) that Edward III
could decree that Enghshmen should take no share in the
staple export trade. The Germans had at one time a substantial
monopoly in the Baltic, which supplied England with corn, wax,
1 Memoires de Ph. de Commynes, Magnum Chronicon Belgicum, etc.,
Part HI, p. 426.
2 MS. Hamburger Commerz Bibliothek, p. 82 sq.

240 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
pitch, hemp, timber, steel, furs, copper. They also carried a
large part of the Enghsh wool to Flanders. As to the cloth
trade, their favourable position is clearly shown by the sub
joined table, by Gresham's letter to Queen Ehzabeth, and by
the statement of Wheeler : " Among the privileges, one was
to carry out and bring in wares for an old custom of one and
a quarter upon the hundred, and were thereby exempt from
all personal or real contribution, which all other merchants are
subject to." x Macpherson speaks as if they had an entire
monopoly of the Enghsh carrying trade ; but this is probably
an exaggeration. Schanz says, of the reign of Henry VII, that
the German share was not so large as is generally supposed,
although " important enough to make the English Government
reflect." The Hanse, according to his figures, had then 97 per
cent, of the wax import, 23 per cent, of the Enghsh cloth export,
and not quite 7 per cent, of the remaining movement of goods. He
adds, however, that it was at that time rapidly growing. The
Merchant Adventurers, in their great Privy Council Case against
the Hanse in 1551, stated that in the third year of Edward VI
the Easterhngs shipped from London alone " in strange bottoms "
42,897 cloths, whereas other strangers trafficking from the same
ports only 1080 cloths." Lappenberg misquotes this passage,
and makes it read that all other foreigners and Enghshmen
shipped only 1100 pieces. Possibly he had never seen the
original documents of the case to which I refer elsewhere. It
is amusing to trace this little error back to its source. Rapin
has it that " all the Enghsh merchants together exported
1100 pieces." Sir John Heyward, in his Life and Reign of
Edward VI (1552), has the figures right, " not above 1100 by
all strangers besides." So that Rapin must have begun the
mistake which has misled nearly every writer on the subject
since his time. Smith, in his Memoirs of Wool, shrewdly dis
covers the blunder, though he does not know the source of the
statement, and he shows that the Merchant Adventurers ex
ported about 40,000 pieces of cloth in one year. Now at this
time the Enghsh Merchant Adventurers had a practical monopoly
of such Enghsh cloth trade as was in Enghsh hands, so that
1 Wheeler's Treatise of Commerce.

GERMAN SHARE IN ENGLISH TRADE 241
the German merchants carried at least as much Enghsh cloth
as the Enghsh merchants. Schanz, then, is perfectly right
when he says that the Hanseatic share was rapidly increas
ing in the time of Henry VII. It not only increased in bulk,
but it increased in proportion to the total. In the reign of
Edward VI we might say, upon this evidence, that the Han
seatic League had roughly an equal share with the Merchant
Adventurers of the Enghsh cloth-carrying trade.
Export op English Cloth by the Germans and by all foreign
merchants in England. MS. dated 1552.1
Shipped by the Merchauntes of the German Stillyard, from
the first yeare of King Edward the second unto
Michaels last past, as by the Kinges reoordes of his
Grace's Exchequer it dothe plainely appeare, as here
after followeth. The first yeare of King Edward the
second (1307) owt of this realme of England but . vi clothes
Brought into this realme by the said Marchauntes in the
same first yeare in all other wares and marchaundyse,
but to the valew of m1 ii° xix11 vi8 xid whereof the
kinges Matie had for his custome after the rate of iiid
the pound  Summa xv1' iiii8 xd
The second yeare of the same king Edward the second
the said Marchauntes of the Styllyard shipped owt
of this realme but ....... vii clothes
In all other wares and merchandize to the valew of so
moch as paied the king in custome .... xxxvu xii8 xd
The first yeare of King Henry the sixt (1422) the said
Marchauntes of the Styllyard shipped owt of this
realme the nomber of . . iiiiml iiiic lxiii clothes xxii yeardes
„ first yeare of King Edward the fourthe (1461) viml i° lix clothes
„ fifteenth yeare of King Henry the seaventhe (1500) xxi™1 iiic iiii« ix clothes
,, iiiith yeare of King Henry the Eight (1513) . xxi™1 vc lvi clothes
,, xxviiith yeare of King Henry the Eight (1537)
xxxiiiiml vic iiiixx xiii clothes and xi yeardes
,, xxixth yeare of King Henry the Eight . xxxiii1111 viic Ixxviii clothes
„ xxxth yeare of King Henry the Eight . xxxiiiiml i° xiii clothes
„ xxxith yeare of King Henry the Eight, which was the
first whole year that Merchaunt straungers paied but
English Custome  xxviimI ii° lx clothes
„ xxxiith yeare of King Henry the Eight xxviiml vic xix clothes
1 MS. in the British Museum. MS. Cotton, Claudius E. VII, fo. 99.
Q

XXXVth xxxvith

242 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
The xxxiiith yeare of King Henry the Eight ¦nriii'"1 iiii0 xii clothes vi yeardes
„ xxiiii™1 ii° xxi clothes ix yeardes
„ xxvii1111 Iii clothes vi yeardes
xxxiiiml ixc lxiii clothes
„ xxximl 1 clothes iii yeardes
,, xxxviiith yeare of King Henry theight
and the first yeare of King Edward
the sixt (1547) .... xxixml vi° iiiixx ix clothes
„ second yeare of King Edward the sixt xliii"11 v° iiii** iii clothes
„ third „ „ xliiii1111 iiii0 ii clothes
„ fourthe „ „ xxxixml viiic liiii clothes
Shipped by the Merchauntes straungers from the xiiii'11 yeare of King
Henry the VIIth unto Michaels in the xxxviiith yeare of King Henry
the Eight, as hereafter followeth.
The xiiiith yeare of King Henry the
Seaventhe (1523) .... iiiml ic iiii3™ i clothes
,, iiiith yeare of King Henry the Eight
(1513)  iiiiml -mnri clothes
„ xxviiith yeare of King Henry the Eight
(1537)  v™1 ii° lxxiii clothes
„ xxixth yeare of King Henry the Eight iiii™1 vi° viii clothes viii yeardes
„ xxxth yeare of King Henry the Eight.
This yeare straungers paied Englishe
custome and vii yeares after . . xxviii1111 iii0 xviii clothes
,, xxxith yeare of King Henry the Eight xxiiii™1 v° lxvi clothes
„ xxxuth ,, „ xxix™1 vii0 imii clothes
„ xxxiiith „ „ xxix™1 ii° lxvii clothes et viii
yeardes
„ xxxiiiith „ „ xiiiiml vic lxxix clothes
„ xxxvth „ „ xxhii™1 ii° iiiixx iHiii clothes
„ xxxvith „ „ lml iiic lix clothes
„ xxxviith „ „ lxiiml viii clothes
Ended the said 7 yeares, and since they paied straungers custome to
the King.
The xxxviiith yeare of King Henry the Eight
and the first yeare of King Edward
the sixt. .... . xiiii™1 vii0 iiiixx xiii clothes
„ first yeare of King Edward the sixt
from Michaels to the vith of July next viii0 iiiixx x clothes
I ,, second yeare of King Edward the sixt xiii0 Ixi clothes
third „ „ xi° iiiixx iii clothes

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

243

GERMAN PREFERENCE IN ENGLISH CUSTOMS
Tariff op Customs from the time of Henry VII and Henry VIII,
compiled by Schanz, Eng. Hand., ii. p. 6, after sources in
Public Record Office, London : Enrolled Accounts of Customs,
Packets 20, 21, and 22, in the Pipe Office.

Total Duty
Kind of Merchandise.
Merchants.
Custom.
Subsidium.
as Percent
age of Heal
Value.
Wool, 1 sack or 240 skins
Staple merchants
6sh. 8d.
33sh. id.
33,3
Non-staple
lOsh.
66sh. Sd. and 8d.
Cales
70,0
Cloth, undyed, per piece
Natives
Ish. 2d.
—
1,9
German
Ish.
—
l.»
Foreigners
2sh. Qd.
Ish. in the £ value
7,3
„ dyed,
Natives
ish. id.
—
German
2sh.
— ,
Foreigners
5sh. Gd.
Ish. in the £ value
„ half dyed, „
NativesGerman
Ish. 9d.
Ish. 6d.
—
Foreigners
ish. Id.
Ish. in the £ value
„ Panni Cornub, per
piece so-called dozens
[¦Natives
{
from £1
value
J9i.
Foreigners
{
from £1
value
\lsh.
Single worsted, per piece
Natives
ld.
(ld. in the £ value)
German
ld.
(Id. „ „ )
Foreigners
lid.
Ish. „ „ )
Double „ „
Natives
2td.
(let)\(Id.) J
0,,
German
3d.
Foreigners
3d.
lsft.inthe £ value
3,i
Wax, per etr.
Natives
Ish.]
—
1..
German
Ish.
—
1.8
Foreigners
Ish.
Ish. in the £ value
5,4
All other goods
Natives
—
Ish. in the £ value
(5)
German
{
3d. in the
£ value
} "
(1,25)
Foreigners
(3d. in the
\| £ value
\lsh. in the £ value
(«.¦)
I have omitted from this hst those goods which show no
preferential treatment of the Germans, and where they are on
the same footing with other strangers.
About non-sweetened wine there seems to have been a
difference in customs, but no satisfactory evidence is to hand.
244 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
APPENDIX IV
THE AUGSBURG DECREE
We Rudolph the Second by the grace of God elect Roman
Emperor etc. . . . heretofore as also in the time of our reign
over the Empire, the Confederate Dutch Hanse towns, and some
others thereby interested . . . especially at Augsburgh in the
year 1582 and at Regensburgh in the year 1594 last past have
in complaining wise declared and showed that they three
hundred years ago and above had obtained and gotten notable
privileges immunities freedoms and exemptions within the realm
of England partly by the special grace and favour of the kings
of that land, and partly with great sums of money for the good
and commodity of the holy Empire . . . granted approved and
confirmed by fourteen kings of England successively and in
the year 1470 by foreknowledge and consent of the States of
the Land both spiritual and temporal made of the force and
nature of a perpetual and irrevocable contract : whereupon
they held their residence and officers within the city of London
in an house or counter called the Dutch Guildhall (Gildhalla
Teutonicorum) whereby they used to buy cloth of the subjects
of the Crown of England and carried the same from thence
into Dutcheland . . . which notwithstanding certain covetous
companies of merchants whereof some call themselves Mer
chant Adventurers seeking their own private gain . . . are
sprung up in the said realm who by bad means have wrought
and practised to the great and notorious hurt and damage of
the foresaid Hanses, and have taken upon them to bring in
many intolerable innovations, contrary to the abovesaid old
customs privileges and perpetual contract obtained ... so that
. . . the Queen of England . . . will not any longer endure or
confirm the said Hanse's privileges, and now finally the last year
to the farther and more intolerable grievance of the foresaid
Hanse towns (specially for that they found it not reasonable
or fit to yield unto the said MM. Adventurers a residence accord
ing to their desire at Hamburg) hath wholly forbidden and cut
off all privileged trade both within and without the said realm
of England, thereby the better to strengthen the trade of the

SEBASTIAN CABOT 245
foresaid Adventurers Company, and to bring their monopolrsh
traffic to a full course ... in that the Hanse cannot enjoy their
privileges whereas on the English side the Enghsh Adventurers
Company increaseth in numbers to wit in Dutcheland first at
Emden, and afterwards in other places more and now presently
at Stade . . . finally through the drift and deahng of these
Adventurers the Dutch Merchants hath the best of his trade
taken from him . . . and the Queen of England hath presumed
with armed hand to be convoyed ... by means whereof
the Hanse towns . . . are forced to forsake . . . the foresaid
free navigation throughout the whole Western Sea and in the
Ems stream for as much as . . . the Merchant Adventurers
used a hurtful monopoly (here follow ponderous pages of repe
tition) we prohibit banish out and proscribe all the forenamed
English Merchants, to wit the whole company of the Merchant
Adventurers, together with their hurtful dealings traffics and
contractings out of all the holy Empire . . . specially out of
the town of Stade and out of all other parts and places (several
pages of prohibitions follow) given in our royal castle at Prague,
1st August 1597. — From Wheeler's Treatise of Commerce.

APPENDIX V
SEBASTIAN CABOT
In 1521, x when Cardmal Wolsey was trying to organise a voyage
to Newfoundland, the merchants were asked to contribute, but
the Drapers' Company protested that they would prefer to be
guided by " mariners born within the realm," rather than by
Sebastian Cabot. Perhaps they were right, for Cabot was at
that time in the employment of the Emperor. "I wrote to
the Emperor," he afterwards told Contarini, " by no means to
give me leave to serve the King of England (in Wolsey's voyage),
and that on the contrary he should recall me forthwith." But
in 1547 the Privy Council paid £100 "for the transporting of
one Shabot, a pilot, to come out of Hispain to serve and inhabit
1 See also Cabot Bibliography, by G. P. Winship.

246 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
in England " (Acts of the P.C. 9th October 1547) ; and in 1549
one Henry Oystryge also got £100 " for conducting of Sebastian
Cabot." The Emperor earnestly wanted him back. " Secondly,
he (the Emperor) desired that whereas one Sebastian Gabote, or
Cabot, grand pilot of the Emperor's Indies, was then in England,
forasmuch as he could not stand the King in any great stead,
seeing that he had but small practice in these seas and was a
very necessary man for the Emperor, whose servant he was and
had a pension of him, that some order might be taken for his
sending over." 1 But the Privy Council had its own views on
the subject : " as for Sebastian Cabot he of himself refused to
go either into Spain or to the Emperor, and that he being of
that mind, and the King of England's subject, no reason or
equity would that he should be forced or compelled to go against
his will." 2 On 21st June 1550 Sebastian " Cabotto " receives a
warrant to the Exchequer for £200, "by waie of the King's
Majestie's rewarde." Strype gives the date of this grant as
March 1551, possibly payment may have been delayed until
that date, or Strype may have mistaken the date. Upon this
the legend has grown that Sebastian Cabot was granted this
money as a reward for managing the case against the Germans.
Thus Mr. Coote : " Important work was soon found for Cabot,
in addition to a general supervision of the maritime affairs of
the country. He was called upon to settle the long-growing
disputes that had almost reached their height between the
merchants of the Steelyard, a colony of German traders of the
Hanseatic League, and the merchants of London, who, for a
long period, had suffered from the monopohes exercised by the
former." But this story, as Harrisse 3 shows, has no better
authority than Campbell's Lives of the Admirals. Moreover,
Mr. Coote is again wrong when he says that " the Company of
Merchant Adventurers was formed and incorporated on
18th December 1551 with Cabot as Governor for life." M.
Harrisse makes it clear that Cabot was not Governor of the
Company at least until after 1552. M. Harrisse, however, thinks
it proved that Sebastian Cabot was Governor of the Merchant
1 Strype, E. M., vol. ii. pt. i. p. 296.
* Harl. MS. 523, fo. 6, quoted by Coote on "Sebastian Cabot" in D.N.B.
3 John Cabot and Sebastian his Son, by Henry Harrisse (1896), p. 331.

THE " BAYE " IN HANSEATIC DOCUMENTS 247
Adventurers' Company, depending on Willoughby's statement
that his sailing instructions were " compiled, made, and de
hvered by the right worshipfull Sebastian Cabota, Esquier,
Governor of the Mysterie and Companie of the Merchants
Adventurers," and again that the document is signed " I
Sebastian Cabota, Governour." Therefore, says Harrisse, " there
can be no doubt that in May 1553 he was already in possession
of the office."
But for my part I find it hard to beheve that Cabot, a
mariner and map-maker by profession, should ever have filled
such an office. The Merchant Adventurers had been for genera
tions the great national Guild of the wholesale cloth-merchants,
regulating the price and the sale of cloth in England and in
Flanders. It had subsidiary guilds in all the great towns of
England connected with the cloth export trade, Bristol included.
What did Cabot know about the sale of cloth ? The fact is
that M. Harrisse falls into the same error as all his predecessors.
Sebastian Cabot was not Governor of the Merchant Adventurers,
but " Governour of the Mysterie and Companie of the Marchants
Adventurers for the discoverie of Regions, Dominions, Islands
and Places Unknowen." x The geographical limits of the
Merchant Adventurers' Company proper would not have covered
such a voyage : it was necessary to promote a subsidiary com
pany. This subsidiary company became, in due course, the
Russia Company, and is caUed " The Merchants of Russia "
in the Royal Charter of 1555. It is of this company that
Sebastian Cabot is here and elsewhere styled Governor.

APPENDIX VI
THE " BAYE " IN HANSEATIC DOCUMENTS
The " Baie " and the " Browasie " belong evidently to the
most important commercial places of the West, from the
middle of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth centuries.
1 Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 195 (1903 ed.).

248 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
All the Easterhngs had intercourse with these places.1 Besides
other products (wine, oil), particularly the " Baiensalz " (salt
from the sea, brine) was exported from there to the East.
Browase, Browasie, also Borwasie, and Latin Burwongia, is
the modern Brouage, south of Rochefort, north of Bourdeaux.
The Spiegel der Seefahrt (1589) (Mirror of Navigation), which
still uses the French name Brouage (in the Index) beside the
German Brovagien, says that in its (chart) map it shows the
counties " Poictou " and " Xantoigne," &c— " Here are situated
the islands St. Martin and Oleron, which produce salt in abund
ance. On the first is Brouage . . . and the whole of France,
the Netherlands, Norway, and every place on the Baltic, also
Lithunia and Russia, are furnished with this salt." Merian,
Topographia Gallice (1654), vol. vii. p. 16: "Brouage . . .
has a good harbour, and salt is being made there." Missive of
the Council of Dantzig to the King of France (1491) mentions
a naval engagement which had taken place " sub oris Brit-
tannise ante Bayas " — the author must have taken " Baye "
as a certain place in the Bretagne. Indeed, such a place is to
be found in the Spiegel der Seefahrt: Baye in the (modern)
Bai of Bourgneuf. A document2 in the Archives of Dantzig
supports this view. It says, that a number of Prussian and
Enghsh " Admirals," Captains and Skippers handed over to
the " Komthur " of Dantzig (a dignitary of the " Teutonic
Knights," governor) a report about a brawl which had taken
place, in 1443, between Hollandish and Enghsh seamen " in
the Baye," and in which the Prussians had intervened. The
drunken affair ends with the Hollanders being sent to Bunde
(on the old map called Bonges) and the Enghsh to Bourgneuf.
There cannot be any doubt that " the Baye " means the small
harbour in front of Bourgneuf. " Bayensalt " is the coarse sea-
salt found in great quantities on the islands and the shore in the
Bai of Bourgneuf, as distinguished from the " Travensalt " gained
by boihng, at Luneburg and exported via Lubeck. The name
has deceived some writers, who take it to be the Bay of Biscay.3
1 Chronicles of Weinreich, Detmar, and Kantzow.
2 No. 2462, Dantz. Arch., LXIX.
3 See Theodor Hirsch and F. A. Vossberg, Explanations to Caspar Weinreich 's
Dantziger Chronicle.

AUTHORITIES
Although I have generally given my sou.
consequence at the foot of the page, the folloV
more important authorities may be found of servi
Geschichte der Stadt Koln, aus den Quellen des Kolner Stadt-:,
Von Dr. Leonard Ennen. Koln and Neuss, 1869.
Dr. Georg Schanz, A.O., Professor der Staatswissenschaften in Erlang
Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters mit besi
derer Beriieksichtigung des Zeitalters der beiden ersten Tudors
Heinrich VE und Heinrich VTH. Leipzig, 1881.
Dr. Leonard Ennen und Dr. Gottfried Eekertz. — Quellen zur Geschichte
der Stadt Koln. Koln, 1863-79.
J. M. Lappenberg. — G. E. Sartorius Freyherrn von Waltershausen,
Urkundiiche Geschichte des Ursprunges der deutschen Hanse.
Edited by J. M. Lappenberg. Hamburg, 1830.
J. M. Lappenberg, Dr. — Urkundiiche Geschichte des Hansischen Stahl-
hofes zu London. Hamburg, 1851.
Georg Sartorius, Professor at Gottingen. — Geschichte des Hanseatischen
Bundes. Gottingen, 1802.
Die Welfen-Urkunden des Tower zu London und des Exchequer zu West
minster. — Edited by Dr. H. Sudendorf. Hannover, 1844.
Hanse Recesse from 1431-1476. — Verein fiir hansische Geschichte, Lubeok.
Hanse Recesse. — Konigliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich.
Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon. — Correspondance diplomatique
de 1568 a 1575. Ed. Edinburgh, Bannatyne Club, 1838.
Urkundenbuch der Stadt Braunschweig, 1227-1499. — Edited by the
Archiv- Verein zu Braunschweig. Braunschweig, 1862.
Hansisches Urkundenbuch. — Edited by Konstantin Hohlbaum. Pub
lished by the Verein fiir Hansische Geschichte.
Der Hansische Stahlhof in London. — Ein Vortrag, gehalten im Saale des
goldenen Sterns zu Bonn am llten Marz, 1856, von Reinhold
Pauli. Bremen, 1856.
Abhandlungen zur Verkehrs- und Seegeschichte, im Auf trage des Hansischen
Geschichtsvereins, herausgegeben von Dietrich Schafer. Band V.
Die Hanse und England von Eduards HI bis auf Heinrichs Vu I
Zeit, von Dr. Friedrich Schulz. Berlin, 1911.
Friedrich Rauers. — Zur Geschichte der alten Handelsstrassen in Deutsch-
land, Gotha. Justus Perthes, 1907. (Herausgegeben vom Verein
fur Hansische Geschichte.)
Hansische Chronik, aus beglaubigten Nachrichten zusammen getragen von
D. Johann Peter Willebrandt. Lubeck, 1748.
Chronik des Eranciscaner Lesemeisters Detmar, nach der Urschrift, etc.,
herausgegeben von Dr. F. H. Grautoff, Professor und Bibliothekar
in Lubeck. Hamburg, 1830.
Caspar Weinreich's Dantziger Chronik. Herausgegeben von Theodor
Hirsch und F. A. Vossberg. Berlin, 1855.

248 THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND
All the Easterhngs forundlagen der deutschen Hanse und die Handels-
other products (jmburgs bis in die zweite Half te des 14ten Jahrhunderts.
from the sea, b'Jur- G. Arnold Kiesselbach, SecretSr der Handelskammer
Browase, ^burg. Berlin, 1907.
the mode^an8en der Hanse zu England im Ietzten Drittel des 14ten Jahr-
„. „ ..underts. — Von Dr. E. Keutgen. Giessen, 1890.
. age zur Geschichte der deutschen Hanse bis um die Mitte des 15ten
still Jahrhunderts.— Von Walther Stein. Giessen, 1900.
C Hansisch-Venetianisohe Handelsbeziehungen im 15ten Jahrhundert. — Von
Wilhelm Stieda. Rostock, 1894.
Die Hanse. — Von Prof. Dr. Dietrich Schafer. Biebfeld, Leipzig, 1903.
Die Haltung der Hansestadte in den Rosenkriegen. — Von Reinhold
Pauli. Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 1874—76, herausgegeben vom
Verein fiir Hansische Geschichte. Leipzig, 1878.
Hanseakten aus England, 1275-1412. — Edited by Karl Kunze. Verein
fiir Hansische Geshichte. Hansische Geschichtsquellen, vol. vi.
Halle, 1891.
Professor Georg Waitz. — Lubeck unter Jiirgen Wullenweber und die
europaisches Politik. Berlin, 1855.
Constantin Hohlbaum. — Mittenlungen aus dem Stadtarchiv von Koln.
Cologne, 1882.
Walther Stein. — Die Genossenschaft der deutschen Kaufleute zu Brugge
in Flandern. Berlin, 1890.
Paul de Rapin- Thoyras. — Acta Regia, or an Account of the Treaties,
Letters and Instruments . . . published in Mr. Rhymer's Fcedera,
1726.
Thomas Rymer, Eoedera, conventiones, &o. London, 1816.
Adam Anderson. — An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the
Origin of Commerce. 4 vols. London, 1787.
Richard Hakluyt. — The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and
Discoveries of the English Nation. 12 vols. Glasgow, 1903-04.
John Wheeler, Secretary to the Society of Merchant Adventurers. — A
Treatise of Commerce, wherein are shewed the commodies [sic]
arising by a wel ordered . . . Trade . . . such as that of Mer-
chantes Adventurers is proved to bee, &c. London, 1601.
Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Venetian, Simancas, Domestio
Chronicles and Memorials, &c. (Rolls Series).

INDEX

Aadenburg, German Kontor, 39
Acre, 13
Adalbert, Archbp. of Bremen, 4, 6
Adeliza, daughter of Henry I, see Matil
da, Empress of Germany
^Ethelstan, King of England, 7
Aix la Chapelle, 18, 23
Albert, King of Sweden, 37
Albert of Saxony, 135
Alcocke, Thomas, 180-2, 183, 184
Aldersey, Thomas, 202
Alexander, Pope, 25
Alfonso, King of Castile, 24
Alkmar, 115
"Almains," "Alemaynes," Alderman
of the, 22, 50-1
Alva, Fernando Alvarez, Duke of, xxvi,
203
Angevins, relations between Germany
and England in times of, 233-4
Anjou, Bishop of, 234
Ankiam, Hanse town, 35
Anne, Countess of East Friesland, 201
Anti-German movement and party, see
Protection.
Antigua Custuma, 53
Antwerp, 16, 39, 43, 88, 134, 139, 144,
147, 218 ; Edward III at, 59 ;
Merchant Adventurers at, 87-8, 162,
163 ; removal of staple to Calais,
136; Perkin Warbeck in, 137;
conference between the Hanse and
English at, 1491, 142; fraudulent
shipment of cloth to, 193 ; loan to
Queen Mary, 195 ; attempt to raise
money in, for Elizabeth, 198 ;
closure to English trade, xxvi, 201 ;
desire for reopening of trade with
England, 202 ; seizure of goods and
ships of English merchants at, 203 ;
diversion of English trade from, 204-
5 ; financial assistance to Spain,
213; free trade with, offered to
Hanse towns and Denmark if trade
with England stopped, 221
Archangel, 176, 184
Arctic route to Russia, xxviii, 175-6, 178-
84
Arnold, "Alderman of the Alemaynes,
22
Arragon, 42 note
Asia Minor, 12

Astrakhan, trade with, 214
Ativolde, German merchants, 59
Augsburg, 5, 41 ; Decree of, 221, 224
244-5 ! Diets of, 188, 210
Austria, 13, 14, 38, 210
Baker, Sir John, Privy Councillor, 151
Baker, Thomas, xxiv
Baldwin, Count of Flanders, 13 note
Bale, Dr., anti-German, 150
Balkans, the, 12, 44
Baltic, piracy in, 36-7, 101 ; trade in, xv,
xvi, 5, 6- 3°, 33> 34, 37, 44, 56, 63,
67, 80, 97, 98, 143, 148, 213, 239-40
Baltic cities, league of, 35-6 ; truce with
England for eight years, 1456, 104
Bangor, Bishop of, 234
Barantyn, English merchant, xxiv
Barlamont, Earl of, embassy to Lubeck,
221
Barnet, battle of, 1471, xx, 116
Basle, 41
"Baye "(the) in Hanseatic documents,
247-8
Bayonne, 79, 80
" Beame," silver of, xvi, 91
Beaufort, Cardinal Henry, 98, 99
Beck, Sir John, envoy to the Hanse, 101I
Becket, Thomas a, 10
Bek, Johan von, 59
" Bell metal powder," 161
Benecke, Paul, Hanseatic admiral, xxi,
1x8, 119, 120
Bentley, H. , envoy to the Hanse, 119
Bergen, xiii, 39, 40, 41, 119, 131, 213,
236 ; as German Kontor, 37 ; sack
°f, 37, 68-9 ; German rights in, 48
note; English trading settlement,
63-4 ; English driven out, 1428.
96 ; represented at negotiations at
Utrecht, 124
Bergen, Andrew von, German merchant,
161
Bergen-op-Zoom , Merchant Adventurers
at, 87, 163
Berwick, South, castle of, 80
Biberach, 41
Blakeney, 80
Bokeland, Johanna, 99
Bokhara, 184
Boleyn, Anne, 151-2, 152, 196
— Geoffrey, xxiv, 151

261

252

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

Bordeaux, 30
Boston, 63, 86, ioo, 121, 127
Bounties, payment by German traders, *
Bourgneuf, 248
Bouvines, battle of, 7, 18, 20, 233
Boxley, Abbot of, 14
Brabant, 2, 40, 57-9, 87, 92-3, 163, 188-9,
ig2
Brand, John, of Dantzig, 159
Brandenburg, 57, 212
Brandois, Hans, of Dantzig, 194
Brandon, Joh., Lynne merchant, 70
Breckfeld, Anselm, German merchant,
161
Bremen, xiv, 6, 11, 20, 22, 35, no, 119,
172, 207 ; privileges granted to mer
chants by King John, 20, 233 ; loan
to Duke of Saxe by Duke of Somerset ,
through, 156 ; embassy to Queen
Mary, 186; mariners levied at, for
invasion of England, 218
Bremer, Maynard, German merchant,
161
Brenner Pass, 5, 38
Bretons, 90
Brian, Leonard, 180
Bribery by German merchants in Eng
land, 251
Bristol, xxiv, 55 note, 76, 86, 94, 128,
247
Bristowe, W. de, envoy to the Germans,
119
Brouage, 247-8
Bruges, xiii, 65, 74, 88, 89, 91, 108, 119,
124, 144, 218; trade routes from, 5,
38, 226; importance of, as trading
centre, 5 note, 38-9 ; relations with
the Hanse, 39-40; removal of staple
to Calais, 82 ; as staple town, 85 ;
Merchant Adventurers given access
to, but driven out by Flemings, 87 ;
negotiations between English and
the Hanse at, 97, 143-4, 150, 164-5 ;
envoy from Henry VI, 109 ; assist
ance requested from, on behalf of
Henry VI and Edward IV, 110-12 ;
assistance of Edward IV, 116-7;
accusations of English merchants
against, 132 ; preparations at, for
invasion of England, 218
Bruges, Louis de, see Gruthuyse, Herr
von
Brunswick, xiv, 21, 36, 40, 46, 208
Budapest, 5
Bulgaria, 12
Burghley, Lord, see Cecil, William, Lord
Burghley
Burgundy, 108, no, in, 112, 113, 117,
J32> 135, 148, 166, 239
Cabot, Sebastian, 176, 177 note, 245-7
Calais, 40, 42 note, 75, 79, 80, 87, 89,
104, 105, 106, 144, 221 ; expedition
of Edward III to, 58-9 ; siege of,
61 ; as staple town, 82, 85, 136

Camber, 42
Campen, 102, 125, 137
Cannyngs, W., fish merchant, xxiv
Canterbury, 55 note, 85
Canute, King of England, 3, 7
Carta Mercatoria of 1303, 57
Caspian, trade with, 184, 214
Catalonia, 42 note
Catherine of Aragon, 151
Caunton, Richard, Archdeacon of Salis
bury, envoy to the Hanse, 101, 103
Cavalli, Marin, Venetian ambassador
with the Emperor, 185 note
Cecil, Algernon, 221, 222
¦ — Sir Robert, 223, 229
— William, Lord Burghley, xxix, 56,
173, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205,
216, 217 note, 223, 228
Celestine III, Pope, 13
Challoner, Sir Thomas, ambassador in
Spain, 201, 202
Champagne, 38
Chancellor, Richard, xxviii, 176, 177,
178
Chapuis, Eustace, Imperial ambassador
in England, 152
Charlemagne, Emperor of Germany,
xv, 1
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy,
108, in, 112, 113, 115-6
Charles IV, Emperor of Germany, 62
Charles V, Emperor of Germany, 156,
172, 185, 188-9, 190, 213-4, 245-6
Charles IX of France, treaty with Queen
Elizabeth, 1572, 206
Charters and privileges to foreign
merchants in England, summary,
xvii ; granted by Ethelred, 1-2,
10 note 2 ; by Henry II to Cologne
merchants, 10-12; by Richard I to
Cologne merchants, 17 ; by John,
19-20, 233-4 ; by Henry III to
Cologners and other traders, 21-2 ;
to Lubeck, 23, 46; to German mer
chants, 24 ; confirmation of, by
Edward I, 57 ; granted by Edward
III, 58, 59, 237; by Richard II,
65-6 ; renewal of, by treaty of 1409,
79-80 ; renewal by Henry V, 96 ;
granted by Henry VI, 97; renewal
by treaty of 1437, 99-100 ; depriva
tion of, by Edward IV, 106-7; re
newal by Edward IV, 107, 107-8,
119, 239; granted by treaty of
Utrecht, 120-7 '• confirmation by
Henry VII, 132 ; Act of 1504 re,
144-5 I renewal by Henry VIII, 150,
151 ; confirmation of, to Lubeck,
Hamburg, and Bremen, by Duke of
Somerset, 1547, 156 ; withdrawal of,
17 1-2 ; confirmation and restoration
by Mary, 186, 189 ; revocation by
Queen Elizabeth, 207
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 67 note, 71, 88
China, 34, 181, 184

INDEX

253

Christian I, King of Denmark, 102-3,
no, 131
Christian II, King of Denmark, 151, 153
Christian III, King of Denmark, 213,
215, 216
Christopher, Earl of East Friesland, 201
Cinque ports, 29
Cistercians in England, 15
Clarence, George, Duke of, 114, 133
Cleves, no
Cley, owner of fishing vessels, 69-70
Clippink, German merchants, 59
Cloth, export tax and privileges of Hanse
merchants, 52-3 ; English industry,
62 ; protective measures, 82-4, 107,
231 ; shut out from German towns
and the Netherlands, 97, 108, no,
20c— 1, 202, 219; reform of, 122;
prohibition of export to the Nether
lands, 134, 145, 199, 200 ; undressed,
prohibition of export, 138-9, 140,
142, 146-7, 148-9, 151 ; preference
to German shippers, 146-7; Italian
market secured by Henry VII, 148 ;
fraud by merchants of the Steelyard
in connection with duties, 157-61 ;
export duties, 160; transfer of weav
ing secrets to other countries, 163 ;
complaint against German merchants
as regards quality of, 163-4 ; prohi
bition of sale in Flanders by Germans
desired by Merchant Adventurers,
165 ; abolition of restrictions on ex
port, 1554, 186 ; complaints by Ger
man merchants re action by Mayor
and Aldermen of London and de
cisions of Privy Council, 19 1-3 ;
fraudulent shipment to Antwerp by
German merchants, 193 ; trade with
Hamburg, 204 ; alleged raising of
price by Merchant Adventurers, 207 ;
revocation of licences for export by
foreign merchants, 207, 208 ; favour
able position of Hanse merchants,
240-1 ; statement of exports by
foreign merchants in England, 241-2 ;
tariff of customs, 243
Clough, Richard, factor, 199, 203
Coblentz, 62
Cogge, ship, 69
Coin, 16, 35
Coinage of leather in France, 62
Colchester, 70
Colmar, 37
Cologne, i Hanse town, xiv, xv, xxii, 3
note 2, 5, 22, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 47,
107, 134, 136, 146 148, 201, 202;
Archbishop of, 6, 16, 18, 234; mer
chants of, in London, 10-12, 17, 19,
21 ; Richard I, assisted by, 16 ; con
federation of German towns under,
17; King John's connection with,
18-20 ; Elector of, pensionary of
Edward III, 57 ; crown pawned to,
by Edward III, 59 ; embassy to

London, 97, 98, 186; peace made
with England, 104, 126, excom
munication by the Hanse, no, 126-7;
support of Yorkist cause by, 125-6 ;
relations of, merchants in England
with Edward IV, 125-6 ; prohibition
of import of silk from, into England,
1459, 139-40; struggle against Mer
chant Adventurers, 208-9
Cologne weights, xvi, 16
Conrad of Montiferrat, King of Palestine,
13, 14
Conrad II, Emperor, 3
Constance, xx, 41
Constantinople, x, 5, 13 note, 38, 41, 44,
214, 22a, 226
Contarini, Zacharia, Venetian ambassa
dor in Germany, 137-8
Cook, Thomas, Mayor of London, 117-8
Copenhagen, 22, 36, 125
Cork, staple town, 55 note
Corn trade, 34, 47, 48, 56, 80, 107
Cornwall, 22, 60
— Henry, son of Richard, Earl of, 26,
3i
— Richard, Earl of, and King of the
Romans, see Richard.
Cosinot, William, Lord of Montreuil, 109
Cotton, English merchant, xxiv
Cracow, Hanse town, xiv, 36, 39
Cromer, 80
Cromwell, Thomas, 150, 186 note
Crossehaire, Nicholas, Hanse merchant,
Crusades, xxm, 12
Curteys, Richard, Hanse merchant, 60-1
Customs and duties, 12, 42 note, 50, 52 ;
exemption of foreign trades from,
17, 20, 21, 95, 186; demanded by
John from Cologne merchants, 19 ;
preference to German merchants,
xvii, 43, 158, 164-5, 243 ; pledged for
loans to foreigners, 57 ; grievances
of Hanse merchants re demands, 75-
6 ; provisions of treaty of Utrecht,
121-2, 124 ; export, on cloth, x, 146-
7 ; tariff of, 243
Cyprus, 13
Dantzig, Hanse town, xiii, xiv, 35, 36,74,
79, 80, 100, 104, 141, 180, 181, 182,
215, 226 ; English trading settlement,
63 ; hostility to English merchants
and bad treatment of, 67, 96, 142,
155-6, 162,165, 166, 170, 171, 194;
embassies to England, 97, 98, 186 ;
refusal to sign treaty of Utrecht in
1474, 122-3 '• English merchants
attacked at sea, 125 ; represented at
negotiations at Utrecht, 125 ; transfer
of allegiance from Grand Masters of
Prussia to Kings of Poland, xiv, 182,
212 ; struggle against Merchant
Adventurers, 208 ; seizure of ships
from, by Queen of England, 220 ;

254

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

William Harborne at, 220 ; supply of
munitions of war for Spain, x, 220
Danube, 38
Dartmouth, 80, 114
Demmin, 35
Denmark, 64, 92, no, 132, 143, 152-3,
205, 212-3, 2I6 ; relations with the
Hanse, 33, 36-7, 44, 63, 1311; capture
of English ships, 1468, 108 ; refusal
of Henry VII to join, in war upon
Hanse towns, 145 ; relations with
Lubeck, 152-3 ; alliances with, xxii,
T53, 2i3, 228 ; negotiations with,
for treaty of defence against the
League, 206; ambassadors sent to,
from Elizabeth, 209 ; blockade of
Hamburg, 213; Flemish embassy
to, to obtain stopping of trade with
England, 221
Deptford, 187
Derby, Earl of (1339), 59
Deventer, 101, 125
Devizes, 86
Dialyn, Paul, ambassador from Poland,
222-4
Dinant, position of, in connection with
the Hanse, xiii, 236-9; destruction
of, 1466, 239
Dobbes, Richard, Mayor of London, 158
Dogger, ship, 70
Dordrecht, Hanse town, 39, 74
Dortmund, Hanse town, 34, 125
Doseyn, James or Jacob, 61
Dover, 29, 89
Drake, Sir Francis, xxvii, 217, 221
Drapers' Company, 245
Dublin, staple town, 55 note
Dunkirk, 218, 221
Durham, Simon, 70
Durrenstein, 14
Duties, see Customs and Duties.
Dymock, John, envoy to Germany, 153
Ealdred, Archbishop of York, 3 note 2
East and West Indies, 214
East Friesland, Earls and Counts of,
201, 202, 203, 209
Easterhngs, xiv-xv, 34, 61, 64, 65, 90,
95, 108, 115, 1181; see also Hanse,
German
" Eastland," Merchant Adventurers in,
88
Edgar, King of England, 93
Edward the Confessor, King of Eng
land, 3
Edward I, King of England, 30, 47, 52,
57, 64, 170, 237
Edward II, King of England, 64, 65,
166
Edward III, King of England, xxiv,
54, 57, 62, 82-3, 87-90, 93, 237,
239
Edward IV, King of England, xx, xxi,
49-53, 54, 84, 94, 106, 110-27, I28,
166, 239

Edward VI, King of England, xxv, 155,
157, 172, 174, 17S-6, r77. l85. I94-
241
Edward, son of Henry VI, 116
Edward, the Black Prince, 60
Egmont, 187, 190
Elbing, Hanse town, 35, 211, 220
Elburg, Hanse town, 67
Eleanor of Brittany, niece of Richard I,
14, IS
Eleanor, wife of Henry II, 234
Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII, 131
Elizabeth, Queen of England, xiv, xxvi-
xxviii, 157, 178, 182, 196-225, 229,
231, 240
Ellers, Antony, German merchant, 161
Emden, xxvii, 201-3, 208-9, 2IO> 2I1,
218 , 227 note
Ems, 41
Erdtzard, Earl of East Friesland, 201
Erfurt, 39
Eric II, King of Norway, 64
Erie VII, 98
Eric XIV of Sweden, 212
Essex, 106, 222
Esturmy, William, ambassador to Prus
sia, 74
Ethelred " the Unready," 1, 10 note 2
Ethingham, Sir William de, knight, 80
Evesham, battle of, 1265, 30, 45
Exchange, 16, 23, 91, 157
Exeter, xxiii, 55 note, 86
Fairs, foreign traders admitted to, 21-2
Fauconbridge, 116
Fensel, Laurence, 160, 161, 168, 169
Finance, Edward Ill's policy, 57-61 ;
terms of treaty of Utrecht, 121-2,
123 - 4 ; loans to England from
foreign merchants, xxv-xxvi, 198-9
Fishing industry and fish trade, 34, 36,
xvi, xxiv, 6^, 97, 131
Fishmongers, charters, 65
Fitzwilliams, John, 202
Flanders, 6, 7, 30, 33, 56, 62, 64, 65,
82, 83, 102, 107, 118 ; alliance with,
sought by William 1,5; importance
of, to Germany, 5 ; the Hanse in, 33,
37, 40 ; relations with France, Ger
many, and England, 40 ; trade with
Venice, 42-3 ; as market for English
wool, 55 ; eviction of English mer
chants, 60; German control in, 81;
Merchant Adventurersin, 87-8 ; trade,
89-91 ; flight of Edward of York to,
115-6; interdicts of trade between
England and, xxix, 135, 147-8 ; ex
pulsion of Flemish from England by
Henry VII, 136 ; dependence on un
dressed cloth from England, 138,
146 ; prohibition of export of woollens
to, 151 ; trade of foreign merchants in
England with, in spite of prohibi
tion, 166 ; contribution towards sum
taken by King of Spain, for Queen

INDEX

255

of England, 188-9 '• prohibition of
import of English cloth, 1563, 199-
200 ; financing of Spanish trade by,
213-4 ; union with Spain under
Philip, 214 ; preparations for in
vasion of England, 218
Flemish-German fleet, defeat of War
wick by, 113
Flemish vessel, capture by Lubeck fleet,
153
Fletcher, Dr. Giles, envoy to Hamburg,
211
Florence, 91, 148
Fortesque, Sir John, Privy Councillor,
223
France, x, 12-, 21, 39, 40, 41, 58, 62, 66,
82, 109, no, in, 112, 117, 172-3,
182; Warwick's embassies to, and
league with, 108, 113; treaties with,
131, 206; friendly understanding
with England, 228
Franciscans, 26 note 2, 27
Frankfort, 201, 209, 219
Frankfort on Main, 23, 41
Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor of Ger
many, 10, 12
Frederick II, Emperor of Germany, 19,
2S, 233
Frederick III, Emperor of Germany, xii,
xxii, 135
Frederick of Holstein, King of Denmark,
iS3
Free trade policy and party, 11, 17, 58,
66, 71, 83, 104, 129
Freeze, Ocko, Drossart of Emden, 203
Friaul, 41
Fugger, Anthony, and nephews, xxv,
xxvi, 219
Gama, Vasco da, 213
Gardiner, Stephen, Archbishop, Lord
Chancellor, 186, 187
Gascony, 24, 25
Genoa, 5, 40, 41, 42 note, 91, 219
Geoffrey of Anjou, 10 note
German bishops, appointed to English
dioceses, 3
German traders in England, see Hanse
Merchants in England and Steel
yard.
Ghent, 22, 218
Gibraltar, 38, 148
Gildhalla Teutonieorum, see Steelyard.
Gilpin, George, envoy to Germany, 210
— John, secretary of the Company,
204
Gmunden, 41
Godezere, ship, 69
Goslar, Hanse town, 40
Gothland,' 22, 34, 39, 97
Graveburgh, 221
Gravesend, 159, 169, 179
Gray, Richard, Company agent, 180,
181-2
Greenwich, 176, 191

Greifswald, Hanse town, 35, 96, 233
Gresham, Sir Thomas, xxv-xxvii, xxxix,
5°. J57-72, 174, 185, 195-7, 197-9
203-4, 240
Grey, Lady Jane, 185
Grippenstraw, Hans, German merchant,
161
Groningen, Hanse town, 137
Grossteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 26 note 2,
27
Gruthuyse, Herr von (otherwise Louis
de Bruges), 115, 116
Gueldres, no
Gufferod, Garrard, German merchant,
161
Guise, Orte, German merchant, 161
Hague, 74, 115
Halewater, John, of Dantzig, 80
Halle, 39
Hamburg, Hansetown, xv, 35, 37, 39, 40,
47, 119, 136, 172, 182,207; league
with Lubeck, 1241, 35; control in
Bruges, 39 ; pirates hanged in, 1402,
68; embassies to England, 1434,
J437, 97, 98, 186 ; negotiations at,
107, 119, 151, 211; represented at
negotiations at Utrecht, 125 ; organi
sation of contraband trade into
Netherlands through, 135 ; loan to
Duke of Saxe by Duke of Somerset
through, 156 ; contract between
Senate and English, 1567, 203-4,
205-6 ; trade with, 204 ; English
traders in, attitude of Lubeck, 207 ;
blockade by Danish fleet, 213 ; offer
of port of, to King of Spain, 215 ;
alliance with Spain against Eng
land, 217 ; mariners levied at, for
invasion of England, 218 ; William
Harborne at, 220 ; supply of muni
tions of war for Spain, 220
Hammond, John, ' ' Alderman of the
Almains," 51
Hanse, German, component cities, xii-
xiv, 32-6, 236 ; origin and purpose,
33 ; struggles with Scandinavia and
Venice, and general control of Euro
pean commerce, 36-44 ; headquarters
in London, 48; sea-power of, 63;
relations with pirates, 68-9 ; claims
by Master - General and counter
claim by Henry IV and negotiations
and settlement, 73-81 ; boycott of
English trade, 77-8 ; English griev
ances against, 77—8, 96-8, 131-2,
141, 155, 162; struggle with Mer
chant Adventurers, xxii, 88, 100,
206-11; embassy to, from Henry V,
96; expulsion of Englishmen from
Germany, 97 ; embassy to London,
1434, 97 ; negotiations with, 97-8,
101-3, 110-3, 119-20, 141-4; treaty
with, 1437, 98-100 ; assistance of
Edward of York, 115-8 ; declining

256

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

power of, 130-1, 154, 205 ; support
of Lambert Simnel by, and invasion
of England, 133-4 ; organisation of
contraband trade in English cloth
into Netherlands, 135, 136 ; support
of Perkin Warbeck, xxii, 135-8 ;
policy of Henry VII re, 138-49 ;
admission of English merchants to
Hanseatic towns, 142-3 ; Act of
1504, 144-5 ; policy of Henry VIII
towards, and negotiations, 150-3 ;
conflict with the Empire, 172; ex
pulsion of merchants from Russia,
177 ; attitude as regards trade be
tween England and Russia, 182-3 ;
policy of Queen Mary, 186 ; proceed
ings of retaliation considered against
England, 208; wars with Holland,
213 ; alliance with Spain against
England, xxvii, 214-20 ; downfall of,
226 ; share in English trade, 239-42
Hanse merchants in England (see also
Charters and Privileges, and Steel
yard) ; system of Government, 49-
50; relations with the corporation,
50-1, and with the Crown, 52,
59-60 ; establish preference over
other foreigners and English mer
chants, 52; King's bankers, 55-6;
confiscation of goods ordered by
Edward III, and revocation, 60-1 ;
protection by Edward III, 60-1 ; peti
tion, 1390, to King re treatment of,
67 note ; charge against, of " colour
ing," xxvi-xxvii, 72, 78, 162, 166, 167;
proclamation by Henry IV, 72 ;
grievances of, 75-7 ; withdrawal of,
77, 108, no; English feeling against,
96 ; protection by Royal edicts, 100-
1 ; payment to Edward IV for re
newal of charter, 108 note; in
surrection and riot against, 114-5,
136 ; conference proposed by, 1487,
132 ; restrictions on, under Henry
VII, 140-1 ; steps taken by English
merchants against, 140-1 ; trade
quarrels with, 150 ; negotiations with,
150-1 ; insults to Anne Boleyn,
151-2 ; frauds by, in connection with
customs, &c, and suit by Merchant
Adventurers, xxvi-xxvii, 157-61,
German version, 167-70; list of
commodities imported by, 167 ;
decree of the Privy Council, 170-2,
173 ; and marriage of Mary and
Philip, 190; complaints of treatment
by Lord Mayor and Aldermen of
London, and decision of Privy
Council, 191-4 ; policy of Queen
Elizabeth towards, 197-231; decrease
in licences granted to shippers, 205 ;
proceedings begun against, by Mayor
of London, 1579, 207; expulsion
from England, xxviii, 224-5
Hanse weights, 39

Hanseatic League, see Hanse, German.
Haquin, King of Norway, 64
Harborne, William, first English am
bassador at Constantinople, 214,
220
Hardware, protection by Queen Eliza
beth, 231
Harold, King of England 3, 4, 7
Hartlepool, 129
Hasse, John, 183-4
Henry I, King of England, 7, 9
Henry II, King of England, 10-12,
233
Henry III, King of England, xxi, 21-31,
45-6, 84, 231
Henry IV, King of England, 71, 72-81,
239
Henry V, King of England, 81, 89, 93,
96
Henry VI, King of England, xx, 54, 89,
95, 97, 98, 99, 104-5, 109-16, 231
Henry VII, King of England, xxiii, 53,
86, 124, 131-49, 150, 166, 240, 241
Henry VIII, King of England, 150-154,
172
Henry of Saxony and Bavaria (Duke
Henry the Lion), 12, 18, 19
Henry III, Emperor of Germany, 3
Henry V, Emperor of Germany, 9
Henry VI, Emperor of Germany, 12-16
Henry, son of Richard, King of Ger
many, 26, 31
Henry, Palatine, nephew of Richard I,
234
Herle, 210
Herston, Peter, German merchant, 76
Hesse, 153
Hewester, John, governor of the Mer
chant Adventurers, 150
Hildebrand of Saxony, 19
Hogge, 2, 236
Hohenstaufens, 19, 25, 233
Holland, 102, 118, 192; forbidden to
trade in the Baltic, 97 ; wars with
the Hanse, 131, 213 ; contribution
towards sum brought by King
Philip for Queen of England, 188-9 ;
alliance with England, 213, 228; com
petition for trade in East and West
Indies, 214 ; sailors of, brawl with
English, 1443, 248
Holstein, 151, 153
Holten, Orant von, 160
— Reignold, of Dantzig, 160
Holy League, xii, 136
" Hosting," xvii, 2-3, 10 note, 26-7, 92
Hoyland, Yorkshire, fair of, 21
Hughson, John, of Yarmouth, 69
Hull, xxiii, xxiv, 55 note, 63, 69, 70, 79,
86, 128, 129, 140-1, 157
Hungary, 41, 44, 91
Hunt, Thomas, 155
Hussey, Anthony, governor of the
Merchant Adventurers, 194
Huy, 239

INDEX

257

Iceland, xxiv, 44, 63, 98, 129, 131
Innocent III, Pope, 234
Innsbruck, 5
Ipswich, xxiii, 86
Ireland, 55, 93, 133, 215
Iron mines of Scandinavia, 34
Iron workers, protection, 106, 107
Isaac of Cyprus, cousin of Leopold of
Austria, 13, 14
Isle of Wight, 215, 216
Italy, 4, 5, 6, 38, 55, 218 ; English trade
in, xxiv ; restrictions on trade of
merchants in England, 129-30;
market for English cloth secured
by Henry VII, 148 ; alum-workers
brought to England by Elizabeth,
231
Ivan Basilowitz, Emperor of Russia, 176,
177
Ivan IV, Czar, 212
Jays, English merchants, xxiv
Jenkinson, Anthony, 184, 214
John, King of England, 15, 16, 18-20,
233-4
John of Gaunt, 71, 66 note
John of Denmark, alliance of Henry VII
with, 148
John, Earl of East Friesland, 201, 202,
203
John, the Iron Count, of Holstein, 61
Jungingen, Conradus de, Master-General
of the Teutonic Knights, 73-4
Kara, Sea of, 184
Keck, Hans, agent of Count Mansfeld,
198-9
Kent, 106, 107, 114, 187, 189, 190, 195
Ketler, Gottard, Grandmaster of the
Teutonic Order of Livonia, 212
Keysiler, Adrian, Dantzig merchant, 159,
160, 161, 167-8, 169
Killingworth, George, Merchant Ad
venturers' first agent in Muscovy,
178, 179
Kingston, John, ambassador to Prussia,
74
Kinkell, John, German merchant, 161
Konigsberg, Hanse town, 35
Laibach, 41
Lancaster Party, 105, 109
Lane, Henry, Merchant Adventurers'
agent, 181-2
Langermann, Alderman Henry, 225
Law, privileges granted to foreign mer
chants, xvii, 100, 121
Leather, export, liberty granted to aliens
and denizens by Richard II, 66
Leicester, Earl of, 28, 30
Leopold of Austria, 12-15
Levant, xxiv, 218
Lewes, Earl of Flanders, 87
Lewis, Emperor of Bavaria, subsidy to,
from Edward III, 57

Liege, a, no, 236, 237, 239
Lincoln, staple town, 55 note
Ling, Derek von, German merchant, 161
Linz, 41
Lippomano, Hieronomo, Venetian am
bassador in Spain, 215, 219
Lisbon, 130, 227
Livland, xx, 39, no, 122, 182, 211
Livonians, 74-5, 78-9
Loans, public, 52, 54
Lombardy, 30, 55, 88
London ( see alsoHanse Merchants in Eng
land and Steelyard) : foreign traders
in, under the Saxon Kings, 2 ; favours
King Stephen, 10; House of Cologne,
merchants in, 10, 11, 17, 19, 21;
grant of commune by King John, 18 ;
hatred of foreigners in, 18 ; rights
of, saved in Cologne charter, 20 ;
German organisation in, 22 ; treaty
of, with Lubeck, 1251, 22; grant of
Guildhall in,to Germans, 24;favoured
by the Oxford Parliament, 1258, 26 ;
representatives of, at Windsor Parlia
ment, 1265, 30 ; Eastern trade of, 42 ;
Germans undertake care of Bishops
gate, xvii, 46-8, 122, 127, are fined
for failure to repair it, 47 ; fish and
liquor trades, 56 ; complaints by
merchants against privileges granted
to foreigners, 65-6 ; captures of
merchants of, by Germans, 70-1 ;
treaty signed at, with Prussia, 1409,
70-80 ; centre of Merchant Adven
turers, 86 ; sheriffs attempt to
exact new duties from Germans, 95
note ; treaty with the Hanse, signed
at, 1437, 98-9 ; Windgoose Lane,
99 ; insurrection in favour of Earl of
Warwick and against Germans, 114-
5 ; represented at negotiations at
Utrecht, 124 ; attacks on Cologne
merchants, 1490, 141 ; assurance of
rights, &c, of, in Act of 1504, 144;
Town Council petitioned to re
move foreigners, 150; riots against
foreigners, xx, 150, 157; German
pageant at Grace Church at marriage
of Anne Boleyn, 151-2; reception
of Russian ambassador, 178-9 ; op
position to Queen Mary's Spanish
marriage, 187 ; march of Sir Thomas
Wyatt on, 187-8 ; failure of Queen
Mary to borrow from, 195 ; Dinant
merchants in, 237 ; war contribution
to the King, 1369, 237-8
Long, Bartholomew, German merchant,
161 '
Longston, Thomas, 209, 210
Louis de Bruges, see Gruthuyse, Herr von
Louvain, 15, 17
Lubeck, Hanse town, 40, 41, 64, 73, 86,
102, 108, 131, 135, 151, 182 ; sack
of Copenhagen by, 1250, 22 ; treaty
with London, 1251, 22; charter
R

258

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

granted to, by Henry III, 23 ; posi
tion of, in Hanseatic League, xii,
33-7; control over fortifications of
the Swine, 36; control in Bruges,
39-40; grant of privileges to mer
chants of, in London, 45-6, 233 ;
attitude re English traders in the
Baltic, 1286, 63 ; embassies to Lon
don, 97, 98, 186 ; negotiations be
tween English and Hanseatic depu
ties at, 101 ; seizure of English
ship, 102-3 1 fleet, 105, 153, 212,
213 ; negotiations with Council of,
1465, 107; requests to, for assistance
to Henry VI, 1463, 109-10; ne
gotiations with Queen Margaret and
Edward IV, 110-112 ; represented at
negotiations at Utrecht, 125 ; Eng
lish merchants attacked at sea, 125 ;
relations with Denmark, 152-3 ;
alliance proposed with England and
Denmark, 1533, 153 ; Merchant
Adventurers fairly treated at, 165 ;
attitude re English traders in
Hamburg, 207 ; struggle against
Merchant Adventurers, 268-9 1
William Harborne at, 220 ; supply
of munitions of war for Spain, 220;
Flemish embassy to, to obtain stop
ping of trade with England, 221 ;
decline of power, 229
Lucke, John, servant of the Merchant
Adventurers, 182 note
Ludekensson, Matthewe, of Dantzig,
79-80
Liittich, see Liege
Lydgate, John, 95
Lymbergh, Tidemann von, 59, 60
Lynne, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 115, 121,
127
Lyons, Sir Richard, 49

Macedonia, 12
Magna Carta, 26, 27
Mainz, 5, 9
Mansfeld, Volrad, Count, 198-9, 218
Margaret, Dowager-Duchess of Bur
gundy, 132-3, 135
Margaret, Queen of England, 109, 110-3,
113-4,116, 146
Margaret of Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark, 37, 71, 74
Marhod, Gerard, Alderman of the Hanse
in London, 47
Marion, John, of Wersingham, 80
Marseilles, 41
Marsh, Adam, Franciscan friar, 27
Mary, Queen, xxvii, 95, 185, 196
Mason, Sir John, 201
Matilda of Flanders, Queen of William I,
5,6
Matilda, Empress of Germany, 9, 10
Matilda, wife of Duke Henry the Lion,

Maximilian, King of the Romans, 131,
132-4, 135, 137, 146, 166
Maximilian II, Emperor, 206
Mayence, 23, 41, 234
Mechlin, loan to Edward III by burghers
of, 59
Medina, Juan Gomes de, 217
Mediterranean, xxiii, 12, 30, 38, 130
Meier, Mark, see Meyer.
Men of the Emperor, xiv-xv; see also
Hanse, German.
Mercenaries, arrangement for supply of,
between Counts of Flanders and
Norman-Angevin kings, 7 note 1
Mercers' Company, 85
Merchant Adventurers, 130, 150, 151 ;
origin of, and purpose, xxiii, 84-5 ;
towns of, 86 ; rules of, copy of Han
seatic rules, 86; field of operations
and methods, 86-8 ; administration
of affairs in towns, 87 ; struggle with
the Hanse, xxii, 88, 206-n ; naval
policy of, 88, 94 ; charter granted to,
by Edward IV, 107 ; compensation
paid to, by Easterlings, 108 ; assist
ance of Henry VII in prevention of
trade to the Netherlands, 135 ; riot
against German merchants in
London, 1493, 136 ; increase of
powers, by Henry VII, xxii, 149 ;
case against Steelyard merchants,
xxvi-xxvii, 157-61 ; complaints
against the Hanse merchants, and
German reply, 162-70; loan to
Edward VI, 174 ; loan to Queen
Elizabeth, xxvi ; trade with Russia,
178-84 ; refused permission to unload
cloth at Antwerp, 201 ; trade in
Emden, 201-3; charter granted by
Queen Elizabeth, 207 ; charge
against, of being a monopoly and
controversy re, 209 ; decree of
Augsburg Diet prohibiting, in
Germany, 210 ; establishment at
Stade, 211 ; case against the
Hanse, 1551, 240; expulsion from
Germany, 1597, 244-5 ; question of
Sebastian Cabot's connection with,
246-7.
Messina, sack of, by Richard I, 13
Metal market, control by German
merchants, 22
Metal trade, German experts brought
to England by Elizabeth to teach
smelting, 231
Meyer, Marcus, captain of Lubeck fleet,
*S*. *53
Middelburg, 43, 87, 88, 111, 239
Milan, 41, 219
Monastic system of life of German mer
chants in England, 48-g
Money, English, 1066-1300, 235
Montague, Viscount, 178, 179
Montefiore, Flemish money-lender, 59
Montfort, Guy de, 31

INDEX

259

Montfort, Henry de, 29-30
— Simon de, xviii-xix, xxi, xxviii-xxix,
24-7, 29-30, 56, 83, 84, 94, 231
Moore, Adrian, 159, 167-8, 168-9
— Andrew, 158-9, 167-8
More, Sir Thomas, 150
Moreden, Simon de, Mayor of London,
75
Munster, 47
Narva, 182-3, 212, 229
Navigation Laws, xxii, 66, 86, 107, 140
Neere, Henry von der, 113
Netherlands, 227 ; prohibition of export
of English cloth to, 134-5, 145 ;
prohibition of trade with, by Henry
VII, 136-7; English treaty with
France for protection of commerce
in, 206 ; see also Flanders and
Holland
Netherlanders, arrest of, and goods in
England, 203
Neville, Richard, Earl of Warwick, see
Warwick
Newcastle, xxiii, xxiv, 55 note, 69, 76, 86
Nicherchen, John van, envoy to Lubeck,
221
Nieuport, 218
Norfolk, 65
North Sea, 38, 97
Northumberland, John Dudley, Duke of,
xxv, 158, 185
Norway, 78, 129 ; relations with the
Hanse, 33, 37 ; disputes between
Enghsh and Germans for trade with,
63-4 ; treatment of English in, 100
Norwich, xxiii, 55 note, 70, 86
Nova Custuma, 57
Nova Zembla, 184
Novgorod, Hanseatic Kontor, xiii, 33,
34, 35, 40, 130, 176-7, 212, 214, 226,
236
Nuremburg, 41, 211
Nuse, Francis von, German merchant,
161
Nystadt, treaty of, 152
Offa, King of Mercia, xv, 1
"Osep Napea," Russian ambassador, 178
Otto IV, King of Germany, 18-19, 20,
233, 234
Oxford, Parliament of, 1258, 26, 27 ;
provisions of, 25, 27, 28, 29
— John de Vere, 13th Earl of, 114
Oystryge, Henry, 246
Palatine, the, 38, 42, 57
Palestine, 12, 13, 14, 38
Parkins, Dr. , 229
Parma, Duchess of (1563), 199
— Duke of, 216, 218-9, 219
Parva Custuma, 52
Pawning of English crowns, &c, by
Edward III and Richard II, 59-60,
65

Pembroke, Earl of (1470), 114
Percie, Lord Henry de, 80
Persian Gulf, 214, 227
Pfeil, Dr. Francis, 173
Philip, King of France, 15, 16, 20
¦ — King of Spain, xxvii, 186-91, 195,
202-3, 204, 210, 214-220, 223
— the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 239
Philippa, wife of Edward III, 59
Piracy, 68, 101, 132
Placentia, 234
Plonnies, Hanseatic ambassador, 193
Plymouth, 80, 203
Poland, xiv, 36, 39, 181, 182, 212, 215 ;
ambassadors sent to, from Eliza
beth, 209 ; embassy to England, xiv,
221-4
Pole (de la), John, Earl of Lincoln,
132
— Richard, xxiv
— William, xxiv
Poles, surrender of the Teutonic Order
of Livonia to, 212
Poll-tax on foreigners granted to Henry
VII, xxii
Pomerania, 35
Ponthieu, 2
Portugual, 216 ; trade with Flanders, 90 ;
discovery of the Cape route, 213,
226 ; competition for trade in East
and West Indies, 214 ; free trade
with ports of, offered to Hanse
towns and Denmark if trade with
England stopped, 221
Prague, 208
Preacher Brethren, 26
Preference to German merchants in
customs, see under Customs
Privileges, see Charters and Privileges
Protection, 66 ; movement, 24-30, 108-
18, 150, 157 ; the Libel of English
Policie, 89-94 ! measures, 106-7,
129-30, 138-40, 231
Protection Party, xviii-xix, 56, 66-7, 104,
130
Protestant cause in Germany financed
by Duke of Somerset, 156
Prussia, 100; relations with the Hanse,
35 ; treaties with, 54, 68, 71 ; expul
sion of English merchants from, 71,
72 ; war with, 67-8 ; withdrawal from
England of merchants, 71, 72 ; Eng
lish treaty with France for protection
of commerce in, 206 ; ambassador
sent to, from Elizabeth, 209
Rainewell, John, 49
Ravensburg, 41
Ravenspur, xxi, 116
Red Sea, 214, 227
Regensburg, 41
Renard, Simon, 190
Reule, Oliver von, merchant in England,
60
Reval, Hanseatic Kontor, xiv, in, 212

260

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

Revenue of England under Richard I,
14-15
Reynewell, G., Mayor of London, 95
note
Rhine, River, 5, 36, 38, 43
Richard I, King of England, xvi, 12-17,
18, 20, 233, 234, 235
Richard II, King of England, 49, 53,
65, 72, 86, 94, 231-2, 239
Richard III, King of England, 115, 124,
128-31
Richard of Cornwall, and King of the
Romans, 22-3, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32,
233
Riga, Hanse town, xiv, 35, 123, 212
Robert the Bruce, 64
Robertsbridge, Abbot of, 14
Rochester, 105
Romane, Lambert, Steelyard merchant,
159, i6*
Rome, 5, 19, 25, 38; Popes of, 5-6, 13,
18, 25, 28-9, 218
Rostock, Hanse town, 35, 40, 68, 69,
70, 102, 125, 233
Rudelius, Dr. John, 173
Rudolph II, Emperor of Germany, 208,
209, 210, 244
Rupert, King of the Romans, 1409, 79
Rusdorfe, Paul, Master General of the
Teutonic Knights, 99
Russia, xxviii, 122,123; Hanseatic League
in, 33; trade, 34, 36, 44, 229-30;
Merchant Adventurers in, 88 ; Han
seatic attack on the monopoly at
Novgorod, 130 ; discovery of Arctic
route to, 175-6 ; trade by, 178-84 ;
alliance with xxviii, 177-8, 228; ex
pulsion of German merchants, 177,
212 ; revolt against Hanse subdued
by bribery, 183
Russia Company, 247
Rye, 42, 153

Salisbury, 86
— William de Montacute, Earl of,
59
Saltonstall, Sir Richard, governor of the
Merchant Adventurers, 211
Salzburg, 41
Sandwich, 42, 76
Santa Cruz, Alvaro de Bazan, 178 Mar
quis of, 215-6, 217
Savaric, Bishop of Bath, 14
Saxe, Duke of (1547), 156
Saxony, 12, 19, 36, 38
Scandinavia, iron mines, 34; German
control, 80
" Scardeburgh" (Scarborough), 80
Schein, Calixt, Syndicus of Lubeck, 209
Scheldt, 201
Schoenen provinces, 36, 39
Schwarte, Claus, Hamburg skipper, 156
Schwarz, Martin, 133, 134
Scoff, Eghard, 80

Sconia, 73, 74
Scotland, xxx note, 64-5, 67 note 2, 90,
in, 182
Sea power: of the Hanse, xvi, 44, 64,
80 ; importance of, to England, 88-
94, 230-1 ; English Navy under
Edward III and Henry VI, 58, 62,
65, 96
Seepper, member of Emperor's Council,
185
Shipping: English attacks on, and
captures, 69-70, 101, 108, 125 ;
Livonian, capture by English sailors,
74-5; monopoly of German merchants
and ships, xvi, 53-4, 100-1, 164,
167, 240 ; encounters between Eng
lish and German ships, xxvii-xxviii,
101-2, 128-9, 221 ; Lubeck fleet,
attacks and captures by, 102-3, 105,
153, 213 ; robbery of English ship
by Hamburg skipper, 156 ; Biscayan
ship chased into Plymouth by
French, 203
Shipping material, xvi, 6, 34, 63, 156,
239-40
Shottesbroke, Sir Robert, embassy to the
Hanse, 101
Siberia, 34
Sicily, 13, 14, 15, 25, 218
Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, 41,
89
Sigismund, King of Poland, 182
Sileden, William, Lynne merchant, 70
Silk, 34, 42 ; protection, 106-7, 107 ;
fabrics, prohibition of import by
Henry VII, 139-40, 143
Silver, German command of, xv-xvi.
Silver wedges, 9
Simancas, 215
Simnel, Lambert, 133
Sluys (Swen), 43, 65, 89, 218, 221
Smith, Baldwin, Customs officer, 159,
168-9, 192
— Hans, German merchant, 161
— Thomas, English merchant, xxiv
Smolensk, 180
Soest, Hanse town, 34
Somerset, Edward, Duke of, Lord Pro
tector, 155-6, 185
Southampton, 20, 42, 43, 76, 102
Southwark, 187
Spain, 5, 24, 38, 130-1, 227; Merchant
Adventurers in, 88 ; trade with
Flanders, 89-90 ; naval defeat, 105,
145-8 ; alliance with, 148, 213 ; com
petition for trade in East and West
Indies, 214 ; capture of vessel by
Lubeck fleet, 153 ; discovery of the
New World, 213 ; financing of, by
Flanders and German merchants,
xxvii, 213-4, 227; union with
Flanders under Philip, '.2 14 ; alliance
with the Hanse against England and
preparations for invasion, xxvii, 214-
20 ; free trade with ports of, offered

INDEX

261

to Hanse towns and Denmark if
trade with England stopped, 221
Speier, Speyer, 24, 41
Spicer, Henry, of Derby, 100
Spisenhagel, Tidemann, 59
Stade, xxvii, 211, 221, 245
Standish, Dr., Bishop of St. Asaph, 151
Staple (The), 53, 54, 84-5
Staple goods, export, privileges to foreign
merchants, 53-4
Staple towns, 55 note, 82, 136
Steelyard, London (see also Hanse mer
chants in England), xiv, xvii, 24,
26-7, 28, 32, 39, 45, 48, 73, 108 note,
121, 127, 141, 234; origin of site and
growth, 48, 49; privileges of, on
wharves, 50, 198 note; left to the
Hanse, 207 ; taken possession of, by
Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London ,
225 ; handed over to Royal Navy,
230 ; Dynanter Hall, 238
Steelyards, Boston and Lynn, 121, 127
Stephen, King of England, 9-10
Stephen, King of Poland, 209
Stettin, Hanse town, 35
Stoad, see Stade.
Stockholm, xiii
Stoke, battle of, 1487, 133
Stralsund, Hanse town, 35, 40, 125, 233
Strassburg, 41
Strusse, Reginald, German merchant,
161
Stynt, Thomas, 155
Subsidy tonnage and poundage on im
ports and certain export duties
granted to Queen Mary, 186
Sudermann, Hermann, Hanseatic am
bassador, 193, 193-4
— Hildebrand, merchant, in England,
60-1
Sussex, 106-107
Sweden, 64, 78, 131 ; relations with the
Hanse, 33, 36, 36-7, 37; English
treaty with France for protection of
commerce in, 206 ; seizure of Liibeck
fleet, 212
Swen, see Sluys.
Swine fortifications, 36
Syth, Henry von, German merchant, 161
Tancred, 14
Taunton, 20
Taverner, of Hull, xxiv
Taxes, exemption of German traders
from, xvii, 2, 17, 19, 21, 47, 48, 52,
56, 186 ; demanded by John from
Cologne merchants, 19 ; evasion by
Hanse merchants in England, 53;
farming of, by German merchants,
56
Taylors' Company, 65
Terry, Thomas, xxiv
Terry, of Hull, 79
Teutonic Knights, order of, xiv, 36, 49, I
49, 67, 71, 73, 98-100 ; Master |

General, negotiations with Henry
IV, and settlement, 73-81
Teutonic Order of Livonia, 212
Teutons, Guildhall of, at London, see
Steelyard
Tewkesbury, battle of, 116
Thames, River, 201
Thirty Years War, 226, 229
Thomas(St,) of Canterbury, Brotherhood
of, original name of Merchant Ad
venturers, 85
Thorne, Robert, of Bristol, 175, 176
Thornes, English merchants, xxiii
Thornton, Roger, English merchant,
xxiv
Tin mines, Cornwall, 22, 60
Tin trade, 106
Trade routes, xv, 5, 34, 38-9, 41, 214,
226
Trier, x, 47, 59
Trinitie, ship, 79
Trivon, 47
Tulburie, of Hull, 79
Tunstall, Cuthbert, Master of the Rolls,
150
Turkestan, 34, 214
Turkey, Merchant Adventurers in, 88
Turkey Company, 214
Turks, 213, 221
Tymerman, Michael, Steelyard merchant,
159, 161, 168, 169
Ulm, 41
Usemann, George, secretary of the Steel
yard, 207
Utrecht, 19, no, 119, 120; treaty of,
xx, xxi-xxii, 49, 54, 119-27, 128,
132, 142-3
Valentine, ship, 125
Vechtelde, Dr. von,' Lubeck Syndicus,
Hanseatic ambassador, 193-4
Veere, 116
Venice, xvii, 40, 41, 42 note, 148, 215,
218 ; trade route to, 5, 38, 214, 226 ;
German "table" in, 39; German
control in, and relations with the
Hanse, xiii, 41-3; oversea trade,
42-3, 91 ; competition of Lisbon,
130
Victualling Brothers, 68-9
Victualling gilds, 66 note
Vienna, 13, 41, 135, 189, 226
Viterbo, 31
Vivelle, 236
Voet, Bartholomew, freebooter, 96
Volga, River, 214
Vorrath, Heinrich, Mayor of Dantzig,
98, 155
Waldemar III, 36
Wales, 12, 55, 93
Wallace, William, 64
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 209, 210

262

THE GERMANS IN ENGLAND

Warbeck, Perkin, invasion of England
and support by Germans, xii, xxii,
135-8
Wars of the Roses, xix-xxi, 106-18,
i25
Warwick, Richard Neville, Earl of,
xix-xxi, xxviii-xxix, 94, 103, 104-18,
126, 231
Waterden, Tho. , Lynne merchant, 70
Wax, 30, 34, 51, 243
Weavers, English, 27, 29, 30; Flemish,
6, 28, 30, 38 ; Lombard, 30
Weights, 16, 39, 52
Wendish " pagans," 36
Wenyngton, Robert, naval victory by,
xxviii, 101-2
Wesentra, Joh. , Lynne merchant, 70
Westendorpe, Dr. George, 211, 221
West, merchants of the, 42 note 2
Westminster, 55 note, 82 ; provisions of,
28
Westphalia, Hanse in, 36
Weymouth, 116
Whittington, Richard, xxiv
William I, King of England, 3 note 2,
4-7, "
William II, King of England, 7
William, Bishop of Lincoln, 99
Willoughby, Sir Hugh, xxviii, 176, 247
Winchester, William Paulet, ist Marquis
of, 176
Winck, Christian, German merchant,
161
Windsor, Parliament at, 1265, 30-1
Wine trade, 11, 30, 106, 122, 140
Wisby, Hanse town, 34, 35, 36
Wismar, Hanse town, 35, 40, 68, 69,
70, 125, 220, 233
Wiveton, 70
Wolde, John von, 59
Wolsey, Cardinal, 150, 186 note, 245

Wool, export by England, 2, 6, 15,
27-9, 38, 40, 43, 53, 54 ; import by
Flanders, 6, 28, 38, 40, 55 ; pro
tectionist policy of Oxford Parlia
ment and Simon de Montfort, 27,
29-30 ; export by Burgundy, France,
Germany, Russia, Spain, 38, 40, 43 ;
import by Lombardy, 43, 55 ; staple
towns, and favourable position of
German merchants in courts, 55 ;
duty on, pawned by Edward III,
59, 60 ; duties, 75, enforcement on
the Hanse, 106; export trade, con
trol by the staple, 84-5 ; dependence
of Spain and Flanders on English
wool, 89-90 ; foreign trade, 91 ;
trade by German merchants in Eng
land, restrictions, 198, note; trade
with Hamburg, 204 ; tariff of cus
toms, 243
Wool and wool-fels, export, liberty
granted to aliens and denizens by
Richard II, 66
Woollens, prohibition of export to Flan
ders, 151
Worcester, John Tiptoft, Earl of, 115
Worms, 41
Wotton, Dr., 173, 194
Wurzburg, 10, 14
Wuttenmeher, Mayor of Lubeck, 151
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 187-8, 189, 190, 195
Yarmouth, 23, 69, 70, 86
York, xxiii, 3 note 2, 58, 70, 86, 114, 116
York Party, 104 ; see also Protection
Party
Ypres, 89
Zane, Matheo, Venetian ambassador
in Germany, 216
Zeland, 69, 102, 192

THE END

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