James A. Williamson

“ Russia’s sole outlets to the ocean were at that time the shores of Lapland and the White Sea; her sailors were nothing more than fishermen, and their craft were quite unsuited for a voyage to England, being for the most part undecked rowing-boats; while her merchants were landsmen and not seamen, accustomed to carry their goods for immense distances over the rivers and plains, but having none of the knowledge or inclination requisite for a sea-borne commerce. ”

“ Rigorous Spanish orthodoxy began a persecution of Englishmen in Spain. Merchants were imprisoned, tortured, and fined for asserting the royal supremacy. The centuries-old alliance with the Netherlands and Spain was gradually undermined, and the seeds were planted of that bitter hatred between Englishman and ‘Dago’ which ultimately emboldened the former to challenge the claim of Spain and Portugal to the monopoly of Asia and the New World. ”

“ This system of violent expansion, successful in the cases of Ireland and Wales, and not seriously pursued in that of Scotland, proved to be its own destruction when applied to France. Although a military conquest might endure for a time, it was impossible that England could permanently absorb a nation larger than itself, of different blood, language, and manners of thought, in the same way that Wales had been absorbed. ”

“ The North Sea, the Bay of Biscay, and the Mediterranean afforded for the time an ample field for the training of Englishmen in the arts of trade and seamanship. They saw the world, and rubbed shoulders with the nations of Europe; acquiring in the process a pride in themselves and a talent for dealing with their fellow men, which have been incalculable but nevertheless important factors in their subsequent development. ”

“ Energetic, versatile, able to turn his hand to politics, trade, discovery, or war, headstrong and quarrelsome, defiant of the law in an age of dreadful penalties, and yet withal patriotic and humane to the weak, it is a pity that our knowledge is so scanty of a career which was so typical of the new, progressive Englishmen of the Renaissance. ”

“ The discovery of the sea voyage to Asia was destined to revolutionize utterly the conditions of the trade, but the change was slow to accomplish itself, and for half a century to come the Mediterranean route was able to hold its place in competition with the long, dangerous navigation round half the circumference of the globe. Consequently it seemed well worth while to contemporary Englishmen in the days of the early Tudors, ignorant as they were of the vast significance of the discoveries of their time, to make strong efforts to capture a share of the traffic of the Levant. ”

“ The prosperity of England’s rising commerce was threatened, and with it the fulfilment of her destiny among the nations. Protection was essential to her merchants if they were to elbow their way to a foremost place amid the jostling crowd of Flemings, Easterlings, Bretons, Spaniards, and Italians who thronged the marts of Europe. The serious effects of the change were immediately evident in the falling-off of the number of ships engaged in the cloth export. Flemish buyers in London used Flemish bottoms in preference to English. ”

“ All the familiar weapons of modern protection—preferential duties on goods from Venetian dependencies, navigation laws to encourage Venetian shipping, retaliatory tariffs against rivals, and reciprocal arrangements with such as were disposed to be reasonable—were to be found in the armoury of Venice, and were applied with an unquestioning assurance as to their efficacy, only possible in an age when the doctrines of free trade were yet unborn. ”

“ It was obviously more economical to employ one well-armed and capacious vessel with a large crew than to send two or three smaller ones which would be liable to part company on a long trip, and would be much more open to peril from storms and pirates. The same considerations had caused the Venetians to build merchantmen of 1,000 tons burden, and they undoubtedly assisted in the development of naval architecture in England which was so remarkable between the accession of Henry VII and the defeat of the Armada. ”

“ The Hansa was now better off than it had been for many years, but the improvement was destined to be fleeting. The Merchant Adventurers did not accept the reversal of their good fortune without a struggle. They accumulated evidence of the malpractices of their enemies and clamoured their discontent with a vigour and pertinacity which showed that the Easterlings would never again enjoy an unchallenged supremacy in the North Sea trade. ”

“ HENRY VII AND HIS COMMERCIAL POLICY The reign of Henry VII marks the opening of the modern era in the history of the English nation, the period in which, from being an agricultural and military people, we have become transformed into a maritime and commercial community, with interests stretching far beyond the shores of our immediate neighbours on the continent of Europe. ”

“ The price of wool was a governing factor of that of cloth and, indirectly, of all other commodities. The result was that cloth was ‘falsified’ to a greater extent than ever before, a new Act to the contrary notwithstanding, and foreign competition began seriously to affect the prosperity of English industry. We read that trade with Flanders decayed, that much cloth was now made in other countries of Spanish wool, and that crowds of workmen were thrown out of employment. One remedy proposed was the holding of free marts in England on the lines of those in the Flemish and German cities. ”

“ The adventures of the reign of Henry VIII illustrate the truth that expansion must be national and spontaneous if it is to produce permanent results; the early attempts of the Cabots and their Bristol contemporaries had been allowed to die of neglect, and it was not until the revival of oceanic enterprise, first by William Hawkins and afterwards by the merchant companies who sent fleets to West Africa and the White Sea, that world-wide interests became a regular factor in English life and history. ”

“ No provocation can justify a man in betraying his country’s interests, and we cannot feel much commiseration for his melancholy end; he was a traitor receiving a traitor’s wages. Eden’s denunciations of Wyndham’s character as a commander are largely discounted by the fact that he was in command at all. He was a tried man, and his record was known; no company of merchants would have entrusted him with their lives and goods if he had been the irresponsible maniac whom Eden depicts. ”

“ Broadly speaking, they fall into two main divisions: the ‘subsidies’, otherwise known as tonnage and poundage; and the ‘customs’. The subsidies were a set of variable duties, granted to the king for life at the beginning of his reign, and consisting of tonnage, or import duty per tun of wine; poundage, a duty per pound sterling value on most other goods exported or imported; and wool duties, levied on exported wool. ”

“ SHIPS AND MEN. ENGLISH PORTS The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed great developments in English shipbuilding. In the former the feeble, untrustworthy vessels of the Middle Ages were improved and strengthened until they were sufficiently sound for regular voyages to all the waters of Europe, the Mediterranean included; and in the latter an ocean-going type was evolved, capable of keeping the sea for weeks and months at a stretch, and of making such voyages as those of Drake and Cavendish, which constituted an astonishing advance on anything that had previously been possible. ”

“ The Admiral and Council have power to reduce in rank inefficient officers and to set delinquents on shore in any English port. Morning and evening prayers are to be read daily, and no blasphemy, swearing, lewd talk, dicing, card-playing, or other devilish games to be permitted. The merchants are only to trade with the consent of the captains, councillors, and head merchants, or a committee of four of them. Petty merchants must show their accounts to the head merchants, and all goods must be carefully packed and not opened until the end of the voyage. ”

“ As long as they had been used in moderation it was not a matter of much importance, but of late they had been excessively used, to the great prejudice of the revenue and merchants of England, and could no longer be tolerated. Therefore Their Majesties’ proposal was that a diet should be held in London within one year, for the settlement of all questions in a manner useful to both parties. In the meanwhile the absolute prohibition of the export of white cloth should be removed, the liberty of exporting one white cloth for every two coloured ones being substituted. ”

“ The actual existence of that passage was not yet known, for Magellan’s Victoria did not return until 1522 with the news of the discovery of the Strait of Todos Sanctos and the circumnavigation of the globe. All that Henry knew was that the Spaniards were challenging the Portuguese monopoly of trade with eastern Asia; and he doubtless felt at liberty to do the same if he could find a north-west passage past the new-found lands which English enterprise had explored in his father’s reign. ”

“ Thus the first ‘expansionist’ writer in England, Richard Eden, sat at Sebastian’s feet and drank in his stories of ancient discovery, which in this way secured acceptance as the whole truth and nothing but the truth until the sceptical nineteenth century began to institute a more searching inquiry. ”

“ Southampton suffered great misfortunes owing to changing conditions. During the latter part of the fifteenth century the town enjoyed great prosperity as the sole English port to be visited by the Flanders galleys of Venice and the great carracks of Genoa, bringing valuable cargoes of eastern goods, and departing with their holds full of English wool. As time went on this traffic almost entirely ceased, and Southampton, unlike London, failed to benefit by the growth of the North Sea trade. ”

“ The only branch of trade excepted from the concession was the export of wool, on which the old duties were maintained. Here was free trade at a single stroke, or what practically amounted to it, since the duties paid by natives were very low. Heavy as the sacrifice was, it was justified by the occasion and by the result. Before the lapse of many weeks the international tension was relieved, and the country was able to breathe freely once more. The principal effect of the move was to buy off the hostility of Charles V, whose Flemish subjects were the chief gainers by it. ”

“ The general progress of discovery and the growth of English manufactures led to the project of finding a passage to Cathay by the north-east. Theoretically there were four ways of reaching from Europe the shores of eastern Asia, which were still regarded as the most desirable mercantile goal in the world. The most practicable route, via the Cape of Good Hope, had been discovered and monopolized by the Portuguese, and no ship of any other nationality had yet traversed it. ”

“ For many a year to come it was to be left to private men, with the fear of the gallows before them, to assert the right of Englishmen to sail all seas and do business in all lands, the prohibitions of popes and emperors notwithstanding. The reply of the merchants opens with words which might serve as the title-deed of a commercial empire.
‘First we say we be merchants who, by common usage of the world, do use traffique in all places of the world, as well Asia and Africa and Europa, and have never been restrained from resort to any places.... ”

“ On a general view it is evident that Henry VIII’s naval policy was justified by success. If it was his object to create a fleet sufficiently powerful to render England immune from invasion and to secure respect for her sea-borne commerce, it must be admitted that that 400object was gained. Although the Continental powers were very much more formidable than they had been at the opening of his reign, he was generally able to take the offensive and to fight on the enemy’s ground. Scotland, too, was rendered easier to deal with by the vulnerability of Edinburgh to a stroke from the sea ”

“ A still more probable testimony to the return of Cabot’s expedition, and to its having coasted extensively on the other side of the Atlantic, is furnished by the map of the Spanish pilot, Juan de la Cosa, drawn up in the year 1500. It is a map of the world as known at the time, and includes a part of the east coast of North America, with flags marking the places visited by the English. The flags are intended to represent the English standard, and some of the names, although translated into Spanish, are such as English explorers might have given; others are unintelligible. ”