advantage to them hereafter to be both of one Trade; because, when they are out of their time, they may join Stocks together; so that I hope they are as well placed as any two Youths in London; but you must not use to send them such large Tokens in Money, for that may corrupt them. When I went to bind my brother Ned Apprentice in Drapers-Hall, casting my eyes upon the Chimney-piece of the great Room, I spied a Picture of an ancient Gentlemen, and underneath Thomas Howell; I asked the Clerk about him, and he told me that he was a Spanish Merchant in Henry VIII.'s time, and coming home rich, and dying a Batchelor, he gave that Hall to the Company of Drapers, with other things, so that he is accounted one of the chiefest Benefactors. I told the Clerk, that one of the Sons of Thomas Howell came now thither to be bound; he answered, that if he be a right Howell, he may have, when he is free, three hundred Pounds to help set up, and pay no interest for five years. It may be hereafter we will make use of this. He told me also, that any Maid that can prove her Father to be a true Howell may come and demand Fifty pounds towards her portion, of the said Hall."

CHAPTER VI

TRADE

It was called
Dutch trade

THE chapter on trade under the Stuarts may be introduced by certain extracts from a paper written by Sir Walter Raleigh early in the seventeenth century. "Observations on Trade and Commerce," in which he compares the and Dutch merchants with our own, very much to our disadvantage. The following, he says, are the seven points in which the Dutch surpass us :—

"1. The Merchant Staplers which maketh all Things in abundance, by reason of their Store-houses continually replenished with all kinds of Commodities.

2. The Liberty of free Traffick for Strangers to buy and sell in Holland, and other Countries and States, as if they were free-born, maketh great intercourse.

3. The small Duties levied upon Merchants, draws all Nations to trade with them.

4. Their fashioned ships continually freighted before ours, by reason of their few Mariners and great Bulk, serving the Merchant cheap.

5. Their forwardness to further all manner of Trading.

6. Their wonderful employment of their Busses for Fishing, and the great Returns they make.

7. Their giving free Custom inwards and outwards, for any new-erected Trade, by Means whereof they have gotten already almost the sole Trade into their hands."

"Thus," he goes on, “as regards the storing of merchandize, Amsterdam is never without a supply of 700,000 quarters of corn, which they keep always ready besides what they sell; and the like with other commodities, so that if a Dearth of Fish, wine, grain, or anything else begins in the country, forthwith the Dutch are ready with fifty or a hundred ships dispersing themselves at every 'Port-Town' in England, trading away their cargoes and carrying off English gold. Moreover, the Dutch have in their hands the greater part of the carrying trade of France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the East Indies, and the West Indies. Yet London is a much more convenient port for a store-house and for the carrying trade if our merchants would but bend their course for it."

As for small duties in foreign countries compared with the excessive customs in ours. James, it will be remembered, relied on his Customs duties, which were heavy, thereby keeping off foreign trade. In Holland the Customs duties were so much. lighter that a ship which would pay £900 in the port of London could be cleared at Amsterdam for £50. Raleigh points out that what is lost by lowering the duties is more than made up by the increase of trade when the duties are low. He advocates Free Trade, observe, long before that innovation was thought of.

By the "fashion" of the ships he means the Dutch merchant vessels called " Boyers, Hoy-barks, and Hoys," constructed to contain a great bulk of merchandise and to sail with a small crew. Thus an English ship of 200 tons required crew of thirty hands, while a ship of the same tonnage built in Holland. wanted no more than nine or ten mariners.

Then, again, as to their "forwardness" in trading. In one year and a half the merchants of Holland, Hamburg, and Emden carried off from Southampton, Exeter,

and Bristol alone near £200,000 in gold. And perhaps £2,000,000, taking the whole of the kingdom into account. The Dutch alone sent 500 or 600 ships every

year to England, while we sent but thirty to Holland.

A warning and an example is presented by the fallen and decayed condition of Genoa. Formerly this city was the most prosperous of all trading cities. All nations traded there; but in an evil moment Genoa declared a Customs duty of 10 per cent, which caused the whole of her trade to vanish. Why, again, Raleigh asks, do we not secure for ourselves the magnificent fisheries which lie off our shores?

In

four towns within the Sound are sold every year between 30,000 and 40,000 casts of herrings, representing £620,000. In Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc., are sold our herrings, caught on our shores, to the amount of £170,000. This fishery represents over a million sterling in addition to all this. They are herrings caught off our shores, and yet we have no share in this great trade.

The Dutch employ a thousand ships in carrying salt to the East Kingdoms; we

none. They have 600 ships in the timber trade; we none; they send into the East Kingdoms 3000 ships every year; we 100 only. They carry goods from the East Kingdoms to France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy in 2000 ships; we have none in that trade. They trade to all the ports of France; we to five or six only. They trade with every one of our ports-with 600 ships; we with three only of these ports, and but forty ships.

We neglect to take advantage of what we have. For instance, we send to Holland our cloth undressed; we let them take, for purposes of trade, our iron, our coal, our copper, lead, tin, alum, copperas, and other things on which we might

employ thousands of people, and this country, which produces nothing, is enriched by carrying commodities about the world.

The arguments of Raleigh in favour of taking up the fisheries appear elementary.

He thus sums up the advantages:

"1. For taking God's blessing out of the Sea to enrich the Realm, which otherwise we lose.

5. For a continual Nursery for breeding and increasing our Mariners.

6. For making employment of all Sorts of People, as blind, lame, and others, by Sea and Land, from ten or twelve years and upwards.

7. For inriching your Majesty's Coffers, by Merchandises returned from other Countries for Fish and Herrings.

8. For the increase and enabling of Merchants, which now droop and daily decay."

The trade of London during the first half of the seventeenth century decayed. The decay was due partly to the monopoly of the privileged companies, which stifled or discouraged enterprise; partly to the civil wars; partly to the Customs duties; and partly, it would seem, to a falling off in the vigour and enterprise which had marked the Elizabethan period. In trade, as in everything, there are times of reaction and of torpor. Meantime, in spite of everything, foreign trade increased. But Raleigh's comparison between the trade of Holland and that of London shows how small our foreign trade was, in comparison with the vast bulk carried on by the Dutch.

After Sir Walter Raleigh's "observations" let me quote Howell on the profession or calling of the merchant :

"For my part I do not know any profession of Life (especially in an Island) more to be cherished and countenanced with honourable employments than the Merchant-Adventurer (I do not mean only the staplers of Hamburgh and Rotterdam); for if valiant and dangerous actions do enoble a Man, and make him merit, surely the Merchant-Adventurer deserves more Honour than any; for he is to encounter not only with Men of all Tempers and Humours (as a French Counsellor hath it), but he contests and tugs oft-time with all the Elements; nor do I see how some of our Country Squires, who sell Calves and Runts, and their Wives perhaps Cheese and Apples, should be held more genteel than the noble Merchant-Adventurer who sells Silks and Satins, Tissues and Cloths of Gold, Diamonds and Pearl, with Silver and Gold."

worms.

In the year 1606 James made an attempt to introduce the breeding of silkHe sent mulberry-trees into the country with instructions for the feeding of the worms. There was a certain amount of English-grown silk manufactured, as is shown by an entry in Thoresby's Diary. "Saw at Mr. Gale's a sample of the satin lately made at Chelsea of English silkworms, for the Princess of Wales, which was very rich and beautiful." The experiment The experiment proved unsuccessful, yet it caused the immigration of a great number of silk throwsters, weavers, and dyers, who settled here and entered upon the silk trade in London. The raw silk was brought from India and China by the East India Company.

A table of imports from India in 1620 gives the most astonishing difference