forbidden to export English goods into foreign countries, that is to
say, countries other than Germany proper. Above all, an attempt was made
to prevent them from carrying English cloth into the Low Countries. This
traffic the Merchant Adventurers, an association formed partly upon the
pattern of the Hansa, wished to reserve to themselves alone.
The Hanseatics further revolted against the old-established custom that
made them all responsible for infraction of privilege, and punished them
for the wrong done by one or several of their cities against some
individual Englishman.
On their side the English insisted with much bitterness that the German
towns refused to render them justice within their dominions; that they
had even laid violent hands upon such of their compatriots as were
occupied in fishing in Ireland; and that they had, in the days of
Christian II., harassed their navigation in the Baltic.
During the hostilities between Francis I. and Henry VIII. the mutual
recriminations diminished. The German Empire supported the English king,
and the League had one more opportunity of playing the old game that had
so often turned to its advantage. Solicited by both parties to lend its
support, it played off one against the other; and insisting upon the
neutrality of its members, traded freely and advantageously with both
combatants.
It is quite certain that, notwithstanding some vexations and disputes,
King Henry VIII. of England remained until his death the staunch friend
of the Hansa, as well as of the Low German towns that formed part of the
Smalkaldic League.
The reign of his young son and successor was to witness the first
serious shock to the Hansa's power. This boy, who ascended the throne at
the early age of ten years, confirmed all the Hanseatic privileges on
his accession. Destined to give some rude blows to the confederation, he
conformed in the first years of his reign to the ways of his ancestors.
One incident is worth mentioning in order to illustrate the immense
influence which the Hansa had gained in England. It was the rule,
contracted years ago, that the name of the Hansa should figure in all
treaties between England and France.
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS GRESHAM.]
But after Edward had reigned a few years he lent willing ear to the
requests of the Merchant Adventurers, all the more readily that their
petitions were supported by Sir Thomas Gresham, the honoured founder of
the London Exchange. This man made clear to the young king and his
guardian, the Duke of Northumberland, that unless the Steelyard were
destroyed, the price of exchange could not rise, because the fiscal
privileges accorded to the Hansa weighed too heavily upon the English.
Besides this, the men of the Steelyard were subjects of the emperor,
whom the young Protestant king hated as a persecutor of his fellows in
the purer faith.
Still the Hansa suspected no real danger from King Edward, and the less
so, as they had completely acceded to his desire that they should
abstain from all trade with Scotland. In April, 1551, a plot laid
against the hated and envied strangers by the London burghers was
discovered. In the course of the inquiry into the plot, it was needful
to examine the Hansa's claims. Confiding in the goodwill of the king's
councillors, the "New Hansa," as Sir Thomas Gresham called the Merchant
Adventurers, poured forth a long catalogue of grievances against the
League. It was stated that English merchants had been ill-treated in
various Hansa cities, notably in Danzig and Stralsund; that the commerce
of the English was hindered in all possible ways; and that serious loss
was incurred by the royal treasury from the circumstance, suspected to
be true, that the Hansa permitted persons foreign to their association
to enjoy with them the benefit of their privileges.
In the list of complaints retailed before the king by the discontented
burghers and merchants of London, and by the Merchant Adventurers who
found themselves less favoured than these foreigners, an attempt was
evident on the part of the English to place on one footing and to
consider as equally prohibited, the fraudulent importation by the
Germans of merchandise belonging to non-Hanseatics, and the importation
by them of merchandise which belonged to them, but was not produced in
their territory.
The fact was urged that, since the Hansa paid only the usual custom
dues, even for the foreign products they imported, and for their
exportation of English goods to lands outside the rule of the Hanseatic
League, they were thus able to paralyse with the greatest facility all
English competition in these different lands.
Certainly nothing better justifies the murmurs of the islanders against
the foreigners than a comparison of their various commercial
transactions. From these it appears that the English themselves, in
1551, exported 1,100 pieces of native cloth as compared with 44,000
pieces exported by the Hansa League in the same year.
It is true that all these complaints were not new. But this time they
fell upon more fruitful soil. The government were perhaps all the more
ready to give an attentive ear, as of late the national commerce had
taken a very vigorous start, so that the royal treasury might hope for
considerable receipts, even if the Crown should lose the duties paid to
it by the members of the League.
In consequence the representative members of the Steelyard were cited
before the Privy Council, which after a very brief examination of the
claims brought forward by the Hansa, decided hastily (February 23, 1552)
"that the Hansa, an illegal body, the names and origin of whose members
were unknown, had by importation and adulteration of foreign goods
forfeited the privileges accorded them by Edward VI."
The following day, also in Privy Council, the suppression of all the old
Hanseatic privileges was decreed and the League placed on an equality
with all other foreigners, none of whom had special favours granted
them. This decision seemed to promise that at last the English would
gain pre-eminence over their redoubtable rivals.
Meantime, the Hanseatic Diet, informed of this step on the part of the
English Government, sent over an ambassador to treat with the king and
Council. The result of his efforts was that, in July of the same year,
the Hansa's privileges were re-established provisionally "as far as was
reconcilable with the justice, fairness, and honour of the king"--so ran
the clause.
Of all the negotiations a detailed and interesting account has been
preserved to posterity in the Diary of the young King Edward, one of the
most interesting documents for the knowledge of his short reign.
The concession granted to them made the members of the Steelyard think,
and very rightly, that it would be well for them to put their own house
in order, and of their own accord to initiate various reforms in their
body, reforms much needed, for complaints against them had been loud
and long. They secretly hoped to be in this wise restored to their
former favoured position.
The disorders, however, in the body of the Steelyard were not, on the
whole, those from which other foreign factories suffered. The taxes and
other enforced contributions, both from residents and from the towns
trading with England, were punctually paid, and the finances of the
establishment were flourishing. The complaints, moreover, addressed to
the Diet, that the members of the Steelyard loved luxury, wine, women,
and gambling too well, and that they rebelled against their
semi-monastic life, were not more frequent from England than elsewhere.
The difficulties were chiefly that trade regulations were not faithfully
observed; that rules of the strictest nature, on which largely depended
the Hansa's success, were circumvented and disregarded. For instance, no
man who had not attained his majority was by statute allowed to become a
member of the League and trade on his own account; nor was one who had
not learnt English for at least six months. This latter precaution was
the more requisite, as past experience had taught that, by ignorance of
the native language, these men were apt to compromise the interests of
the factory. Then there were other abuses that led to grave results,
such as trading illicitly with natives and then absconding with their
debts unpaid; the whole factory in such cases becoming responsible for
the debts.
In 1553, therefore, the members of the Steelyard drew up a series of new
statutes which they proposed to lay before the King of England for
approval. If these minutes are well considered it will be seen that
whatever else was dead or moribund, Hanseatic astuteness was not. The
new laws, it is true, tended to abolish the abuses that had crept into
the use of their privileges, but they did not make the least sacrifice
of the liberties that the Hansa had acquired in the course of years.
King Edward, however, seemed little inclined to consider these statutes,
or to revoke permanently his somewhat arbitrary decision--a decision
undoubtedly just towards his subjects. Then happily for the Hanseatic
League, though not for his country, he died in this same year, and the
crown passed to his sister, the fanatical persecutor of Protestants,
Bloody Queen Mary, as the popular mouth has named her.
The new sovereign speedily made it evident that she meant in all
respects to pursue a different policy from that of her predecessor. The
first to fall was the Duke of Northumberland, the pronounced enemy of
the Hansa. Immediately after, the queen showed by various signs that she
was graciously disposed towards these strangers, who had boldly greeted
her proclamation as queen against her rival, Lady Jane Grey, by draughts
of Rhenish wine liberally bestowed upon the populace at the gates of her
capital. On the occasion of her triumphal entry into London they were
foremost in welcoming her with pomp and splendour, as we have already
mentioned in a former chapter.
Scarcely was the queen firmly seated on her throne, than the Syndic
General of the Hansa, Dr. Sudermann, waited upon her, attended by
councillors from some of the chief Hansa cities. The result of their
representations was that one of the first acts of the new queen's reign
was to annul the royal statute of Edward VI. that so grievously
threatened the League. This almost unexpected good result was, it is
whispered, not due merely to Queen Mary's reactionary policy, but also
to the corrupting influence of Hanseatic gold, judiciously distributed.
Our League thus recovered its entire liberties and rights in the matter
of export and import, notwithstanding the opposition of Parliament, of
the Lord Mayor of London, and of the citizens. It is therefore not
astonishing that they were willing to show themselves liberal on the
occasion of King Philip's entry as husband of the English queen; and
that in order to maintain the favour of this couple, various cities,
especially Luebeck, showed themselves far from friendly to Protestant
refugees who sought protection in their precincts.
A valuable memorandum, drawn up by the Syndic Sudermann and happily
preserved to our times, gives a vivid picture of what was implied by the
Hanseatic privileges in England.
Taking merely into account one article of their commerce, English cloth,
it appears from this report that from the month of January to the month
of November, 1554, the Hansa had exported from England 36,000 pieces of
cloth, as against 1,100 exported by the English themselves, a third dyed
and two-thirds in the rough; that they only paid for the right of exit
threepence each piece, while other foreigners paid five shillings and
ninepence; that they could use their own servants for packing and
expediting merchandise, and so were relieved of various custom dues;
that had they not possessed these privileges they would have had to buy
this cloth on the Antwerp market, paying about L1 sterling more for the
same; that they further gained L1 on each undyed piece, which they alone
were allowed to export in this state, and which they resold after having
had it dyed. If it be further considered that in reality they paid less
than threepence a piece in the pound as custom duties, because the price
of goods, fixed in ancient statutes, had gone up, while the Hansa still
paid at the old figure; if, in short, this and various other matters be
taken into account, it is no wonder that Syndic Sudermann could prove
that on English cloth alone the Hansa earned, above that made by other
foreigners who traded in this branch, a sum of about L61,000 sterling.
Small wonder, therefore, that the trade was as much coveted as it was
prosperous, and that the mayor and municipal council of London did not
cease from laying their complaints before the queen. They literally
pestered her with petitions and demands on this subject.
For some months the Hansa succeeded in averting the storm from their
heads, but finally the leading members of the Steelyard found themselves
suddenly cited to appear before the Queen's Privy Council, and had to
listen to a long catalogue of grievances drawn up by their accusers.
The sum total of these grievances was, that the Hansa did not
contribute sufficiently to the resources of the English Crown; that it
was prejudicial to the English navy, because it refused to employ any
vessels but its own; that it harmed the very quality of English cloth,
for the makers, seeing the Hansa would be sure to buy, presented them
often with inferior qualities. An amusing complaint is the following:
Whereas, say the memorialists, the Hanseatics are all bachelors, they
greatly injure English trade at Antwerp, because the increased leisure
this state gives them, allows of their trading more extensively and
actively. Further, they once more brought forward the time-honoured
objection that the Hansa would permit of no reciprocity, and while
nominally allowing the English to settle in their towns, crippled their
trade by heavy taxation and vexatious regulations.
That these assertions were not without foundation, not even the Hansa
could deny. They could but point to ancient charters to justify them in
a measure. The result of this last formal complaint was, however, that
the Privy Council decided that henceforth the Hansa should abstain from
importing English cloth into the Netherlands, and that the quantity of
undyed goods they might export be reduced by two-thirds. They further
added that any infraction of these orders would result in entire
suppression of all privileges.
The Hansa, who did not easily own themselves beaten, and who desired at
all costs to hinder their rivals from supplanting them, sent various
embassies in the course of the next few years to the Court of England.
They also once more attempted the agency of bribery and corruption by
means of Hansa gold, to attain their ends. In vain. Embassies,
seductions, led to no result; not even a letter which King Philip of
Spain was induced to indite to his wife, the Queen of England, on their
behalf, could modify by one iota the decision taken by the Privy
Council.
Despairing of a good result from these measures, the League resolved to
have recourse to its ancient mode of exerting pressure upon obstinate
peoples, by threatening to break off all intercourse with them. The
measure was, however, likely to have brought destruction to them in
England; that it did not was due to the circumstance that the towns were
no longer, as in past days, blindly obedient to the orders issued by the
Hanseatic Diet. The Hansa, issuing such an order, forgot that they were
no longer the exclusive masters of the North and East.
Such was the state of things when Queen Mary died, and Elizabeth, the
Virgin Queen, took into her firm and able hands the reins of the English
government (1558). It is true that she gave a gracious reception to the
Hanseatic embassy that waited on her in May, 1560; but between a
gracious reception and a confirmation of the ancient privileges of the
League the Hansa were to learn that there lay an abyss she would never
bridge over.
That the Hansa's power was effectually broken in England ultimately was
due to that queen and to her wise statesman, Lord Burleigh.
It was soon felt by the nation at large that, with the advent to power
of Elizabeth, a new spirit was infused into English life and enterprise.
After a hundred years of weakness, England awoke to renewed life and
vigour, and with vigour awoke ambition.
The Merchant Adventurers, encouraged by Gresham, put forward their
desires; and they, too, asked that the Hansa should be kept down. These
desires were listened to by the patriotic sovereign. She reconfirmed all
the new tariffs with which the Hansa had been charged by Edward VI., and
she further made various demands which the Hansa were most unwilling to
concede; for they implied a strict investigation of the affairs of their
factory--an investigation that they had no wish to provoke.
In the following years an active correspondence took place between the
English queen and the Hansa cities, which made it most emphatically
manifest to the latter that they must renounce all their antiquated
pretensions; but that, on the other hand, the English queen was willing
to place them in the category of the most-favoured nation clause, so
that they would still pay less than other foreigners.
The Steelyard authorities, being on the spot and better able, therefore,
to estimate the bearings and value of Elizabeth's letters and threats,
strongly advised the Hansa towns to conform to the queen's concessions
and demands. They foresaw that worse things were in store were this not
done. But the League--to whom the smallest and most equitable sacrifice
always seemed an enormity--resolved, before yielding, to try as a last
resource what could be effected by endeavouring to obtain the
intervention of the emperor.
It is strange that, after the lapse of so many years, experience should
not have taught the Hanseatics that from the German emperor no effective
help could be obtained. In this case, as in many previous ones, the
reigning sovereign contented himself by writing a letter of
remonstrance--a letter so worded that it was easily manifest to the
recipient that words would not be followed by deeds. Both the Hansa and
the emperor involuntarily revealed that, even after the ancient special
privileges were withdrawn, the League would still enjoy great favour in
England.
The emperor's letter was presented to Elizabeth by the aldermen and
councillors of the Steelyard. The queen's privy councillors, and
especially the trusty William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, in reply, made it
very clear to the deputation that they had nothing to hope for beyond
the last concessions offered.
Burleigh was the special object of the Hansa's hate. This arose,
perhaps, from the fact that he had, according to a contemporary
reporter, insulted one of their ambassadors by accosting him "with
almost indecent rough speech." But Burleigh's speech can scarcely
deserve these epithets, if the complaints and remarks are founded on his
saying, that it was a bad shepherd who desired to pasture the cattle of
strangers more richly than his own flocks; nor could they complain that
they were excluded, so long as they might trade as freely as the
English, and more freely than the French, Flemings, Dutch, Scotch, and
other nations.
The Hansa, blind, unwise, stuck to its old policy, and like Shylock
demanded the very letter of its ancient bond. It is true that Elizabeth
insisted, on her side, that her subjects should be favoured in the Hansa
towns; that this reciprocity should be granted was already a clause in
the Treaty of Utrecht, concluded, it will be remembered, in 1474, but it
had never been carried into effect.
It must be admitted that, all things considered, Queen Elizabeth treated
the Hanseatics with a good deal of consideration and long-suffering, and
demanded from them no more than what she had a right to demand. When
they refused the offer to be placed on an equal footing with the English
the queen issued an order that their export of English cloth should in
future not exceed five thousand pieces. Cologne tried to retaliate by
putting on an import tax, but it was an isolated measure, and had no
effect.
In a word, the victory remained in the end with the English Government,
on the side of which fought, not only its own vigorous organization, but
also the disunion among the Hansa towns, which grew more serious daily,
and the grave disorders that existed in the Steelyard itself.
For some time past serious complaints had been heard against the
alderman of the factory, Peter Eiffler, a man who filled this high post
for several consecutive years. He was accused among other things, of
having tampered with the funds of the establishment, of having
administered the factory without the help, or advice of the council; and
of having divided unfairly among the Hanseatic merchants, the five
thousand pieces of cloth permitted to them for export. Further, he was
reproached for having in 1563 made a journey, leaving the Steelyard and
the care of the treasury to young men incapable of so high a trust, who
had done great damage to the factory.
After all these accusations had been duly sifted, this unfaithful
servant of the Hansa was of course deposed from his post of trust, but
his dismissal brought no fresh order into the shattered condition of
things. As is frequently the case in the face of a public calamity,
public spirit was extinct. Each individual thought only of himself, and
of what he could rescue from the impending general ruin. On the one
hand, there was the selfishness of the individual towns; on the other,
the selfishness of the foreign factories. The London Steelyard, seeing
that the fabric of the League was tottering, tried to save its
individual existence out of the general wreck. It thought to acquire an
independent life, and act and trade on its own account. Hence when the
League knocked at the doors of its strong-room, to obtain the funds that
should prolong or, as they hoped, even dispel the death agonies of the
other foreign factories, whether by bribing nobles and kings, or by
sending embassies to foreign courts, the Steelyard was careful not to
listen to these demands, thinking of the future, when it might need all
funds for itself. It was thus that in 1567, the London factory, in reply
to a reprimand sent it by Syndic Sudermann for delaying to pay a sum of
over one thousand florins into the public fund, made known to the town
of Luebeck that this delay must not be imputed to it as a fault, that the
times were not favourable to saving, that the annual expenses of the
Steelyard amounted to eight hundred pounds sterling, and that other sums
no less high had to be expended by it, in maintaining the factories at
Lynn and Boston. The memorandum went on to explain that, if the English
establishments were not kept in good repair, they would become forfeit
to the English Crown. Then, again, the Hansa taxes had grown so heavy
that no one could bear them. If the Diet wished, the Steelyard would be
quite ready annually to send its accounts to Luebeck for revision, in
accordance with the ancient usage, which however did not seem very
firmly established; but, on the other hand, they would prefer not to act
thus, since they feared lest their account-books should fall into the
hands of their enemies, who by inspecting them, would gain an
undesirable insight into Hanseatic commerce, and might thus perchance
despoil them of their last privileges. The memorandum winds up by
saying, that the Steelyard would feel greatly obliged if the League
would refrain in future from making demands for pecuniary help in times
of public difficulty.
If this was not the language of insubordination, it is difficult to say
what else would be. Whither had vanished the blind obedience which the
League had ever exacted, and till now obtained from all its members, and
which was the source of its greatness and strength?