and wholesome laws,-by which alone, be ob- | kept it so long alive, is hardly so considerable a served, sedition and rebellion were to be truly put down, and not by the blood shed in the field or by the marshal's sword, the eloquent chancellor went on ;-" And because it is the king's desire that this peace, wherein he hopeth to govern and maintain you, do not bear only unto you leaves for you to sit under the shade of them in safety, but also should bear you fruit of riches, wealth, and plenty, therefore his grace prays you to take into consideration matter of trade, as also the manufactures of the kingdom, and to repress the bastard and barren employment of moneys to usury and unlawful exchanges, that they may be, as their natural use is, turned upon commerce and lawful and royal trading." That is to say, commerce was to be promoted by the destruction of credit; for a chief branch of commercial credit is the lending and borrowing of money on interest, which is what is here called usury. The next of the cardinal's recommendations also partook of the twilight views of the time, a twilight, however, which the space of three centuries and a half that has since elapsed has not wholly dissipated. After calling upon them. to take measures that the "people be set on work in arts and handicrafts, that the realm may subsist more of itself; that idleness be avoided, and the draining out of our treasure for foreign manufactures stopped;" he continued :-" But you are not to rest here only, but to provide further, that whatsoever merchandise shall be brought in from beyond the seas may be employed upon the commodities of this land, whereby the kingdom's stock of treasure may be sure to be kept from being diminished by any overtrading of the foreigner." So that the old system of encouraging foreign trade by shutting out foreign merchants and foreign commodities was still the only plan that was thought of, and the sole end and design of all commercial intercourse with other nations was held to be, to take produce and manufactures out of the country, and to bring gold into it.

The conclusion of the chancellor's oration is worth quoting for its curious argument, intended to prove how the country would enrich itself by making the king as rich as possible. "And,

lastly," said Morton, "because the king is well
assured that you would not have him poor that
wishes you rich, he doubteth not but that you will
have care
as well to maintain his revenues of
customs and all other natures, as also to supply
him with your loving aids, if the case shall so
require. The rather for that you know the king is
a good husband, and but a steward, in effect,
for the public; and that what comes from you is
but as moisture drawn from the earth, which
gathers into a cloud, and falls back upon the
earth again." All this, too, however (only sub-
stituting the government for the king, who in that
age was the whole government), is still the faith of
many people in our own day, when the spark of
truth that lies in the heart of the error, and has

Bacon's Henry VII.

particle as it was in the circumstances in which
Cardinal Morton propounded his ingenious me-
taphor. The economical evil of a large diversion
of the public wealth into the hands of the govern-
ment is not that the money so paid over is absorbed
or lost to the public, as if it were buried in the
ground or thrown into the sea; in so far at least
as it is expended in the country, which nearly all
of it usually is, it does undoubtedly descend again
to the sources from which it was drawn, as the
moisture that rises from the earth in vapour falls
back upon it in showers. The objection is, not
that any part of it is absolutely lost to the country,
but that, as expended by the government, it is not
expended so advantageously for the interests of
industry and production as it would have been if
it had been left in the pockets of the people.
There is nothing lost; but there is not so much
gained in the one case as there would have been
in the other. The reproduction is less; the ac-
cumulation of the capital of the community does
not go on so fast. However, there may perhaps be
a state of circumstances in which it is for the
general advantage that a portion of the public
wealth should be impelled by force in a certain
direction, for the sake of forming and maintaining
somewhere a larger reservoir of capital than would
otherwise anywhere exist: the general rule may
be that capital should be allowed to diffuse itself
freely, because in that way the increase will, upon
the whole, be the largest; but there may be an
exception for the case of an early society, which
would labour under the disadvantage of having no
capital but what was distributed in driblets unless
some system of artificial drainage were put in
action to collect a number of the puny rivulets into
one efficient stream. Even the rapacity of a king
or a government, whatever counterbalancing evils
it
may be attended with, may in some sort answer
this purpose; and Cardinal Morton's metaphoric
logic, therefore, though not the whole truth, in
regard to Henry VII. with his riches being but a
cloud made for the refreshment of his people, was
not perhaps without a smack of reason as well as
of poetry.

Agreeably to the spirit of one of the chancellor's commercial principles, the parliament now passed an act against usury (3 Henry VII. c. 6), that is, against all lending of money on interest, and took much pains to provide against the various ways in which attempts were likely to be made to evade the prohibition. The punishment for offenders was the annulment of the usurious bargain, and a fine of a hundred pounds-" reserving to the church," it was added, "this punishment notwithstanding, the correction of their souls according to the laws of the same." The objection to usury was in its origin purely a religious feeling, derived from the general antipathy to the Jews, the great money-dealers of the middle ages.

In another of the acts of the parliament of 1487-8, passed for annulling an ordinance of the

terms.

lord mayor and aldermen of London, prohibiting | mention is made of other merchandise in general any of the citizens from resorting with their goods to any fair or market out of the city, there occurs incidentally an enumeration of the principal places where fairs were then held throughout the country, and also of the articles sold at them. The London ordinances, if allowed to stand good, the Commons represent to his majesty," shall be to the utter destruction of all other fairs and markets within this your realm, which God defend [forbid]; for there be many fairs for the common weal of your said liege people, as at Salisbury, Bristow, Oxenforth, Cambridge, Nottingham, Ely, Coventry, and at many other places, where lords spiritual and temporal, abbots, priors, knights, squires, gentlemen, and your said commons of every country, hath their common resort to buy and purvey many things that be good and profitable, as ornaments of holy church, chalices, books, vestments, and other ornaments for holy church aforesaid, and also for household, as victual for the time of Lent, and other stuff, as linen cloth, woollen cloth, brass, pewter, bedding, osmund, iron, flax, and wax, and many other necessary things, the which might not be forborne among your liege people." At this time most purchases, except of articles of daily consumption, were probably made at these markets periodically held in the great towns. attests the commercial pre-eminence which London had now acquired, the country markets, it appears, being principally dependent for their supplies upon the resort to them of the dealers from the capital.

The act

Of several commercial treaties made with foreign countries in the reign of Henry VII., we may notice one that was concluded with Denmark in 1490, being an extension of one that had been entered into the preceding year. Among other regulations it was provided by this compact, that the English should freely enjoy for ever the property of all the lands and tenements they possessed at Bergen in Norway, Lunden and Landscrone in Schonen, Dragor in Zealand, and Loysa in Sweden. At all these places, therefore, there were English residents and commercial establishments. The English settlers in each of these towns, and wherever else there might be any, were to have full liberty according to custom to erect themselves into societies, and to elect one of their number as governor or alderman to administer justice among them according to laws agreed upon among themselves, the Danish government engaging to support his authority.* On the other hand, there is no mention of any privileges to be enjoyed by subjects of Denmark resident in England, from which we may conclude that there were no Danes settled here. It also appears that all the trade between the two countries was carried on in English vessels. The only commodities specified in the treaty are woollen cloths brought from England, and fish purchased in Denmark, though

On the subject of these governors of English merchants resident in foreign parts, see ante, p. 171.

They

Another important treaty of the same kind was made the same year with the republic of Florence, which also contains some things deserving of notice. In 1485 Richard III. had, on the application of some English merchants who proposed engaging in the trade to Pisa, appointed a Florentine merchant to be governor of his subjects who might become resident in that city, or what we should now call English consul there; and from that date in all probability is to be counted the commencement of the trade to Florence in English vessels. From the present treaty it appears that such a trade was now fairly established; and the English settled at Pisa are also spoken of in such terms as should seem to show that they already formed a considerable community. were to have a right to hire or otherwise procure houses for their residence, and to form themselves into a corporate body, with a governor and other officers according to their own regulations; and were not only to enjoy all the privileges enjoyed by the citizens of Pisa or of Florence, but were even to be exempted from municipal taxation in all parts of the state except in Florence. these advantages, it is true, they were to pay a good price; for it was stipulated by this treatywhich was to last for six years-both that the English should every year bring as much wool to Florence as had on an average been used to be brought, and that no wool should be allowed to be exported by foreigners from any part of the English dominions, except six hundred sacks annually by the Venetians. The treaty, therefore, secured to the Florentines as much English wool as they required, and of course at no higher prices than they had been accustomed to pay, unless their own demand should become an increasing onefor with neither a rise in the demand, nor a falling off in the supply, there could be no rise in the price; and it also tended to reduce the price of wool in the English market by checking the purchase of it by all other foreigners. This latter

For

regulation, however, was also of the nature of a monopoly granted to the English shipownerthough at the expense of his fellow-countryman the sheep-owner.

The affair of Perkin Warbeck, and the encouragement given to that adventurer by the DuchessDowager of Burgundy, had the effect of interrupting for some years of this reign the most important branch of the foreign commerce of England

-the trade with the Netherlands. Henry, first, in 1493, banished all the Flemings out of England, and ordered all intercourse between the two countries to cease; on which the Archduke Philip, the sovereign of the Netherlands, expelled in like manner all the English subjects resident in his dominions. This state of things continued for nearly three years, when the interruption of trade

began," says Bacon, 66 to pinch the merchants of both nations very sore, which moved them by all

manner he deemed most for his individual advantage," without exaction, fine, imposition, or contribution to be had or taken of them, or any of them, to, for, or by any English person or persons ;" and in like manner they had till now been used to have free passage and resort "to the coasts of Flanders, Holland, Zealand, Brabant, and other places thereto nigh adjoining, under the obeisance of the Archduke of Burgoyne (or Burgundy), in which places the universal marts be commonly kept and holden four times in the year, to which marts all Englishmen and divers other nations in time past have used to resort, there to sell and utter the commodities of their countries, and freely to buy again such things as seemed them most necessary and expedient for their profit and the weal of the country and parts that they be come from.” Now, however, "the fellowship of the mercers and other merchants and adventurers dwelling and being free within the city of London," had made an ordinance and constitution that no Englishman

means they could devise to affect and dispose their sovereigns respectively to open the intercourse again. Wherein time favoured them; for the archduke and his council began to see that Perkin would prove but a runagate and a citizen of the world, and that it was the part of children to fall out about babies. And the king, on his part, after the attempts upon Kent and Northumberland, began to have the business of Perkin in less estimation; so as he did not put it to account in any consultation of state. But that that moved him❘ most was, that, being a king that loved wealth and treasure, he could not endure to have trade sick, nor any obstruction to continue in the gatevein which disperseth that blood." At last, commissioners from both sides met at London, and soon arranged a treaty for the renewal of the trade. "After the intercourse thus restored," adds the historian," the English merchants came again to their mansion at Antwerp, where they were received with procession and great joy." All the while that the stoppage lasted, the merchant-ad-resorting to the said marts should either buy or venturers, he says, "being a strong company at that time, and well under-set with rich men, did hold out bravely; taking off the commodities of the kingdom, though they lay dead upon their hands for want of vent." This they must have done out of a patriotic zeal in the support of the government, or perhaps they may have been in some measure forced by the urgent excitements of the king to incur the loss they did. The treaty made upon this occasion with the Flemings was distinguished by the name of the "Intercursus Magnus," or great treaty.

The merchant-adventurers here spoken of by Bacon appear to have been the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, an association which can be traced back nearly to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and which a few years after this time (in 1505) was incorporated by royal charter under the title of The Merchant Adventurers of England. Presuming perhaps upon the aid they had afforded to the crown on this occasion, these London merchants appear to have now made an attempt to take possession of the whole foreign trade of the country, by asserting a right to prevent any private adventurers from resorting to a foreign market without their license. This gave occasion to the passing of an act of parliament in 1497 (the 12th Henry VII. c. 6), which affords a general view of the foreign commerce of England at that date, as stated in the petition, which the preamble recites, of the merchant-adventurers inhabiting and dwelling in divers parts of the realm out of the city of London. The petitioners represent that they had been wont till of late to have free course and recourse with their merchandises into Spain, Portugal, Brittany, Ireland, Normandy, France, Seville, Venice, Dantzic, Eastland, Friesland," and other divers and many places, regions, and countries, being in league and amity with the king our sovereign lord," where in their sales and purchases every one used freely to proceed in the

sell any goods or merchandises there, unless he first compounded and made fine with the said fellowship of merchants of London at their pleasure, upon pain of forfeiture of the goods so by him bought or sold; "which fine, imposition, and exaction," the petition goes on, "at the beginning, when it was first taken, was demanded by colour of a fraternity of St. Thomas of Canterbury, at which time the said fine was but the value of half an old noble sterling (3s. 4d.), and so by colour of such feigned holiness it hath be suffered to be taken for a few years past; and afterward it was increased to a hundred shillings Flemish ; and now it is so that the said fellowship and merchants of London take of every Englishman or young merchant being there at his first coming twenty pounds sterling for a fine, to suffer him to buy and sell his own proper goods, wares, and merchandises that he hath there." It is asserted that the effect of this imposition had been to make all merchants not belonging to the London company withdraw themselves from the foreign marts, whereby the woollen cloth, which was one of the great commodities of the realm, "by making whereof the king's true subjects be put in occupation, and the poor people have most universally their living," and also other commodities produced in different parts of the kingdom, were not disposed of as formerly, "but for lack of utterance of the same in divers parts where such cloths be made, they be conveyed to London, where they be sold far under the price that they be worth and that they cost to the makers of the same, and at some time they be lent to long days, and the money thereof at divers times never paid." On the other hand, foreign commodities, the importation of which was now wholly in the hands of the London company, were sold at so high a price that the buyer of the same could not live thereupon-that is to say, could not retail them at a living profit. "By reason whereof," the petition concludes, "all the cities, towns, and