Alice Green - Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

The English traders, however, took all misfortune with the hardihood and exuberant courage of youth. Help from their own government was beyond hoping for, so long as conquering kings like Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth were bound hand and foot to the great mercantile houses of Lübeck and the Hanse towns by the loans raised from them to carry on the French wars; while Henry the Fourth, who, before he came to the throne, had been in Danzig and seen the troubles of the English merchants there, 193 193 Pauli’s Pictures, 135-8. and who in his anxiety to win the support of the trading class, was persistent in negotiations to improve their position, had not the power to give effect to his desires. The Adventurers, therefore, could only follow the one obvious course open to them, and kept up a steady brigandage on the seas and a series of opportune attacks on the enemy’s out-posts. They held on desperately at Bergen, 194 194 8 H. VI. c. 2; Proc. Privy Council, iv. 208; Schanz, ii. 170. and stoutly clung to the formal right which Henry the Fourth had given them to organize themselves under consuls in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, for the carrying on of their trade. 195 195 In 1425 there were letters from Henry the Sixth to the King of Dacia, Norwegia, and Swecia, concerning the merchants of Lynn who traded with the parts of North Berne; (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 203). In 1427 he wrote to the English merchants “in partibus Prucie, Dacie, Norweie, Hanse, and Swethie commorantes,” to assemble in a sufficient place, elect governors and make ordinances for self-government in mercantile matters, and for reasonable punishment of any merchants disobedient (203). At times the English even forced compensation from the Hanse merchants for outrages (Schanz, i. 250). In 1438 rye was brought from Prussia “by the providence of Stephen Browne,” the mayor, at a time of famine in England, when a bushel of corn was sold for 3s. 4d., and the people were making bread of vetches, peas, beans, and fern-roots. (Fabyan, 612.) Fishing boats which were shut out from the Baltic or from Bergen sailed on to Iceland, where, as the island was the private property of the King of Norway (who was himself the servant of the League) and was allowed to receive no ships save the King’s, or those licensed by the King, opportunities for illegal trade were abundant and profits large. A frugal people, needy and remote, eagerly welcomed smuggled goods from England in exchange for their fish; and the smugglers carried on a rough business – outlaws and daring men of their company plundered and killed and stole cattle and desolated homesteads, and bartered after their own self-made laws. 196 196 Schanz, i. 254. It mattered nothing to them that Henry the Fifth, in obedience to the League, forbade the trade, or that in a storm of 1419 twenty-five English ships were driven on the coast of Iceland in three hours. Bristol men found their way to its shores by help of the compass, leaving for us the first record of its use in England, probably in 1424; and about 1436, in a year when the English had been expelled from Bergen, so many vessels sailed to Iceland that they could get no return cargo, and half of them had to come empty home. 197 197 Libel of English Policy. Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 191. The bailiffs and community of Chepstowe did trade with Iceland and Finmark. (Proc. Privy Council, iv. 208.) In 1426 Lynn forbade trade with Iceland to its inhabitants and the whole community sent a petition against the trade to the King’s Council. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 160.) But the northern trade was not all violent or lawless. English merchants bought double licenses from the English and the Norwegian kings, which allowed them to carry on a regular traffic; and in the middle of the fifteenth century one of the Bristol merchants, Cannynges, had in his hands the chief trade with northern Europe. Not only were his factors established in the Baltic ports, but his transactions with Iceland and with Finland were on so great a scale that when in 1450 all English trade with these regions was forbidden in virtue of a treaty with the King of Denmark, Cannynges was specially exempted on account of the debts due to him there by Danish subjects, and for two years he had a monopoly of the trade. 198 198 Hunt’s Bristol, 94-6. In 1491 fishing-smacks starting for Iceland had to get leave to sail, after finding surety that they would not carry more grain nor any other forbidden thing than sufficed for their own food. Paston Letters, iii. 367-9.

Meanwhile the Adventurers watched their opportunity to carry the war nearer home, for the League, already weighted with the effort to maintain its monopoly before the rise of Scandinavian powers and the consolidation of the Duchy of Burgundy, was further troubled within its own ranks by divided counsels. 199 199 Keutgen, 30. In the reign of Henry the Sixth, therefore, the English renewed among other claims their old demand that the Hanseatic merchants should no longer be favoured at their expense, but should be treated like any other foreigners and forced to pay the same tolls on wine and wool. There was a chance of success, for Lübeck and the western towns finding in their strength and self-reliance arguments for a policy of peace with England, were generally for amicable compromise; though the eastern towns led by Danzig, weaker at sea and peculiarly sensitive to any increase of money burdens, preferred fighting to submission with its apprehended dangers. 200 200 Ibid. 84-5, 70-71. For these negotiations see Rymer’s Fœdera, x. 656-7, 666-70, 753. Bekynton, i. 215. The party of violence won the day and a fierce maritime war followed with open hostilities and reprisals and lawsuits and endless negociations. On one occasion the English seized a fleet of 108 sail returning to Lübeck and Riga, and the men of the Hanse retaliated by laying hands on rich English prizes. Trade was so ruined that Henry the Sixth declared himself unable to pay to the Count Palatine the dowry of his aunt Lady Blanche, because there were now no dues and customs coming into his Treasury from the German merchants. 201 201 In 1439. Bekynton’s Corres. i. 183-4. At last the dispute came to a climax in 1469, when the English quarrelled with the German traders in London, summoned them before the courts and imposed a fine of £13,520, 202 202 “Whereof the payment was kept secret from writers” (Fabyan, 657.) while members of the Steel Yard were thrown into prison, and the corporation nearly broken up. 203 203 The fortunes of Memling’s Last Judgement now at Danzig give a curious illustration of this war and the trade complications of the time. Ordered at Bruges through the Florentine agents there (the Portinari), probably by Julian and Lorenzo de Medici, the picture could not be carried to Florence on account of this war begun in 1468. At last in 1473 it was sent off from Sluys in a British-built ship, which had been bought by English merchants as a French prize, chartered by Florentines in Bruges for a voyage to London, registered in the name of the Portinari, commissioned by a French captain, and navigated under the Burgundian flag for greater security against capture. It was, however, taken off Southampton by a privateer sailing under the Danzig flag and commanded by a noted captain Benecke. In spite of a bull issued by Sixtus the Fourth the cargo was sold at Stade and the picture brought by the owners of the ship to Danzig. (Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Early Flemish Painters, 257-260.) The answer of Bremen, Hamburg, and Danzig was given in a fleet which gathered against England under the leadership of Charles the Bold. But just at this moment came the English revolution by which Edward the Fourth was driven out of the country, and all the great trading bodies, the Hanseatic League, and the Flemish and Dutch corporations, seeing the danger which threatened their commerce from the new political situation, cast aside minor quarrels and united to set Edward again on the throne. 204 204 Henry the Sixth, on the other hand, brought the help of the Genoese. Possibly the excessive price of fish mentioned in the Paston Letters in 1471 may have been caused by the political troubles (iii. 22, 254). Such a service demanded a great reward; and in 1474 a treaty was signed at Utrecht, by which the Hanse was given back all its earlier privileges, and secured in possession of its Guild Hall and Steel Yard in London, and its houses in Boston and Lynn. The Adventurers who made a bold demand that the Easterlings should renounce the right of carrying out wool or wool-fells from England can scarcely have expected to succeed; but they at least gained some measure of peace for their colony in Danzig. 205 205 Schanz, i. 172-9; ii. 388-396. Pauli’s Pictures, 185-7.