The History of London by Walter Besant (best classic books TXT) 📕

been found necessary in the Plantagenet period. They not only carried criminals in shameful procession through the City, but they flogged girls for idleness, apprentices for immorality, and rogues for selling goods falsely described. A 'pillar of reformation' was set up at the Standard in Cheap; here on Sunday morning the mayor superintended the flogging of young servants. When Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen a young fellow, for speaking slightingly of her title, had his ears nailed to the pillory and afterwards cut off, heretics were burned, traitors were hanged first for a few minutes and then taken down and cut open--one of the most horrible punishments ever inflicted.

The Reformation, which suppressed the religious Houses, at the same time suppressed the hospitals which were all religious Houses and the schools which belonged to the religious Houses. St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, St. Mary's, St. Mary of Bethlehem, besides the smaller houses, were all suppressed. The sick people were sent back to their own houses; the brethren and sisters were dispersed. One House contained one hundred blind men, all these were cast adrift; another contained a number of aged priests--these were turned into the streets. Eight schools perished at the Dissolution. For a time London had neither schools nor hospitals.

This could not continue. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, Bethlehem, and, under Queen Mary, the Savoy were refounded under new statutes as hospitals. For schools, St. Paul's which was never closed, was endowed by Dean Colet; St. Anthony's continued, the Blue Coat School was founded on the site of the Franciscan House. The Mercers took over the school of St. Thomas. The Merchant Taylors founded their school. In Southwark, schools were founded at St. Olave's and St. Saviour's. A few years later Charterhouse was converted into an almshouse and a school.



43. TRADE.

PART I.

London was anciently the resort of 'foreign' merchants. It was rich because 'foreign' merchants brought and exchanged their goods at this port. There were no ships built in England until the reign of King Alfred. When the kingdom became tranquil he is said to have hired out his ships to foreign merchants. A list of tolls paid by foreign ships in the reign of King Ethelred II. shows that the imports were considerable. The foreign merchants, however, were not to 'forestall their markets from the burghers of London,' so that the retail trade was kept in native hands. When retail trade was separated from wholesale trade all that the London merchants had was the collection, the warehousing, and the sale of the exports. It is reasonable to suppose that foreign merchants coming to the City year after year would find it useful to have a permanent settlement--a wharf with officers and servants of their own. Such a settlement was, no doubt, permitted from very early times. But in the year 1169 was founded a trade association which, for wealth, success, and importance, might compare with our East India Company. This was the Hanseatic League (so called from the word _Hansa_, a convention). In the League were confederated: first, twelve towns in the Baltic, Luebeck at the head; next, sixty-four--and even eighty--German towns. They were first associated for protection against pirates: they speedily became the greatest trading company of the period. In the reign of Henry III. the League obtained a Royal Charter granting them liberty of constant residence at a place in London. They were permitted to have a permanent establishment at a place called the Steelyard--i.e. the place where the Steelyard or Scales had formerly been kept--under certain conditions, including the payment of custom dues. They were called the Merchants of the Steelyard: they at once drew to themselves the whole trade of England with the northern ports: and they remained there for nearly 400 years.

There was another association of foreigners called the Merchants of the Staple. That is to say, they dealed in what was called the 'staples' of England--in the raw produce, as lead, tin, wool, &c. Gradually, however, the word Staple came to be applied solely to wool as the most important export. The Lord Chancellor, to this day, is seated on a Woolsack. The Merchants of the Staple became merged in the Merchants of the Steelyard.

These foreign merchants were at all times extremely unpopular with the Londoners, who envied their wealth, which they thought was made at the expense of the City, not understanding, for a long time, that the same way of wealth was open to themselves. When they began to put forth merchant ships on their own account, they at first sought the southern ports, sailing to Dunquerque, Sluys, Rouen, Havre, Bordeaux, Lisbon, and even to the Mediterranean ports. Whittington's trade was entirely with the South. It was not at Luebeck or on the shores of the Baltic that he found his cloth of gold, his rich velvets, his silks, his gold embroidery, his scented wood, his wines, his precious stones. And the reason why he sent his ships to the South was that the trade of the North was in the hands of the Steelyard.

Edward III. seems first of our kings to have understood the value of manufactures and of foreign trade. He first passed laws for the repair of the highways: under his reign the Merchant Adventurers were encouraged and assisted: he first stimulated the making of English cloth instead of selling our wool: under him the shipping of the London merchants began to increase and to develop. Still the foreign merchants continued to occupy the Steelyard: still our merchants were shut out of the northern ports: still other foreigners received permission to settle: even craftsmen came over from Germany and the Low Countries and followed their trade in London. Richard III., in order to please the citizens, ordered their expulsion, but it does not appear that the order was obeyed. Henry VII., on the other hand, persuaded many Flemish woollen manufacturers to come over to this country.

Early in the sixteenth century the exports of English cloth by the foreign merchants amounted to 44,000 pieces, while the English ships took away no more than 1,000 pieces. When our own merchants were prepared with ships and had what may be called the machinery of trade; as a market, wharves, permission to buy and sell; it is obvious that the old state of things could no longer continue. It was not, however, until the reign of Edward VI. that the foreign merchants were finally deprived of all their privileges and charters.

These rivals, with their powerful organisations and their hold over all the northern ports, once out of the way the English merchants began to push out their enterprises in all directions. You shall see immediately how they prospered.

Meantime there remains a monument erected in memory of the Hanseatic League. In the reign of Queen Anne the merchants of Hamburg presented to the church where the merchants of the Steelyard had worshipped for 400 years, a splendid screen of carved wood. Unless the church, which is already threatened with destruction, is pulled down, you should go to see that screen, and remember all that it means and commemorates.



44. TRADE.

PART II.

English trade, that is to say, trade in English hands, practically began with Edward III. and, slowly increasing under his successors, gained an enormous development under Elizabeth. Several causes operated to produce this increase. In the first place the abolition of the Steelyard, though ordered by Edward VI., was not completely carried out till many years afterwards. During this period the merchants were learning the immense possibilities open to them when this incubus should be removed. Next, the great rival of London, Antwerp, suffered, like the rest of the Netherlands, from the religious wars. Thirdly, the wise and farseeing action of Gresham transferred the commercial centre of the northern world from that town to London.

Antwerp in the fifteenth century was the richest and most prosperous city in western Europe. There were 200,000 inhabitants, a great many more than could be counted in London: 5,000 merchants met every day in the Bourse for the transaction of business: 2,500 vessels might be counted in the river: 500 loaded waggons entered every day from the country. It was the port of the great and rich manufacturing towns of Bruges and Ghent. In the latter town there were 40,000 weavers, and an army of 80,000 men fully armed and equipped, could be raised at any moment. The former town, Bruges, was the Market--the actual commercial centre--of the world. Hither came the merchants of Venice and Genoa, bringing the silks, velvets, cloth of gold, spices and precious stones from the East to exchange for the English wool and the produce of Germany and the Baltic.

The Religious Wars of the sixteenth century: the ferocities, cruelties, and savagery of those wars: depopulated and ruined this rich and flourishing country: the Inquisition drove thousands of Flemings, an industrious and orderly folk, to England, where they established silk manufactures: and the carrying trade which had been wholly in the hands of the Antwerp shipowners was diverted and went across the narrow seas to London, where it has ever since remained.

Before the ruin of Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, it was of these towns that the Kings of England obtained their loans. They were taken up by the merchants of the Low Countries at an interest of 14 per cent. This enormous interest, then thought quite moderate and reasonable, explains how the merchants of that time grew so wealthy. Part of the loans, also, often had to be taken in jewels. In order to negotiate these loans and to pay the interest an agent of the English Sovereign was kept at Antwerp, called the Royal Agent. Very fortunately for London, the Royal Agent under Edward VI., Mary, and the early years of Elizabeth, was Sir Thomas Gresham.

You must learn something about this great man. He was the son of Sir Richard Gresham, formerly Lord Mayor: nephew of Sir John Gresham, also Lord Mayor (who preserved Bethlehem Hospital on the Dissolution of the Religious Houses): he came of a Norfolk family originally of the village of Gresham: like Whittington he was of gentle birth. He was educated at Cambridge: he was apprenticed to his uncle after taking his degree: and he was received into the Mercers' Company at the age of twenty-four. It must be observed that from the outset the young man had every advantage--good birth, good education, good society, and wealth.

At the age of thirty-two he was appointed Royal Agent at Antwerp. At this time the City was at the height of its splendour and prosperity. Gresham walked upon the long quays, gazed at the lines of ships, saw the river alive with boats and barges, loading and unloading, watched the throng of merchants in the Bourse, saw the palaces, the rows and streets of palaces in which they lived, thought of London which he had formerly regarded with so much pride though he now perceived that it was even poor and quiet compared with this crowded centre of an enormous trade--why, the city which he had thought the envy of the whole world could show no more than 317 merchants in all, against Antwerp's 5,000: and these, though there were some esteemed wealthy, could not between them all raise a loan of even 10,000_l._ The King had to go abroad for the money and to pay 14 per cent. for it. Then he began to ask himself whether something could not be done to divert some of this trade to his native town.

First of all, he applied himself to the reduction of the interest. This he managed to lower from fourteen per cent. to twelve and even to ten. A gain of four per cent. on a loan of, say,