History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 133

wares from Prussia. There are examples of chartering from Aquitaine to Hull and from
Boulogne to Sluis for English merchants. One constant proof for freighting is that when
a ship from Holland or Zeeland is arrested, the cargo goes free as the property of
another man.
A great increase in this freighting trade was brought about when Edward III converted
the English merchant fleet to purposes of war and thus destroyed its effectiveness in
commerce. Recourse had then to be had to foreign ships, and the effect on the
English cargo fleet was so serious that in the reign of Richard II a law similar to the
later Navigation Act was passed in the interests of English shipping. It is important to
note that export licences were sometimes granted to Englishmen and Zeelanders in
partnership. There is evidence that Hollanders and Zeelanders were taking part in the
export coal trade as early as 1352.
3. 5.
The 13th century witnesses the growing importance of the Low German traders in
Flanders, England, and Norway. In the North Sea trade their ships compete ever more
successfully with the English, Flemings, Danes, and Norwegians, and towards the
middle of the century we get the first foundation of the later Hansa trading system.
The settlement of the German traders in London was very old and very important. The
corporation of the Merchants of the Steelyard dates from the reign of Henry III. In 1194
Richard I had granted a charter to the men of Cologne; Hamburg, Bremen, and
Brunswick long struggled for equal recognition, but it came first to Lübeck, which had
declared for Richard. Little by little the merchants had purchased property surrounding
the original grants until they had a great body of buildings all enclosed by a wall and
fences. The settlement was immediately on the Thames above London Bridge, so that
the Hansa vessels unloaded at their own wharf. This London ‘kontor’ maintained its
independence longer than any other Hansa settlement abroad, and only applied for
the assistance of the League when it found itself helpless before the great movement
of the English commons against foreign interference in trade, which came at the end
of the reign of Edward III. The privileges of the Gildhall in participation in the retail
trade in certain wares, in the right of forming a union for mutual support, in advantages
of residence and the possession of property, were all most valuable for a factory in a
foreign land. It is probable that there were Hansas of Germans in other towns, such as
Boston and Lynn, for we know that Germans in those towns had some sort of an
organization as early as 1271.
At first the German merchants in England were from Saxony, Westphalia, the Lower
Rhine and Friesland, and the Waalsch-Lotharingsch district; these probably formed in
the 12th century a close ring of Germans in England, out of which the last group soon
separated. Then in the beginning of the 13th century new groups of Germans
appeared in England, and the incorporation of these into the old group seems to have
been attended with some difficulty. Merchants who were not received in the Baltic as
German merchants were not accepted into the ring. In the later years of the 13th
century merchants from the Prussian and Livonian towns were accepted as Germans;
so also were men from the Netherland Hanse towns; but Hollanders and Zeelanders
never qualified as merchants from Germany.

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