History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 135

of Lübeck destroyed their Baltic trade. In this transit trade they took from England
grain, malt, salt, and cloth, and brought in exchange wine from the Rhineland, herrings
from Schonen, pitch, tar, and ship-timber from Prussia, and probably the industrial
products of the Rhineland and Westphalia.
3. 7.
The English merchants trading to the Netherlands in articles other than those
controlled by the Staplers received privileges from the Duke of Brabant as early as the
13th century, and the right of settling their disputes before their own ‘consul’ in the
14th century. The earlier charters, whether of English or foreign princes, down to the
middle of the 15th century, were not granted to a company as such, but to the
merchants of England trading beyond the seas in general, and the privileges thus
gained were shared by the merchants of other ports as well as of London. It is
probable, however, that the body which took the initiative in procuring the charters was
a body of London merchants trading at Bruges and Antwerp, and who were bound
together in a fraternity dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket. In early days they admitted
other English merchants to the fraternity, or at any rate to the exercise of trade under
the charter, on fairly easy terms, but as the expenses of the establishment grew and
the trade became more important, they raised their fees.
This gild of Londoners managed to acquire such control of the Netherlands trade that
no Englishman, though according to law and the treaties perfectly free to buy and sell
in the Netherlands, could share in it until he had paid the entrance fee imposed on
him. This was eventually made so high that the merchants from the provincial ports
were shut out from direct trade with the Netherlands and were obliged to deal through
the agency of members of the gild, with the result that the market for English cloth was
restricted. In 1497, however, the gild was forced to admit these provincial merchants
to a recognized position in its organization, and separate Courts of the Company were
set up at Hull and York, while Lynn, Norwich, Ipswich, Exeter, and Southampton are
also specified in 1603 as ports from which the Merchant Adventurers traded. The
governing body was the Court at Antwerp, a town which had come to be the centre of
the commercial world and with which Henry VII had established close commercial
relationships in 1496.
In 1494 the Merchant Adventurers had moved their factory from Bruges, whose trade
had decayed, to Antwerp, and the trade which they attracted to the port contributed
not a little to its rapid rise. They carried there very large quantities of cloth and much of
this was undyed and undressed, so that a considerable industrial population was
employed in finishing the goods. The Englishmen were also large purchasers of
hardware manufactured in Germany and passed down the Rhine to Antwerp. The
Adventurers appear to have been affected to some extent by the habits of such a
cosmopolitan city as Antwerp, and it seems to have been felt advisable to take special
precautions against the marriage of English merchants into Flemish families. Political
changes soon led to the entire detachment of the English colony and eventually to its
removal elsewhere.
In 1564 the Company obtained their Charter, which for the first time gave a legal basis
to their monopoly of the