History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 137

Eastland Company, and the justification of this arbitrary restriction was sought in the
prevalence of privateering. The provincial ports on the east coast were to participate in
this new company, but those merchants alone were to be admitted who had traded to
the Baltic ten years before the foundation of the Company, that is before 1568.
The Eastland Company competed in one of the two great branches of Hansa trade,
that with Scandinavia, Poland, and the German ports on the Baltic. The Company
exported English cloth, but their voyages were important to the country not so much
because they kept open a market for our commodities as because they secured a
supply of tar, hemp, cordage, and other naval stores, and what is of even more
importance, in view of the increasing impoverishment of the English forests, a supply
of masts, spars, and shipbuilding timber. The Company seems to have carried on a
vigorous trade in the early part of the 17th century and was resuscitated at the
Restoration, but there is some difficulty in tracing its later history. Eventually England
looked to her plantations in North America for timber, and a decrease in the demand
for English cloth contributed to the decline of the Baltic trade. England failed, owing to
her lack of proper shipping, to secure the lion's share of the commerce formerly
carried on by the Hanseatic League. The great Baltic corn trade to Spain and the
Mediterranean fell into the hands of the Dutch and was the mainspring and foundation
of their maritime power.
The rise of the United Provinces and the success of the Dutch against Spain
compelled the notice of Englishmen. The Dutch were ever present in the minds of
English statesmen of the 17th century as an example of economic development. That
the Dutch had developed a great trading and maritime power marked them out for the
imitation of men who were striving to excel on those very lines.
The trade between England and the Netherlands was largely in the hands of the
Dutch, while much of England's trade with other countries was ca '&