Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/175

Rh sister of King Edward. Their eldest son John, who had been in 1467 created Earl of Lincoln, was declared by Richard III. his presumptive heir, on the death of his son Edward Prince of Wales in 1484; and a marriage was also arranged at the same time between their daughter Ann and James Duke of Rothsay, afterwards James IV. of Scotland. But the family had now reached the summit of its greatness. In the change of circumstances that followed the overthrow of Richard, the Scottish marriage never took place; and the Earl of Lincoln died in 1487, a few years before his father, without having enjoyed either crown or dukedom. To the latter his younger brother Edmund succeeded, and was the last of the noble house of De la Pole. He was put to death by Henry VII., in 1513—his claim to the crown through his relationship to the House of York being, as is generally believed, the true cause of his destruction. It may be added, that letters as well as commerce were brought near to the crown by the De la Poles, if we may depend upon the common account; for the first Duke of Suffolk married Alice, daughter of Thomas Chaucer, Speaker of the House of Commons, who is believed to have been the son of the poet; and she became the mother of John, the second duke, who married the sister of Edward IV.

One of the greatest of the English merchants in the reign of Henry VI. was William Cannyng, or Canyngs, of Bristol—a name made familiar to modern readers by the famous forgeries of Chatterton. Two letters of King Henry, addressed in 1449 to the Grand Master of Prussia and the magistrates of Dantzic, recommending to their good offices two factors resident within their jurisdictions of his "beloved and honourable merchant William Canyngs," are printed in the Fœdera. On Canyngs's monument in the magnificent church of St. Mary Radcliff, in Bristol, of which he was the founder, it is stated, that on one occasion shipping belonging to him to the amount of 2470 tons was seized by Edward IV., in which were included some vessels of 400, of 500, and even of 900 tons. Canyngs was one of those merchants who took part in the Iceland trade after it was extended beyond