Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/224

222 chases in the home-market, notwithstanding the stoppage of the usual great vent of exportation. On that occasion the interests of peace were forced to give m ay to those of war; but it was different now. "The sullen merchants," Lord Herbert goes on to inform us, little moved with the cardinal's menaces, said they had no reason to buy commodities they knew not how to utter. Propositions were thrown out for the establishment of a new continental mart at Calais or Abbeville; but the "sullen merchants" would not understand any of these schemes. At last the council, being advised with, told the king "that the resultance of war in the Low Countries could be nothing but a grievance to his subjects, a decay of trade, a diminution of his customs, and addition to the greatness of Francis, who would have the advantage of all that was undertaken in this kind;" on which it was resolved that the war should be suspended for the present. This result shows very strikingly how completely its foreign commerce was now become part of the very life-blood of the nation; and it should also seem to warrant the inference that the trade with Antwerp had considerably risen in importance within the last thirty years,—the consequence, doubtless, in great part, of the general commercial revolution that had been wrought by the discovery of the new route to the East.

The spirit of mercantile adventure in England, however, was now turning likewise to other quarters, though its excursions out of its accustomed track were still somewhat timid or desultory. Among the notices collected by the industrious Hakluyt are the following:—About 1530 Captain William Hawkins, of Plymouth, made a trading voyage to Guinea for elephants' teeth, &c., and thence proceeded to Brazil, where he also traded. Two years after he is noted to have made another such voyage to Brazil. Trading voyages, both to Brazil and Guinea, became common soon after this date. From about 1511 to 1534 divers tall ships of London, Southampton, and Bristol, carried on an unusually great trade to Sicily, Candia, and Chio, and sometimes to Cyprus, to Tripoli, and to Barutti in Syria. Their exports were woollen