Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/236

234 first movement for the suppression of the Steelyard Company appears to have been made by an application of the Merchant Adventurers to the government about the close of the year 1551. An answer to this information having been given in by the aldermen and merchants of the Steelyard, both statements were put into the hands of the solicitor-general and the recorder of London—upon whose report the council, on the 23rd of February, 1552, resolved that the Steelyard merchants had forfeited their liberties, and should for the future be held to stand in regard to the duties upon their exports and imports upon the same footing with any other strangers. The alleged grounds of this decree, as we gather them partly from King Edward's Journal, partly from other accounts, appear to have been, that the charters of incorporation of the Steelyard Company were contrary to the laws of the realm; that, no particular persons or towns being mentioned in their grants of privileges, it was uncertain to what persons or towns the said privileges extended, by reason of which uncertainty the company admitted to their immunities whomsoever they pleased, to the great prejudice of the king's customs and to the common hurt of the realm; that they had been in the habit of colouring the goods of other foreigners, that is, of getting such goods passed through the Custom-house as their own; that the condition had been broken on which their privileges when formerly forfeited had been restored by Edward IV., namely, that English subjects should enjoy the like privileges in Prussia and other Hanseatic parts; that, whereas for a hundred years after the first pretended concession of their privileges, they used to transport no merchandise out of the realm, but only to their own countries, nor import any but from their own countries, they now not only conveyed English merchandise into the Netherlands, but also imported into England the merchandise of all foreign countries; and, lastly—which was no doubt a chief reason, though one rather stronger, it must be confessed, in policy than in law—that, from small beginnings, they had so increased their trade, that it now constituted almost the entire trade carried on by