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260 The once famous South Sea Company, of which this writer was one of the officers, is now reduced to the same condition of a merely nominal existence.

We have seen the rise of Antwerp, soon after the commencement of the present period, to the rank of being the most eminent commercial city in the world—the principal impulse which carried it to this height being originally derived from the opening of the Portuguese trade by sea with India. In 1585 the capture and sack of this great emporium by the Spanish commander, the Duke of Parma, gave a shock to the whole system of European commerce. About six thousand of the inhabitants perished in the devastation of their noble and opulent city; and of the survivors of its fall the greater number of those whose wealth, enterprise, and industry had hitherto chiefly sustained it, fled from its ensanguined streets and blackened ruins. To quote the compendious summary of Anderson,—"The ruin of this famous city gave the finishing blow to the commerce of the Spanish Netherlands. The fishing-trade removed into Holland. The noble manufactures of Flanders and Brabant were dispersed into different countries. The woollen manufacture settled mostly in Leyden, where it still flourishes. The linen removed to Haerlem and Amsterdam. About a third part of the manufacturers and merchants who wrought and dealt in silks, damasks, tafteties, bayes, sayes, serges, stockings, &c., settled in England, because England was then ignorant of those manufactures." The rise, indeed, of the manufacturing industry of this country may be said to date from the fall of Antwerp. In commercial importance Amsterdam now became what Antwerp had been, the grand emporium of Europe.

A curious evidence of how much the internal trade of England was still dependent upon the periodical fairs or markets held in the great towns is afforded by a proclamation issued in 1593, prohibiting the holding of Bartholomew fair in the usual manner for that year in consequence of the plague being then in London. The proclamation speaks of there being wont to be a general resort to the fair of all kinds of people out of every part