Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/98

96 sand marks; and it refers to previous charters which they had received both from Henry I. and Henry II.

There are traces of an intercourse having subsisted between these islands and the East from the remotest times. The mere derivation of the people of Europe from Asia most probably, of itself, had always kept up some connexion between the East and the West; neither the Gothic nor the earlier Celtic colonists of Europe seem to have ever altogether forgotten their Oriental origin; the memory of it lives in the oldest traditions alike of the Irish and of the Scandinavians. But even within the historic period we find a succession of different causes operating to keep up a connexion between Britain and the East. As long as the island was under the dominion of the Romans it was of course united by many ties, and by habits of regular intercourse, with all the other parts of the extended empire to which it belonged. Afterwards, in the Saxon times, the establishment of Christianity in the country contributed in various ways to maintain its connexion with the East. The Greek learning, and probably also some of the Greek arts, were introduced by Archbishop Theodore and other churchmen from Asia: at a later date we find Alfred despatching a mission to the Christians in India; and not long afterwards we find pilgrimage to the Holy Land becoming a common practice. From this practice we may most properly date the commencement of our modern trade with the East; it has ever since been a well established and regular intercourse. The pilgrims, from the first, very generally combined the characters of devotees and merchants. Then, towards the close of the eleventh century, commenced the crusades, which for nearly two hundred years kept, as it were, a broad highway open between Europe and Asia, along which multitudes of persons of all sorts were continually passing and repassing.

Some curious evidences of the extent to which eastern commodities now began to find their way to the remotest