Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/350

 336 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 55. from the looms which had been brought from Ghent and Bruges to their own doors. But the recovered prosperity was partial ; the experiment of the mart at Hamburgh had been tolerably successful ; but the Eng- lish merchants and sailors were tempted from legitimate trade by the more profitable occupation of privateering, and in the T4th year of Elizabeth, the burden of all the vessels in the kingdom which were engaged in ordinary commerce scarcely exceeded 50,000 tons. 1 The largest merchantman which sailed from the port of London was no bigger than a modern collier brig. 2 In the harbours of Devonshire and Cornwall there were but a hundred and fifty vessels of all kinds pursuing any lawful calling, and the most considerable of them would have appeared small by the side of a common Channel coasting schooner. At a time when an unarmed ship could escape from pirates in the open water only by being too worthless to be seized, the English sailors eschewed a calling which was as dangerous as it was inglorious. It was fortunate for Elizabeth that another occupa- tion was open to them, that the sea-going portion of her subjects were those in whom the ideas of the Reform- ation had taken the deepest root, and that the merchant therefore could change his character for that of the buc- caneer with the approval of his conscience as well as to the advantage of his purse. The Catholic spirit was naturally strongest where 1 The exact figures are 50,926, List of vessels trading from all parts of England, 1572 ; Domestic MSS. Rolls House. - 240 tons ; Ibid.