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duties as were established when formerly commerce had free course between the two countries. Soon afterwards similar commercial treaties were made, with France, the towns of Flanders, and the people of Zealand; and in the fourteenth year of his reign, Edward granted to the Hanse merchants the absolute property of the Steelyard in London, with certain other privileges, which they may be said to have enjoyed, through various changes and vicissitudes, almost to our own time. He also favoured the merchants of Italy with an exemption from most of the additional duties which had been imposed upon them during his own and former reigns.

These treaties of reciprocity greatly encouraged the ship-owners of England in embarking on more distant voyages. Hitherto, their ships had been confined almost exclusively to a coasting trade with the Baltic and with the Spanish Peninsula. A few only of the more wealthy and enterprising traders had ventured through the Straits of Gibraltar to the Mediterranean ports; nor, indeed, had even they been able to compete on equal terms with the larger vessels of the north of Europe or with the still superior vessels of the Italian republics which, throughout the middle ages, monopolised the most important and most lucrative branches of the over-sea carrying trade. In the reign, however, of Richard III., English merchants had increased their distant operations to an extent sufficient to justify