Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/119

 thousand men of war, besides her captains, skippers, and quartermasters." The historian says further, "if any man believe that this description of the ship is not of verity as we have written, let him pass to the gate of Tillibarden, and there before the same ye will see the length and breadth of the ''Great Michael'' planted with hawthorn by the wright that helped to make her." This circumstantial account shows that she was deemed a marvellous effort of naval architecture. "This schip lay still in the road, and the king tuik great plesour everie day to cum down and sie huir, and would dyne and sup in her sundrie tymes, and be showing his Lordes his ordour and munitioun."

The commerce of England during the reign of Henry VIII. and his immediate successor had been almost wholly monopolised by the two very powerful corporations to which we have already referred. But the association of German merchants having become unpopular, a large portion of their trade soon afterwards fell into the hands of the "Merchant Adventurers." To this influential fraternity English merchants were admitted on payment of a small fine; the government of the day, in their ignorance of the requirements of trade and navigation, having hitherto divided the commerce so far as practicable between these two companies, attempting at the same time to fix the boundaries of their respective rights by charters. But towards the close of the reign of Edward VI., when the interests of the English merchants greatly predominated, and when a committee which had been specially appointed to