Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/95

 *nestly seek and desire, were now neglected and the price thereof abated, although they be carried to their own parts."

Cabot, having been consulted as to the best mode of remedying this depressed state of things, recommended, after a conference with the merchants of London, "that three ships should be prepared and furnished out for the search and discovery of the northern part of the world, to open a way and passage to our men for travel to new and unknown kingdoms."

So general was the desire to secure a continuation of Cabot's services, that, notwithstanding his advanced age, the Letters Patent incorporating the association for carrying out the expedition he had recommended declared him to be governor, an office he was to enjoy "during his natural life, without a moving or dismissing from the same room." But the association had to encounter the opposition of the Steel-yard, the powerful foreign body whose monopoly had long exercised a very prejudicial influence on English manufactures and commerce.

For the interests, therefore, of England, and to afford a fair field in the then known markets of the world to her merchants and manufacturers, it became necessary to break down the monopoly exercised by the Germans, from their privileged site on the banks of the Thames, and the "Merchant Adventurers' Company," with Sebastian Cabot as its governor, was made the instrument of effecting this desirable change. Edward himself, fully alive to the necessity of abolishing the foreign monopoly, seems, by the records in