“Certes, he Jacke Strawe and his meynee Ne made never shoutes half so shrille, When that they wolden any Fleming kille, As thilke day was made upon the fox.”
The Hanseatic League was most powerful: to it belonged all the important towns of North Germany, it had ships numbering hundreds, and controlled the whole trade of the Baltic, that is to say, of Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, and Germany, and exercised in England for its own purposes the influence which everywhere belongs to the purse. The members advanced money to the King on large interest; they got him out of his difficulties, for a consideration. Thus Edward III., in return for money advanced, let the Black Prince’s tin mines in Cornwall to the Germans; and, for the same consideration, he gave them a number of farms for a thousand years. One need not here follow the Gildhalla Teutonicorum and its various charters and privileges. It is sufficient to note that the continual wars of the English—civil wars, as in the reign of Stephen, Henry III., Edward II., Richard II., Henry VI., Edward IV. and Richard III.; foreign wars with Scotland and France; the repression of rebellion as in Ireland and in Wales—checked the growth of commercial enterprise and made it impossible for the English merchant to contend against the League. Yet when the Merchant Adventurers began, early in the fifteenth century, they attacked the Hanseatic trade in Norway and in Denmark and in Flanders. There was fierce resistance; in Bergen the English merchants were murdered; on the open sea the “Rovers” or pirates attacked and destroyed the English ships; the Hanseatics pillaged the English coasts. The English power at sea was unable to put down these acts of piracy or war. The King was obliged to invite the arbitration of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, who accorded to the English merchants the substantial benefit of trading in the Baltic, but restored to the League all their former privileges and more. This arbitration was called the Treaty of Utrecht. It remained in force till the final expulsion of the League a hundred years later.
The Gildhalla Teutonicorum or Steelyard covered a large area in the most crowded part of London. Its river front extended from Cousin Lane—a narrow lane close to Dowgate Dock on the west—to Allhallows Lane on the east; and from the river to Thames Street. This area contained about 110,000 square feet. It was surrounded by a strong wall; the chief building was a large hall called the Guildhall in which the merchants and their clerks took common meals; the north front looking on Thames Street possessed three arched gates, of which for greater security the two side gates were walled up. Above the three gates were the following inscriptions:—