Maritime Enterprise, 1485-1558

CHAPTER I. Henry Vii and His Commercial Policy

HENRY VII AND HIS COMMERCIAL POLICY

The reign of Henry VII marks the opening of the modern era in the history of the English nation, the period in which, from being an agricultural and military people, we have become transformed into a maritime and commercial community, with interests stretching far beyond the shores of our immediate neighbours on the continent of Europe. Throughout the Middle Ages all the strivings and ambitions of England were concentrated on the conquest, by force of arms, of the surrounding countries—of the remaining parts of the British Isles at first, and afterwards of France. With a hardy and independent peasantry and a fierce and warlike baronage, it could scarcely have been otherwise. English kings found themselves obliged, for their own preservation, to put themselves at the head of such movements, and those of them who were unable or unwilling to do so were continually menaced by the turbulent elements to which they refused an outlet.

This system of violent expansion, successful in the cases of Ireland and Wales, and not seriously pursued in that of Scotland, proved to be its own destruction when applied to France. Although a military conquest might endure for a time, it was impossible that England could permanently absorb a nation larger than itself, of different blood, language, and manners of thought, in the same way that Wales had been absorbed. When Henry V commenced his wonderful career of conquest the sentiment of nationality was already too well established; and the long struggle, which ended forty years later in the expulsion of the English from France, consolidated that sentiment, and rendered the renewal of such an attempt for ever impossible of success. But just as France had developed from a mere geographical area into a nation in the modern sense of the word, so also had England, although much remained to be done before her development could proceed on truly national lines. The Wars of the Roses, protracted, with intervals of peace, for thirty years, cleared away much of the remaining débris of feudalism; and at their close Henry VII came forward as the first king of modern England. The old ideals, the old national instincts, and the old social order had gone, or were in process of dissolution; and the work of his reign consisted in forming new ones and giving direction to that universal awakening of the human mind which now first began to make its influence felt in the practical affairs of the English nation.

As with all changes of deep-rooted and far-reaching importance, its results were slow to manifest themselves, and were scarcely apparent to many of the greatest minds of the time, bred up to the old order, yet nevertheless working unconsciously in the furtherance of the new. The king himself, who did more than any other man to usher in the new era, and whose policy has been followed, with intervals of retrogression, almost to our own time, may well have been unaware how greatly he differed from his forerunners, and there is nothing in his recorded utterances to show that he realized the significance of the change that was taking place. In fact, as compared with many of the more flamboyant statesmen who followed him, he must have appeared slow and conservative, a survival of mediaevalism rather than a man of the Renaissance. Like the evolution of the natural world, that of imperial Britain has been largely unconscious, and measures which owed their origin to expediency and the needs of the moment have frequently hardened into enduring elements of the national system. Let us then examine, from this point of view, one aspect of the reign of the first Tudor—his commercial policy; bearing in mind that, although he himself was concerned only with the immediate welfare of his family and country, his work was of such a character as to serve as the foundation for an edifice upon which the passage of four Centuries has not yet placed the topmost stone.

European commerce, down to the age of the great geographical discoveries, hinged upon two great trade routes and two great producing areas, the one of manufactured, and the other of raw, material. To these four dominant factors all subsidiary avenues and crafts owed their origin and continued existence. The two primary trade routes were: first, that connecting, by way of the Levant and the nearer East, the Italian cities with the vaguely known and fabulously portrayed wealth of southern Asia; and second, that by which the hardy merchants of the Hanseatic League conveyed the produce of the Baltic shores, of Scandinavia, of the wide plains of Muscovy, and through them the far-fetched wares of Persia and Cathay, to western Europe, which region, stimulated by amenities whence the indolent mind of Asia drew no profit, inevitably became the centre of the world’s progress. Nothing for nothing being a universal law, Europe had to find something of her own to exchange for the furs of the North and the spices of the East. The cities of the Rhine delta supplied, in great part, the indispensable quid pro quo, by devoting themselves to a variety of manufactures amongst which that of cloth assumed a position of paramount importance. Here, then, arose the first producing area necessary to the balance of the mediaeval trading system; England constituted the second and equally indispensable one, for she alone, secured by the sea from the worst scourges of war, could supply the raw material for the cloth industry. The generous wool-sacks of England became her title of entry into the ranks of the progressing nations of the world.

Already, before the dawn of the new era, England had begun to manufacture a portion of her wool into rough, inferior qualities of cloth, but, until the awakening under the Tudor dynasty, she cannot be said to have realized the possibilities of her position. The Hanse merchants and the Italians were in possession of the bulk of her foreign commerce, and only a few subsidiary trades were in the hands of Englishmen, whose education and ability in such matters were inferior to those of the foreigners.

TRADE ROUTES from and to ENGLAND at the commencement of the Tudor Period. ]

A more detailed consideration of the lines of communication with which England was immediately concerned reveals four main commercial avenues, all forming part of the great general system already described: the trade with Germany and the Baltic, chiefly controlled by the great Hansa, whose tentacles spread from Riga to the Rhine; the export of half-made cloth to Flanders, shared between the Hansa, the Flemings, and the English Merchant Adventurers; the wool export, to Calais by the English Staple Merchants, and overland to Italy by the Venetians and Florentines, who maintained business houses for that purpose in London; and the long sea route for wools, wines, and spices, to and from the Mediterranean, again monopolized almost exclusively by the Italians. In addition there were minor, but nevertheless much frequented, trades to Spain for wines and oils, to Gascony for wines, and to Iceland for stock-fish. The two last mentioned were more exclusively in the hands of Englishmen than any of the others.

These mediaeval trade routes, although destined to be profoundly modified by the great extension of the limits of the world as known to Europeans, remained of paramount importance for more than a century to come, and Henry VII set himself to the policy of ousting foreigners from their control, and of fostering, by every means known to his statesmanship, the mercantile enterprise of his own people.

One of the shrewdest business men who ever sat upon a throne, he had no doubt studied and admired the commercial system of Venice. That state, which existed solely by means of and for the purpose of trade, maintained her ascendancy by a fiscal policy which combined rigorous protection with a species of socialism undefiled by any morbidly altruistic ideas. All the familiar weapons of modern protection—preferential duties on goods from Venetian dependencies, navigation laws to encourage Venetian shipping, retaliatory tariffs against rivals, and reciprocal arrangements with such as were disposed to be reasonable—were to be found in the armoury of Venice, and were applied with an unquestioning assurance as to their efficacy, only possible in an age when the doctrines of free trade were yet unborn.

In addition there was in Venice an absolutely complete subordination of the individual to the interests of the State. If the export or import of a certain article was considered prejudicial to the welfare of the city, that trade was stopped forthwith; if the clothworkers of Venice were short of raw material, shipmasters coming from England were ordered to load with wool and nothing else; if the State galleys for the Flanders voyage had difficulty in completing their cargoes, those who preferred to ship their goods in private vessels were forced to pay half or quarter freights to the official ships as well; since it was desirable that Venice should possess a large commercial navy, the overland conveyance of certain wares was forbidden or subjected to paralysing duties. Such are a few examples of the working of an undemocratic republic, of a type which may never be seen again, but which was eminently suited to the needs of its time. And the secrets of the success of this unparalleled interference by the State with individual rights? They were two: first, magnificent discipline, ready obedience enforced by severe penalties; and second, an elasticity of method, an instant variation of policy to meet varying conditions, which could only have been carried out by an assembly of level-headed, patriotic merchant-statesmen, such as filled the benches of the Venetian senate.

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