Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/219

The increase of the foreign trade of the country, and of the wealth of the people and their command over the conveniences and luxuries of life, proceeded at an accelerated rate during the early part of the next reign. Of this there are various indications both in the notices of the chroniclers and in the pages of the Statute-book. An act, for instance, of 1512 (4 Henry VIII. c. 6), for regulating the sealing or stamping at the Custom-house of cloths of gold and silver, of "bawdekin," velvet, damask, satin, sarcenet, "tartron," camblet, and every other cloth of silk and gold brought from beyond the seas, incidentally mentions that it was not unusual for 3000 or 4000 pieces of these fabrics to be brought over in one ship. Most of the artificers of the more costly description of articles, and also many of the persons who traded in these and other commodities, appear still to have been foreigners settled in England; and from the details that are given of a great insurrection of the native Londoners on May-day, 1517, against these strangers, we have some curious particulars of the branches of industry then carried on in the capital. The popular complaints against the foreigners were, according to Hall, "that there were such numbers of them employed as artificers that the English merchants had little to do by reason the merchant strangers bring in all silks, cloths of gold, wine, oil, iron, &c., that no man almost buyeth of an Englishman; they also export so much wool, tin, and lead, that English adventurers can have no living; that foreigners compass the city round about, in Southwark, Westminster, Temple Bar, Holborn, St. Martin's [Le Grand], St. John's Street, Aldgate, Tower Hill, and St. Catherine's; and they forestall the market, so that no good thing for them cometh to the market; which are the causes that Englishmen want and starve, whilst foreigners live in abundance and pleasure." The importation of various articles from abroad, that interfered with home produce and manufactures, was also loudly cried out against; the Dutchmen in particular, it was asserted, brought over "iron, timber, and leather, ready manufactured, and nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools,