home from Flanders with cart-wheels and wheel-*barrows. The writer remarks that the Scotch ships must pass by the English coast on their way to Flanders, and might therefore be easily intercepted,
"
We might lightly stoppe hem in the sea."
The trade of the Easterlings,[1] Prussia, and Germany, consisted of copper, beer, bacon, bow staves, steel, wax, pottery, pitch and tar, fir, oak planks, Cologne thread, wool cards, fustian, canvas, and buckram, exported to Flanders; whence were carried back silver plate and wedges, and silver (which came to Flanders in great plenty from Bohemia and Hungary); also woollen cloths of all colours. "And they aventure full greatly unto the Bay For salt that is needefull;"
"They should not passe our streems withouten leve
It would not be, but if we should hem greue."
There then follows a description of the commerce of Genoa, whose merchants resorted to England in great caracks "arrayed withouten lacke," with cloth of gold, silk, black pepper, woad, wool, oil, cotton, rock-alum, taking as a return cargo, wool, and woollen cloth made with home-spun wool, proceeding frequently from England to Flanders, then the chief market of north-eastern Europe.
"If they would be our full enemies,
They should not passe our streems with marchandise."
- ↑ The ancient word Easterlings or Osterlings (whence Sterling) signifies from the east, and embraces the inhabitants of all the seventy-two Hanse Towns.