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1400.]
TRADE WITH THE NORTH.
395

lay between Danzig and Memel.[1] There is in the treaty mention of English ships at Danzig and of Prussian ships at Lynn. Both sides seem to have plundered one another freely, and hence the trouble. At the same time there is mention of negotiations with the Hanse Towns. In 1393 three Lynn ships of large size were allowed to aid Margaret of Denmark against the Hanse Towns. It does not, then, surprise us to discover in 1399, that the English merchants complain of bad treatment on the part of Prussia in the Hanse Towns, Lübcek, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, and Greifswald, where pirates plundered them right and left. In 1394 Bergen in Norway was burnt by freebooters, and twenty-one houses, valued at £146, belonging to merchants of Lynn, were destroyed. In 1401 there were more complaints of Prussia, against ships of Lynn,[2] and counter-charges on the part of the English king for the seizure of English ships by Prussia. Acts of piracy were not, however, repressed, and in 1403 there are the old complaints again, settled by a fresh treaty of reciprocity and amity between England and Prussia. In 1408 we find that the English settlement at Bergen is important enough to have a governor of its own, who resides there for the direction of the English trade to Scandinavia. In 1409 the Hanse Towns and Henry IV. exchanged sums of money for damage done by pirates on either side, and piracy appears to have somewhat abated. William Waldron, Lord Mayor of London in 1412 and 1422, ships £24,000 worth of cargo to the Mediterranean in 1412, which was promptly seized by the jealous Genoese. In 1417 patent was issued granting annuities to the masters or owners of large ships. Some years later is a treaty of reciprocity between Scotland and Norway. In 1429 the King of Denmark forbade English merchants to sail to Finmark, or indeed to any place but Bergen.

In 1446 one Gibson of Glasgow is mentioned as trading to Polaud, France, and Holland, in pickled salmon. In 1449 John Taverner of Hull built a very large merchant ship, and was graciously permitted to sail with her to Italy for trading purposes. Now, too, Canyng, Mayor of Bristol, was sending ships to Danzig, Iceland, and Finmark, in spite of the Danish prohibition. In 1467 there was a treaty of reciprocity with Denmark. A large passenger trade was also springing up with Spain; and in 1445 we find ships which could contain two hundred passengers sailing

  1. ‘Fœdera,’ vii. 599.
  2. Ib., viii. 203.