CHAPTER V.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD III. A.D. 1399—1485.
The rule of the House of Lancaster, with whatever ultimate benefits it may have been fraught in this as well as in other respects, could not, while it lasted, have proved favourable, on the whole, to the interests of the national industry, productive as it was of long and expensive foreign wars in the first instance, and, as soon as they were ended, of the still more wasteful calamity of domestic discord, bloodshed, and confusion. The reign of the first of the three princes of that house, however, was, after the two or three first years, a time of general tranquillity both at home and abroad; and during that interval the trade and few manufactures of the country probably flourished as much as at any former period. Henry IV. appears to have felt the importance of protecting and promoting the commerce of his subjects; or, at all events, the public mind was now so much awake to these objects that he could not afford to disregard them. The history of his government affords many instances of his interference being called for and exerted to open new facilities for the intercourse of the kingdom with other countries, or to obtain redress for injuries which his subjects had sustained in their commercial dealings with foreigners. Thus, in the very first year of his reign, we find him granting letters of marque and reprisal against the Earl of Holland, and issuing orders to his admirals to detain all vessels and property in England belonging to the people of Holland and Zealand, till the earl should take measures to compel the payment of certain debts, due by his subjects to English creditors. The same year he summoned the governors of several of the Hanse
