marked by many commercial treaties with foreign powers, which are to be considered as evidences, not so much of any peculiar attachment to the interests of trade in that prince—although, as we have seen, it was a pursuit which he did not disdain to follow on his own account—as of the importance which it had now acquired in the public estimation, and the manner in which it was consequently enabled to compel attention to its claims. Such treaties were made in 1465 with Denmark; in 1466 with Britany; the same year with Castile; in 1467 with the Netherlands; in 1468 with Britany again; in 1475 with the Hanse Towns; in 1478 with the Netherlands again; in 1482 with the Guipuscoans in Spain, &c. The only one of these conventions that requires particular notice is that with the Hanse Towns, which was concluded at Utrecht, after a great deal of negotiation, by commissioners appointed on both sides. At this time the great trading community of the Hanse comprised nearly seventy cities and towns of Germany, which were divided into the districts, or regions, as they were called, of Lubeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Dantzic—the city of Lubeck standing at the head of the whole confederacy. Of the factories of the Hanse merchants in foreign countries, four were accounted of chief dignity—namely, those of Novogorod, in Russia; London, in England; Bruges, in Flanders; and Bergen, in Norway. It is probable that, of these, London was the most ancient, as well as the most important.[1] The Hanse merchants resident in and trading to London had early received important privileges from the English kings, which, however, had commonly been granted only for short terms, and had of late especially been held upon a still more precarious tenure than usual, and even subjected occasionally to curtailment or total suspension. The object of the present treaty was to remedy this state of things, which was found to be fraught with inconvenience to all parties, and to establish the Hanse factories in England upon a foundation of permanent security. It
- ↑ Macpherson, Ann. of Com. i. 694
