privileges we have seen denounced by the House of Commons ten years before, had found means to induce Charles to issue a proclamation which restored their monopoly by strictly prohibiting the exportation of "any white cloths, coloured cloths, cloths dressed and dyed out of the whites, Spanish cloths, baizes, kerseys, perpetuanos, stockings, or any other English woollen commodities," to any part either of Germany or the Netherlands, except to the marts or staple towns of the company. It was alleged by their enemies that both now and on former occasions the company were indebted for the favour shown them to the new-year's gifts with which they bribed the courtiers or officers of state. It is asserted, for instance, that, in the year 1623, the lord treasurer was presented by them with two hundred broad pieces of gold, besides a piece of plate; and that other presents were also then made to the Duke of Buckingham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Keeper, the Lord President, the Secretaries of State, &c.[1] The Eastland and Muscovy (or Russian) Companies are stated to "export principally cloth, as the best commodity, as also tin, lead, with some spices of India, and other southern commodities, and to bring home ashes, clapboard, copper, deals, firs, rich furs, masts, pipe-staves, rye, timber, wainscot, wheat, fustians, iron, latten, linen, mathers, quicksilver, flax, hemp, steel, caviare, cordage, hides, honey, tar, ropes, tallow, pitch, wax, rosin, and sundry others." The exports of the French Company were cloths, kerseys, and bays of English manufacture, with galls, silks, and cottons from Turkey; their imports, buckrams, canvas, cards, glass, grain, linens, salt, claret, and white wines, woad, oils, almonds, pepper, with some silk stuffs and some other petty manufactures. England and France, however, were at this time, as they have continued to be, with little interruption, down almost to the present day, jealous rivals, when they were not open enemies, in
- ↑ These allegations are made in a treatise entitled Free Trade, by J. Parker, published in 1648.—Anderson, ii. 358.
