which runneth in the Dutch, and serveth them instead of a company."[1] The Turkey Company now conducted an important and profitable commercial intercourse with the Levant;[2] London having in a great measure superseded Venice in that valuable traffic, even supplying that city with articles of Indian produce. By this time, also, English merchants had become importers of Indian produce into Constantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and many other Mediterranean ports.
Ships of the Turkey and Muscovy Company. The Turkey Company alone despatched their ships, not yearly, but monthly, indeed almost weekly, thus securing a large proportion of that important trade;[3] while the Muscovy Company, on the other hand, in virtue of their exclusive monopoly, enjoyed with their own ships almost undisputed possession of the maritime commerce of the Baltic.[4]
- ↑ Letter of advice to the King on the breach with the new Company, Feb. 25, 1615, vol. v., p. 259
- ↑ In the Appendix No. 6, will be found a list of the vessels then employed in the trade between England and Turkey.
- ↑ Roberts' 'Map of Commerce,' p. 270, ed. 1700, original edition being 1638.
- ↑ The cargoes from England of the vessels of the Muscovy Company chiefly consisted of the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Coventry, dyed and dressed; kerseys of Hampshire and York; lead, tar, and a great quantity of Indian spices, indigo and calicoes; their return cargoes consisting of raw silks from Persia, Damascus and Tripoli; galls of Mosul and Tocat; camlets, grograins, and mohairs of Angola; cotton and cotton yarns of Cyprus and Smyrna, and sometimes the gums of India and drugs of Egypt and Arabia, with the currants and dried fruits of Zante, Cephalonia, and the Morea. The recital of cotton among these imports indicates that already the English had commenced the important business of weaving calicoes; and indeed, in a work published in 1641, Manchester is pointed out as the place where the raw material was made up, and when manufactured into "fustians, dimities and vermilions," became an article of export for her merchantmen, a branch of business which has since reached an extent altogether unexampled in the history of commerce and navigation.
