Sigismund died in 1437, the date of the ‘Libel’ must lie between those years. It is divided into all introduction and twelve chapters, and is of sufficient importance to merit some analysis here, seeing that the writer was perhaps the first to fully grasp the importance to England of commerce and sea-power.
The general introduction runs:—“Here beginneth the prologue of the processe of the Libel of English Policie, exhorting all England to keep the Sea, and namely the Narrow Sea; shewing what profite cometh thereof, and also what worship and salvation to England, and to all Englishmen.”
After demonstrating both the usefulness and the necessity of England’s preserving the dominion of the sea, and stating that the Emperor Sigismund, who had been in England in 1416, and who had gone to France vith Henry V., had advised that king to keep the two towns Dover and Calais as carefully as he would keep his two eyes, the author explains the device on the gold noble[1] struck by Edward III., after Sluis, his text being:—
“Four things our noble sheweth unto me,
King, ship, and sword, and power of the sea.”
The first chapter contains an account of the commodities of Spain and Flanders, and insists that neither country could live without the other, while Spanish wool could not, without an admixture of English, be worked by the Flamands. Trade between Spain and Flanders must be precarious unless both countries were at peace with England; so that, with Calais and Dover in English hands, and the sea under English dominion, Spain and Flanders flourished only by the permission of England.
The second chapter deals with the commodities of Portugal, and points out that Portugal had always been friendly to England, and that a valuable trade had always subsisted between the two countries, although the current of the commerce had begun to turn so as to benefit Flanders. Another chapter treats of the commerce of Brittany, and of the general interruption occasioned to trade by the piracies of the Bretons, whenever England failed to assert her dominion of the Narrow Seas. In the fourth chapter, the commerce of Scotland is reviewed, the conclusion being that Scotland might be ruined, should England, strong at sea, see fit to prevent her from drawing her household stuffs, her haberdashery,
- ↑ Illustrated, ante, p. 145.
