as much of the world's older trade transferred by this change
to English shores, but the burst of national vigour which characterized
the time found new outlets for its activity. The fisheries grew more and
more valuable. Those of the Channel and the German Ocean gave
occupation to the ports which lined the coast from Yarmouth to Plymouth
Haven; while Bristol and Chester were rivals in the fisheries of Ulster.
The merchant-navy of England was fast widening its sphere of commerce.
The Venetian carrying fleet still touched at Southampton; but as far
back as the reign of Henry the Seventh a commercial treaty had been
concluded with Florence, and the trade with the Mediterranean which
began under Richard the Third constantly took a wider developement. The
trade between England and the Baltic ports had hitherto been conducted
by the Hanseatic merchants; but the extinction at this time of their
London depot, the Steel Yard, was a sign that this trade too had now
passed into English hands. The growth of Boston and Hull marked an
increase of commercial intercourse with the Scandinavian states. The
prosperity of Bristol, which depended in great measure on the trade with
Ireland, was stimulated by the conquest and colonization of that island
at the close of the Queen's reign and the beginning of her successor's.
The dream of a northern passage to India opened up a trade with a land
as yet unknown. Of three ships which sailed in the reign of Mary under
Hugh Willoughby to discover this passage, two were found frozen with
their crews and their hapless commander on the coast of Lapland; but the
third, under Richard Chancellor, made its way safely to the White Sea
and by the discovery of Archangel created the trade with Russia. A more
lucrative traffic had already begun with the coast of Guinea, to whose
gold dust and ivory the merchants of Southampton owed their wealth. The
guilt of the Slave Trade which sprang out of it rests with John Hawkins.
In 1562 he returned from the African coast with a cargo of negroes; and
the arms, whose grant rewarded this achievement (a demi-moor, proper,
bound with a cord), commemorated his priority in the transport of slaves
to the labour-fields of the New World. But the New World was already
furnishing more honest sources of wealth. The voyage of Sebastian Cabot
from Bristol to the mainland of North America had called English vessels
to the stormy ocean of the North. From the time of Henry the Eighth the