nn, and perhaps in other towns. Their
permission to own property and to live in their own house instead of
in the houses of native merchants, as was the usual custom, was
derived, like most privileges of foreigners, from the gift of the
king. Little by little they had purchased property surrounding their
original grants until they had a great group of buildings, including a
meeting and dining hall, tower, kitchen, storage house, offices and
other warehouses, and a considerable number of dwelling-houses, all
enclosed by a wall and fences. It was located immediately on the
Thames just above London Bridge so that their vessels unloaded at
their own wharf. The merchants or their agents lived under strict
rules, the gates being invariably closed at nine o'clock, and all
discords among their own nation were punished by their own officers.
Their trade was profitable to the king through payment of customs, and
after the failure of the Italian bankers the merchants of the
Steelyard made considerable loans to the English government either
directly or acting for citizens at home. In 1343, when the king had
been granted a tax of 40_s._ a sack on all wool exported, he
immediately borrowed the value of it from Tiedemann van Limberg and
Johann van Wolde, Easterlings. Similarly in 1346 the Easterlings
loaned the king money for three years, holding his second crown as
security. Like the Florentines, at one time they took the Cornwall tin
mines at farm. They had many privileges not accorded generally to
foreigners, but were exceedingly unpopular alike with the population
and the authorities of the city of London. There were some other
Germans domiciled in England, but nowhere else were they so
conspicuous or influential as at the Steelyard.

[Illustration: Ground Plan of the Steelyard in the Seventeenth
Century. (Lappenberg. _Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes_.)]

The trade with Flanders brought Flemish merchants into England
temporarily, but they do not seem to have formed any settlement or
located permanently in any one place. Flemish artisans, on the other
hand, had migrated to England from early times and were scattered here
and there in several towns and villages. In the early part of the
fourteenth century Edward III made it a matter of deliberate policy to
encourage the immigration of Flemish weavers and other handicraftsmen,
with the expectation that they would teach their art to the more
backward native English. In 1332 he