in the
west, were a part of the same effort of commercial companies or
interests to carry their trading into new lands.

*44. Government Encouragement of Commerce.*--Before the accession of
Henry VII it is almost impossible to discover any deliberate or
continuous policy of the government in commercial matters. From this
time forward, however, through the whole period of the Tudor monarchs
a tolerably consistent plan was followed of favoring English merchants
and placing burdens and restrictions upon foreign traders. The
merchants from the Hanse towns, with their dwellings, warehouses, and
offices at the Steelyard in London, were subjected to a narrower
interpretation of the privileges which they possessed by old and
frequently renewed grants. In 1493 English customs officers began to
intrude upon their property; in 1504 especially heavy penalties were
threatened if they should send any cloth to the Netherlands during the
war between the king and the duke of Burgundy. During the reign of
Henry VIII the position of the Hansards was on the whole easier, but
in 1551 their special privileges were taken away, and they were put in
the same position as all other foreigners. There was a partial regrant
of advantageous conditions in the early part of the reign of
Elizabeth, but finally, in 1578, they lost their privileges forever.
As a matter of fact, German traders now came more and more rarely to
England, and their settlement above London Bridge was practically
deserted.

The fleet from Venice also came less and less frequently. Under Henry
VIII for a period of nine years no fleet came to English ports; then
after an expedition had been sent out from Venice in 1517, and again
in 1521, another nine years passed by. The fleet came again in 1531,
1532, and 1533, and even afterward from time to time occasional
private Venetian vessels came, till a group of them suffered shipwreck
on the southern coast in 1587, after which the Venetian flag
disappeared entirely from those waters.

In the meantime a series of favorable commercial treaties were made in
various directions by Henry VII and his successors. In 1490 he made a
treaty with the king of Denmark by which English merchants obtained
liberty to trade in that country, in Norway, and in Iceland. Within
the same year a similar treaty was made with Florence, by which the
English merchants obtained a monopoly of the sale of wool in the
Florentine dominions, and the right to have