e eastern
and western companies before alluded to. The disputes between
the English and the Hanseatic towns were carefully observed by
the Dutch, and turned to their own advantage. The English
manufacturers, who quickly began to flourish, from the influx
of Flemish workmen under the encouragement of Elizabeth, formed
companies in the Netherlands, and sent their cloths into those
very towns of Germany which formerly possessed the exclusive
privilege of their manufacture. These towns naturally felt
dissatisfied, and their complaints were encouraged by the king
of Spain. The English adventurers received orders to quit the
empire; and, invited by the states-general, many of them fixed
their residence in Middleburg, which became the most celebrated
woollen market in Europe.

The establishment of the Jews in the towns of the republic forms
a remarkable epoch in the annals of trade. This people, so outraged
by the loathsome bigotry which Christians have not blushed to
call religion, so far from being depressed by the general
persecution, seemed to find it a fresh stimulus to the exertion
of their industry. To escape death in Spain and Portugal they
took refuge in Holland, where toleration encouraged and just
principles of state maintained them. They were at first taken
for Catholics, and subjected to suspicion; but when their real
faith was understood they were no longer molested.

Astronomy and geography, two sciences so closely allied with and
so essential to navigation, flourished now throughout Europe.
Ortilius of Antwerp, and Gerard Mercator of Rupelmonde, were two
of the greatest geographers of the sixteenth century; and the
reform in the calendar at the end of that period gave stability
to the calculations of time, which had previously suffered all
the inconvenient fluctuations attendant on the old style.

Literature had assumed during the revolution in the Netherlands
the almost exclusive and repulsive aspect of controversial learning.
The university of Douay, installed in 1562 as a new screen against
the piercing light of reform, quickly became the stronghold of
intolerance. That of Leyden, established by the efforts of the
Prince of Orange, soon after the famous siege of that town in
1574, was on a less exclusive plan--its professors being in the
first instance drawn from Germany. Many Flemish historians succeeded
in this century to the ancient and uncultivated chroniclers of
preceding times; the civil wars dra