peter, and spices from the Far
East were sold to English merchants by the Portuguese or the Dutch; and
at exorbitant prices, for the thrifty Hollanders no sooner got control
of the spice islands than they raised the price of pepper from three to
eight shillings per pound. And it was the Dutch, intrenched in the
European fisheries partly through favors granted by Elizabeth, who
imported into England two thirds of the fish so extensively consumed by
the nation.

While England was dependent upon rivals for many necessities, the
foreign markets for her own products were now becoming inadequate. Apart
from wool, England exported little; but the confiscation of the
monasteries, the ruin of Antwerp, the rising prices resulting from the
influx of silver from New Spain, contributed to stimulate English
industry and to increase in some measure the volume of commodities
seeking markets abroad. Yet the markets were closing in some places and
becoming less accessible in others. "It is publically knowne that
traffique with our neighbor countries begins to be of small request, the
game seldom answering the merchant's adventure, and foraigne states
either are already or at the present are preparing to inriche themselves
with wool and cloth of their own which heretofore they borrowed of us."
English traders were persecuted in Spain; English exports were checked
by tariffs in France and by Sound dues in Denmark; privileges formerly
enjoyed in German towns were being withdrawn in retaliation for the
exclusion of Hanse merchants from advantages long enjoyed in London; and
as for Flanders, heretofore the great mart for English wool, the civil
wars had, as Hakluyt says, "spoiled the traffique there."

The desire to change this untoward condition of things was what inspired
the unwarranted enthusiasm of the time for American and Indian
colonization. The voyages of Willoughby and Frobisher, seeking some
northeast or northwest passage, were but the prelude to the later
voyages by way of the Cape of Good Hope and to the foundation of the
East India Company, the specific purpose of which was to procure the
products of the Orient independently of the Dutch and at lower cost. The
colonization of America it was supposed would serve a similar purpose.
It was still thought to be rich in precious metals; its soil well
adapted to commodities now purchased in the Levant. Its waters would
furnish England with the herring now purchased of the Dutch, and i