ant parts of the world. He adds, that it
was no uncommon thing for 500 ships to come and go in one day; that 10,000
carts were constantly employed in carrying merchandize to and from the
neighbouring countries, besides hundreds of waggons daily coming and going
with passengers; and 500 coaches used by people of distinction. In his
enumeration of the principal trades, it is curious that there were
ninety-two fishmongers, and only seventy-eight butchers; there were 124
goldsmiths, who, it must be recollected, at that time acted as bankers, or
rather exchangers of money. The number of houses was 13,500. With respect
to the shipping, which, according to this author, were so numerous at the
port of Antwerp, comparatively few of them belonged to this city, as most
of its commerce was carried on by ships of foreign nations.

This circumstance, of its having but few ships of its own, may be regarded
as one cause why, when it was taken and plundered by the Spaniards in the
year 1585, it could not recover its former commerce, as the shipping
removed with the nations they belonged to. The forts which the Dutch built
in the Scheldt were, however, another and a very powerful cause. The trade
of Holland rose on the fall of Antwerp, and settled principally at
Amsterdam; this city had indeed become considerable after the decline of
the Hanseatic confederacy; but was not renowned for its commerce till the
destruction of Antwerp. The commerce of Holland was extended and supported
by its fisheries, and the manufactures of Flanders and the adjoining
provinces, which in their turn received support from its commerce.
Guicciardini informs us, that there were in the Netherlands, in time of
peace, 700 busses and boats employed in the herring fishery: each made
three voyages in the season, and on an average during that period, caught
seventy lasts of herring, each last containing twelve barrels of 9OO or
1000 herrings each barrel; the price of a last was usually about 6L.
sterling: the total amount of one year's fishery, was about 294,000L.
sterling. About sixty years after this time, according to Sir Walter
Raleigh, the cod and ling fishery of Friesland, Holland, Zealand, and
Flanders, (the provinces included by Guicciardini in the maritime
Netherlands) brought in 100,000L. annually: and the salmon-fishing of
Holland and Zealand nearly half that sum.

The woollen manufactures of the Netherlands had, about the time that
Guicciardini wrote, been