it appears, that
all the seamen employed in the merchant service amounted to ten thousand
men, which probably exceeds not the fifth part of their present number.
Sir Thomas Overbury says, that the Dutch possessed three times more
shipping than the English, but that their ships were of inferior burden
to those of the latter.[v**] Sir William Monson computed the English
naval power to be little or nothing inferior to the Dutch,[v***] which
is surely an exaggeration. The Dutch at this time traded to England with
six hundred ships; England to Holland with sixty only.[v****]

* Journ. 11th March, 1623. Sir William Monson makes the
number amount only to nine new ships, (p. 253.)

** Stowe.

*** Parl. Hist, vol vi. p. 94.

**** Rymer, tom. xvii. p. 413.

v See note LLL, at the end of the volume.

v* The trade's increase, in the Harleian Misc. vol. iii.

v** Remarks on his travels, Harl. Misc. vol. ii. p. 348.

v*** Naval Tracts, p. 329, 350.

v**** Raleigh's Observations.

A catalogue of the manufactures for which the English were then eminent,
would appear very contemptible, in comparison of those which flourish
among them at present. Almost all the more elaborate and curious arts
were only cultivated abroad, particularly in Italy, Holland, and the
Netherlands. Ship-building and the founding of iron cannon were the
sole in which the English excelled. They seem, indeed, to have possessed
alone the secret of the latter; and great complaints were made every
parliament against the exportation of English ordnance.

Nine tenths of the commerce of the kingdom consisted in woollen
goods.[*] Wool, however, was allowed to be exported, till the nineteenth
of the king. Its exportation was then forbidden by proclamation; though
that edict was never strictly executed. Most of the cloth was exported
raw, and was dyed and dressed by the Dutch; who gained, it is pretended,
seven hundred thousand pounds a year by this manufacture.[**] A
proclamation issued by the king against exporting cloth in that
condition, had succeeded so ill during one year, by the refusal of the
Dutch to buy the dressed cloth, that great murmurs arose against it; and
this measure was retracted by the king, and complained of by the nation,
as if it had been the most impolitic in the world. It seems indeed to
have been premature.

In so little credit was the fine English cloth even at home, that the
king was