their commerce was soon after suspended for a time, to the great
advantage of the English merchants, who tried what they could themselves
effect for promoting their commerce. They took the whole trade into
their own hands; and their returns proving successful, they divided
themselves into staplers and merchant adventurers; the former residing
constantly at one place, the latter trying their fortunes in other towns
and states abroad with cloth and other manufactures. This success
so enraged the Hanse Towns, that they tried all the methods which a
discontented people could devise, to draw upon the English merchants
the ill opinion of other nations and states. They prevailed so far as
to obtain an imperial edict, by which the English were prohibited all
commerce in the empire: the queen, by way of retaliation, retained sixty
of their ships, which had been seized in the River Tagus with contraband
goods of the Spaniards. These ships the queen intended to have restored,
as desiring to have compromised all differences with those trading
cities; but when she was informed, that a general assembly was held at
Lubec, in order to concert measures for distressing the English trade,
she caused the ships and cargoes to be confiscated: only two of them
were released to carry home the news, and to inform these states, that
she had the greatest contempt imaginable for all their proceedings.[*]

Henry VIII., in order to fit out a navy, was obliged to hire ships from
Hamburgh, Lubec, Dantzic, Genoa, and Venice, but Elizabeth, very early
in her reign, put affairs upon a better footing; both by building
some ships of her own, and by encouraging the merchants to build
large trading vessels which, on occasion, were converted into ships
of war.[**] In the year 1582, the seamen in England were found to be
fourteen thousand two hundred and ninety-five men;[***] the number of
vessels twelve hundred and thirty-two; of which there were only two
hundred and seventeen above eighty tons. Monson pretends, that though
navigation decayed in the first years of James I., by the practice of
the merchants, who carried on their trade in foreign bottoms,[****] yet,
before the year 1640, this number of seamen was tripled in England.[v]

The navy which the queen left at her decease appears considerable, when
we reflect only on the number of vessels, which were forty-two: but when
we consider that none of these ships carried above forty guns; that four
only came