the king was not only to pay them for the service of the
said ships but for the vessels themselves if they miscarried. Now it
happened that at their return to Germany, from serving Henry the Third,
there was a great fleet of them cast away, for which, according to
covenant, they demanded reparation. Our king in lieu of money, among
other facts of grace, gave them a privilege to pay but one per cent.,
which continued until Queen Mary's reign, and she by advice of King
Philip, her husband, as it was conceived, enhanced the one to twenty per
cent.

The Hans not only complained but clamored loudly for breach of their
ancient privileges confirmed unto them, time out of mind, by thirteen
successive kings of England, which they pretended to have purchased with
their money. King Philip undertook to accommodate the business, but
Queen Mary dying a little after, and he retiring, there could be nothing
done. Complaint being made to Queen Elizabeth, she answered that as she
would not innovate anything, so she would maintain them still in the
same condition she found them. Hereupon their navigation and traffic
ceased a while, wherefore the English tried what they could do
themselves, and they thrived so well that they took the whole trade into
their own hands, and so divided themselves (tho they be now but one), to
staplers and merchant-adventurers, the one residing constant in one
place, where they kept their magazine of wool, the other stirring and
adventuring to divers places abroad with cloth and other manufacturies,
which made the Hans endeavor to draw upon them all the malignancy they
could from all nations.

Moreover, the Hans towns being a body politic incorporated in the
empire, complained thereof to the emperor, who sent over persons of
great quality to mediate an accommodation, but they could effect
nothing. Then the queen caused a proclamation to be published that the
easterlings or merchants of the Hans should be entreated and used as all
other strangers were, within her dominations, without any mark of
difference in point of commerce. This nettled them more, thereupon they
bent their forces more eagerly, and in a diet at Ratisbon they procured
that the English merchants who had associated themselves into
fraternities in Emden and other places should be declared monopolists;
and so there was a committal edict published against them that they
should be exterminated and banished out of all parts of the empire; and
this