ctivities
resented and their efforts blocked and thwarted.

All commerce with the dominions of the King of Spain was carried on with
the greatest difficulty. "Our necessitie of oiles and colours for our
clothinge trade being so greate," pointed out Hakluyt, "he may arreste
almoste the one halfe of our navye, our traficque and recourse beinge so
greate in his dominions." The rich trade with the Far East was seriously
hampered by the Turks, through whose territories it had to pass, and
often a heavy tribute was laid upon it by the Sultan and his minions.
Even after the merchants had succeeded in lading their vessels in the
eastern Mediterranean with goods from the Orient, they still had to run
the gauntlet of the hostile Powers who infested that sea. If they
escaped the Knights of Malta, they might be captured by the corsairs of
Algeria or Tripoli.

The trade with France had also declined greatly during the closing years
of the Sixteenth century. Not only had the religious wars proved a
tremendous obstacle, but the government at Paris discriminated against
the woolens from England by means of custom duties, while the French
workmen were themselves manufacturing cloth of excellent quality in
larger amounts than had hitherto been thought possible. In the Low
Countries the long and bitter struggle of the people against the bloody
bands of Alva had wrought such destruction and had so ruined industry
that all foreign commerce had greatly declined.[1-9]

There can be no surprise, then, that many English economists felt that a
crisis had been reached, that nothing save the immediate establishment
of colonies would prevent disaster. With the woolen industry declining,
with the shipbuilding centres almost idle, with able mariners deserting
the service, with the foreign market gradually closing to English wares,
with the country overrun with idle and starving laborers, with some of
her chief natural resources nearly exhausted and the trade by which her
needs were replenished in constant danger, England turned to America as
her hope for salvation. Upon securing a foothold in the New World,
hitherto monopolized by Spain and Portugal, depended Albion's future
greatness and prosperity.

It is this which gave to the London Company its national character, and
made its efforts to establish a colony across the Atlantic a crusade, a
movement in which every Englishman was vitally concerned. The great
lords and wealthy merchants who compr