ever, is not demonstrable. Linen was made at that time in Flanders;
and as late as 1417 the fine linen used in England was imported from
France and the Low Countries. Macpherson, from Rymer, t. ix. p. 334.
Velly's history is defective in giving no account of the French commerce
and manufactures, or at least none that is at all satisfactory.

[590] Adam Bremensis, de Situ Daniae, p. 13. (Elzevir edit.)

[591] Schmidt, t. iv. p. 8. Macpherson, p. 392. The latter writer thinks
they were not known by the name of Hanse so early.

[592] Pfeffel, t. i. p. 443; Schmidt, t. iv. p. 18; t. v. p. 512;
Macpherson's Annals, vol. i. p. 693.

[593] Macpherson, vol. i. passim.

[594] Rymer, t. viii. p. 360.

[595] Macpherson (who quotes Stow), p. 415.

[596] Walsingham, p. 211.

[597] Rymer, t. vii. p. 210, 341; t. viii. p. 9.

[598] Rymer, t. x. p. 461.

[599] Rymer, t. viii. p. 488.

[600] Macpherson, p. 667.

[601] Richard III., in 1485, appointed a Florentine merchant to be
English consul at Pisa, on the ground that some of his subjects intended
to trade to Italy. Macpherson, p. 705, from Rymer. Perhaps we cannot
positively prove the existence of a Mediterranean trade at an earlier
time; and even this instrument is not conclusive. But a considerable
presumption arises from two documents in Rymer, of the year 1412, which
inform us of a great shipment of wool and other goods made by some
merchants of London for the Mediterranean, under supercargoes, whom, it
being a new undertaking, the king expressly recommended to the Genoese
republic. But that people, impelled probably by commercial jealousy,
seized the vessels and their cargoes; which induced the king to grant
the owners letters of reprisal against all Genoese property. Rymer, t.
viii. p. 717, 773. Though it is not perhaps evident that the vessels
were English, the circumstances render it highly probable. The bad
success, however, of this attempt, might prevent its imitation. A Greek
author about the beginning of the fifteenth century reckons the Inglenoi
among the nations who traded to a port in the Archipelago. Gibbon, vol.
xii. p. 52. But these enumerations are generally swelled by vanity or
the love of exaggeration; and a few English sailors on board a foreign
vessel would justify the assertion. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish
traveller, pretends that the port of Alexandria, about 1160, contained
vessels not only from England, but from Russia, and even _Cracow_.
Ha