140 TRADE AND MARKETS. 



highly valued, for when they were held by France they were 

 generally the retreats of corsairs, as those of Brittany con- 

 stantly remained. From the mouth of the Loire to Bayonne the 

 English were the masters, and England was on friendly terms 

 with Portugal, with whom it had close commercial relations. 

 Inside the straits of Marok, as the modern straits of Gibraltar 

 were named, the trade was in the hands of the Venetians, the 

 Genoese, and the Florentines. 



The Libel of English Policy, printed among other political 

 poems in the Rolls Series, and assigned by Mr. Wright, the 

 editor, to a date which is a little later than the siege of Calais 

 in 1436, gives clear information as to the origin of most com- 

 modities imported into England, and insists that the two ports 

 of Dover and Calais were, as the Emperor Sigismund advised 

 Henry the Fifth, the keys of the channel, and the guarantee that 

 the English navy would be employed most efficiently in order to 

 protect English commerce, and control that of other countries. 

 This was clearly enough seen in the reigns of Edward the 

 Third and Henry the Fifth, but the advice was now neglected, 

 and consequently the continental influence of England had de- 

 clined. So total indeed was the decay of the navy at this 

 time, that the Flemings gibed the English with the advice that 

 they should get rid of the ship from the gold noble, and put a 

 sheep in its place. 



The produce of Spain was figs, raisins, dates, bastard wine, 

 liquorice, Seville oil, grains, iron, Castile soap, wax, wool, 

 wadmal (a kind of coarse woollen webbing), fine leather, 

 saffron and quicksilver, the principal mart for these goods 

 being Bruges. The principal articles of Flemish manufacture 

 exchanged against Spanish goods are D'Ypres linen, the best 

 made, fine cloths, fustians, and woollen goods generally, the 

 material being generally English, for even Spanish wool 

 must be mixed with English to be advantageously manu- 

 factured. It was, says the poet, by its trade and manufacture 

 that Flanders existed ; it does not grow corn enough to ke< 

 its inhabitants for a month. 



