^be ^ubor lPerio^, 



CHAPTER XX. 



THE CONNECTION BETWEEN LAND AND TRADE. 



The chief feature of the age now under discussion was the 

 rapid and vigorous growth of the great English middle class. 

 Fortunes were being constantly made in trade, and within 

 little more than a century the descendant of a wealthy Hull 

 merchant had not only become a duke of the realm and the 

 consort of a royal princess, but had died with the very crown 

 within his grasp.^ There were great commercial houses like 

 the Cannyngs of Bristol, and merchant princes like Dick Whit- 

 tington, thrice Lord Mayor of London and hero of modern 

 pantomime. There was John Taverner, whom a wide export 

 trade had induced to build so mighty a merchant vessel that 

 its great cargoes of woolfels, passelarges, lambskins and hides 

 evaded the staple by special royal consent. And there were 

 many less famed merchant magnates who were initiauing 

 that daring spirit of enterprise which, in Elizabeth's reign, 

 carried the English flag into all the out-of-the-way nooks and 

 crannies of the hitherto ill-explored world. Attracted by such 

 success the nobles themselves turned merchants, and the clergy 

 followed suit. A reverend abbot ^ was not too sanctified to 

 start a herring trade, nor the very king himself too august to 

 seek wealth from commercial dealings. Our forefathers might 



1 TheDe la Poles of Hull subsequently became Earls of Suffolk. William 

 de la Pole was created a duke for his services at the siege of Orleans ; 

 John de la Pole, his son, married the sister of Edward IV., and their 

 eldest son was declared heir presumptive to the throne by Eichard III., 

 and was betrothed to a daughter of the Scottish royal house, but died as 

 plain Earl of Lincoln a few years before his father. 



- William of Trumpington, Abbot of St. Albans. 



261 



