262 History of the English Landed Interest. 



have with far more justice earned our modern reproach of 

 being a nation of shopkeepers, had not all classes abroad been 

 stricken with the same trading fever. 



Though it was without doubt the aim of the Tudor dynasty 

 to exalt the wealth of England, the privileges granted to 

 foreigners had tended to place the national commerce almost 

 entirely under foreign flags. As soon however as royal attention 

 had become focused on the attempts of the Hanse merchants 

 to obstruct English trade outlets, and on the monopolisation of 

 native commerce by the Lombards, the patriotic queen needed 

 not the London mob's clamour in the riot of 1597 to spur her 

 on to remedying the abuse. She forthwith expelled the 

 Easterlings, closed their Steel Yard, ^encouraged her merchants 

 to build ships, and rewarded their successful captains. Hence- 

 forth the spirit of adventure stirred the hearts of bold sailors 

 like Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, whilst the love story of 

 Edward Osborne shed a glamour of romance around the 

 hitherto prosy trade dealings of the sixteenth-century mer- 

 chant, which afterwards proved an eloquent theme for the 

 novelist.^ 



No wonder then that the Tudor aristocracy never considered 

 that commercial dealings would soil their fingers, and that 

 younger sons of the landed gentry found thus a suitable vent 

 for their loftiest ambition. A few generations before, the 

 sword had been the sole profession worthy of their considera- 

 tion ; henceforth commerce and the sword were so closely al- 

 lied that the former was raised to dignity by the latter's 

 agency. By such means was infused into trade the blue blood 

 of the Norman, and into the landed interest the hitherto de- 

 spised blood of the Anglo-Saxon ; and this alliance of com- 

 merce with land obliterated those few remaining traces of race 

 antagonism that had survived the lapse of centuries. 



' In Edward Sixth's i-eifi;n their monopoly was taken away and their 

 liberties forfeited, but they still throve by exporting native cloths, till 

 Elizabeth expelled them in 15t>7. 



- Edward Osborne, a clothworker, saved the life of his master's daughter 

 by jumping into the Thames after her, whereuiion she refused the Earl 

 of Shrewsbury and married her preserver, wlio thus became the progeni- 

 tor of the ducal house of Leeds. 



