A, D, 1594. 205 



was merely a new political Lent, which did not pretend to have any 

 relation to religious abftinence. The landholders might furely have 

 more effectually promoted the increafe of fleili meac, by enabling their 

 tenants to take long leafes of their farms, whereby they might have had 

 time fufficient f jr railing fheep and oxen, and increafing their butter, 

 cheefe, poultry, &c. This law was doubtlefs very favourable to the 

 filheries of Scotland, which was probably the motive for enacting it. 



The emperor Rodolph II having written a letter to Queen Elizabeth 

 in the preceding year refpeding the grievances daily complained of by 

 the maritime cities of the Baltic league (i. e. the Hanle towns), the 

 queen now difpatched Dr. Perkins as her envoy to the emperor to vin- 

 dicate her condud towards the German Steelyard merchants of the 

 Hanfe confederacy. That envoy gave the following account to the em- 

 peror's minifters, viz. 



That the antient privileges which they formerly had in England, be- 

 caufe of their great abufe of them, and in confideration that they were 

 become incompatible with the good ftate of the realm, had been abro- 

 gated in the reign of Edward VI ; yet Queen Elizabeth, in the begin- 

 ning of her reign, granted them the trade of her own fubjeds, until at 

 length, in the year 1577, an alTembly of the Hanfe deputies at Lubeck 

 decreed to forbid the Englifli merchants trade at Hamburgh ; and yet 

 at this time, notwithftanding all their unkind dealing, her majefty of- 

 fereth them the privileges of her own fubjeds, in cale that they will 

 fuffer fome convenient trade to the Englifh merchants in their cities. 

 And for that, in all kingdoms, fome old uiages and privileges, by 

 change of circumftances, ufe to be taken away, efpecially if fome great 

 abufe of them happen, the Hanfes have no caufe to complain of Eng- 

 land, but of themielves ; wherefor it hath been taken fomewhat un- 

 kindly that a mandate of late hath been given (meaning by the empe- 

 ror) againfl the Englifli trade at Stoade *. [Fa^dt'/a, V. xvi, pp. 212, 

 253 — Catndeni Annales, L. iv. | 



An engine was ereded at Broken-wharf, in London, for conveying 

 the Thames water into the feveral fl;reets of that city by leaden pipes 

 into every houfe. [Siow's Jlunalcs, p. i 279.] 



The author of a Colledion of voyages undertaken by the Dutch Ead- 

 India company, and of an account of feveral attempts to find out ihe 

 north-eaft paffage (8vo, I703\ in his introdudion remarks, that ' if the 

 ' Spaniards had not feized on the Hollanders' ihips, and expofed their 

 ' perions to the rigour of the inquilition, probably they had never ex- 

 ' tended their navigation beyond the Eairic lea, the northern countries, 

 ' England, France, Spain, and its dependencies, the Mediterranean, and 



* Tills claufe relates to the decree of the German diet, which Gilpin's dexterity had defeated, as 

 already noted. 3 



