THE HANSARDS 67 



wharves and the denes adjoining Yarmouth 

 to-day. 



Liibeck, the most important town of the 

 Hansa League, had for its armorial bear- 

 ings three herrings upon a plain gold shield ; 

 the herring was thus the ensign of the greatest 

 power in commerce and warfare in Northern 

 Europe for at least 350 years, roughly speaking, 

 that is, from 1241 to the end of the reign of 

 Queen Elizabeth. Liibeck sent her fishing 

 boats into the Belt and the Sound, where the 

 herring, in the twelfth century, resorted for 

 the purpose of spawning. By harassing the 

 Hanseatic traders, the Danes in and near the 

 Sound drew upon themselves a war with the 

 League which lasted with scarcely an interval 

 from 1227 to 1249, and ended by permanently 

 crippling the Danish kings. 



The migrations of the herrings during that 

 period, and even later till the Dutch domi- 

 nated the fisheries, in fact determined the 

 whole course of commerce and of politics, in 

 Northern Europe. Just as the Hansa League 

 had depended for a great part of its wealth on 

 the herring, so the Low Countries first began to 

 become commercially prosperous when, during 

 the early part of the fifteenth century the fish 

 began to spawn in the North Sea instead of in 

 the Baltic. Out of the Dutch fishing fleet grew 

 the Dutch mercantile marine, and this came to 

 be of such importance that in Cromwell's time 

 the Dutch owned 16,000 out of the 20,000 



