THE OPENING OF THE EAST 



by Queen Mary in 1555. Chancellor led another expedition in that 

 year and on his return voyage picked up the body of Willoughby and 

 his papers. In 1556 three vessels sailed to the White Sea under Steven 

 Borough in the Searchthrifty and not only carried out very valuable 

 surveying work along the Northern European coast but also in Nova 

 Zembla and many of the Northern Islands. Chancellor, a very gallant 

 seaman who did much for the exploitation of our trade in the North of 

 Europe, perished in 1556 when the Edward Bonaventure was wrecked 

 near Aberdeen while bringing over the first Muscovite Ambassador to 

 the Court of London. 



The Company of Merchant Adventurers. 



The Company of Merchant Adventurers of England, already men- 

 tioned, was granted a charter in the year 1555 for the discovery of 

 unknown lands and their exploitation. The twelfth Earl of Arundel 

 was the moving spirit, together with Sebastian Cabot who was made a 

 Life Governor of the Company, but it was really a development of a 

 very early trading guild in Brabant dating from 1296, which afterwards 

 extended its operations to England. It worked very largely in the 

 Netherlands and on the modern German coast and eventually it came 

 to have its centre at Hamburg, whereby it was known as the Hamburg 

 Company. It certainly did magnificent work in extending the bounds 

 of England and also in increasing her trade, but the charter of 

 incorporation that was granted to it by Queen Elizabeth in 1564 gave 

 it so many privileges in the East that it came into very bitter antagonism 

 with the East India Company. Its original purpose was the exploitation 

 of British wool. 



The Portuguese in the East. 



Following hard on the discoveries of Vasco da Gama came the 

 extension of the Portuguese Empire in the East. In 1500 they estab- 

 lished themselves in a factory at Calicut on the Indian coast and three 

 years later they built fortresses which seemed to render their position 

 unassailable. Copying the Phoenicians of old their great care was that 

 no whisper of their wealth should leak out to possible enemies, and this 

 policy resulted in their being left practically undisturbed for nearly a 

 century. When British ships began to take Spanish and Portuguese 

 prizes, however, they learned a lot about the twin empires and soon 

 made the most of their knowledge. The West oflEered better oppor- 

 tunities than the East and therefore the Gentlemen Adventurers 

 attacked the Spanish before the Portuguese, but it was only a matter of 

 turn. Meanwhile the Portuguese were making the most of their oppor- 

 tunities and had established a chain of stations from Ormuz in the 

 Persian Gulf to the East Indies and beyond, fortifying the strategical 

 points and maintaining a fleet to protect themselves from pirates and 

 the " free-traders " or " interlopers " whom they were always expect- 

 ing to come and break their monopoly. 



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