188 
HINTS TO COIN-COLLECTOHS 
the birth of England's commercial undertakings beyond the 
seas that surround her. Before that period internal dissen- 
sions, oivil wars and the general policy of her rulers had 
prevented her embarking in any but warlike undertakings 
abroad. In the middle of the nineteenth century we see her 
the ruler of the seas, with so vast an extent of colonial 
territory that the sun never sets on the boundaries of her 
dominions : — in the middle of the sixteenth, only 300 years 
before, we find her possessions almost exclusively bounded 
by the seaboard of Great Britain, with a mercantile marine 
so weak that London at that time is said to have " possessed 
but four ships of above one hundred and two tons burden, 
exclusive of the navy royal." JS^ow her merchant princes 
absorb an enormous percentage of the trade of the world : 
then the cities of the Hanseatic league appear to have almost 
monopolized the trade of her main towns, while Portugal, 
who, by the discovery of the Cape route, virtually commanded 
what little Indian trade there was, vied with the Italian 
states, who held the trade of Egypt and the Persian Gulf 
in supplying the Western isles with the products and the 
luxuries of the East. The accession of Elizabeth, however, 
inaugurated a new era in the naval history of England. 
Recognizing the advantages of holding in her own hands 
the importation of those goods in which her merchant 
subjects dealt, and realizing, too, that she, as the defender of 
a faith at variance with that of most of the maritime powers 
of Europe, above all others, required a strong naval force, 
she spared no pains to encourage the promotion of that power, 
which was destined, in the distant future, to raise her country 
to the highest rank among the nations of the world. " The 
result," as a writer at the commencement of this centui'y 
says, *' was that the commercial resources of England de- 
veloped themselves with a rapidity truly wonderful. The 
scene might have reminded a fanciful spectator of one of 
those changes undergone by vegetable natui'e, when after 
