home from Flanders with cart-wheels and wheel-*barrows. The writer remarks that the Scotch ships must pass by the English coast on their way to Flanders, and might therefore be easily intercepted,
"If they would not our friends bee
We might lightly stoppe hem in the sea."
The trade of the Easterlings,[1] Prussia, and Germany, consisted of copper, beer, bacon, bow staves, steel, wax, pottery, pitch and tar, fir, oak planks, Cologne thread, wool cards, fustian, canvas, and buckram, exported to Flanders; whence were carried back silver plate and wedges, and silver (which came to Flanders in great plenty from Bohemia and Hungary); also woollen cloths of all colours. "And they aventure full greatly unto the Bay For salt that is needefull;"
"They should not passe our streems withouten leve
It would not be, but if we should hem greue."
There then follows a description of the commerce of Genoa, whose merchants resorted to England in great caracks "arrayed withouten lacke," with cloth of gold, silk, black pepper, woad, wool, oil, cotton, rock-alum, taking as a return cargo, wool, and woollen cloth made with home-spun wool, proceeding frequently from England to Flanders, then the chief market of north-eastern Europe.
"If they would be our full enemies,
They should not passe our streems with marchandise."
- ↑ The ancient word Easterlings or Osterlings (whence Sterling) signifies from the east, and embraces the inhabitants of all the seventy-two Hanse Towns.
