which have rendered us so great, so eminent, so flourishing a people."[1]
But the Merchant Adventurers, besides leading the way to and developing the trade with Russia, were instrumental in the establishment of the whale fishery of Spitzbergen, and in the equally great, if not more important, fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland. Nor were their efforts confined to discoveries of new sources of wealth at sea, for, besides their extensive commercial operations with the interior of Russia where they had established various agencies, they entered into trading relations with Persia. Writing to one of these agents, they remark, "We have further hope of some good trade to be found out by Master Anthonie Jenkinson, by reason we do perceive by your letters, that raw silk is as plentiful in Persia as flax is in Russia, besides other commodities that may come from thence."[2]
The Steel-Yard merchants partially restored to their former influence. The untimely death of Edward VI. (6 July, 1553), while it operated as a severe check on the advancing commercial prosperity of England, was no less inauspicious to the fortunes of Sebastian Cabot, who had given to it the first great impulse. The generosity of the youthful monarch, his ingenuous and enterprising spirit, and his fondness for maritime affairs, offer a melancholy contrast to the sullen bigotry of Mary.[3] Without one spark of feeling for the commercial interests of the people whom she had been
- ↑ Campbell's 'Lives of the Admirals.'
- ↑ Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 307.
- ↑ Among the first acts of Elizabeth, when she ascended the throne, was to address a letter on the subject of commercial intercourse "To the right mightie and right victorious Prince, the Great Sophie, Emperor of the Persians, Medes, &c., &c., and the people on this side and beyond the river of Tigris."
