THE tale of their privileges is staggering to consider. They had their fortified Guildhall with its wharves and store-houses on the riverside;* they were free of most, if not all, English taxes, both municipal and national, and paid less in customs than native Englishmen; they had not only their own court and aldermen for the government of their own affairs, but had special judges to settle their disputes with natives; they were above English juries and English law; they were exempt especially from that ancient custom of “hosting”* which prevailed not only in England but throughout at least Northern Europe; they held their houses in London and other ports in freehold; they had control of one of the gates of the City of London, and were free to go out and in without paying municipal duties; they dealt not only “in gross” but in retail, in defiance of English custom.*
They were thus favoured not only over other foreigners, but over Englishmen. Their advantage over other foreigners was so overwhelming that even the trade of the Venetians with England languished and dwindled almost to nothing, and their advantage over Englishmen was substantial enough to make the determination to end it one of the chief forces in our mediaeval politics.*
* This Guildhall was known as the Steelyard. In 1281, Edward I recognised a self-governing community, the Hanse of Almain, in London, and granted them a Carta Mercatoria in 1303. Resentments flared in 1469. The Steelyard was destroyed, plunging the country into the Anglo-Hanseatic War of 1470–74; but after Edward IV signed the Treaty of Utrecht the bloc regained the Steelyard, and from 1475 enjoyed the rights enumerated by Colvin, which were not reciprocated in the towns of the Hanse.
* The league also attempted to manipulate civic and diplomatic policy for its own benefit. As William Harborne (?1542-1617), Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, travelled through Gdansk, Lübeck and Hamburg he was showered with congratulations on England’s deliverance from the Spanish Armanda of 1588; but he learnt too that down on the docks labourers were busily loading ships bound for Spain with “great provisions of corn, cables, ropes, powder, saltpetre, harquebusses, armour, iron, lead, copper, and all other munitions serving for the war”. On June 30th, 1589, Sir Francis Drake impounded sixty Hanse ships, laden with military supplies, during a raid on Lisbon.
* By legal custom reaching back to Anglo-Saxon times, foreigners were not permitted to live in the City of London except as paying guests of the citizens, who were entitled to claim commission on their guests’ sales. The privilege was jealously guarded, and exemptions consequently resented. King Ethelred (r. 978-1016) got round it by hosting foreigners aboard ship.
* The League’s grip weakened when English merchants began to look for alternative trading parters. William Adams established links with Japan, but the heaviest blow was the Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers or Muscovy Company, which capitalised on Richard Chancellor’s breakthrough journey to Russia in 1553. “How abominable that such a Company could suppress the Hanse,” grumbled the Alderman of the Steelyard in 1581, “considering that at other times a few Hanse towns have kept the whole kingdom of England under their thumbs.” Elizabeth’s refusal to release the ships impounded by Drake confirmed that the Hanse was powerless in the face of English defiance, and the Queen rescinded the bloc’s City privileges in 1598. The Steelyard was reopened a few years later under James I, but England had become a trading power in her own right and was now looking towards India and North America.