Edward III enticed over-regulated Dutch textile workers across the Channel with the promise of English beef and English beauties.
In the days of Edward III (1327-1377), English wool was the finest in Europe; but as we knew no more what to do with our wool (wrote Thomas Fuller) than the sheep that wear it, we exported it raw to the Continent and imported the finished cloth at a high price. Lesser men might have imposed taxes, subsidies or price controls to balance the economy, but Edward had a much better idea: some healthy competition.
Samuel Smiles explains how Tudor England was transformed from sleepy backwater to hive of industry.
Samuel Smiles has been writing about England’s sluggish economy early in Elizabeth’s reign, with London acting as little more than a trading post for prosperous merchants in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Something needed to change the culture in England’s declining market towns.