a robust generation were served by the wealth of her great landed
proprietors, and of the "worthy vavasours" (smaller landowners) who, like
Chaucer's "Franklin"--a very Saint Julian or pattern of hospitality--knew
not what it was to be "without baked meat in the house," where their

tables dormant in the hall alway
Stood ready covered all the longe day.

From this source, and from the well-filled coffers of the traders came the
laity's share of the expenses of those foreign wars which did so much to
consolidate national feeling in England. The foreign companies of
merchants long contrived to retain the chief share of the banking business
and export trade assigned to them by the short-sighted commercial policy
of Edward III, and the weaving and fishing industries of Hanseatic and
Flemish immigrants had established an almost unbearable competition in our
own ports and towns. But the active import trade, which already connected
England with both nearer and remoter parts of Christendom, must have been
largely in native hands; and English chivalry, diplomacy, and literature
followed in the lines of the trade-routes to the Baltic and the
Mediterranean. Our mariners, like their type the "Shipman" in Chaucer (an
anticipation of the "Venturer" of later days, with the pirate as yet,
perhaps, more strongly marked in him than the patriot),--

knew well all the havens, as they were
From Gothland, to the Cape of Finisterre,
And every creek in Brittany and Spain.

Doubtless, as may be noticed in passing, much of the tendency on the part
of our shipmen in this period to self-help in offence as well as in
defence, was due to the fact that the mercantile navy was frequently