The old Hans had extraordinary immunities given them by our Henry the Third, because they assisted him in his wars with so many ships, and as they pretend, the king was not only to pay them for the service of the said ships but for the vessels themselves if they miscarried.  Now it happened that at their return to Germany, from serving Henry the Third, there was a great fleet of them cast away, for which, according to covenant, they demanded reparation.  Our king in lieu of money, among other facts of grace, gave them a privilege to pay but one per cent., which continued until Queen Mary’s reign, and she by advice of King Philip, her husband, as it was conceived, enhanced the one to twenty per cent.

The Hans not only complained but clamored loudly for breach of their ancient privileges confirmed unto them, time out of mind, by thirteen successive kings of England, which they pretended to have purchased with their money.  King Philip undertook to accommodate the business, but Queen Mary dying a little after, and he retiring, there could be nothing done.  Complaint being made to Queen Elizabeth, she answered that as she would not innovate anything, so she would maintain them still in the same condition she found them.  Hereupon their navigation and traffic ceased a while, wherefore the English tried what they could do themselves, and they thrived so well that they took the whole trade into their own hands, and so divided themselves (tho they be now but one), to staplers and merchant-adventurers, the one residing constant in one place, where they kept their magazine of wool, the other stirring and adventuring to divers places abroad with cloth and other manufacturies, which made the Hans endeavor to draw upon them all the malignancy they could from all nations.

Moreover, the Hans towns being a body politic incorporated in the empire, complained thereof to the emperor, who sent over persons of great quality to mediate an accommodation, but they could effect nothing.  Then the queen caused a proclamation to be published that the easterlings or merchants of the Hans should be entreated and used as all other strangers were, within her dominations, without any mark of difference in point of commerce.  This nettled them more, thereupon they bent their forces more eagerly, and in a diet at Ratisbon they procured that the English merchants who had associated themselves into fraternities in Emden and other places should be declared monopolists; and so there was a committal edict published against them that they should be exterminated and banished out of all parts of the empire; and this was done by the activity of one Sudennan, a great civilian.