This circumstance, of its having but few ships of its own, may be regarded as one cause why, when it was taken and plundered by the Spaniards in the year 1585, it could not recover its former commerce, as the shipping removed with the nations they belonged to.  The forts which the Dutch built in the Scheldt were, however, another and a very powerful cause.  The trade of Holland rose on the fall of Antwerp, and settled principally at Amsterdam; this city had indeed become considerable after the decline of the Hanseatic confederacy; but was not renowned for its commerce till the destruction of Antwerp.  The commerce of Holland was extended and supported by its fisheries, and the manufactures of Flanders and the adjoining provinces, which in their turn received support from its commerce.  Guicciardini informs us, that there were in the Netherlands, in time of peace, 700 busses and boats employed in the herring fishery:  each made three voyages in the season, and on an average during that period, caught seventy lasts of herring, each last containing twelve barrels of 9OO or 1000 herrings each barrel; the price of a last was usually about 6L. sterling:  the total amount of one year’s fishery, was about 294,000L. sterling.  About sixty years after this time, according to Sir Walter Raleigh, the cod and ling fishery of Friesland, Holland, Zealand, and Flanders, (the provinces included by Guicciardini in the maritime Netherlands) brought in 100,000L. annually:  and the salmon-fishing of Holland and Zealand nearly half that sum.

The woollen manufactures of the Netherlands had, about the time that Guicciardini wrote, been rivalled by those of England:  yet he says, that, though their wool was very coarse, above 12,000 pieces of cloth were made at each of the following places; Amsterdam, Bois-le-duc, Delft, Haarlem, and Leyden.  Woollen manufactures were carried on also at other places, besides taffeties and tapestries.  Lisle is particularised by him as next in commercial importance to Antwerp and Amsterdam.  Bois-le-duc seems to have been the seat of a great variety of manufactures; for besides woollen cloth, 20,000 pieces of linen, worth, on an average, ten crowns each, were annually made; and likewise great quantities of knives, fine pins, mercery, &c.  By the taking of Antwerp, the Spanish or Catholic Netherlands lost their trade and manufactures, great part of which, as we have already observed, settled in the United Provinces, while the remainder passed into England and other foreign countries.

The destruction of the Hanseatic league, which benefited Amsterdam, seems also to have been of service to the other northern provinces of the Netherlands:  for in 1510, we are informed by Meursius, in his History of Denmark, there was at one time a fleet of 250 Dutch merchant ships in the Baltic:  if this be correct, the Dutch trade to the countries on this sea must have been very great.  The circumstance of the Dutch, even before their revolt from Spain, carrying