The East India Company, on the other hand, alleged that the cloth they exported was finer and more valuable than that exported by the Turkey Company, and that, if they were rightly informed, the medium of cloths exported by that company, for the last three years, was only 19,000 cloths yearly:  it is admitted, however, that before there was any trade to China and Japan, the Turkey Company’s exportation of cloth did much exceed that of the East India Company.  With respect to the charge of exporting bullion, it was alleged that the Turkey Company also export it to purchase the raw silk in Turkey.  The East India Company further contended, that since their importation of raw silk, the English silk manufacturers had much encreased, and that the plain wrought silks from India were the strongest, most durable, and cheapest of any, and were generally re-exported from England to foreign parts.

We have been thus particular in detailing this dispute between these companies, partly because it points out the state of the Levant Company and their commerce, at the close of the seventeenth century, but principally because it unfolds one of the principal causes of their decline; for, though some little notice of it will afterwards occur, yet its efforts were feeble, and its success diminished, chiefly by the rivalry of the East India Company.

The Levant trade, as we have seen, was gradually obtained by the English from the hands of the Venetians and other foreign powers.  The trade we are next to notice was purely of English origin and growth;—­we allude to the trade between England and Russia, which began about the middle of the sixteenth century.  The discovery of Archangel took place, as we have already related, in 1553.  Chanceller, who discovered it, obtained considerable commercial privileges from the Czar for his countrymen.  In 1554, a Russian Company was established; but before their charter, the British merchants had engaged in the Russian trade.  The first efforts of the company seem to have been confined to attempts to discover a north-east passage.  Finding these unsuccessful, they turned their attention to commerce:  they fortunately possessed a very enterprising man, peculiarly calculated to foster and strengthen an infant trade, who acted as their agent.  He first set on foot, in 1558, a new channel of trade through Russia into Persia, for raw silk, &c.  In the course of his commercial enquiries and transactions, he sailed down the Volga to Nisi, Novogorod, Casan, and Astracan, and thence across the Caspian Sea to Persia.  He mentions that, at Boghar, which he describes as a good city, he found merchants from India, Persia, Russia, and Cathay,—­from which last country it was a nine months journey to Boghar.  He performed his journey seven different times.  It appears, however, that this channel of trade was soon afterwards abandoned, till 1741, when it was resumed for a very short time, during which considerable quantities of raw silk were brought to