“Society of Equal Sharers” or “Brotherhood of Victuallers.”  This consisted of an incongruous aggregation of noble and plebeian blades, who, despite their excessive brutality, nevertheless possessed some genuine knightly characteristics, the hardihood and bravery of the true mariner, and a boundless love of adventure.  Formed during the eighth decade of the fourteenth century for the purpose of assisting the King of Sweden against the martial queen Margaret of Denmark, its immediate object at that time was the supplying of victuals to the beleaguered city of Stockholm—­whence its name.  When, upon the surrender of the city and the establishment of peace, the immediate object of the society had been fulfilled, the attraction of freebooting proved too strong for these wild companions, whose excesses now assumed an increasingly alarming form.  For more than a half century they remained the terror of the northern seas.  Almost annually the cities were compelled to send out vessels against them, which, however, were not always so successful as the celebrated Bunte Kuh ("Brindled Cow”) of Hamburg, which captured the most dangerous of the piratic captains, Claus Stoertebeker and Godeke Michel, with their followers and their fabulous treasures, and brought them to Hamburg.  Tradition has it that for three days the public executioner stood ankle-deep in the blood of the condemned.  Nevertheless, the seafaring public did not suspect the presence of a robber behind every bush or cliff.  After all, an undisturbed voyage was the rule rather than the exception; sensational occurrences, of course, then, as now, playing an important part in the reports of the time.

To these social disorders must be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea—­the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated—­dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available.  Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective.  It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and were of course followed by all the evils of that cruel and barbarous “Strand law” which, despite all papal edicts and voluntary treaties, could not be abrogated, but was actually carried out by the Archbishop of Bremen himself.

Notwithstanding all these hinderances, the sea voyage, which, by reason of the dangers attending it, was strictly prohibited during the winter months, was incomparably safer and pleasanter than the journey by land.  The traveller by land was strictly confined to the prescribed highway of travel, every deviation from which was regarded as a defraudation of the customs and was punished by confiscation of goods.  The inconveniences to which the merchant was subjected in the way of taxes are almost incredible.  As the mediaeval spirit was reflected in the confusion of coinage—­nearly every petty count and