It must not be forgot here to take some notice of the state of trade during the time of this common calamity; and this with respect to foreign trade, as also to our home trade.

As to foreign trade, there needs little to be said.  The trading nations of Europe were all afraid of us.  No port of France, or Holland, or Spain, or Italy, would admit our ships, or correspond with us.  Indeed, we stood on ill terms with the Dutch, and were in a furious war with them, though in a bad condition to fight abroad, who had such dreadful enemies to struggle with at home.

Our merchants were accordingly at a full stop.  Their ships could go nowhere; that is to say, to no place abroad.  Their manufactures and merchandise, that is to say, of our growth, would not be touched abroad.  They were as much afraid of our goods as they were of our people; and indeed they had reason, for our woolen manufactures are as retentive of infection as human bodies, and, if packed up by persons infected, would receive the infection, and be as dangerous to the touch as a man would be that was infected; and therefore when any English vessel arrived in foreign countries, if they did take the goods on shore, they always caused the bales to be opened and aired in places appointed for that purpose.  But from London they would not suffer them to come into port, much less to unload their goods, upon any terms whatever; and this strictness was especially used with them in Spain and Italy.  In Turkey and the islands of the Arches,[291] indeed, as they are called, as well those belonging to the Turks as to the Venetians, they were not so very rigid.  In the first there was no obstruction at all, and four ships which were then in the river loading for Italy (that is, for Leghorn and Naples) being denied product, as they call it, went on to Turkey, and were freely admitted to unlade their cargo without any difficulty, only that when they arrived there, some of their cargo was not fit for sale in that country, and other parts of it being consigned to merchants at Leghorn, the captains of the ships had no right nor any orders to dispose of the goods; so that great inconveniences followed to the merchants.  But this was nothing but what the necessity of affairs required; and the merchants at Leghorn and Naples, having notice given them, sent again from thence to take care of the effects which were particularly consigned to those ports, and to bring back in other ships such as were improper for the markets at Smyrna[292] and Scanderoon.[293]

The inconveniences in Spain and Portugal were still greater; for they would by no means suffer our ships, especially those from London, to come into any of their ports, much less to unlade.  There was a report that one of our ships having by stealth delivered her cargo, among which were some bales of English cloth, cotton, kerseys, and such like goods, the Spaniards caused all the goods to be burned, and punished the men with death who were concerned in carrying them on shore.  This I believe was in part true, though I do not affirm it; but it is not at all unlikely, seeing the danger was really very great, the infection being so violent in London.