Still another group of buyers was represented by those who had commissions direct from traders in Holland, Germany and Austria, the business done by the members of this group being "not less considerable" than that done by the others. It was mainly on account of this London and foreign trade that the Act for making the rivers Aire and Calder navigable was obtained, there being secured a waterway communication by means of which the cloth could be sent direct from Leeds, Wakefield and other industrial centres to Hull, there to be shipped to London or to Continental ports, as desired. The facilities for navigation thus afforded subsequently had a still greater influence on the development of the Yorkshire coal trade, coal being taken from Wakefield or Leeds to the Humber, and thence conveyed up the Ouse to York, or to the numerous towns situate on the Trent or other rivers. By the same navigation the Yorkshire towns received most of their supplies, either as imported into Hull from abroad, or as received there from London or the eastern counties, these supplies including butter, cheese, salt, sugar, tobacco, fruit, spices, oil, wine, brandy, hops, lead, and all kinds of heavy or bulky goods. For the merchants of Hull this meant a business to be compared only with that of the merchants of Lynn and Bristol. Some of the many river improvement Acts passed in the period here under review were not secured without a certain amount of opposition, and the case of the Don, more especially, {148}offers a striking example of that conflict of rival interests, even in the case of rivers, which later on was to give rise to many a Parliamentary battle in the days, first of canals, and then of railways. How the cutlers of Sheffield and the steel manufacturers and others of Hallamshire in general had been accustomed to forward their goods by road to the inland port of Bawtry, thence to be sent down the Idle and on by the Trent and the Humber to Hull, has already been told. (See pp. 123-4.) There came a time, however, when this preliminary land journey of twenty miles from Sheffield to Bawtry was found of great disadvantage to the trade of the district; and in 1697 leave was given to bring in a Bill to allow of the Don, already navigable to Doncaster, being rendered navigable to Sheffield, in order that merchandise might be sent by that stream direct from Sheffield to the Ouse, and so on to the Humber and the port of Hull. But the opposition offered by representatives of the Bawtry, Trent and other interests--who rightly foresaw in the scheme impending ruin for most of the traffic on the Idle--was so powerful that the Bill was thrown out. A further Bill, with a like object, was introduced, and strongly supported, in the following Session. It was still more vigorously opposed, there being what Hunter describes as "a war of petitions," and it was not proceeded with.