But ye Fleminges, if ye be not wrothe, The grete substance of your cloth, at the fulle, Ye wot ye made it of youre English wolle. But Flanders was not the only division represented. Our ‘Brabazons’ once written ‘le Brabançon,’ together with our ‘Brabants,’ ‘Brabaners,’ and ‘Brabans,’ issued, of course, from the duchy of that name; while our ‘Hanways’[144] and ‘Hannants’ hailed from Hainault, the latter of the two representing the usual early English pronunciation of the place-word. The old enrolled forms are ‘de Hanoia’ and ‘de Henau.’ It is very likely, therefore, that our ‘Hannahs’ are similarly derived. The poem I have just quoted, after mentioning the products of ‘Braban,’ ‘Selaunde,’ and ‘Henaulde,’ proceeds to say:— But they of Holonde at Caleyse buy our felles And our wolles, that Englyshe men then selles. This, and such an entry as ‘Thurstan de Holland,’ give us at once a clue, if clue were needed, to the source whence have issued our ‘Hollands.’ Holandman,’ which once existed, is, I believe, now extinct. A common sobriquet for those enterprising traders who visited us from the shores of the Baltic was ‘Easterling,’ and it is to their honest integrity as merchants we owe the fact of their name in the form of ‘Sterling’ being so familiar. In contrast to the country-made money, their coin obtained the name of ‘Easterling,’ or, as we now term it, ‘Sterling’ money—so many pounds _sterling_ being the ordinary phrase for good and true coin. We have even come to apply the term generally in such phrases as _sterling_ worth, _sterling_ honesty, or _sterling_ character. The more inland traders were styled ‘Almaines,’ or merchants ‘d’Almaine,’[145] terms common enough in our earlier archives, as ‘le Aleman,’ or ‘de Almania,’ or ‘le Alemaund,’ and thus have sprung our ‘Alemans,’ ‘Almaines,’ and ‘Allmans,’ and through the French, probably, our ‘Lallimands,’ ‘D’Almaines,’ ‘Dalmaines,’ and more perverted ‘Dalmans’ and ‘Dollmans.’[146] Thus to these enterprising and honest traders we owe a surname which from the odious forms it has assumed shows that their names, at least, were corruptible, if not their credit. I ought to have mentioned, though I have no record to quote in proof of my assertion, that our ‘Hansards’ are, I have no doubt, descendants of such Hanse merchants in our country as were members of the Hanseatic League. The founder of the Hansards, the publishers of the Parliamentary Debates, came from Norwich in the middle of the last century, and I need scarcely say that the city was the chief headquarters of the Flemish weaving interest at the date we are considering.