Before going on to speak of the glass made in Spain, it will be well to say a few words of that made in the Spanish Netherlands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here, as might be expected from the course of trade, the Venetian influence was early felt, and before long became predominant. In the northern provinces, on the other hand, the old Teutonic traditions, both as to form and material, continued on the whole unchanged to a much later period, so that the glass of the United Provinces will be best dealt with in connection with that of Germany. Already in the fourteenth century the Venetian galleys brought the glass of Murano to the Flemish ports. In some cases this glass was held worthy of being mounted in silver. A goblet and an _aiguière_ are mentioned in an inventory of 1379 as the property of Charles V. of France. These pieces are indeed described as ‘_voirres blants de Flandre_’: it is, however, very probable that they came in the first place from Venice. As early as 1541 Venetian glass-workers were settled at Antwerp, but, as in France, the great invasion took place shortly after the middle of the century. It must be borne in mind that what we know of the wanderings of these _gentilshommes de verre_ from Venice and from L’Altare is derived almost exclusively from the researches of Belgian antiquaries and _archivistes_. In the already quoted works of Houday, of Pinchart, and above all in the earlier and later letters of the Belgian judge, the President Schuermans, we have a wealth of information. M. Schuermans has traced these Italian glass-workers to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Namur, to Liége, Maestricht and Huy, and in the northern provinces to Bois-le-Duc, Middelburg, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. There was a great rivalry between the Muranese, who on the whole predominated at Antwerp, and the Altarists, whom we find for the most part at Liége: these were the two most important centres. The Low Countries indeed became before long a second home to these Italians, whence they wandered out again to France, England, and Spain. While at Antwerp the true Venetian _cristallo_ was imported free of duty, the imitations of that glass, the _voirre de cristal, à la faschion de Venise_, made over the French frontier at Mézières or in Germany, and often difficult to distinguish from the originals, were strictly excluded, and these fiscal regulations were enforced by the most tyrannical measures. The case is well put by Mr. Hartshorne: ‘There were,’ he says, ‘in the Low Countries in the beginning of the seventeenth century, real Venetian glasses imported from Venice, Venetian glasses legally made in the Low Countries, those illegally made, and foreign imitations of Venetian glass’ (_Old English Glasses_, p. 39). Apart from these varieties of _cristallo_ glass, the old _verre de fougère_ doubtless continued to be manufactured.