necessarily excited the ill-will and animosity of the English merchants. … The League exerted themselves vigorously in defence of their privileges; and having declared war against England, they succeeded in excluding our vessels from the Baltic, and acted with such energy, that Edward IV. was glad to come to an accommodation with them, on terms which were anything but honourable to the English. In the treaty for this purpose, negotiated in 1474, the privileges of the merchants of the Hanse towns were renewed, and the king assigned to them, in absolute property, a large space of ground, with the buildings upon it, in Thames Street, denominated the Steel Yard, whence the Hanse merchants have been commonly denominated the Association of the Steel Yard. … In 1498, all direct commerce with the Netherlands being suspended, the trade fell into the hands of the Hanse merchants, whose commerce was in consequence very greatly extended. But, according as the spirit of commercial enterprise awakened in the nation, and as the benefits resulting from the prosecution of foreign trade came to be better known, the privileges of the Hanse merchants became more and more obnoxious. They were in consequence considerably modified in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and were at length wholly abolished in 1597. The different individuals belonging to the factory in London, as well as those belonging to the other factories of the League, lived together at a common table, and were enjoined to observe the strictest celibacy. … By means of their factory at Bergen, and of the privileges which had been either granted to or usurped by them, the League enjoyed for a lengthened period the monopoly of the commerce of Norway. But the principal factory of the League was at Bruges in the Netherlands. Bruges became, at a very early period, one of the first commercial cities of Europe, and the centre of the most extensive trade carried on to the north of Italy. The art of navigation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was so imperfect, that a voyage from Italy to the Baltic and back again could not be performed in a single season, and hence, for the sake of their mutual convenience, the Italian and Hanseatic merchants determined on establishing a magazine or store-house of their respective products in some intermediate situation. Bruges was fixed upon for this purpose, a distinction which it seems to have owed as much to the freedom enjoyed by the inhabitants, and the liberality of the government of the Low Countries, as to the conveniency of its situation. In consequence of this preference, Bruges speedily rose to the very highest rank among commercial cities, and became a place of vast wealth. … From the middle of the fifteenth century the power of the confederacy, though still very formidable, began to decline.