The injury to English trade proved, however, less complete than the Spanish minister had anticipated. An eventual open rupture with Spain had long been foreseen and prepared for. But changes in the course of commerce were made with greater ease than he had calculated upon. Fresh openings of ports in the Baltic afforded new facilities for intercourse; and Hamburg readily took the place of Antwerp as the mart through which English goods could be carried into Germany. The merchants of London had also found new and more distant fields for their enterprise. They had pushed their way to Moscow, penetrated to Persia, and had opened out, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar, direct commercial intercourse with Constantinople and Alexandria, the ancient centres of the commerce of the world, and even with the Catholic state of Venice. Rochelle supplied the best wines and fruits of France; while its privateers intercepted the vessels sailing from the Catholic harbours, and their cargoes lay ready for export in the Huguenot storehouses. English spirit and energy having converted the loss feared by an exclusion from the Spanish and Flemish trades into gain, Elizabeth and her ministers became even more imperative in their demands. Alva, who had come to England to arrange, if possible, terms of conciliation and renewed intercourse, was informed that, if relations between Spain and England were to be re-established, the king himself must send a direct commission for that purpose; and, as a proof of Elizabeth’s determination to maintain the position she had taken in this affair, the ships which escorted Alva back to Dunkirk actually cut out from Calais roads a dozen rich Spanish merchantmen, and sent them to the Thames. [Sidenote: Hatred of the Catholics.] Whenever a ship could be found with a Catholic owner she was plundered by the English rovers. In harbour, in the Channel, or on the open sea, they became alike objects of their eager prey. While some of these freebooters were content to lie in wait for such vessels as contained Flemish prisoners whom they would set at liberty, others resolutely entered Spanish ports to rescue the English vessels, crews, and cargoes which had been detained in them. But their patriotism, like their religious enthusiasm, was ever blended with a love of plunder, for they invariably helped themselves to any valuables they came across in their cruises by land or by sea. To the yet deeper distress of Philip, the houses of the largest Spanish merchants in London were not merely searched and ransacked by Elizabeth’s police, but the plundered furniture of his chapel, the crucifixes and the images of the saints were borne in mock procession through the streets, and burnt in Cheapside amid the jeers of the populace, who cried as they saw them blazing, “These are the gods of Spain—to the flames with them and their worshippers.”[137] [Sidenote: Increase of the privateers, 1570.] [Sidenote: Their desperate acts.]