In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Flemings imported great quantities of wool from England, to be manufactured into cloth at home. But Flemish emigrants had carried that manufacture to England; and in the time of Philip the Second the cloths themselves were imported from the latter country to the amount of above five millions of crowns annually, and exchanged for the domestic products of the Netherlands.[376] This single item of trade with one of their neighbors may suggest some notion of the extent of the commerce of the Low Countries at this period. But in truth the commerce of the country stretched to the remotest corners of the globe. The inhabitants of the Netherlands, trained from early youth to battle with the waves, found their true element on the ocean. "As much as Nature," says an enthusiastic writer, "restricted their domain on the land, so much the more did they extend their empire on the deep."[377] Their fleets were to be found on every sea. In the Euxine and in the Mediterranean they were rivals of the Venetian and the Genoese, and they contended with the English, and even with the Spaniards, for superiority on the "narrow seas" and the great ocean. The wealth which flowed into the country from this extended trade was soon shown in the crowded population of its provinces and the splendor of their capitals. At the head of these stood the city of Antwerp, which occupied the place in the sixteenth century that Bruges had occupied in the fifteenth, as the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands. Two hundred and fifty vessels might often be seen at the same time taking in their cargoes at her quays.[378] Two thousand loaded wagons from the neighboring countries of France, Germany, and Lorraine daily passed through her gates;[379] and a greater number of vessels, freighted with merchandise from different quarters of the world, were to be seen floating at the same time on the waters of the Scheldt.[380] The city, in common with the rest of Brabant, was distinguished by certain political privileges, which commended it as a place of residence even to foreigners. Women of the other provinces, it is said, when the time of their confinement drew near, would come to Brabant, that their offspring might claim the franchises of this favored portion of the Netherlands.[381] So jealous were the people of this province of their liberties, that in their oath of allegiance to their sovereign, on his accession, it was provided that this allegiance might lawfully be withheld whenever he ceased to respect their privileges.[382]