His foresight was justified by the event; the process which Henry VII. had begun was completed by the fall of the Steelyard in the reign of Elizabeth. A more difficult problem was presented by the Netherlands. England and the Low Countries were commercially indispensable to each other; the English wool-market in Flanders was the centre of the mercantile interests of both nations. The merchants of the Netherlands, however, had contrived to get the better of their English neighbours until the accession of the house of Tudor; but the concessions which resulted from the temporary removals of the English wool-mart from Antwerp to Calais by Henry VII., and the enormously advantageous commercial treaty which that King was able to wring from the Archduke Philip when fortune had thrown the latter into his hands in 1506, had completely altered the situation to England’s profit[295]. The efforts of Henry VIII. and Wolsey had been directed towards preserving the provisions of the agreement of 1506, the validity of which the Netherlanders were of course unwilling to acknowledge. Cromwell went further than this; his administration witnessed not only the maintenance and increase of all the advantages which his predecessor had secured, but also the discussion of a plan for attaining complete commercial independence of the Low Countries, by bringing home the English wool-mart to London[296]. This scheme was not carried through, owing to the unwillingness of the King to offend the Emperor; but the news of the proposals for it was soon known in the Netherlands, and was not without its effect there. The merchants of the Low Countries were greatly alarmed lest they should lose the English trade, and instead of opposing every move which their rivals made, now began to grant them all possible concessions. The Emperor’s dread of alienating Henry also contributed to force them to adopt a more conciliatory attitude than ever before, and it may be justly said that at the close of Cromwell’s administration the mercantile relations of England and the Netherlands were so regulated as to secure every advantage for the former. Cromwell’s whole commercial policy was strongly influenced by his desire to increase and improve English shipping, especially at the last, when an invasion was threatened from the Continent[297]. His ‘remembrances’ are filled with items for appropriations for building and rigging vessels of various kinds, and for making and improving harbours[298]. He did his utmost to clear the Channel of pirates, and was diligent in writing letters to demand restitution of goods taken from English merchants at sea[299]. In 1540 he caused an Act to be passed for the ‘maintenance of the navy[300]’: one of its provisions restricted the privileges conferred on all foreign merchants by a proclamation in the previous year[301] to those who transported their wares in English ships.