This company sent out Sir Hugh Willoughby, with three ships, to find a north-east passage to China. But Sir Hugh was forced to put in at a port in Russian Lapland, where he and all his men were frozen to death. The Russian Company became whalers, and quarrelled with the Dutch over the fishing. It had a checkered career, and finally died, but, like the Eastland Company, it continued to elect officers and to dine together long after its work was over. Or the Turkey Company, which lasted from 1586 to 1825, when it dissolved? Or the Royal African Company, which lived from 1530 to 1821? There were, also, the Merchants of Spain; the French Merchants; the Merchants of Virginia; the East India Company, the greatest and most powerful of any trading company ever formed; the Hudson Bay Company, which still exists; the South Sea Company; the Guinea Company; the Canary Company. Some of these belong to a later period, but they speak of the spirit of the enterprise and adventure first awakened under Elizabeth. In the Church of St. Martin Outwich, now pulled down, was a monument to the chief actor in the promotion of these trading companies. "Here," said the tombstone, "resteth the body of the worshipful Mr. Richard Staple, elected Alderman of this city 1584. He was the greatest Merchant in his time; the chiefest Actor in the Discovery of the Trade of Turkey and East India; a man humble in prosperity, painful and ever ready in affairs public, and discreetly careful of his private. A liberal house-keeper, bountiful to the Poor, an upright dealer in the world, and a devout inquirer after the world to come.... _Intravit ut exiret._" The increase of trade had another side. It was accompanied by protection, with the usual results. "In the old days," says Harrison, "when strange bottoms were suffered to come in, we had sugar for fourpence the pound that now is worth half a crown; raisins and currants for a pennie that now are holden at sixpence, and sometimes at eightpence and tenpence, the pound; nutmegs at twopence halfpenny the ounce; ginger at a pennie the ounce; prunes at a halfpenny farthing; great raisins, three pound for a pennie; cinnamon at fourpence the ounce; cloves at twopence; and pepper at twelve or sixteen pence the pound." He does not state the increase in price of the latter articles; but if we are to judge by that of sugar, the increase of trade was not an unmixed blessing to those whose incomes had not advanced with equal step.