To Hamburgh and Middleburgh, thirty-five ships are sent by our Merchant Adventurers’ Company. To Dantzic, Koningsburg, etc., we send yearly about thirty ships, viz. six from London, six from Ipswich, and the rest from Hull, Lynn, and Newcastle, but the Dutch many more. To Norway we send not above five ships, and the Dutch above forty, and great ships too. Our Newcastle coal trade employs 400 sail of ships; viz. 200 for supplying of London, and 200 for the rest of England. And besides our own ships, hither, even to the mine’s mouth, come all our neighbouring nations with their ships continually, employing their own shipping and mariners. I doubt not whether, if they had such a treasure, they would employ not their own shipping solely therein. The French sail thither in whole fleets of fifty sail together, serving all their ports of Picardie, Normandie, Bretagne, etc., even as far as Rochel and Bordeaux. And the ships of Bremen, Emden, Holland, and Zealand supply those of Flanders, etc., whose shipping is not great, with our coals. Our Iceland fishery employs 120 ships and barks of our own. And the Newfoundland fishery 150 small ships. And our Greenland whale fishery fourteen ships. As for the Bermudas, we know not yet what they will do; and for Virginia, we know not what to do with it; the present profit of these two colonies not employing any store of shipping” (Capper, p. 84). The completion of the New River in 1620 was a great boon and blessing to the people, but the greatest benefit to trade in the reign of James I. was the improvement of the navigation of the upper part of the Thames by deepening the channel, so that not only was Oxford placed in communication with London, but the country all round Oxford.