every one, guilty or innocent, mounted the ladder with an intrepid countenance. Death has no terrors either for the arch-conspirator Storey, or for the pirate hanged at Execution Dock. The privileges granted to the foreign merchants of the Steelyard and the Hanseatic League were finally withdrawn by Queen Elizabeth. This withdrawal had been in preparation for nearly two hundred years. In the time of Henry IV. English merchants began to trade in the Baltic and with Norway and other parts. This aroused the jealousy of the Hanseatic League, which seized upon several of the English ships. Complaints were laid before the King, who withdrew such of the privileges enjoyed by the League as interfered with the carrying on of trade by his own merchants. He also granted a charter to the merchants trading to the Eastlands. This charter was renewed and enlarged by Edward IV. In the first and second of Philip and Mary a charter was granted to the Russia Company—we have seen how the first Russian Ambassador came to England in the reign of Mary. This Company obtained a confirmation of their charter under Queen Elizabeth. Now, although our people enjoyed many more privileges than of old, yet the Hanseatic League still had the advantage over them by means of their well-regulated Societies and their privileges, insomuch that when the Queen wanted hemp, pitch, tar, powder, and other munitions of war, she had to buy them of the foreign merchants at their own price. The Queen, therefore, began to encourage her own people to become merchants: she assisted them to form companies; she gave them Charters; she withdrew all the privileges from the Hansa. Not the least of the debt which England owes to this great Queen is her wisdom in the encouragement of foreign trade. The strange and foolish rising of the Earl of Essex belongs to national history. It was, however, met and repressed in the first outbreak by the City. Not one person offered to join the Earl; he was proclaimed traitor in Cheapside; the Bishop of London raised, in all haste, the force which stopped him on Ludgate Hill. Towards the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign there were great complaints of hawkers and pedlars—in fact we begin to hear of the London Cries. These street cries did great harm to London tradesmen. We have seen that there were no shops at all originally, except in the appointed markets; these hawkers, with their itinerant barrows and baskets, brought the market into every part of London. Steps were taken to prevent this nuisance; but they were unavailing. In 1580 the Queen issued a Proclamation against the building of new houses and the further increase of London:—