Hamburg was founded in 809 by Charlemagne, and its merchants were among the first to take advantage of Jomsborg; and it was very shortly after that market was opened when they appeared in London. The growth of the League was, however, very gradual; and it was not until the foundation of Luebeck, which afterwards became its principal city, that it assumed its great importance. But the destruction of Jomsborg by the Danes transferred all the Eastern trade of the Baltic to this new town, which, as a consequence of its increasing importance, was made in 1226 a free city of the Empire; and by 1234 it had become so powerful as to be able to destroy for ever the naval supremacy of Denmark in the sea-fight of Travemuende. Its treaty with Hamburg for mutual defence was made soon afterwards, and this event is reckoned to be the formal establishment of the Hansa League, not only as a corporate body, but as an independent state to make treaties, and, when necessary, to levy war. [Illustration: COAT OF ARMS OF HANSA MERCHANT IN LONDON.] During this same period the German settlement in London had been increasing in importance, and, although not yet recognized as a corporate body, is frequently referred to as a guild or association. There is but little doubt that the William Almaine, one of the three city merchants who completed London Bridge, after the death of Peter of Colechurch, was one of its members, and so important had the London settlement become in the eyes of the Flemings, that in a charter granted to the Flemish town of Damme by Joan of Constantinople in 1241, it is specially provided that no one shall aspire to the office of alderman of that place unless he had been previously admitted a member of the Hanse in London. In 1250 the permanent buildings of the League in London were commenced by the erection of storehouses; and nine years afterwards, through the influence of his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, Henry III. "granted that all and singular the merchants, having a house in the City of London, commonly called the Guilda Aula Teutonicorum, should be maintained and upholden through the whole realm by all such freedoms and free usages or liberties as by the King and his noble progenitors' time they had enjoyed."