The time, nevertheless, was evidently growing ripe for accomplishment. Apart from any political or religious motives, America was as certain to be colonized in the early part of the seventeenth century as it was to be discovered by Columbus, or someone else, in the latter part of the fifteenth. After the fall of Calais in 1557, England, though fearful of the future, had turned her back definitely and forever upon continental conquest and entanglements, and had embarked boldly upon those waves which it was to become her pride to rule.[93] With the seas safe for traffic, with a host of younger sons and other men suffering from the economic conditions of the time, with the growing need in England of many commodities found in the new world, with the great growth of capital seeking investment, and with the trade of practically every other portion of the earth already in the hands of corporate companies, English merchants and adventurers could not fail to turn again, with ampler resources and better methods, to the land where they had already tried and failed. The Muscovy Company controlled all trade with Russia, the Eastland that with the Baltic, the Levant that with Venice and the East, while another controlled the African west coast, and the East India Company held from the Straits of Magellan around to Africa again.[94] Although these companies, which were almost wholly owned in London, aroused the jealousy of Plymouth, Southampton, and the other provincial ports, which found themselves limited to a little nearby continental and coasting trade, they pointed the way to the corporate form and joint-stock undertakings as the successful method of handling large business enterprises, such as colonizing was now realized to be. Footnote 93: A. B. Hinds, _The Making of the England of Elizabeth_ (New York, 1895), p. 138. Footnote 94: S. R. Gardiner, _History of England_ (London, 1895), vol. I, p. 187.