With the death of Elizabeth the history of the Hanseatic League as such practically comes to an end in England. Then followed, quickly afterwards, the Thirty Years' War, which gave the League a mortal blow, from which it never recovered. Even before the last stroke fell, John Wheeler, a secretary of the association of Merchant Adventurers, had declared regarding the Hanseatic cities (1601), "Most of their teeth have fallen out, the rest sit but loosely in their head." His judgment was verified all too soon. VII. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR KILLS THE LEAGUE. John Wheeler's diagnosis of the condition of the League was too correct. It is true that an ostensibly official document enumerates fifty towns as forming part of the Hansa League in 1603, but we know that at the same time only fourteen had a seat and voice in the Diet and duly paid their fees. Indeed, the more we examine the internal condition of the League at this period the more we wonder, not that it fell asunder, but that it endured so long. It had become utterly disorganized and was decaying fast. In 1606, the Emperor Rudolph II. evoked a feeling of alarm among all the towns by suddenly demanding to see their charters, and to know whence they derived their privileges and statutes. Thus the results of appealing to imperial aid, in the English complications, bore their inevitable and unpleasant fruit. The emperor's ulterior aim was of course to extract money from the cities, this time in aid of his Hungarian wars. As in the days of their glory, the cities knew how to protect themselves, and how to escape undesirable inquiries by means of subterfuges and evasive answers. Still the first attempt at supervision had been made, and was to bear fruit later. While matters were in this uncomfortable state, there broke forth the long, terrible strife known to history as the Thirty Years' War. Its causes are to be sought for in those most unhappy differences of doctrinal opinions, which, being rooted in mutual intolerance, a want of fairness of spirit, and of dramatic insight into the needs of divergent mental constitutions, make one man wish forcibly to impose his point of view upon his neighbour, under the conviction that it is the only point of view, and hence the true one. This intolerant and narrow spirit, which more fatally divides individuals and nations than any other form of human folly, had reached its climax in the century of the Reformation, when not only were Protestant and Catholic opposed to one another, but Protestants were also divided among themselves, Calvinist and Lutheran persecuting each other with an acrimony quite out of proportion to the gravity of the questions at stake.