§ 9. SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL PROGRESS DURING THESE WARS—The reign of James I. was noticeable for the rapid growth of the foreign trade which had developed from the somewhat piratical excursions of the Elizabethan sailors. Trading companies were formed in considerable numbers, and among them the Levant Company may be noticed, {130} as having made “great gains” in the East in 1605. The mercantile class was now growing both numerous and powerful, and a proof of their advance in social position and influence is furnished by the new title of nobility, that of baronet, conferred by James I. upon such merchant princes as were able and willing to pay the needy king a good round sum for the honour.[39] It is interesting, by the way, to notice the figures of trade in his reign. In 1613 the exports and imports both together were about £4,628,586 in value, and a sign of a quickly developing Eastern trade is also seen in the fact that James made attempts to check the increasing export of silver from the kingdom. At this time English merchants traded with most of the Mediterranean ports, with Portugal, Spain, France, Hamburg, and the Baltic coasts. Ships from the north and west of Europe used in return to visit the Newcastle collieries, which were rapidly growing in value. The English ships were also very active in the new cod fisheries of Newfoundland, and the Greenland whale fisheries. Commerce was further aided by the Navigation Acts of 1651, which provided that no merchandise of Asia, Africa, or America should be imported in any but English ships. Previously, the carrying trade had been in the hands of the Dutch, but Holland had now entered upon the period of its decline, and the short war with England which followed these Acts contributed to hasten it. The development of English trade is signalized in this century by the appearance of numerous books and essays on commercial questions, of which the works of Mun, Malynes, Misselden, Roberts, Sir Josiah Child, Worth, and Davenant may be mentioned as among the most important. The increase in the wealth of the country is shown by the rapid rebuilding of London after the Great {131} Fire, when the loss was estimated at £12,000,000; and Sir Josiah Child, writing in 1670, speaks of the great development of the commerce and trade of England in the previous twenty years. We know from Gregory King that rents had been doubled in this period, and that is always a sure sign of prosperity. The East India Company was so flourishing that in 1676 their stock was quoted at 245 per cent. Trade with America was equally prosperous. New Amsterdam, now New York, was taken from the Dutch in 1664, and in 1670 the Hudson’s Bay Company received their charter. But the main commercial fact of the latter half of the seventeenth century, and of the eighteenth, was the development of the Eastern trade, and, as a consequence, of the home production of articles to be exchanged for Eastern goods.