But it would be a mistake to assume that Sandwich was immediately ruined by the closing of its haven. It so happened, about the time when the sands were first closing in, in the reign of Elizabeth, that religious persecution in the Netherlands was harassing the industrious Flemish and French peoples whose commercial and industrial genius had made the fortunes of that land. England’s textile and weaving trades were poor in comparison with those of the Continent, and it was a far-seeing statesmanship, as much as a fellow religious feeling, that induced Elizabeth to grant the petition of the oppressed weavers of bays and says, and other craftsmen in 1565, and afford them an asylum from the ferocious persecution carried on by the Spaniards in the Low Countries. Archbishop Parker well named the Dutch and French refugees who by command of that great Queen were permitted to settle in Sandwich, “gentle and profitable strangers.” Unlike the often diseased, verminous, and generally vicious, ignorant, and tradeless aliens whose free entry into the England of to-day is so rightly resented, those immigrants brought with them, in addition to cleanly and industrious and law-abiding habits, the mastery of trades and techniques that England lacked. They were indeed profitable to the State, and they largely saved Sandwich from such complete extinction as that which has befallen Romney and Winchelsea. This community originally numbered some four hundred persons, and formed a class apart, with two chapels, a Flemish and a French, for their own use. Their textile trades thrived, and sent forth colonies to Colchester and other places; and, among other crafts, they introduced market-gardening. Incidentally, also, they taught the wasteful and the riotous English a new mode of life. I suppose those two chief races that mainly go towards the making of the English people--the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons--have wastefulness and a love of drink in common, however else they differ. But these strangers added sobriety and prudence to their industry, and brought much housekeeping cleverness with them. It is but one example of their methods, but characteristic, that they were the first to introduce oxtail soup. The English butchers had always disposed of the tails with the hides, but these newcomers had long known their value and bought them cheaply, in the way of their housekeeping, until the English aptitude to learn at other people’s expense sent up the price of those neglected appendages. It is quite in keeping with the contrary nature of people and affairs that it was after a time sought to discriminate unfavourably in taxation against these people who had brought such benefits into the land. How matters would eventually have shaped does not appear, for at that juncture the strangers had begun to mingle with the English. They intermarried and lost their foreign tongues, and, such is the English power of assimilation, their very names have suffered similar changes. Thus,