Troubles on the Continent brought large numbers of skilled artisans to this country, and the result was that, in course of time, the English manufacturers found themselves, as regards the actual cost of production, able to compete with their opponents. Conscious of their growing wealth and influence, the citizens began to raise outcries against their grievances. This feeling sometimes found expression in great popular riots. During one of these outbreaks, which occurred in the year 1493, the premises of the Easterlings in Thames Street, then, and long after, known as the Steelyard, were attacked by the mob; immense damage was done, and the tumult only quelled by the Lord Mayor and aldermen, with all the force they could muster, coming to the protection of the merchants. Some idea of the magnitude of the influence gained by the Easterlings may be gathered from the fact that, for several hundreds of years, they not only determined the weights and measures to be legally used throughout England, but so late as the year 1531, King Henry VIII. granted them a charter exempting them from payment of all king’s taxes within the City. But from this period the increased wealth, and growing intelligence of the citizens of London, made it manifest that it would shortly be necessary to withdraw all these privileges. Thus, in the year 1552, the English merchants presented a petition to the king, complaining that their competitors, by trading in a body, kept down the price of woollen cloths (one of the staples of English manufacture), and having command of the foreign markets, shut English merchants out of them. In proof of this statement they alleged, that in the previous year (1551), the Steelyard merchants had exported 44,000 woollen cloths, whereas the English merchants had been able to export only 1,100. It was also represented that the whole of the trade was carried on in foreign bottoms, greatly to the detriment of the English marine. This effort was successful. The greater part of the monopolies enjoyed by the Steelyard merchants were abolished, and the whole of the trade with Flanders immediately passed into the hands of the English, who, in the same year, exported no less than 40,000 woollen cloths, as compared with 1,100, in the previous year. In the year 1597, all the exclusive privileges of the League in England ceased to exist.