The ‘Golden Age’ of the Hanseatic League 97
Prussians decided for new negotiations, in June 1450 Lübeck requested that
the German merchants in London should leave England. When the Lübeck
merchants sailing to Bergen captured English envoys in July 1450, they were
brought to Lübeck. In April 1452, Lübeck concluded an agreement with
Christian i of Denmark to stop any English goods coming through the Øresund.
Lübeck added an ordinance to completely stop all trade with English cloth.
The English reaction was weak, owing to the defeats in the Hundred Years’ War.
The privileges were revoked only temporarily, as tonnage and poundage were
soon introduced again, both later limited to Lübeck and the Prussians (until
1453). Negotiations scheduled for May 1454 did not take place because of the
Thirteen Years’ War between the towns and the Teutonic Knights in Prussia
(1454–1466). The unstable balance in the Anglo-Hanseatic relations continued
because of ongoing incidents, such as when the English took a salt fleet from
Lübeck in July 1458.
This ongoing crisis only ended in war, when Danish contingents assaulted
English ships in the Øresund, Pentecost 1468, and when the Hanseatic League
was made responsible for the attack. In July 1468, the German merchants in
London were arrested and their goods confiscated. Diplomatic efforts were in
vain. The merchants were judged guilty before the crown council in November,
with the exception of the traders from Cologne who came to separate arrange-
ments with the English, who in consequence later were excluded from the
Hanseatic privileges in April 1471.104 An assembly of the towns’ representatives
in September 1468 had offered negotiations, as Edward iv was open to dip-
lomatic initiatives and waited with the distribution of the confiscated goods
until April 1469. At the same time, the towns prohibited the trade with England
and called back the German merchants. When Duke Charles of Burgundy tried
to mediate,105 the Lübeck canon and syndic Dr. Johann Osthusen formulated a
statement rejecting any common liability of the Hanseatic towns. Negotiations
in Bruges failed, while the trade with England was interrupted, and the import
of English cloth was prohibited from November 1470. The situation was com-
plicated by the conflict between Edward iv and Richard Earl of Warwick, who
in 1470 re-installed Henry vi.
104 Jenks, England, 2, 713–16.
105 Petra Ehm-Schmock, “Handelspartner, Reichsfeind, Städtefeind: Karl der Kühne und die
Hanse 1465–1477,” in Les Relations entre la France et les villes hanséatiques de Hambourg,
Brême et Lübeck. Moyen Age—xixe siècle / Die Beziehungen zwischen Frankreich und den
Hansestädten Hamburg, Bremen und Lübeck. Mittelalter—19. Jahrhundert, ed. Isabelle
Richefort, Burghart Schmidt, Diplomatie et Histoire (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006), 149–76.