A Companion to the Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League in the Early Modern Period 109

and threatened noncompliance with expulsion.16 The joy of accomplishment
remained but briefly. Although electoral Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Saxony, and
Brandenburg, the Imperial Cities and numerous princes urged the publication
of the decree—the Hanseatic Cities had heretofore written to Trier, Mainz,
Saxony, and Brandenburg—the Emperor hesitated to draw it up, let alone put
it into practice. Instead, he admonished the Counts of East Friesia, conveyed
to the English envoys in a decree the contents of the decision of the Imperial
Estates, and asked Queen Elizabeth to resolve the problems at the core of the
Hanseatic grievances. Thus, on the one hand, the Emperor sought a compro-
mise with England, and on the other hand, he had discovered the tactic of the
Hanseatic Cities.

[The Cities have] given no little cause to this widespread enfifement and

reduction of their freedoms, in that they themselves initially opposed the

Queen and also whose commands and charges, which in the crown at

least must be, opposed, finally also the English have been driven from

Hamburg and other ports against the request and warning of the Queen,

from this has all of this refuse emanated.17

Only two options remained to the Hanseatic Cities, the first, seven addi-
tional and unsuccessful legations to England, which cost 150,000 Tollar,
and concerning which a supplication to the Imperial Deputations Council
(Reichsdeputationstag) of Worms was judged in 1586, and the second, the sum-
moning of the Aulic Council (Reichshofrates).18 After the English Queen had—
in a 1589 letter to the Emperor concerning this—offered the Electors and the
Hanseatic Cities a trade agreement, which should have ensured identical con-
ditions in both kingdoms for the English and Hanseatic merchants but was
rejected by the Hanseatic League, it appeared advisable to the Emperor and his
consultant Electors to wait for further developments. Although the “Merchant
Adventurers” had relocated their trading post from Emden to Stade in 1587,
the Regensburg Diet of 1594 at first still feared open conflict and remained
ready for compromise. Indeed, the envoys of Lübeck and Cologne managed

16 Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Vienna, Acta Antiqua 27, fol. 136–139 (spätere Kopie).
17 Quotation from Ludwig Beutin, Das Reich, die Hansestädte und England (1590–1618)
(Berlin, 1929), note 4, p. 4 (Marcus, S. 55, Anm. 20, K. I. Nr 2179).
18 Nr. 24: Supplikation der Hansestädte an den dt mit Bericht über die 1585 erfolgte,
Gesandtschaft zur Kgn. von England; von Dr. Heinrich Sudermann, Syndikus in Lübeck,
mit vier Beilagen (in: Thomas Fröschl, ed. Der Reichsdeputationstag zu Worms 1586
(Göttingen, 1994), 793.