A Companion to the Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League in the Early Modern Period 111

the mandate, however with time this was avoided more and more, even by the
Hanseatic Cities.
The “Merchant Adventurers” who had relocated from Stade to Middelburg,
shipped their cloth into the Empire through middlemen from Bremen,
Hamburg, and the Netherlands. The return of many English merchants to
Stade—with the implication, they did not belong to the company of the
“Merchant Adventurers”—threw Lübeck into a renewed state of alertness.20 It
began a new diplomatic and publicized offensive, which was directed at the
Emperor and the Aulic Council (Reichshofrat). Hereby Lübeck stylized itself
as a “Frontier City” of the Empire, which was established upon Imperial aid
for the defense of the honor of the empire. Above all, injuries “to the Holy
Imperial Sovereignty” committed by the English with the support of the Queen
were branded, a brand whereby the humiliation of the Emperor was empha-
sized before the world:

Now is nonetheless to pity, and not the Hanseatic Cities alone, rather

the entire Roman Empire, that this highly onerous, highly invested

affair, whereafter to whose execution per publicatione mandatorum was

made a beginning, in such a way that it remains ignominious, harmful,

and heated, and that the banned monopolistic English Company of the

Adventurers, [.. .], the commendable Hanseatic City, and yes, the entire

Roman Empire, with their self-serving, forbidden actions and practices

should in such a way mislead, suck dry, cause damages and respect lit-

tle, and that they everything, [.. .], as dissolute elude and with outward

ignominy and irretrievable injury of the Empire can take to the waters

unpunished.21

In these views, however, Lübeck stood increasingly alone in the Empire. Other
cities, which, like Augsburg, had recently still supported a mandate against the
monopolistic trade of the “Merchant Adventurers,” suggested to the Hanseatic
cities that they force a monopolistic position for themselves in English trade.
They pleaded indeed to forbid the monopolistic practices, however under no

20 Ludwig Beutin, Hanse und Reich im handelspolitischen Endkampf gegen England (Berlin,
1929), 25–30.
21 Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Vienna, Acta Antiqua 27: 1599 Kurtzer Auszug der gant-
zen Englischen Mandatssachen, fol. 100–106. Quotation according to Nils Jörn, “Die
Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Hanse und Merchant Adventurers vor den ober-
sten Reichsgerichten im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Lübeckische
Geschichte und Altertumskunde 78 (1998), 337.