The inaugural oration, spoken on the 4th day of November 1815, at the ceremony of laying the first stone of the London Institution for the Diffusion of Science and Literature / By Charles Butler.

  • Butler, Charles, 1750-1832.
Date:
1816
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The inaugural oration, spoken on the 4th day of November 1815, at the ceremony of laying the first stone of the London Institution for the Diffusion of Science and Literature / By Charles Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    VII, y The Hanse towns were robbed of a consider¬ able portion of their trade by the Netherlands. For centuries, these enjoyed, almost exclusively, the commerce of cloth, cotton, camlets and tapestry. In exchange, they received raw wool from England; silk, spices, and the other pro¬ duction of the Levant, from the Italians. The wealth and splendour of the commercial towns in that country in the aera of their prosperity* placed the Dukes of Burgundy, their sovereigns, on a level with the greatest monarchs, and en¬ abled their principal merchants to display such magnificence in their dress, their buildings, and their mode of living, as excited the envy of the noblest princes of Europe. Bruges was their capitalIn 1310, it contained sixty-eight companies of traders and artificers ; insurances and letters of change were in common use. Doctor Robertson (in his Historical Disquisi¬ tion, p. 239), mentions, that, in the year 1301, Joanna of Navarre, the wife of Philip the Fair, King of France, having been some days in Bruges, was so much struck with its grandeur and wealth, and particularly with the splendid appearance of the citizens wives, that she was moved