Note 88 — Chapter VI · THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE
Reading edition
Cromwell has been credited with the intention of ‘stapling’ the cloth trade in London, i.e. with deliberately supplanting the Merchant Adventurers’ mart at Antwerp by an emporium in London. It is hardly likely that he would have adopted such a suicidal policy otherwise than on compulsion. The more probable explanation seems to be as here stated. Chapuys’s letter quoted below (p. 130) appears conclusive.