Under the Tudors
Under Henry VII's charter of 1505, the company had a governor and 24 assistants. The members were trading investors, and most of them were probably mercers of the City of London.[9] However, the company also had members from York, Norwich, Exeter, Ipswich, Newcastle, Hull, and other places. The merchant adventurers of these towns were separate but affiliated bodies. The Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol was a separate group of investors, chartered by Edward VI in 1552.
Under Henry VII, the merchants who were not of London complained about restraint of trade. They had once traded freely with Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, but the London company was imposing a fine of £20, which was driving them out of their markets. Henry VII required the fine to be reduced to 10 marks (£3, 6s and 8d).[10] Conflict arose with the Merchants of the Staple, who sought to diversify from exporting wool through Calais into exporting cloth to Flanders without having to become freemen of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. The Merchant Adventurers kept control of their trade and Flanders as their port. Foreign merchants of the Hanseatic League had considerable privileges in English trade and competed with the Merchant Adventurers, but these privileges were revoked by the English government in the mid-16th century.
The Merchant Adventurers decided to use other ports. Emden in East Friesland and Hamburg competed to serve the Merchant Adventurers of England, who chose Emden. They soon found, however, that the port failed to attract sufficient merchants to buy the English merchants' wares, so they left abruptly and returned to Antwerp. Operations there were interrupted by Queen Elizabeth's seizing Spanish treasure ships, which were conveying money to the Duke of Alva, governor of the Netherlands. Although trade was resumed at Antwerp from 1573 to 1582, its declining fortunes ceased with the fall of the city and the subsequent development of the Amsterdam Entrepôt, and the Dutch Golden Age.
Under the charter of 1564,[11] the company's court consisted of a governor (elected annually by members beyond the seas), his deputies, and 24 Assistants. Admission was by patrimony (being the son of a merchant who was free of the company at the time of the son's birth), service (apprenticeship to a member), redemption (purchase) or 'free gift'. By the time of the accession of James I in 1603, there were at least 200 members. They gradually increased the fees for admission.
