1. The Trials of Foreign Borrowing: the English Crown and the Antwerp Money Market in the Mid-Sixteenth Century.
- Author
-
Ouithwaite, R. B.
- Subjects
ECONOMIC conditions in Great Britain ,MONEY market deposit accounts ,MONEY market funds - Abstract
This article focuses on Great Britain's dependence on the Antwerp, Belgium money market for loans or credits during the sixteenth century period. The reasons for this dependence are largely explicable in terms of the size and frequency of royal demands for credit, the inability of the English money market to satisfy such demands, and the contemporary dominance of Antwerp both as an international capital market and as a center for English trade. There can be no doubt that intermittently throughout these thirty years Britain's demands for credit were extraordinarily heavy. A few random illustrations reveal the enormous scale on which credit was periodically demanded. The localization of financial transactions in the famous bourse and an advanced system of brokerage facilitated the rapid satisfaction of borrower and lender. Also, to Antwerp there migrated, and at Antwerp were developed, some of the greatest fortunes of the sixteenth century.
- Published
- 1966