ABSTRACT
Fifteenth century Bristol, according to a shrewd Italian, was one of the three most important towns in England, and of the three, it may well be studied as the typical trading city; for York was not a port, though it traded far afield through Hull, and London, though a port, was so much else that its story is very complex. Moreover Bristol is of peculiar interest as a centre of English enterprise, for the principal southern and eastern ports were strongholds of foreign influence, from which Bristol was singularly free. Looking out westwards, she concerned herself little with the spheres of the powerful Hanseatic or Italian merchants, but carved out routes of her own, neither in the North Sea nor in the Mediterranean, but on the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean. This independent out look, foreshadowing a new orientation of trade in the future, gives her yet further interest, for it was her seamen who, intimately acquainted with the eastern coasts of the Atlantic from Iceland to Gibraltar, were the first to venture forth from England across the ocean towards its western shores.
