234.
** Mem.Cieum.p, 289.
The speculative doctrines, or the metaphysics of religion, were also reduced to forty-two articles.

These were intended to obviate further divisions and variations; and the compiling of them had been postponed till the establishment of the liturgy, which was justly regarded as a more material object to the people.

The eternity of hell torments is asserted in this confession of faith; and care is also taken to inculcate, not only that no heathen, how virtuous soever, can escape an endless state of the most exquisite misery, but also that every one who presumes to maintain that any pagan can possibly be saved, is himself exposed to the penalty of eternal perdition.[*] * Article xviii.
The theological zeal of the council, though seemingly fervent, went not so far as to make them neglect their own temporal concerns, which seem to have ever been uppermost in their thoughts: they even found leisure to attend to the public interest; nay, to the commerce of the nation, which was at that time very little the object of general study or attention.

The trade of England had anciently been carried on altogether by foreigners, chiefly the inhabitants of the Hanse Towns, or Easterlings, as they were called; and in order to encourage these merchants to settle in England, they had been erected into a corporation by Henry III., had obtained a patent, were endowed with privileges, and were exempted from several heavy duties paid by other aliens.
So ignorant were the English of commerce, that this company, usually denominated the merchants of the "stil-yard," engrossed, even down to the reign of Edward, almost the whole foreign trade of the kingdom; and as they naturally employed the shipping of their own country, the navigation of England was also in a very languishing condition.

It was therefore thought proper by the council to seek pretences for annulling the privileges of this corporation, privileges which put them nearly on an equal footing with Englishmen in the duties which they paid; and as such patents were, during that age, granted by the absolute power of the king, men were the less surprised to find them revoked by the same authority.