Much the greatest market for English goods was found in the ports of the nearby coasts of Europe from Hamburg to the Bay of Biscay and in Ireland, and this same area was the principal supplier of goods to England. At the end of the sixteenth century, indeed, little trade was carried on beyond those parts, and their predominance in English commerce was only gradually eaten away. The import trade was heavily concentrated on London, which took enormous quantities of manufactured goods from Hamburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, as well as the greater part of the French wine import so long as this came legally. The provincial ports, however, had a very important role in export, and in all trade with the French Channel ports and Ireland. Much of the miscellaneous trade with France and Flanders was carried on in tiny craft from small harbours of the south coast (with Southampton specializing in the Channel Islands traffic); they dealt with a multitude of minor Continental ports, such as Nieuport, Ostend, Calais, Boulogne, Rouen, Caen, Morlaix, and their total trade, legal and illegal, was substantial. The traffic with Ireland was carried on almost entirely by the west coast ports; on the Irish side it was heavily concentrated on Dublin and Cork, though Belfast began to rise in importance in the eighteenth century.

These trades differ from all others in having an export tonnage far greater than that of imports. During most of our period this was accounted for by the great shipments of coal, cheapest of all commodities, which made a small showing in trade returns but far exceeded in volume all the exports of costly manufactures. Enormous and rapidly growing quantities of coal went from Newcastle and Sunderland to Holland, with smaller but still important amounts to Hamburg, Bremen and Rouen; at the end of the seventeenth century Whitehaven developed an export to Ireland which grew exceptionally fast during the eighteenth century, and Whitehaven's shipments were supplemented by those of South Wales and later of Liverpool.