By 1486 the customary pattern of the Celys’ trade in wool – selling to netherlanders and making home their receipts by exchange loans to English merchants – had become liable to so much disruption by civil commotion in Flanders and by embargos on the trade of merchant adventurers, that they had decided on some diversification. Involvement in the shipping business was the most obvious course. This was not an activity restricted to the members of a particular Company, nor to trade with a politically disturbed area like the netherlands, and the Celys would be free to pursue a variety of commodities and markets. For a small ship, operated by a partnership of two or three people, the initial capital requirement was not very great, and one advantage which may have appealed to them was that many of the returns would come to them directly in England and in sterling. The returns themselves were of two kinds. They could expect to carry freight for other merchants and even, on certain routes, could offer the ship's officers cargo-room in lieu of part of their wages. In addition, worthwhile profit could be made on their own export of such commodities as grain and on the import of cloth, wine and salt. The risks were high, and the Celys for one do not seem to have taken out marine insurance. But by the late fifteenth century increasing numbers of English merchants were finding that investment in shipping offered a sufficiently lucrative prospect, especially when, after 1485, Henry VII's navigation acts sought to give them a monopoly of carriage to England.