 Antwerp was then Europe's largest financial and international trading centre, taking as much as 75 or 80% of English exports of cloth,<ref>Ramsay, 62–63</ref> and the disturbances created serious and well-justified fears that its position as such was under threat.Sir Thomas Gresham, the English financier who arranged Elizabeth I's borrowings, and whose agent in Antwerp was Clough, left London for Antwerp on August 23, only hearing about the Antwerp attacks "en route"; he needed to roll-over 32,000 Flemish pounds and borrow another 20,000 to finance her expenses in Ireland.Dining with William of Orange on his arrival, he was asked if "the English were minded to depart this town or not", and wrote to William Cecil, Elizabeth's chief minister, "in alarm that he "liked none of their proceedings" but "apprehended great mischief", and urged that the English government "should do very well in time to consider some other realm and place" for marketing English products.