# The History of British Commerce/Volume 1/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III. FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF KING JOHN. A.D. l066—1216.
The Norman Conquest, by the closer connexion which it established between our island and the continent, must have laid the foundation for an ultimate extension of English commerce; but a revolution which so completely overturned the established order of things, and produced so much suffering to the body of the population, could not be favourable, in the first instance, or until after the lapse of a considerable space of time, either to the foreign trade of the country, or to the national industry in any of its other branches. For the first four reigns after the Conquest, accordingly, the notices that have come down to us on the subject of the national commerce are still comparatively few and unimportant.
When the Normans first came over, however, they found England a country possessed of considerable capital, or accumulated wealth, and also, as it would seem, of a flourishing foreign commerce, which had, no doubt, chiefly grown up in the long and, for the greater part, tranquil reign of the Confessor. William of Poictiers gives a glowing account of the quantities of gold and silver and other precious effects which the Conqueror carried with him on his first visit to Normandy, and of the admiration which these spoils excited both in the Normans themselves and in strangers from other parts of the continent by whom they were seen. He expressly testifies that merchants from distant countries were at this time wont to import to England articles of foreign manufacture that were unknown in Normandy. He mentions also in other passages the great wealth of the native or resident merchants both of London and Winchester. Exeter was another town distinguished for its opulence; and Ordericus Vitalis relates, that when it was attacked ​by the Conqueror, in 1068, there were in the harbour a great number of foreign merchants and mariners, who were compelled by the citizens to assist them in their defence. These notices occur incidentally in the relation of political transactions or military events; no chronicler has thought it worth his while to enumerate either the various points at which this foreign commerce was carried on, or the articles in the exchange of which it consisted. If our information were more complete, we should probably find that it was shared by various other towns besides those that have been mentioned. There is reason to believe that Hastings, Dover, Sandwich, and the other towns on the coast nearest to France, which afterwards came to be distinguished as the Cinque Ports, and also Lincoln, and York, and other places in the more northern parts of the kingdom, all at this time maintained some commercial intercourse with the continent—with Italy, and perhaps also with Spain, as well as with France and the north of Europe or Germany. An active trade, as noticed in the last Chapter, also seems to have existed between Ireland and both Bristol and Chester on the west coast.
The principal exports at this early period were probably the same that for many ages after constituted the staples of our trade with foreign countries, namely, the natural productions of the island—its tin and lead, its wool and hides, and sometimes perhaps also its beeves, and the other produce of the same description reared in its pastures and forests. We find a regular trade in these and other articles established at the most remote date to which it is possible to carry back the history of English commerce: and it may be safely presumed that they were the commodities for which the island was resorted to by foreign merchants from the earliest times. As for corn, it was probably at this date, as it long afterwards continued to be, sometimes an article of export, sometimes of import. The articles we have enumerated were, no doubt, those in the production of which the industry of the great body of the people was employed. The only manufacture for their skill in which the English were as ​yet eminent, was the working in gold and silver; and William of Poictiers states that the best German artists in that department found themselves encouraged to come and take up their residence in the country. From this, we may presume that the chief demand for their productions and those of the native artists of the same class was among the English themselves; but, from the high repute of the English workmanship, some of the embroidered stuffs, of the vases, ornamented drinking-cups, and other similar articles fabricated here, would, no doubt, also be sent abroad. Considerable quantities of the precious metals must have been consumed in the manufacture of these articles; and it is not unlikely that the supply was in great part obtained from Ireland, where it is agreed on all hands that, whencesoever it may have been obtained—whether from native mines, or from the ancient intercourse of the island with the East, or from the Northmen, enriched by the spoils of their piracy, who had conquered and occupied a great part of the island in the period immediately preceding that with which we are now engaged—there was formerly an extraordinary abundance of gold and silver, of the former especially. ​"William of Malmesbury, it may be observed, seems to speak of the trade between England and Ireland as one which the former country could dispense with without any serious inconvenience, but upon which the latter was dependent for the necessaries of life. He tells us that upon one occasion, when the Irish monarch, Murcard (or Murtach) O'Brien, behaved somewhat haughtily towards Henry I., he was speedily humbled by the English king prohibiting all trade between the two countries; "for how wretched," adds the historian, "would Ireland be if no goods were imported into it from England." Perhaps English agricultural produce was exchanged for Irish gold.
In the violent transference and waste of property, however, that followed the Conquest, and the long struggle the invaders had to sustain before they made good their footing in the country, the wealth, and commerce, and general industry of England must all have received a shock from which it was not possible that they could rapidly recover. The minds and the hands of men were necessarily called away from all peaceful pursuits, and engaged in labours which produced no wealth. Nor was the system of government and of society that was at last established favourable, even after its consolidation and settlement, to trade and industry. It was a system of oppression and severe exaction on the one hand, depriving the industrious citizen of the fruits of his exertions and of the motive to labour; and, on the ether hand, it was a system of which the animating principle was the encouragement of the martial spirit, to which that of trade and industry is as much opposed as creation is opposed to destruction.
Two charters were granted to the city of London by the Conqueror, and a third by Henry I.; but it is remarkable that not even in the last-mentioned, which is of considerable length, and confers numerous privileges, is there anything relating to the subject of commerce, with the exception of a clause, declaring that all the men of London and their goods should be exempted throughout England and also in the ports from all tolls and other ​customs. There is no reference to the city itself as a great mart, or to either its shipping or its port. Even in the general charter granted by Henry I., on his accession, there is not a word in relation to commerce or merchants. It is stated, however, by William of Poictiers, that the Conqueror invited foreign merchants to the country by assurances of his protection.
The numerous ships in which the Conqueror brought over his troops—amounting, it is said, in all, to about 700 vessels of considerable size, besides more than three times that number of inferior dimensions—must have formed, for some time, a respectable royal navy. William of Poictiers informs us that the first care of the duke, after disembarking his men, was to erect defences for the protection of his ships; and most of them w'ere, doubtless, preserved, and afterwards employed in war or commerce. It is the opinion of a late writer, that the numerous fleet thus brought over by the Conqueror, "when not engaged in ferrying himself and his armies to and from the continent, was probably employed in trading between his old and new territories and the adjacent coasts of France and Flanders, which were all now connected with the new masters of England." We find a naval force occasionally employed in the wars even of the first English kings after the Conquest. The Saxon Chronicle states that, when the Conqueror made his expedition against Scotland in 1072, he sent a fleet to attack that country by sea, at the same time that he invaded it in person at the head of his army. Good service was done for Rufus against his brother Robert by the privateers which he permitted his English subjects to fit out in the beginning of his reign. A fleet was also equipped by Henry I., to oppose the threatened invasion of Robert, on his accession, the greater part of which, however, deserted to the enemy. Provision, indeed, was made by the Conqueror for the defence of the kingdom, whenever it should become necessary, by a naval force, by means of the regulations which he established in ​regard to the Cinque Ports—originally Hastings, Hythe, Romney Dover, and Sandwich—each of which towns was bound, upon forty days' notice, to furnish and man a certain number of ships of war, in proportion probably to its estimated wealth or population. Other towns in different parts of the coast also appear to have held of the crown by the same kind of service.
One of the old Saxon laws revived or continued by the Conqueror, and the only one in the collection of enactments which passes under the name of his Charter having any reference to trade, is the prohibition against all purchases above a certain amount, except in the presence of witnesses. "No one shall buy," it is declared, "either what is living or what is dead, to the value of four pennies, without four witnesses, either of the borough or of the village."
About the year 1110, Henry I. established a colony of Flemings in the district of Ross, in Pembrokeshire. These foreigners had come over in the reign of the Conqueror, driven from their native country, it is said, by an inundation of the sea, and they had been settled, in the first instance, chiefly about Carlisle and the neighbouring ports, and, as it would seem, with a view merely to the service their hardihood and skill in war might be of in the defence of the northern frontier of the kingdom. But they were as dexterous in handling both the plough and the shuttle as the sword. Henry is said to have been induced to remove them to Wales, by finding that they and the English, with whom they were mixed, did not agree well together. In the district of which he put them in possession, and which he had taken from the Welsh, they maintained their ground against all the efforts of the hostile people by whom they were surrounded to dislodge them, and soon came to be regarded as the force to be mainly depended upon for keeping the Welsh in check. By these Flemings the manufacture of woollen cloths appears to have been first introduced into this country; and it is supposed that they soon came to be made for exportation as well as for home consumption. Giraldus Cambrensis describes the foreigners as "a people ​excellently skilled both in the business of making cloth and in that of merchandize, and always ready with any labour or danger to seek for gain by sea or land." It is probable that they also introduced some improvements in agriculture; and, altogether, the example of industry, activity, and superior acquirements set by this interesting colony—the last, as it has been remarked, of any consequence settled in any part of the island till the coming over of the French Protestant silk-weavers, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685—could not fail to be of high public benefit. Their language was very nearly the same with the English; and the district in which they dwelt, it seems, used to be called Little England beyond Wales; in fact, they made the whole county of Pembroke, though lying at the further extremity of Wales, an English county. Henry II. afterwards added to their numbers by permitting some of those of their countrymen who had served as mercenaries under Stephen to settle among them. It is said that the descendants of these Flemings may still be distinguished from their Welsh neighbours.
The Flemings were indebted, both for the welcome reception they met with in the first instance, and for the permanent settlement they obtained, to their martial more than to their commercial skill—to their being a people, as Giraldus expresses it, equally most ready, now at the plough—now at the sword. The Jews, who came over in great numbers soon after the Conquest, were a people of altogether another stamp. Precluded by their religion from engaging in the wars of any of the European nations among whom they had settled, they had become mere traders, and were, indeed, men of peace in a more strict, sense than any other class of persons in those days, the clergy themselves not excepted. Independently, therefore, of the odium to which their faith exposed them, ​their habits made them in a peculiar degree objects of hatred and contempt to the warlike population of England and the other countries in which they took up their residence. Yet almost wherever commerce had taken any root, there were they to be found, pursuing perseveringly under obloquy, danger, and the cruellest oppression, their peculiar trade. To draw down upon them still more of the popular suspicion and dislike in a rude and ignorant age, that trade was not any species of industry by which produce of any kind was visibly created; it did not necessarily imply even the exertion of any peculiar powers or acquirements; it was labour neither of the hand nor of the head. Yet it was, in truth, a trade as essential to the creation of wealth as any labour. The Jews were the capitalists of those times; they were dealers in that other element, by a combination with which alone it is that labour itself can, in the creation of wealth, accomplish any extraordinary results. Even in that dark and turbulent age the inherent power of property was strikingly evinced in their case, by the protection which it long secured to them, notwithstanding all the hostility of the popular feeling, and the disregard of them by the law itself. It was early found necessary to support them in their rights over their debtors; and, while affairs went on in their ordinary course, it does not appear that a Jew ever had any greater difficulty in recovering the money owing to him than a Christian. The law, indeed, seems to have considered the Jews as the property of the king: and he oppressed and plundered them to any extent that he deemed prudent. But he did not usually allow them to be injured by others; and perhaps, indeed, they were more secure under the royal protection than they would have been under that of the law. Some of the kings, William Rufus in particular, excited much popular clamour by favouring them, as it was alleged, too much. Their wealth enabled them, at different times, to purchase charters from the crown. For one which they obtained from King John, and which is styled a confirmation of their charters, they are recorded to have paid four ​sand marks; and it refers to previous charters which they had received both from Henry I. and Henry II.
There are traces of an intercourse having subsisted between these islands and the East from the remotest times. The mere derivation of the people of Europe from Asia most probably, of itself, had always kept up some connexion between the East and the West; neither the Gothic nor the earlier Celtic colonists of Europe seem to have ever altogether forgotten their Oriental origin; the memory of it lives in the oldest traditions alike of the Irish and of the Scandinavians. But even within the historic period we find a succession of different causes operating to keep up a connexion between Britain and the East. As long as the island was under the dominion of the Romans it was of course united by many ties, and by habits of regular intercourse, with all the other parts of the extended empire to which it belonged. Afterwards, in the Saxon times, the establishment of Christianity in the country contributed in various ways to maintain its connexion with the East. The Greek learning, and probably also some of the Greek arts, were introduced by Archbishop Theodore and other churchmen from Asia: at a later date we find Alfred despatching a mission to the Christians in India; and not long afterwards we find pilgrimage to the Holy Land becoming a common practice. From this practice we may most properly date the commencement of our modern trade with the East; it has ever since been a well established and regular intercourse. The pilgrims, from the first, very generally combined the characters of devotees and merchants. Then, towards the close of the eleventh century, commenced the crusades, which for nearly two hundred years kept, as it were, a broad highway open between Europe and Asia, along which multitudes of persons of all sorts were continually passing and repassing.
Some curious evidences of the extent to which eastern commodities now began to find their way to the remotest ​extremities of Europe may be collected from the records of the times. One very remarkable notice occurs in the Registry of the Priory of St. Andrew's, in Scotland, in which it is related that Alexander I., when bestowing a certain endowment of land upon the church of that city, presented at the same time an Arabian horse which he was wont to ride, with his bridle, saddle, shield, and silver lance, a magnificent pall or horse-cloth, and other Turkish arms (arma Turchensia) of various descriptions. He caused the horse, arrayed in its splendid furniture, to be led up to the high altar of the church; and the record adds that the Turkish armour, the shield, and the saddle were still preserved there, and shown to the people, who came from all parts of the country to behold them. Alexander reigned from 1107 till 1124; and this account is written in the reign of his brother and successor, David I.
But the most precious gift which Europe obtained from the East within the present period was the knowledge of the art of rearing and managing the silk-worm. Cloth of silk had long been known in England and other European countries, to which it was brought in a manufactured state from Greece and other parts of the East. Afterwards the Saracens introduced the art of weaving silk into Spain. The silk-worm, however, was first brought from Greece in 1146, by Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, who, in an expedition which he led against Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, carried off a great number of silk-weavers from these cities, and settled them in his capital of Palermo. From them the Sicilians learned both how to weave the cloth and how to rear the worm; and within twenty years from this time the silk fabrics of Sicily were celebrated over Europe. It is not till some centuries later that we have any accounts of the establishment of any branch of the manufacture in this country; but from ​about this time we find silks becoming much more abundant in England as well as in the other countries of Europe than formerly—and they must now have been imported, probably from Spain, Sicily, and Italy, as well as from Asia, in considerable quantities.
It so happens that rather more information has come down to us respecting the commerce of Scotland than of England during the first half of the twelfth century. We have not only some very interesting notices respecting David I., who reigned from 1124 till 1153, from the historian Ailred, or Aldred, who was educated in Scotland along with Prince Henry, David's eldest son; but we have also a collection of the laws and customs of the burghs of Scotland, which professes to be as old as the reign of the same king, and is generally admitted to be, in the greater part, of that antiquity. Ailred celebrates the attention of David to foreign commerce. He exchanged, he says, the produce of Scotland for the wealth of other kingdoms, and made foreign merchandize abound in his harbours. Among the laws of the burghs attributed to him the following may be quoted as referring to trade with other countries:—By chap. 10, all goods imported by sea are ordered not to be sold before being landed, except salt and herrings; by chap. 18, foreign merchants are prohibited from buying wool, hides, or other goods, from any but burgesses; and by chap. 48, the lands of all persons trading to foreign countries are exempted from seizure for any claim whatever during their absence, unless they appeared to have withdrawn on purpose to evade justice. From this regulation it would appear that some of the Scottish merchants already traded themselves to foreign parts. Another of these burgh laws prohibits all persons except burgesses from buying wool for dyeing or making into cloth, and from cutting cloth for sale, except the owners of sheep, who might do with their own wool what they chose. The manufacture of woollen cloth had, therefore, been by this time introduced into Scotland. The art had probably been taught to the inhabitants of that country by settlers from England. William of Newburgh, writing about ​twenty years after the death of David, says that the towns and burghs of Scotland were then chiefly occupied by English inhabitants. We know, too, that in the next reign numbers of Flemings left England and took refuge in Scotland. "We can trace the settlement of these industrious citizens," says Mr. Tytler, " during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in almost every part of Scotland; in Berwick, the great mart of our foreign commerce; in the various towns along the east coast; in St. Andrew's, Perth, Dumbarton, Ayr, Peebles, Lanark, Edinburgh; and in the districts of Renfrewshire, Clydesdale, and Annandale. There is ample evidence of their industrious progress in Fife, in Angus, in Aberdeenshire, and as far north as Inverness and Urquhart. It would even appear, from a record of the reign of David II., that the Flemings had procured from the Scottish monarchs a right to the protection and exercise of their own laws. It has been ingeniously conjectured that the story of Malcolm IV. having dispossessed the ancient inhabitants of Moray, and of his planting a new colony in their stead, may have originated in the settlement of the Flemings in that remote and rebellious district. The early domestic manufactures of our country, the woollen fabrics which are mentioned by the statutes of David, and the dyed and shorn cloths which appear in the charter of William the Lion to the burgh of Perth, must have been greatly improved by the superior dexterity and knowledge of the Flemings; and the constant commercial intercourse which they kept up with their own little states could not fail to be beneficial in imparting the knowledge and improvements of the continental nations into the remoter country where they had settled." A manuscript in the Cottonian Library, the work of a contemporary writer, is quoted by Mr. Macpherson for the fact, that in the reign of David I., the Frith of Forth was frequently covered with boats manned by English, Scottish, and Belgic fishermen, who were attracted by the great abundance of fish (most probably herrings) in the ​neighbourhood of the island of May. Anderson speaks of the Netherlanders resorting to Scotland so early as about the year 836, for the purpose of buying salted fish of the Scotch fishermen; but his authority for this statement is not known. Mr. Macpherson considers the passage in the Cottonian Manuscript to be "the very first authentic and positive notice of a fishery, having any claim to consideration as a commercial object, upon the North British coast." He also doubts if it be not " the earliest notice of English fishermen going so far from their own ports on a fishing voyage, if they were indeed subjects of England; for in the age of the writer here quoted the Scottish subjects on the south side of the Frith of Forth were called English."
The long reign and able and successful government of Henry II. not only enabled the commerce of England to recover from the depression under which it had languished during the whole of the turbulent and miserable reign of his predecessor, but eventually raised it to an extent and importance which it had certainly never attained either since the Conquest or before it, at least since the departure of the Romans. The intercourse, in particular between this country and France, must immediately have been placed upon a new footing, and no doubt greatly augmented, both by the restoration of the old connexion with Normandy, and still more by Henry's acquisition through his marriage of the great Duchy of Aquitaine, which gave the English crown the dominion of all the French coast from Picardy to the Pyrenees. Some years afterwards the conquest of Ireland, and the establishment in that island of a numerous English population, must have also considerably extended the range, or at least added to the activity, of English commerce in that other direction.
In several contemporary writers we find notices of the commerce of London, and also of other English cities, in this reign. Henry II., in a charter which is without date, but which was probably granted soon after he came ​to the throne, confirmed to the citizens of London all the privileges which they enjoyed under his grandfather, with some others in addition, none of which, however, have any particular reference to the commerce of the city. The fullest and most curious account we have of London at this period is that given in the introduction to a Latin life of Becket by a monk of Canterbury, of Norman descent, named William Fitz-Stephen, or Stephanides, as he calls himself in Latin, which appears to have been written about 1174. He says that no city in the world sent out its wealth and merchandize to so great a distance; but he has not recorded either the descriptions of goods that were thus exported or the countries to which they were sent. Among the articles, however, which were then brought to London by foreign merchants, he enumerates gold, spices, and frankincense, from Arabia; precious stones from Egypt; purple cloths from India; palm-oil from Bagdad; furs and ermines from Norway and Russia; arms from Scythia; and wines from France. The citizens he describes as distinguished above all others in England for the elegance of their manners and dress, and the magnificence of their tables. It was in this reign, it may be observed, that London first became decidedly, what Fitz-Stephen calls it, the capital of the kingdom of England (regni Anglorum sedes), Winchester, the ancient royal seat of the West Saxons, although it was the place where the early Norman kings kept their treasury, had begun to decline even before the Conquest, and had sustained such calamities in the civil wars of the time of Stephen that it was never afterwards in a condition to dispute the ascendancy of its rival on the Thames. At this time, according to Fitz-Stephen, and his account is confirmed by Peter of Blois, writing a few years earlier, there were, in the city and suburbs, thirteen large conventual churches and 126 parochial ones. Peter of Blois says, in an epistle to Pope Innocent II., that the population was only 40,000; but this is not absolutely inconsistent with the statement of Fitz-Stephen, that in the reign of Stephen there issued from the city, of fighting men, no fewer than 60,000 foot ​and 20,000 horse, since the army assembled in the city, or raised under the orders of its authorities, might very possibly greatly exceed the number of the actual inhabitants. It is most probable, however, that there is an error in the numbers found in Fitz-Stephen's text as it has come down to us. He adds, that the dealers in the various sorts of commodities, and the labourers and artizans of every kind, were to be found every day stationed in their several distinct places throughout the city, and that a market was held every Friday in Smithfield for the sale of horses, cows, hogs, &c. At this time Ludgate, now far within Temple Bar, was the west end of London; the space from thence to Westminster was a tract of fields and gardens: Moorfields was a large lake of water, into which ran several streams turning mills; the rising grounds towards Pentonville and Islington were covered with corn and grass; and a large district of country beyond was a forest, that had probably stood since the creation, in which the citizens hunted wild-boars and other game. According to Fitz-Stephen, the citizens of London were distinguished from those of other towns by the appellation of barons; and Malmesbury, an author of the same age, also tells us that, from their superior opulence and the greatness of the city, they were considered as ranking with the chief people or nobility of the kingdom. "It is filled," he adds, " with merchandize brought by the merchants of all countries, but chiefly those of Germany; and, in case of scarcity of corn in other parts of England, it is a granary where the article may be bought cheaper than anywhere else." It was in London that the Jews chiefly resided, and many of them were no doubt among its wealthiest citizens.
The following are some of the most remarkable particulars that are to be collected from contemporary authorities respecting other English cities at this period. Exeter, according to Malmesbury, was a magnificent city, filled with opulent citizens. Henry of Huntingdon states, that, in consequence of its being the principal port for the mineral productions of the adjacent country, it was so much resorted to by foreign merchants that everything ​that could be desired might be purchased there in abundance. Bristol is mentioned by Malmesbury as having a great trade, not only with Ireland, but also with Norway and other foreign countries. Both Gloucester and Winchester are celebrated for the excellence of their wines made from the grapes of the country. For foreign wines, again, Chester would appear to have been one of the chief ports, if we may trust the testimony of a monk of that city named Lucian, whom Camden quotes. According to this authority, ships repaired to Chester in great numbers, not only from Ireland, but also from Gascony, Spain, and Germany, and supplied the inhabitants with all sorts of commodities; "so that," adds Lucian, "being comforted by the favour of God in all things, we drink wine very plentifully; for those countries have abundance of vineyards." Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, now reduced by the encroachments of the sea to an insignificant village, is described by William of Newburgh as a famous sea-port town, stored with various kinds of riches; and in the reign of John this town is stated to have paid twice as much rent to the king as any other upon the neighbouring coast. Norwich is described in general terms by Malmesbury as famous for its commerce and the numbers of its population. Lynn is described by Newburgh as a city distinguished for commerce and abundance, the residence of many wealthy Jews, and resorted to by foreign vessels. Lincoln, Malmesbury speaks of as having become one of the most populous seats of home and foreign trade in England, principally in consequence of a canal of about seven miles in length, made by Henry I., from the Trent to the Witham, which enabled foreign vessels to come up to the city. Grimsby is noted by the Norwegian or Icelandic writers as an emporium resorted to by merchants from Norway, Scotland, Orkney, and the Western Islands. York is mentioned by Malmesbury as resorted to by vessels both from Germany and Ireland, though surely it lay very much out of the way of any trade with the latter country. Whitby, Hartlepool, and some other towns on the same part of the east coast, appear to have possessed shipping. Berwick, as already ​noticed, was the most eminent of the Scottish towns for foreign commerce. It had many ships. Perth, however, was at this time, properly speaking, the capital of Scotland; and Alexander Neckham, abbot of Cirencester, a Latin poet of this age, says that the whole kingdom was supported by the wealth of that city. Inverleith (now Leith), Striveling (now Stirling), and Aberdeen, are also mentioned in charters as places at which there was some shipping and trade, and where customs were collected. Glasgow was as yet a mere village; it was made a burgh, subject to the bishop, by William the Lion, in 1175; but in the charter there is no mention of a guild, of any mercantile privilege, or of any trade whatever, except the liberty of having a weekly market. Edinburgh, though it was probably made a burgh by David I., was of little note till the middle of the fifteenth century. In Ireland, Dublin, which Henry II. granted by a charter in 1172 to be inhabited by his men of Bristol, is spoken of by Newburgh as a noble city, which, it is added, somewhat hyperbolically, might be considered as almost the rival of London for its opulence and commerce.
There are two laws of Henry II. relating to commerce, that deserve to be mentioned. Henry I. had so far mitigated the old law or custom, which made all wrecks the property of the crown, as to have enacted, that, if any human being escaped alive out of the ship, it should be no wreck; and his grandson still farther extended the operation of the humane principle thus introduced, by decreeing, that, if either man or beast should be found alive in any vessel wrecked upon the coasts of England, Poictou, Gascony, or the isle of Oleron, the property should be preserved for the owners, if claimed within three months. The other law is the last clause of the statute called the Assize of Arms, published in 1181: it very emphatically commands the Justices in Eyre, in their progress through the counties, to enjoin upon all the ​lieges, as they love themselves and their property, neither to buy nor sell any ship for the purpose of its being carried out of England, and that no person should convey, or cause to be conveyed away, any mariner out of England. It has been inferred, from these regulations, that both English ships and English seamen were already held to be superior to those of other countries; but they can only be considered as showing that the naval force of the kingdom had now come to be looked upon as an important arm of its strength, and was the object of a watchful and jealous superintendence.
The only articles that are mentioned as imported into England from foreign countries in this period, are the spiceries, jewels, silks, furs, and other luxuries enumerated by Fitz-Stephen, of which there could not be any very extensive consumption; some woad for dyeing, and occasionally corn, which was at other times an article of export. The exports, on the other hand, appear to have been of much greater importance and value. Henry of Huntingdon enumerates, as being annually sent to Germany by the Rhine, great cargoes of flesh and of different kinds of fish (especially herrings and oysters), of milk, and, above all, of what he calls "most precious wool." He also mentions mines of copper, iron, tin, and lead as abundant; and it appears from other authorities that there was a large exportation both of lead and tin. The roofs of the principal churches, palaces, and castles, in all parts of Europe, are said to have been covered with English lead; and the exports of tin from mines belonging to the crown in Cornwall and Devonshire furnished at this time and for ages afterwards a considerable portion of the royal revenue. It is probable also that hides and skins and woollen cloths were exported, as well as wool. All this could not be paid for by the few articles of luxury above enumerated; and it may therefore be concluded that a large part of the annual returns derived by the country at this time from its foreign trade was received in the form of money or bullion. This supposition is confirmed by the account of Huntingdon, who expressly informs us that the Germans paid for the wool and ​provisions they bought in silver; on which account, he adds, that metal is even more plentiful in England than in Germany, and all the money of England is made of pure silver. The balance of trade, then, was what is commonly called in favour of England, unreasonably enough, as if nothing were wealth but gold and silver. The country at this time did not really become richer by exchanging its produce for money, than it would have done by taking foreign produce or manufactures in exchange for it. Nor, even if we should hold money to be the only true wealth, could it have accumulated in the country with more rapidity or to a greater amount under the one system than under the other; for a country in a given social condition can only retain a certain quantity of money in circulation within it, and that quantity it always will obtain, if it is able to obtain anything else of equivalent value. Money is necessary, and profitable to a certain extent, just as shoes or hats are; but beyond that extent, neither they nor it are either profitable or necessary—that is to say, something else for which the article could be exchanged would be more useful. The money anciently obtained by England through its foreign trade did not enrich the country, or even remain in it; so much of it as was not required for the purposes of circulation was as sure to find its way abroad again, as the stone thrown up into the air is to return to the ground.
If the commerce of England had not struck far deeper root, and grown to far greater magnitude and strength, at the time of the death of Henry II. than at that of Henry I., somewhat more than half a century before, the reign of Richard would have been, in proportion to its length, nearly as ruinous to it as was the disorderly and distracted reign of Stephen. All the activity and resources of the country were now turned from trade and industry to the wasteful work of war, which was carried on, indeed, in a foreign and distant land, and therefore did not produce the confusion and desolation within the kingdom that would have resulted from a civil contest; but, on the other hand, was, doubtless, on that account attended with a much larger expenditure both of money and of human ​life. Yet even from Richard's warlike preparations, and the pecuniary burdens which his expedition in other ways brought upon his people, we may collect a few notices of interest in regard to the progress of the commerce, navigation, and wealth of the country. The fleet which carried out his troops to the Holy Land was probably by far the most magnificent that had ever as yet left the English shores, although some of those of former times may have consisted of a greater number of vessels. But the barks, amounting, it is said, to some thousands, in which the Conqueror brought over his army from Normandy, and the four hundred vessels in which Henry II. embarked his forces for the conquest of Ireland, not to speak of the more ancient navies of Edgar and Ethelred in the Saxon times, must have been craft of the smallest size, or what would now be merely called boats. Besides a crowd of vessels of this description—the number of which is not given—Richard's fleet, when it assembled in the harbour of Messina, is said to have consisted of thirteen large vessels, called busses or dromons, fifty-three armed galleys, and a hundred carricks or transports. All these vessels were constructed both to row and to sail, the dromons having three sails, probably each on a separate mast, and both they and the galleys having, as it would appear, in general two tiers or banks of oars. "Modern vessels," says Vinisauf, "have greatly fallen off from the magnificence of ancient times, when the galleys carried three, four, five, and even six tiers of oars, whereas now they rarely exceed two tiers. The galleys anciently called liburnæ are long, slender, and low, with a beam of wood fortified with iron, commonly called a spur, projecting from the head, for piercing the sides of the enemy. There are also small galleys called galeons, which, being shorter and lighter, steer better, and are fitter for throwing fire." The fire here alluded to is the famous Greek fire, the great instrument of destruction at this time, both in encounters at sea, and in assaults upon fortified places on shore. This expedition of Richard was the first in ​which an English fleet had accomplished so long and various a navigation; and, under the conduct of so energetic a commander, it could not fail to give an impulse to the naval progress of the country, and to raise both the military skill and the seamanship of English sailors.
The kingdom had not yet recovered from the exhausting exertions it had made in fitting out this great fleet and army, when it was called upon to raise what was in those days an immense sum for the king's ransom. The agreement was, that before Richard's liberation, his jailor, the emperor, should be paid 100,000 marks of silver, besides 50,000 more afterwards—an amount of money then deemed so great, that a contemporary foreign chronicler, Otto de St. Blas, declines mentioning it, as he could not, he says, expect to be believed. It does not clearly appear how much of the 150,000 marks was paid in all; but it is stated that 70,000 marks of silver, equal in weight to nearly 100,000l. of our money, were remitted to Germany before the king was set free. This money was only raised by the most severe and grievous exactions. It was not all obtained till three successive collections had been made. Four years before this, it may be noted, in the beginning of Richard's reign, the much poorer kingdom of Scotland had repurchased its independence at the cost of 10,000 marks.
A few laws for the regulation of trade are recorded to have been enacted by Richard after his return home. The same year in which he returned, a prohibition was issued against the exportation of corn, "that England," as it was expressed, "might not suffer from the want of its own abundance." The violation of this law is stated to have been punished in one instance with merciless severity: some vessels having been seized in the port of St. Valery, laden with English corn for the King of France, Richard burned both the vessels and the town (which belonged to that king), hanged the seamen, and also put to death some monks who had been concerned in the illegal transaction. He then, after all this wild devastation, divided the corn among the poor. In 1197, also, a law was passed for establishing a uniformity of weights and ​measures, and for regulating the dyeing and sale of woollen cloths. The business of dyeing, except in black, it was enacted, should only be carried on in cities and boroughs, in which alone also any dyeing stuffs, except black, were allowed to be sold. It appears that the duties upon woad imported into London in 1195 and 1196 amounted to 96l. 6s. 8d. "If London alone," observes Macpherson, "imported woad to an extent that could bear such a payment (and it will afterwards appear that but a small part of the whole woad imported arrived in London), the woollen manufacture, to which it was apparently mostly confined, must have been somewhat considerable. But there is reason to believe that but few fine woollen goods were made in England, and that the Flemings, who were famous at this time for their superior skill in the woollen manufacture, as is evident from the testimony of several of the English historians of this age, continued for a series of ages to supply most of the western parts of Europe, and even some of the Mediterranean countries, with fine cloths, which the Italians called French cloths, either as reckoning Flanders a part of France (as, indeed, in feudal language it was), or because they received them from the ports of the south coast of that country." Much of the wool used in Flanders, however, appears to have been obtained from England. In the history, indeed, which bears the name of Matthew of Westminster, it is said that all the nations of the world used at this time to be kept warm by the wool of England, which was made into cloth by the Flemish manufacturers. In the patent of incorporation of the guild of weavers in London by Henry II., granted in the thirty-first year of his reign, there is a prohibition against mixing Spanish with English wool in the making of cloth, from which it may be inferred that the wool of England was in this age of superior quality to that obtained from Spain.
From the commencement of his reign, John appears to have affected to favour the interests of the part of the community connected with trade, now daily rising into more importance, and to have courted their support ​against the power of the nobility and the clergy. Immediately after his accession, he granted three charters to the citizens of London; the first generally confirming all their ancient rights and privileges; the second empowering them to remove all kidells, or wears for catching fish, from the rivers Thames and Medway, the navigation of which had been much impeded by these erections, set up by the keeper of the Tower and others; and the third confirming to them the fee-farm of the sheriffwicks of London and Middlesex at the ancient rent, and also giving to them the election of the sheriffs. For these charters he received 3000l. He also, probably at the same time, addressed letters to the most important commercial towns throughout the kingdom, promising that foreign merchants of every country should have safe conduct for themselves and their merchandize in coming into and going out of England, agreeably to the due right and usual customs, and should meet with the same treatment in England that the English merchants met with in their countries. The places to which these letters were sent were the towns of London, Winchester, Southampton, Lynn, the Cinque Ports, and the counties of Sussex, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Dorset, Somerset, Hants, Hertford, Essex, Devon, and Cornwall; "whence it appears," observes Macpherson, "that the south coast, and the east coast only as far as Norfolk, were esteemed the whole, or at least the chief, of the commercial part of the country." It is certain, however, that several towns beyond these limits had already risen to considerable commercial importance. In a list of towns which in the year 1205 paid the tax called the quinziéme, or fifteenth, which appears to have been a species of excise or tallage exacted from merchants, we find enumerated the following places in the northern part of the kingdom:—Newcastle in Northumberland; Yarum, Cotham, Whitby, Scarborough, Headon, Hull, York, and Selby, in Yorkshire; and Lincoln, Barton, Ymmingham, Grimsby, and ​Boston, in Lincolnshire. The other towns in the list are Lynn, Yarmouth, and Norwich, in Norfolk; Dunwich, Orford, and Ipswich, in Suffolk; Colchester in Essex; Sandwich and Dover in Kent; Rye, Winchelsea, Pevensey, Seaford, and Shoreham, in Sussex ; Southampton in Hampshire; Exmouth and Dartmouth in Devonshire; Esse (now Saltash) and Fowey, in Cornwall; and London. It will be observed, however, that these are all coast towns, or places having a river communication with the sea; and it surely cannot be supposed that there were not at this time some trading towns in the interior of the country. Either the quinziéme was not a duty payable, as has been asserted, by "all persons who made a business of buying and selling, however trifling their dealings might be," or this is not a complete list of the places from which it was collected. Besides, not a single place on the western coast of the kingdom is mentioned, not even Bristol or Chester. We should be disposed to conjecture that the quinziéme was only an impost upon foreign commerce, and even perhaps only upon some particular branch or branches of that. This supposition would make somewhat more intelligible the proportions of the whole amount collected which are set down as received from particular towns. It appears that the whole tax at this time yielded about 5000l. per annum; while of this total Lynn paid 651l., Southampton 712l., Boston 780l,, and London only 836l. It cannot for a moment be believed that in their general mercantile wealth London and Boston stood in this relation to each other. To add to the perplexity, we find that three years after this time the merchants of London purchased from the king an entire exemption from paying the quinziéme for the small sum of 200 marks, that is to say, for less than a sixth part of the amount of the tax for one year. We must, in these circumstances, suppose the exemption to have been accorded as a mark of royal favour to the city, and the 200 marks to have been paid merely as an acknowledgment. Newcastle is the only other town ​the amount paid by which is mentioned; it is set down as paying 158l., and must therefore have already grown to considerable consequence, although only founded little more than a century before this time. Hull also appears for the first time as a place of trade only in the close of the last reign.
That several of the Scotch burghs were at this period possessed of very considerable opulence is testified by their having, in 1209, contributed 6000 marks of the 15,000 which William the Lion bound himself to pay to John by the treaty of Berwick. In this age Mr. Macpherson calculates that 6000 marks would have purchased in Scotland about 240,000 bolls of oats, or 60,000 bolls of wheat. Among other countries, a trade with Norway appears to have been carried on by the Scotch in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Among the articles which are mentioned in the monastic chartularies of the country as paying tithe at this time are wool, corn, butter, cheese, cattle, fish, and flax. From the occurrence of the last article it may be inferred that some linen was already made in Scotland.
It was in the reign of John that their first great naval victory was gained by the English, at the battle of Damme, or of the Sluys, as it is sometimes called, fought in 1213. As yet, however, the country possessed nothing that could properly be called a navy. The royal navy usually consisted merely of merchant-ships collected from all the ports of the kingdom, each of which, as we have seen, was bound, when required by the king, to furnish him with a certain number. In pressing emergencies, indeed, the king seized upon the whole mercantile shipping of the kingdom, or as much of it as he required; "so that in those times," as the historian of commerce observes, "the owners could never call their vessels their own." "A striking illustration," it is added, "of the king's claim of right to the services of all merchant-ships appears in a letter written by Edward II. to the king of Norway, upon the detention of three English vessels, which he concludes by saying, that he cannot quietly put up with the vessels belonging to his kingdom, which ought at all times to be ​ready for his service, being detained in foreign countries John appears to have possessed merely a few galleys of his own.
In this reign we find the earliest mention of what may be called letters of credit, the first form, it may be supposed, of bills of exchange, the introduction and general employment of which very soon followed. In a document printed in the Fœdera, John, under date of 25th August, 1199, at Rouen, engages to repay in four instalments, in the course of two years, a sum of 2125 marks, which had been advanced by a company of merchants of Placentia to the bishops of Anjou and Bangor on the faith of the letters of King Richard. Afterwards John himself repeatedly raised money by such letters, addressed to all merchants, whereby he bound himself to repay the sums advanced to his agents to the amount named, at such time as should be agreed upon, to any person presenting his letter, together with the acknowledgment of his agents for the sum received by them. Mr. Macpherson is of opinion that, as there is no mention of interest in any of those letters, it must have been discounted when the money was advanced. It is remarkable that, although at this time, in England, no Christian was permitted by law to take interest, or usury as it was called, even at the lowest rate, upon money lent, the Jews in this respect lay under no restriction whatever. The interest which they actually received, accordingly, was sometimes enormous. In the large profits, however, which they thus made the crown largely shared, by the power of arbitrarily fining them, which it constantly exercised. William of Newburgh frankly speaks of them as well known to be the royal usurers; in other words, their usury was a mode of suction, by which an additional portion of the property of the subject was drawn into the royal treasury: and this sufficiently accounts for the manner in which they were tolerated and protected in the monopoly of the trade of money-lending.
Very few direct notices of the state of trade in this ​reign have come down to us. Licences are recorded to have been granted to the merchants of various foreign countries to bring their goods to England, on due payment of the quinziéme, which would thus appear to have been a customs duty, payable probably both on the import and export of commodities. The Flemings were the chief foreign traders that resorted to the country, and next to them, apparently, the French. In 1213 the duties paid on woad imported from foreign countries amounted to nearly 600l.; of which the ports in Yorkshire paid 98l.; those in Lincoln, 47l.; those in Norfolk and Suffolk, 53l.; those in Essex, 4l.; those in Kent and Sussex (exclusive of Dover), 103l.; Southampton, 72l.; and other places, not named, 214l. The woad, it may be presumed, was almost wholly used in dyeing cloths; but much cloth would also be both exported and worn at home without being dyed.
The freedom of commerce was sought to be secured by one of the clauses of the Great Charter (the forty-first), which declared that all merchants should have safety and security in going out of, and coming into England, and also in staying and travelling in the kingdom, whether by land or by water, without any grievous impositions, and according to the old and upright customs, except in time of war, when, if any merchants belonging to the hostile country should be found in the land, they should, at the commencement of the war, be attached, without injury of their persons or property, until it should be known how the English merchants who happened to be in the hostile country were treated there; if they were uninjured, the foreign merchants should be equally safe in England. This was as reasonable and even liberal a regulation as could have been desired on the subject. By other clauses, it was declared, that the debts of a minor should bear no interest during his minority, even if they should be owing to a Jew; that London and other cities and towns should enjoy their ancient privileges; that no fine should be imposed upon a merchant to the destruction of his merchandize; and that there should be a uniformity of weights and measures throughout the kingdom.
​The only coined money of this period, as far as is certainly known, was the silver penny, which, as at present, was the twelfth part of a shilling; the shilling being also, as it has ever since been, the twentieth part of a pound. The pound, however, was still a full pound of silver, according to the ancient Saxon or German standard of eleven ounces and a quarter troy, or 5400 grains to the pound. The same amount of silver is now coined, as explained in the preceding chapter, into 2l. 16s. 3d. sterling; and that, therefore, was the amount of money of the present denominations in the early Norman pound. The shilling, consequently, being the twentieth part of this, was equivalent to 2s. 9¾d. of our present money; and the penny, being the twelfth part of the shilling, or the 240th part of the pound, was still of the same value as in the Saxon times, and contained an amount of silver equal to a trifle more than what might be purchased by 2¾d. of our money. But both the pound and the shilling were only money of account; there were no coins of these denominations. It is doubtful, also, if there were any coins of inferior value to the silver penny; no specimens of any such have been discovered. Both halfpence and farthings, however, are mentioned in the writings of the time; and a coinage of round halfpennies by Henry I. is expressly recorded by Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, and Hoveden. It has been supposed that the people before, and also perhaps after this, used to make halfpence and farthings for themselves, by breaking the penny into halves and quarters, which, it has been said, they were more easily enabled to do from the coin having on one side of it a cross very deeply indented. Leake, however, has remarked that "the story of the cross being made double, or so deeply impressed, for the conveniency of breaking the penny into halves and quarters, is disproved by the coins now extant, whereon the crosses generally terminate at the inner circle, and, instead of being impressed, are embossed, which prevents their being broken equally." It is most ​probable, perhaps, that both halfpence and farthings were actually coined, though none have come down to us.
Other denominations of money, however, than the alcove are also mentioned. In the early part of the period, and especially in the reign of the Conqueror, the Saxon mode of reckoning appears to have remained in general use. "In his laws," says Ruding, "the fines are regulated by pounds, oras, marks, shillings, and pence. The shillings are sometimes expressly stated to be English shillings of four pennies each. But in Domesday Book various other coins or denominations of money are to be found, such as the mite, farthing, halfpenny, mark of gold and silver, ounce of gold, and marsum. There seems also to have been current a coin of the value of half a farthing, which was probably the same as the mite above mentioned." The values of the Saxon coins here enumerated have been stated in the last chapter. The mark, it may be added, long remained a common denomination, and was at all times reckoned two-thirds of the pound. Some foreign coins, especially byzantines, which were of gold, are also supposed to have been still in use, as in the Saxon times.
The coins of the earlier Norman kings are of great rarity. Those issued by the Conqueror "were made," Ruding thinks, "to resemble those of Harold in weight and fineness, and some of them in typo," in conformity with the policy upon which William at first acted, of affecting to be the regular successor of the Saxon kings. The coins of the two Williams can scarcely be distinguished, the numerals being for the most part absent. The same is the case with those of the two Henrys. Royal mints were still established in all the principal towns; and the name of the place where it was struck continues to be commonly found on the coin. In the lawless times of Stephen all the bishops and greater barons are said to have very generally coined and issued money of their own; every castle had its mint; and the money thus thrown into circulation is alleged to have been so debased that, in ten shillings, not the value of ​one in silver was to be found. Stephen himself is also charged with having, in his necessities, resorted to the expedient of diminishing the weight of the penny. When Henry II. came to the throne, however, he put down all this base money; and none of the baronial coins of Stephen's reign are now known to exist, with the exception of a few bearing the names of his son Eustace, and of his brother, the Bishop of Winchester, which were probably issued by the royal licence.
Henry I., on his accession, abolished the tax of moneyage, which had been introduced either by the Conqueror or his son Rufus; and he afterwards effected a reform of the coinage, which had been greatly corrupted by the frauds of the moneyers. Henry II. also called in all the old coins in circulation in the year 1180. No coins are known to be in existence either of Richard I. or John, as kings of England, although there are some of the former as Earl of Poictou and as Duke of Aquitaine, and of the latter as lord of Ireland.
An English penny of Richard's is given in various collections of plates of coins, but is admitted to be a forgery. Mr. Ruding, speaking of it and another of John, says—" These two pennies are now well known to be the fabrication of a late dealer in coins, who pretended to have discovered them amongst some which were found upon Bramham Moor in Yorkshire. He sold one of them for thirty guineas; the other remained in his possession, and was disposed of with the rest of his collection, after his death." The man's name was White.
The earliest Scotch coins that have been discovered are some of Alexander I., who began his reign in 1107. The Scotch money appears to have, at this period, entirely corresponded with the English; and, indeed, the circulation of Scotland probably consisted in great part of English coins.
In regard to the real or efficient value of the money of those days, as compared with that of our present money, ​it is, as we have already had occasion to remark, impossible to make any statement which shall be universally applicable. The question of the value of money at any given period is merely a question of the price of a particular commodity—namely, the metal of which the money is made. But we have no means of estimating with precision the price of any commodity whatever, in the scientific sense of that term. All that we can do is to state it relatively to the price of some other commodity. This is all that we really do when we state the money-price of anything. That is only a statement of the relation between the price of the article in question and the price of the other article called money. It is no expression either of the general price of either, or of the relation of the price of either to that of any other article whatever. Commodities of all kinds, from causes sufficiently obvious, are constantly changing their relative positions in regard to price; and, therefore, the relation between the prices of any two of them can be no permanent index of the relation between the prices of any two others. In other words, the money-price of any one article at a particular time will give us no certain information as to the money-price either of all other articles, or of any other article.
Although, indeed, no precise estimate can be arrived at of the general value of money in former times as compared with its present value, many important conclusions in regard to the state of society, and the command possessed by the several classes of the population over the necessaries and comforts of life, may be drawn from the notices that have been preserved of the money-prices of commodities and labour at different periods. But the only point which properly belongs to our present subject is that of the relative values of gold and silver in the period we have been reviewing. The relation between the values of these two metals has fluctuated considerably in different ages. In ancient Rome, about the commencement of our era, it seems to have been usually as one to ten. About the fourth century, however, silver had become so much more plentiful, or gold so much ​scarcer, that fourteen pounds eight ounces of the former were exchanged for a pound of the latter. In England, in the Saxon times, the legal proportion appears to have been as one to twelve. After the Conquest, however, gold became cheaper; and, about the middle of the twelfth century, one pound of it was exchanged for nine pounds of silver. In the beginning of the thirteenth century we find the value of silver rated to that of gold in the proportion of ten to one. At present the proportion is about as fourteen to one.
* ↑ "It appears that there were greater stores of the precious metals in Ireland than could well be supposed. Large sums of gold and silver were frequently given for the ransom of men of rank taken in battle; and duties or rents, paid in gold or silver, to ecclesiastical establishments, occur very often in the Irish annals. At the consecration of a church in the year 1157, Murha O'Lochlin, king of Ireland, gave a town, 150 cows, and 60 ounces of gold, to God and the clergy: a chief called O'Carrol gave also 60 ounces of gold; and Tiernan O'Ruark's wife gave as much—donations which would have been esteemed very great in that age in England or upon the continent. What superstition so liberally gave, some species of industry must have acquired; and that was most probably the pasturage of cattle...unless we will suppose that the mines of Ireland, which, though unnoticed by any writer, seem to have been at some time very productive, were still capable of supplying the sums collected in the coffers of the chiefs and the clergy." — Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 334.
* ↑ Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, i. 307.
* ↑ Itinerar. Camb. i. ii. Giraldus adds, that they were admirably skilled in soothsaying, by the inspection of the entrails of beasts!
* ↑ Nunc ad aratra, nunc ad anna, gens promptissima.
* ↑ Madox, Hist. Excheq., p. 174.
* ↑ Extracts from the Register of St. Andrew's, printed in Pinkerton's Inquiry into the History of Scotland preceding the reign of Malcolm III., i. 464. The circumstance is also mentioned by Wynton, who is, however, a much later authority.
* ↑ History of Scotland, ii. 28 7.
* ↑ Origin of Commerce, i. 77. (Edit, of 17S7.)
* ↑ Annals of Commerce, i. 325.
* ↑ See these and other facts collected, and the authorities cited, by the laborious and accurate Macpherson, Ann. of Com. i. 330—333.
* ↑ Translation in Macpherson, Ann. of Com. i. 352.
* ↑ Maitland's Hist. of London, i. 73-75. Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 129.
* ↑ Macpherson, Ann. of Com. i. 371.
* ↑ Macpherson's Ann. of Com. i. 379.
* ↑ Historical Account of English Money (2nd edit.), p. 38.
* ↑ See Ruding's Ann. of the Coinage, ii. 35 and 50, and v. 98 aud 262.