# The History of British Commerce/Volume 1/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V. FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD III. A.D. 1399—1485.
The rule of the House of Lancaster, with whatever ultimate benefits it may have been fraught in this as well as in other respects, could not, while it lasted, have proved favourable, on the whole, to the interests of the national industry, productive as it was of long and expensive foreign wars in the first instance, and, as soon as they were ended, of the still more wasteful calamity of domestic discord, bloodshed, and confusion. The reign of the first of the three princes of that house, however, was, after the two or three first years, a time of general tranquillity both at home and abroad; and during that interval the trade and few manufactures of the country probably flourished as much as at any former period. Henry IV. appears to have felt the importance of protecting and promoting the commerce of his subjects; or, at all events, the public mind was now so much awake to these objects that he could not afford to disregard them. The history of his government affords many instances of his interference being called for and exerted to open new facilities for the intercourse of the kingdom with other countries, or to obtain redress for injuries which his subjects had sustained in their commercial dealings with foreigners. Thus, in the very first year of his reign, we find him granting letters of marque and reprisal against the Earl of Holland, and issuing orders to his admirals to detain all vessels and property in England belonging to the people of Holland and Zealand, till the earl should take measures to compel the payment of certain debts, due by his subjects to English creditors. The same year he summoned the governors of several of the Hanse ​Towns and their protector, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, to appear in person or by deputy before his council, to answer the complaints of the merchants of England, that they were not treated in those places so well as the merchants from them were treated in England, notwithstanding the express stipulations of the treaty which secured to the foreign merchants the privileges they enjoyed in this country. This dispute with the famous association of the Hanse Towns, already the most powerful commercial community in Europe, was protracted through a long course of subsequent transactions, which it is unnecessary to detail. The foreign merchants alleged that they had more reason for complaint against the English than the English had against them; that their privileges were infringed upon by the corporations of London and other places; that they were subjected to the grossest impositions by Henry's custom-house officers; and that their ships had been repeatedly attacked and plundered at sea by his subjects. In the end, it seems to have been admitted that these representations were well founded; for it was finally agreed, in 1400, by commissioners appointed on both sides, that all differences should be settled by Henry paying above 30,000 English nobles to the Grand Master and the magistrates of Hamburgh; while the Grand Master, on the other hand, was let off on the payment of only 766 nobles to the English sufferers. A new treaty was then concluded, on the basis of mutual freedom of trade, and oblivion of past injuries. In case of any future outrages, the respective sovereigns bound themselves to make satisfaction for the aggressions of their subjects; failing which, the sovereign of the party injured was to have the right of arresting any subject of the other power found in his dominions within six months after preferring the complaint. Repeated treaties on the same basis of mutual freedom of intercourse were made in the course of the reign with Castile, Portugal, Flanders, Britany, and other countries. The growing importance of the ​foreign trade of England at this period is further indicated by the frequent applications which are noticed as having been made to Henry by those of his subjects interested in particular branches of it for their separate incorporation, or, at least, the public recognition of them as associated for a specific object. Thus, in 1404, the English merchants trading to Prussia and the Hanse Towns were empowered to elect a governor, who should exercise a general authority over their body, and in the settlement of disputes between them and foreigners. Three years after, the same privilege was granted to the merchants trading to Holland, Zealand, Brabant, and Flanders; and in 1408, to those trading to Norwav, Sweden, and Denmark. These governors of the English merchants, whose functions somewhat resembled those of consuls in modern times, appear usually to have resided in the foreign country to which the merchants resorted. It soon became customary to appoint such a governor for every country with which any commercial intercourse was carried on.
Some very curious notices of the productions and commerce of the principal countries of Europe at the commencement of the fifteenth century are found in the recital given by the Byzantine historian, Laonicus Chalcondyles, of the observations made by Manuel, the unfortunate Emperor of Constantinople, who, in the year 1400, visited Italy, France, England, and other parts of the west, to solicit the aid of the monarchs of Christendom against the Turkish barbarians, now all but masters of the imperial capital itself. The following abstract of so much of the Greek writer's account as belongs to the present subject is presented by the modern Historian of Commerce: "The natives of Germany excel in the mechanic arts, and they boast of the inventions of gunpowder and cannons. Above two hundred free cities in it are governed by their own laws. France contains many flourishing cities, of which Paris, the royal residence, is pre-eminent in wealth and luxury. Flanders is an opulent province, the ports of which are frequented by merchants of our own sea (the Mediterranean) and ​the ocean. Britain (or rather England) is full of towns and villages. It has no vines, and but little fruit, but it abounds in corn, honey, and wool from which the natives make great quantities of cloth. London, the capital, may be preferred to every city of the West for population, opulence, and luxury. It is seated on the river Thames, which, by the advantage of the tide, daily receives and despatches trading vessels from and to various countries."
The establishment of Banks, which now began to take place in various parts of Europe, affords an unquestionable indication of the general extension of commercial transactions. Bills of exchange, as already noted, had been in use from the early part of the thirteenth century; and, at least by the beginning of the fifteenth, if not earlier, the form in which they were drawn out, and the usages observed respecting their negotiation and non-payment, had come to be nearly the same as at the present day. Although, however, the origin of the Bank of Venice is carried back to the institution of the Camera degl' Imprestiti (or Chamber of Loans), being an office for the payment of the annual interest on the debts of the republic, in 1171, the Taula de Cambi (or Table of Exchange) opened at Barcelona, by the magistrates of that city, in 1401, is generally considered to have been the earliest European establishment properly of the nature of what is now called a bank. The Bank of Genoa originated in the establishment, in the year 1407, of the Chamber of St. George, which at first, however, was merely an office for the management of the debts of the republic, similar to the Venetian Chamber of Loans.
The false notions on the subject of money to which we had occasion to advert in the preceding Chapter, as ​having given rise in England to so much absurd and mischievous legislation, were not yet corrected by the enlarged commercial experience of the present period. In 1402, we find the parliament enacting, in the spirit of former statutes, that all merchants, whether strangers or denizens, importing commodities from abroad, and selling them in the country for English money, "shall bestow the same money upon other merchandise of England, for to carry the same out of the realm of England, without carrying any gold or silver in coin, plate, or mass, out of the said realm, upon pain of forfeiture of the same, saving always their reasonable costs." There can be no doubt that the main motive of this and other prohibitions of the same kind was far more to prevent the purely imaginary evil of the export of English money than even to promote the really desirable, however unwisely pursued object, of the export of English produce or manufactures. The law, however, entirely failed of its intended effect. The statute of 1402 was confirmed the following year, with additional provisions for its more effective execution—a fact which is itself sufficient evidence that it had proved useless, or been generally evaded; but this new attempt to compass an impossibility was not more successful than the former; for, in a few months after their enactment, we find the principal part of the recent more stringent regulations abandoned, and declared "utterly void and annulled for ever," as having been seen by the king and his parliament to be "hurtful and prejudicial as well for himself and his realm, as for the said merchants, aliens, and strangers. " From other recorded facts, also, it appears that, notwithstanding all these prohibitions, English money constantly found its way to the continent, and was commonly current in every country of Europe. Thus, when Eric, King of Sweden, in 1408, bought the Isle of Gothland, with its great commercial emporium of Wisbuy, from the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, he is stated to have paid for it in ​English nobles. So, on the settlement, as mentioned above, of the differences with Prussia and the Hanse Towns, in 1409, it was arranged that all the payments on both sides should be made in the same coin, as if it were a common European currency. On another occasion, indeed—the payment of 100,000 English nobles to the Duke of Burgundy, in 1431—it is expressly noted that the money was estimated at its current rate.
A few years before the commencement of the present period, all export or import of merchandise in any other than English ships had been prohibited, under pain of the forfeiture of vessel and cargo. Like many of the other mercantile laws of those times, however, this first navigation act passed by the English parliament seems to have been by no means strictly enforced. In the documents relating to the quarrel with the Hanse Towns and Prussia, foreign ships are repeatedly mentioned as being laden with goods which were the property of English merchants, and, apparently, exports from England. Woollen cloth is the article that most frequently occurs; another is wine, which, however, could only be legally exported under the royal licence. A considerable trade was now carried on with Venice. In 1409 permission was granted by King Henry to the merchants of Venice to bring their carracks, galleys, and other vessels laden with merchandise, into the ports of England and his other dominions, to transact their business, to pass over to Flanders, to return to his dominions, to sell their goods without impediment or molestation from his officers, to load their vessels with wool, cloth, or other English merchandise, and to return to their own country. This licence, which was often renewed, shows us what was the nature of the Venetian trade with England at this time. It was in part what is called a carrying trade, one of its objects being the interchange of the commodities of England and Flanders. The Byzantine ​historian Chalcondyles has recorded some particulars respecting the commerce of Venice, in relating the visit of the Emperor John Palæologus to that city in 1438. It is described as excelling all the other cities of Italy in the magnificence of its buildings and the opulence of the inhabitants. According to this account, twenty-two of their largest vessels, under the command of the sons of the nobles, were employed in trading to Alexandria, Syria, Tanais, the British Islands, and Africa. A few years before this time, it was asserted, in a speech addressed by the Doge Tommas Mocenigo to the senate, that the total value of the annual exports from Venice to all parts of the world was not less than ten millions of ducats. The shipping belonging to the citizens of the republic consisted of 3000 vessels, manned by 17,000 seamen; 300 ships, carrying 8000 seamen; and 45 galleys, of different sizes, but carrying, in the whole, 11,000 men, or, on an average, nearly 250 each. In the trade with England the balance was what is called against the republic; the money-payments made to England amounted annually to 100,000 ducats—which was one-fifth of the sum sent every year into Syria and Egypt, the latter being probably very nearly the whole cost price of the oriental productions imported by the republic.
Henry V. also began his reign by giving evidence of his disposition to favour and encourage commerce. One of his first acts was to confirm the privileges that had been granted by his father and preceding kings to the Venetians, and to other foreign merchants. The splendid illusion of the conquest of France, however, soon drew off his attention from this as well as from all other subjects of domestic interest; and the history of his reign furnishes scarcely a fact worth referring to for our present purpose. It is to be feared, indeed, that the prosperity which had been springing up during several years of peace was now struck with a blight from which it did not ​recover for many a day, and that every branch of social industry in the kingdom paid dear for the glory with which Henry's victories crowned the English name. These victories drained the land both of men and of money, and then spread among all classes of the people a spirit of restless and impatient aversion to every peaceful pursuit. Still it appears, from the account of the Treasurer for the year 1421, that even in this anticommercial reign the greater part of the public revenue was derived from the trade of the country. Among the new articles of English manufacture, and occasionally, as it would appear, of export, that now appear, may be mentioned both gunpowder and guns. The manufacture and export of guns are mentioned in a licence granted in 1411, for sending two small guns for a ship, along with the king's great gun, to Spain.
The misgovernment and political misfortunes of the greater part of the reign of Henry VI. probably did not oppress and injure the commerce of the kingdom nearly so much as the successful wars of his great father, which, by the very intoxication they produced in the public mind, dried up the spirit of mercantile industry and enterprise, and carried off the whole current of the national feelings and energies in an opposite direction. The loss of France, which was accounted at the time the great calamity and disgrace of the reign, was no loss to the trade of England. Even the weakness of the government did not operate so unfavourably as might be supposed upon that interest, which was now strong enough, if let alone, in a great measure to protect itself, or was, at least, pretty sure of receiving what facilities it needed in the shape of privileges or conventional stipulations from the general feeling of its importance and the mutual wants which bound one country to another. It is remarkable, that in this age a free commerce was not unfrequently continued between two countries even while their governments were at war, and treaties were made between them in contemplation of this state of things. ​The trade between England and Flanders in particular was so indispensable to the people of both countries, that it was never long interrupted by any quarrel between the two governments.
A very curious general review of the commerce of Europe in the earlier part of the fifteenth century is contained in a poem published by Hakluyt, called 'The Libel of English Policy,' which appears to have been written in the year 1436 or 1437. We will extract the most remarkable particulars that have any relation to England, introducing, as we go along, a few notices from other sources. In the first place, it appears, both from this poem and from other evidences, that the English wool of the finest quality was now superior to any produced even in Spain, which had already long been the greatest wool-growing country in Europe. It is stated that, although the Flemings obtained the greater part of their wool from Spain, they could not make good cloth of the Spanish wool by itself, but were obliged to mix it with the English. In Spain itself, in making the finest cloths, the mixture of any other wool with the English was strictly prohibited by a code of laws drawn up about this time by the magistrates of Barcelona, expressly "for the regulation of the manufacture of cloths made of fine English wool," The cloths of England, however, were still very inferior in fineness of texture to those both of Spain and the Netherlands; so that the fine English wool was sometimes carried to those countries, there to be manufactured into cloth, which was then sent back to the English market. In the coarser fabrics, on the other hand, the English appear to have already attained considerable excellence; for we find imitations of English cloth soon after this mentioned among the products of the looms of Barcelona. According to the poem, whatever trade England had at this time with Spain was all carried on indirectly through the medium of the great Flemish emporium of Bruges, ​that being the place to which all the Spanish exports were sent in the first instance. These consisted of figs, raisins, bastard wine, dates, liquorice, Seville oil, grain, Castile soap, wax, iron, wool, wadmole, skins of goats and kids, saffron, and quicksilver. With Portugal there was a direct intercourse, which was already considerable—wine, wax, grain, figs, raisins, honey, cordovan, dates, salt, and hides, being among the commodities imported from that country. A direct trade was also carried on with the Genoese, who resorted to England in great carracks, to purchase wool and woollen cloths of all colours, bringing to the country cloth of gold, silks, black pepper, great quantities of woad, wool, oil, wood-ashes, cotton, alum, and gold for paying their balances. Europe was now principally supplied with alum by the Genoese, who had obtained from the Greek emperor, Michael Palaeologus, the lease of a mountain on the coast of Asia Minor, containing a mine of that substance, and where a fort which they built became the origin of a town called New Phocæa, after a city which had anciently stood on the same site. Gibbon, however, appears to be mistaken in asserting that the different nations of Europe, and among others the English, resorted to New Phocæa. The alum was carried by the ships of the Genoese themselves to the ports of England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. In 1450, we find Henry VI. making a purchase of alum to the amount of 4000l. from some merchants of Genoa, and afterwards selling it for twice that sum. This transaction curiously illustrates the manner in which trade was at this period carried on by kings. The Genoese merchants were only paid in part by the money which they received, or rather which was promised them; for the bargain was, that their claim was to be discharged by the remission of that amount of custom-duties upon the goods brought and carried away by them: meanwhile, they were licensed by ​parliament to export from the south part of England any staple wares whatever, till the debt due to them should be paid. Out of this permission they would, no doubt, contrive amply to reimburse themselves for any sacrifice they may have made in the price at which they had disposed of the alum to the king. Then, on the other hand, to the merchants to whom his purchase was immediately resold by the king for ready money, and at so immense an advance of price, the parliament also gave what was, we may be certain, deemed sufficient compensation, in a grant of the monopoly of the whole trade in the article for the next two years—all persons being prohibited during that period from importing, buying, or selling any other alum. So that the king's profit of 4000l. was really extracted out of the pockets of his own subjects, partly in the shape of an imposition upon all consumers of alum, partly by the still more oppressive method of an invasion of the equal rights of all the native importers and exporters of that and every other commodity in which the Genoese traders dealt. The Genoese soon lost their establishment of Phocæa; but in 1459 they found new alum mines in the Isle of Ischia, by means of which they were enabled to continue their former commerce.
The balance of the trade of England with Venice and Florence would seem, according to the author of the 'Libel of English Policy,' to have been what is called favourable to the Italian communities; that is—contrary, as we have seen, to what other authorities assert to have been the case, at least in so far as Venice was concerned—it left a certain amount of money to be paid every year by England. He complains that these foreigners "bear the gold out of this land, and suck the thrift out of our hand, as the wasp sucketh honey of the bee." Their imports, which were brought in large galleys, consisted in spiceries and groceries, sweet wines, apes and other foreign animals, and a variety of other articles of luxury. In return for these, besides money, they carried away wool, cloth, and tin, which they were accustomed to travel to Cotswold and other parts of ​England to buy up. They sometimes, it is asserted, would buy on credit, and then sell the goods at Bruges, for ready money, five per cent, under what they had cost, for the sake of having the money to lend out at usury during the interval before their payments should become due. It appears, from some expressions of the author, that at this time English merchants also traded to Venice.
The English, according to this writer, bought greater quantities of goods in the marts of Brabant, Flanders, and Zealand, than all other nations together; though these marts or fairs were also frequented by the French, the Germans, the Lombards, the Genoese, the Catalonians, the Spaniards, the Scots, and the Irish. The purchases of the English consisted chiefly of mercery, haberdashery, and groceries; and they were obliged to complete them in a fortnight—a previous space of the same length having been allowed them for the sale of their cloth and other imports. The merchandise of Hainault, France, Burgundy, Cologne, and Cambray, was also brought in carts over-land to the markets of Brabant.
A trade to Iceland for stock-fish had been long carried on from the port of Scarborough; but for about twelve years past a share had been taken in it by Bristol and other ports. The author of the poem, however, states that, at the time when he wrote, the vessels could not obtain full freights. The Danish government in this age repeatedly attempted to prevent the English from trading to the coasts of Iceland.
A curious fact is mentioned in this poem respecting the people of Britany. The inhabitants of St. Malo especially, it is affirmed, were still accustomed to roam the seas as pirates, very little regarding the authority of their duke, and often made descents upon the eastern coast of England, plundering the country, and exacting contributions or ransoms from the towns.
Among the documents in the Fœdera occur various ​lists of articles ordered to be purchased in England for foreign potentates, or permitted to be exported for their use without paying custom. One of these lists, dated in 1428, enumerates the following articles as then shipped for the use of the King of Portugal and the Countess of Holland. For the king, 6 silver cups, gilded, each of the weight of 6 marks (or 4 pounds); 1 piece of scarlet cloth; 1 piece of sanguine, dyed in grain; 1 piece of blood colour; 2 pieces of mustrevilers; 2 pieces of marble colour; 2 pieces of russet mustrevilers; 2 pieces of black cloth of lyre; 1 piece of white woollen cloth; 300 pieces of Essex straits for liveries; 2000 platters, dishes, saucers, pots, and other vessels, of electrum (some unknown substance—perhaps a kind of crockery); a number of beds of various kinds and sizes, with curtains, &c.; 60 rolls of worsted; 12 dozen of lances; and 26 ambling horses. For the countess, quantities of various woollen cloths; 12 yards of red figured satin; 2 pieces of white kersey; 3 mantles of rabbits' fur; 1½ timber of martens' fur; and a quantity of rye, whole and ground, in casks. All these articles, therefore, were at least to be now purchased in England; but it is probable that almost all of them were also the produce or manufacture of the country.
Another indication of the growing extension of the commerce of the kingdom is furnished by the instances now beginning to be of frequent occurrence of individuals rising to great wealth, and sometimes to rank and power, through the successful pursuit of trade. The most remarkable example of this kind of elevation is that of the De la Poles, successively Earls, Marquises, and Dukes of Suffolk, and eventually ruined by a royal alliance and a prospect of the succession to the crown. The founder of the greatness of this family, which shot so rapidly to so proud a height, and filled for a century so large a space in the history of the country, was a merchant originally of Ravensere (supposed to be the same with Ravenspur, on the east coast of Yorkshire, now obliterated), and afterwards of the neighbouring town of Hull, named William de la Pole, who flourished in the time of ​Edward III. He was esteemed the greatest merchant in England, and must have possessed immense wealth for that age, since on one occasion he lent King Edward no less a sum than 18,500l. Edward made the opulent merchant the chief baron of his Exchequer, and a knight banneret; and in the course of that and the following reign he was often employed in embassies and in other important affairs of state along with the most distinguished men in the kingdom. His political employments and honours, however, do not appear to have withdrawn him from commerce. His son Michael also began life as a merchant. This was he whom Richard II. created Earl of Suffolk, and made his lord chancellor, but who was soon afterwards driven from office, and deprived of property, rank, and everything except his life, which he saved by taking flight to France, in the sweeping reform of the court by the king's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and his "wonderful parliament." Michael's son of the same name, however, was recalled, and restored to his father's dignities a year or two before the deposition of Richard: it was his son, also named Michael, whio fell in 1415 at the battle of Azincourt. The uncle, again, and heir of this last, William de la Pole, was the celebrated Earl of Suffolk who commanded at the siege of Orleans in 1429, when that place was relieved by Joan of Arc, and who afterwards becomes more conspicuous in the annals of the disastrous reign of the sixth Henry, as the favourite of the queen, Margaret of Anjou, through whose influence he was first created Marquis and afterwards Duke of Suffolk, and made lord chancellor, lord high admiral, and prime minister, or rather dictator of the kingdom—honours, however, which only conducted him after a few years to a bloody death. But this catastrophe did not put an end to the still buoyant fortunes of the family. Soon after the accession of Edward IV., John de la Pole, the son of the late duke, was restored by the Yorkist king to the same place in the first rank of the peerage to which his father had been raised by the House of Lancaster; and this second Duke of Suffolk eventually married the Princess Elizabeth, the ​sister of King Edward. Their eldest son John, who had been in 1467 created Earl of Lincoln, was declared by Richard III. his presumptive heir, on the death of his son Edward Prince of Wales in 1484; and a marriage was also arranged at the same time between their daughter Ann and James Duke of Rothsay, afterwards James IV. of Scotland. But the family had now reached the summit of its greatness. In the change of circumstances that followed the overthrow of Richard, the Scottish marriage never took place; and the Earl of Lincoln died in 1487, a few years before his father, without having enjoyed either crown or dukedom. To the latter his younger brother Edmund succeeded, and was the last of the noble house of De la Pole. He was put to death by Henry VII., in 1513—his claim to the crown through his relationship to the House of York being, as is generally believed, the true cause of his destruction. It may be added, that letters as well as commerce were brought near to the crown by the De la Poles, if we may depend upon the common account; for the first Duke of Suffolk married Alice, daughter of Thomas Chaucer, Speaker of the House of Commons, who is believed to have been the son of the poet; and she became the mother of John, the second duke, who married the sister of Edward IV.
One of the greatest of the English merchants in the reign of Henry VI. was William Cannyng, or Canyngs, of Bristol—a name made familiar to modern readers by the famous forgeries of Chatterton. Two letters of King Henry, addressed in 1449 to the Grand Master of Prussia and the magistrates of Dantzic, recommending to their good offices two factors resident within their jurisdictions of his "beloved and honourable merchant William Canyngs," are printed in the Fœdera. On Canyngs's monument in the magnificent church of St. Mary Radcliff, in Bristol, of which he was the founder, it is stated, that on one occasion shipping belonging to him to the amount of 2470 tons was seized by Edward IV., in which were included some vessels of 400, of 500, and even of 900 tons. Canyngs was one of those merchants who took part in the Iceland trade after it was extended beyond ​its original seat at Scarborough; he was probably the first who brought it to Bristol. In 1450 we find permission granted to him by King Henry to employ two ships of whatever burden for two years in the trade to Iceland and Finmark, and to export in them any species of goods not restricted by law to the staple at Calais. This licence became necessary in consequence of the existing law which prohibited all English subjects from trading to Iceland without permission both of their own sovereign and of the King of Denmark. Canyngs had previously obtained letters from the Danish king, authorising him to load certain vessels with lawful English merchandise for Iceland and Finmark, to take in return fish and other merchandise, and to make as many voyages as he should think proper during a limited term, in order to recover debts due to him in those countries. King Henry's licence is stated to have been granted in consideration of the good services granted to him by Canyngs while mayor of Bristol—an office to which the great merchant was elected by his fellow-citizens no fewer than five times.
Another of the opulent commercial men of this age, who is especially famous in story, is Richard Whytington, the history of whose cat, however, must be held to belong to the region of poetry and fable; for, instead of being originally a poor scullion-boy, he was the son of Sir William Whytington, knight, as is stated in the ordinances of his college of St. Spirit and St. Mary, yet preserved in the custody of the Mercers' Company of London. Whytington was elected lord mayor of London in 1397; again in 1406; and a third time in 1419. During his second mayoralty we find him lending Henry IV. the sum of 1000l. on the security of the subsidies on wool, hides, and woolfels, while one of the greatest princes of the church, the Bishop of Durham, advanced only 100 marks, and the most opulent of the lay nobility that contributed, no more than 500l. The ​above-mentioned college was suppressed in the reign of Edward VI.; but another foundation of Whytington's, his almshouse near Highgate, still remains a monument of the wealth and munificence of this "worthy and notable merchant, the which while he lived had right liberal and large hands to the needy and poor people," to make use of the terms in which he is described by his executors, in the body of rules established by them for the management of the latter charity. Among the subscribers along with Whytington to the loan to Henry IV., are two other London merchants, John Norbury and John Hende, whose opulence appears to have at this time exceeded his; for they advanced the sum of 2000l. each. Hende was mayor in 1391 and 1404; and both he and Norbury were the founders of several churches, colleges, and other charitable institutions. Another eminent English merchant and mariner of those times was John Taverner of Hull, who, in a royal licence granted in 1449, is said to have, "by the help of God and some of the king's subjects," built a ship as large as a great carrack (that is, one of the first class of the Venetian traders), or even longer, which the king directed should be called the Carrack Grace Dieu—authorising Taverner at the same time to take on board his carrack wool, tin, lamb-skins, woolfels, passelarges, and other hides, raw or tanned, and any other merchandise, in the ports of London, Southampton, Hull, or Sandwich, and, on paying aliens' duty, to carry them direct to Italy, from which he might bring back bow-staves, wax, and other foreign produce necessary for the country, to the great benefit of the revenue and of the nation. "The exemption of an English subject," observes Macpherson, "from the law of the staple, in consideration of the extraordinary size of his ship, is a clear proof that no such vessel had hitherto been built in England." Henry V., thirty or forty years before this time, had built some dromons, or large ships of war, at Southampton, such, according to the author of the 'Libel of English Policy,' as were ​never seen in the world before, to match those which his enemies the French had obtained from the Genoese and Castilians. Three of these ships of Henry V. were called the Trinity, the Grace de Dieu, and the Holy Ghost. Another contemporary writer mentions two ships belonging to the fleet with which this king made his second invasion of France—one called the King's Chamber, the other the King's Hall,—both of which were fitted up with extraordinary sumptuousness. That called the King's Chamber, in which Henry himself embarked, is said to have carried a sail of purple silk, with the arms of England and France embroidered on it.
To these instances of commercial opulence in England in the fifteenth century may be added another of a merchant of France of the same era, which is still more remarkable, both in itself, and especially if we take into account the then calamitous circumstances of that country. Mr. Macpherson has drawn up from various sources the following account of Jacques Cœur, "who, at a time when trade was scarcely known in France, is said to have employed 300 factors to manage his vast commerce, which extended to the Turks and Persians of the East, and the Saracens of Africa; the most remote nations then known to the merchants of Europe. His exports consisted chiefly of woollen cloths, linens, and paper—then the principal manufactures of France; and his returns were silks, spiceries, &c. But some say that his dealings were chiefly in gold, silver, and arms. This illustrious merchant was treasurer (argentier) to the King of France, and lent him 200,000 crowns; without which he could not have undertaken the reduction of Normandy. Being sent on an embassy to Lausanne, his enemies took the opportunity of his absence to bring false charges against him; and the king, regardless of his multiplied services and zealous attachment, abandoned him to their malice. Though nothing could be proved against him, in a trial conducted by his enemies with acknowledged unfairness, he was condemned, the 19th of May, 1453, to the amende honorable, to confiscation of all his property, and imprisonment. Having escaped from confinement by ​the grateful assistance of one of his clerks, he recovered some part of his property which was in foreign countries; and, being appointed by the pope to command a division of his fleet, he died in that service at Chio in the year 1456."
In this age, both in our own and in other countries, commerce was not only carried on by kings and nobles as well as by the regular merchant, but among the most active traders were some of the higher clergy. In England, indeed, it had long been customary for the greatest dignitaries in the church to engage in mercantile pursuits. Matthew Paris tells us that William of Trumpington, abbot of St. Alban's, in the reign of Henry III., traded extensively in herrings, for the purchasing of which at the proper season he had agents at Yarmouth, where he had bought a large house for fifty marks, in which he stored the fish till they were sold, "to the inestimable advantage," says the historian, "as well as honour of his abbey." Frequent mention is made in those early times of trading-vessels which were the property of bishops and other ecclesiastics of rank. Nor did these eminent persons sometimes disdain to take advantage of very irregular and questionable ways of pursuing their extra-professional gains. One transaction in which two bishops of Iceland figure the Historian of Commerce does not hesitate to designate as a scheme of smuggling. They were in the habit, it seems, of requesting and obtaining licences from Henry VI. for sending English vessels to Iceland on various pretences, which have all the look of being collusive arrangements between them and the owners of the vessels for carrying on an illicit trade. Iceland, it may be observed, in passing, is stated, at this time, to have possessed neither cloth, wine, ale, corn, nor salt; almost its only produce seems to have been fish. Licences were often obtained from the English kings by popes, cardinals, and other foreign ecclesiastics, to export wool and other goods without payment of the usual ​duties. The religious persons of all kinds resident in the country were not considered subject to the payment of custom-duties, any more than of almost any other public burdens; and, taking advantage of this privilege, the Cistercian monks had become the greatest wool-merchants in the kingdom, until, in 1344, the parliament interfered, and prohibited them for the future from practising any kind of commerce. The evil, however, of ecclesiastical communities and individuals engaging in trade long continued, in England and elsewhere, to defy the edicts both of the temporal and the spiritual authorities.
Commercial legislation in England in the reign of Henry VI. was still as short-sighted and barbarous as ever, especially on the great subject of national jealousy—the treatment of foreigners. In 1429 a law was passed that no Englishman for the future should sell goods to any foreign merchant except for ready money, or for other goods delivered on the instant. The penalty for the violation of this enactment was to be the forfeiture of the merchandise. The very next year, however, we find the parliament complaining, that, because of this ordinance, "the English merchants have not sold, nor cannot sell nor utter, their cloths to merchants aliens, whereby the king hath lost his subsidies and customs, which he ought to have had if the said cloths had been sold as they were, and were wont heretofore, and English merchants, clothworkers, and other the king's liege people, in divers parts of his realm, greatly annoyed and endamaged;" whereupon, at the solicitation of the commons, the late law is so far relaxed as to permit sales at six months' credit. Some years after this, the wisdom of the legislature displayed itself in another attempt of a still stranger kind. In 1439 it was ordained that no foreign merchant should sell any goods to another foreigner in England, on pain of the forfeiture of the goods so sold; the reason assigned for this law being, that "great damages and losses daily come to the king and to his people by the buying and selling that the merchants, ​aliens and strangers, do make at their proper wiIl and liberty, as by such buying and selling, which they use together, of all manner of merchandises, any of them with other, and also by covins and compassings that they do, to impair and abate the price and value of all manner of merchandises of this noble realm, and increase and enhance the price of all their own merchandises, whereby the said merchants aliens be greatly enriched, and the king's subjects, merchants denizens of the same realm, grievously impoverished, and great treasure by the same aliens brought out of this realm, the customs and subsidies by them due to the king greatly diminished, and the navy of the said realm greatly destroyed and hindered." Happy, says the Roman poet, is the man who is able to tell the causes of things! It is very difficult, however, to understand this parliamentary logic, or to see how either the consequences alleged, or any others of a pernicious sort, could flow from London or any other town in England being made, what Bruges, and Calais, and other continental emporia were, a place to which foreigners of all nations brought the produce of their respective countries for exchange with one another, as well as for the supply of the resident inhabitants. The only effect of prohibiting the former of these two kinds of traffic would be to prevent the foreign merchants from bringing with them so large a quantity of goods as they would otherwise have done.
The calamitous circumstances of the last eight or ten years of the nominal reign of Henry VI.—during the greater part of which period the kingdom was almost without a government, and the land a great battle-field—could not fail to be keenly felt by the tender plant of our rising foreign commerce. Although its growth was checked, however, by the storms with which it had now to contend, it was already too strong to receive more than a temporary injury; and it began to recover its former activity and prosperity as soon as some degree of tranquillity was restored. The reign of Edward IV. is ​marked by many commercial treaties with foreign powers, which are to be considered as evidences, not so much of any peculiar attachment to the interests of trade in that prince—although, as we have seen, it was a pursuit which he did not disdain to follow on his own account—as of the importance which it had now acquired in the public estimation, and the manner in which it was consequently enabled to compel attention to its claims. Such treaties were made in 1465 with Denmark; in 1466 with Britany; the same year with Castile; in 1467 with the Netherlands; in 1468 with Britany again; in 1475 with the Hanse Towns; in 1478 with the Netherlands again; in 1482 with the Guipuscoans in Spain, &c. The only one of these conventions that requires particular notice is that with the Hanse Towns, which was concluded at Utrecht, after a great deal of negotiation, by commissioners appointed on both sides. At this time the great trading community of the Hanse comprised nearly seventy cities and towns of Germany, which were divided into the districts, or regions, as they were called, of Lubeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Dantzic—the city of Lubeck standing at the head of the whole confederacy. Of the factories of the Hanse merchants in foreign countries, four were accounted of chief dignity—namely, those of Novogorod, in Russia; London, in England; Bruges, in Flanders; and Bergen, in Norway. It is probable that, of these, London was the most ancient, as well as the most important. The Hanse merchants resident in and trading to London had early received important privileges from the English kings, which, however, had commonly been granted only for short terms, and had of late especially been held upon a still more precarious tenure than usual, and even subjected occasionally to curtailment or total suspension. The object of the present treaty was to remedy this state of things, which was found to be fraught with inconvenience to all parties, and to establish the Hanse factories in England upon a foundation of permanent security. It ​was agreed that all past injuries or complaints on both sides should be buried in oblivion, and that a full settlement of conflicting claims should be effected by a payment to the Hanse merchants of 10,000l. sterling, which they consented to receive in the shape of customs remitted upon their subsequent imports and exports. It was also arranged that the king should appoint two or more judges, who, without any legal formalities, should do justice between the parties in all civil or criminal causes in which the Hanse merchants might be concerned in England; a similar provision being made for the settlement of disputes involving the English residents in the Hanse countries. It is in this treaty, we believe, that the first mention is made of the London Staelhof, or Steelyard, which is described as a court-yard extending to the Teutonic Guildhall. It was not, therefore, as has been generally assumed, the same with the Teutonic Guildhall, although both buildings seem to have eventually come into the possession of the Hanse merchants, if the latter did not originally belong to that confederacy. The Steelyard, by the present treaty, was conveyed to the Hansards by the king in absolute property, as were also a court-yard called by the same name in the town of Boston, and another house in Lynne, they becoming bound to bear all the burdens for pious purposes to which these several buildings were liable by ancient foundation or the bequests of the faithful, and having full power to pull down and rebuild, as they might find convenient. The London Steelyard, or Steel-house, as it was sometimes called, stood between Thames-street and the river, where there is a street still known by the name of Steelyard-street, a little to the east of Dowgate Wharf. The name seems to have no connexion with steel, but to mean the place where cloths, and perhaps also other goods, were sealed or stamped.
Besides the gain which he made by his own commercial undertakings, Edward IV. obtained large pecuniary supplies at various times in the form of loans from the merchants and mercantile communities both of his own kingdom and of other countries. The amount ​of these advances evinces the opulence which was now not unfrequent among the followers of commerce. In the preceding reign, according to the statement in an act of parliament passed in 1449, the annual revenue derived from the customs at the great staple of Calais, which in the reign of Edward III. had amounted to 68,000l., had then fallen to 12,000l.; under which state of things the commons of the land, it is affirmed, were "not enriched by their wools and woolfels and other merchandise, as they were wont to be, the merchants greatly diminished as well in number as in goods, and not of power nor of comfort to buy the wools and woolfels and other merchandises, as they have done of old time, the soldiers of Calais and of the marches there not paid of their wages, and the town of Calais by default of reparation likely to be destroyed." Within a few years from this date, however, the merchants of Calais were wealthy enough to lend King Edward what was a large amount of money in those days. In 1464 he is stated, in the Rolls of Parliament, to have owed them 32,861l., for payment of which they were assigned a yearly instalment out of the subsidies on wool. He continued, however, to borrow largely in subsequent years; so that in 1468 he was still owing them about 33,000l., a debt which he increased the next year by 10,000l., borrowed of them for payment of a part of his sister's portion to the Duke of Burgundy. On many other occasions he resorted for pecuniary assistance to the same quarter. Another quarter to which he repeatedly had recourse was that of the famous Medici, the princely merchants of Florence. Comines assures us that one of the agents of Cosmo de' Medici was chiefly instrumental in enabling him to mount the throne, by furnishing him at one time with a sum of not less than 120,000 crowns. Florence, we may remark, was now growing rich by the Oriental trade, which had nearly left Genoa, torn as the latter republic was by internal dissensions, as well as deprived of all its possessions in the East by the conquests of the Turks.
​Some documents, printed by Rymer, relating to an application made to King Edward by some Spanish merchants in 1470, for compensation on account of the loss of several vessels and cargoes which they alleged had been piratically taken from them by the people of Sandwich, Dartmouth, Plymouth, and Jersey, furnish some information respecting the ordinary size of the trading-vessels of those times, and the value both of the ships and their cargoes. The ships in question were laden with iron, wine, wool, raisins, liquorice, spicery, incense, oranges, marfac, and a small quantity of cheese—all the produce of the north of Spain. They were seven in number, of which one, called a carvel, of 110 tons, valued at 150l., and having wool, iron, &c. on board, to the amount of 2350l. more, was bound for Flanders: the cargoes of the others, whose destination was England, were all of much less value. They were, a carvel of 120 tons, valued at 180l., with a cargo valued at 270l.; a ship of 120 tons, valued at 110l., with a cargo valued at 190l.; a carvel of 110 tons, valued at 140l., with a cargo valued at 240l.; a ship of 100 tons, valued at 107l. 10s., with a cargo valued at 457l. 10s.; a ship of 70 tons, valued at 100l., with a cargo valued at 250l.; and a carvel of 40 tons, valued at 70l., with a cargo valued at 180l. These statements may be compared with those in the documents contained in a preceding volume of the same collection relating to the dispute with the Hanse Towns, which was at length settled, as mentioned above, by the treaty of 1409. In the latter we find mention made of a Newcastle ship of 200 tons, valued at 400l.; of a cog belonging to Hull, which, with its cargo of cloth, was valued at 200l.; of another, laden with oil, wax, and werke (?), valued at 300l.; of a barge belonging to Falmouth, laden with salt and canvass of Britany, valued at 333l. 6s. 8d.; of another Yarmouth vessel, laden with salt, cloth, and salmon, valued at 40l.; of four vessels ​belonging to Lynne, carrying cloth to the value of 3623l., 5s. 11d., besides wine and other goods; and of a crayer belonging to Lynne, laden with osmunds and other goods to the value of 643l. 14s. 2d. Towards the close of the reign of Edward IV., it appears, from the orders issued for the manning of the fleet on the breaking out of the war with Scotland in 1481, the crown was possessed of no fewer than six ships of its own; which was probably the greatest royal navy that had existed in England since the reign of William the Conqueror.
The foreign trade of the country, as one of its most important interests, occupied much of the attention of the parliament called together by Richard III., in the first year of his reign. Of the fifteen acts passed by it, seven relate to commerce and manufactures. The subject of the first was chiefly the fabrication and dyeing of woollen cloths; and the preamble slates that it had been customary for the foreign merchants in their purchases of wool, to procure it sorted and picked, and to leave the locks and other refuse—by reason of which, it is added, there had come to be no manufacture of fine drapery in England. To remedy this evil, it was provided that, for the future, no wool should be sold to strangers cleaned from the locks or refuse, or in any other state than as it was shorn—an enactment conceived in the spirit of the very infancy and rudest barbarism of commercial legislation. The next chapter of the statute, entitled 'An Act touching the Merchants of Italy,' is very interesting for the information which it incidentally furnishes respecting the trade then carried on in this country by foreign merchants. The preamble represents, that ​merchant strangers of the nation of Italy—under which name are included not only the Venetians, Genoese, Florentines, Apulians, Sicilians, and Lucaners, or people of Lucca, but also the Catalonians "and other of the same nation," according to the fashion of speaking in that age, which was to consider all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean as belonging to Italy,—were resident in great numbers both in London and in other cities of England, and were in the habit of taking warehouses and cellars in which to store the wares and merchandises, they imported, "and them in their said warehouses and cellars deceivably pack, meddle (mix), and keep unto the time the prices thereof been greatly enhanced, for their most lucre, and the same wares and merchandises then sell to all manner of people, as well within the ports whereunto they bring their said wares and merchandise, as in other divers and many places generally within this realm, as well by retail as otherwise." An extensive and active internal trade, therefore, was carried on by these foreign residents: it is probable, indeed, that, besides their business as importers and exporters, the greater part of the domestic sale of commodities brought from beyond seas was in their hands. This is the second condition in the natural commercial progress of a country; first, its poverty and barbarism invite only the occasional resort of foreigners, without offering any temptation to them to take up their residence within it; then, as its wealth increases, foreigners find even its home trade an object worth their attention, and one which they easily secure by the application of their superior skill and resources; lastly, in the height of its civilization, and when the energies of its inhabitants have been fully developed—in a great measure by the impulse received from these stranger residents—its traffic of all kinds, as well as all the other business carried on in it, naturally falls into the almost exclusive possession of its own people. England, then, at the end of the fifteenth century, was only yet making its way through the intermediate or transition stage in this advance from having no commerce at all to having a ​commerce properly its own. The act goes on to recite, that the foreign merchants not only traded in the manner that has been described in the goods imported by themselves from abroad, but also bought, in the ports where they were established and elsewhere, at their free will, the various commodities which were the produce of this realm, and sold them again at their pleasure within the country, as generally and freely as any of the king's subjects, "And the same merchants of Italy and other merchants strangers," it is added, "be hosts, and take unto them people of other nations to sojourn with them, and daily buy and sell, and make many privy and secret contracts and bargains with the same people." They are farther specially charged with buying up in divers places within the realm great quantities of wool, woollen cloth, and other merchandises, part of which they sold again both to natives and aliens, as they found it most for their profit, delivering a great part of the wool to clothiers, to make into cloth "after their pleasures." "Moreover, most dread sovereign lord," continues the recital, "artificers and other strangers, not born within your obeisance, daily resort and repair unto your said city of London, and other cities, boroughs, and towns of your said realm, in great number, and more than they have used to do in days past, and inhabit themself within your said realm, with their wives, children, and household, and will not take upon them any laborious occupation, as carting and ploughing, and other like business, but use making of cloth and other handicrafts and easy occupations, and bring and convey from the parts of beyond the sea great substance of wares and merchandises unto fairs and markets, and all other places of your realm, at their pleasure, and there sell the same as well by retail as otherwise, as freely as any of your said subjects useth for to do, to the great hurt and impoverishing of your said subjects, and in nowise will suffer nor take any of your subjects to work with them, but only take into their service people born in their own countries, whereby your said subjects for lack of occupation fall to idleness, and been thieves, beggars, ​vagabonds, and people of vicious living, to the great trouble of your highness and of all your said realm." We need not transcribe the enacting part of the statute; its historical interest, and its value for our present purpose, lie in the above preamble, which furnishes so full and clear an account of the manner in which the commerce of the country was at this time conducted. The evils, or supposed evils, so strongly complained of, were of course attempted to be remedied by all sorts of restrictions on the operations of the foreign dealers—restrictions which were one and all absurd and of mischievous tendency, as well as, fortunately, in their very nature of impracticable enforcement. Their almost avowed object was to check the importation of foreign commodities of all kinds. While shackles, however, are imposed upon the trade in all other commodities, it is interesting to find an exception made in favour of the new-born trade in books, the creation of the great art recently invented of growing them as it were in crops, even as the manifold produce of the corn-fields is raised from the scattered seed. "Provided always," the statute concludes, "that this act, or any part thereof, or any other act made or to be made in this present parliament, in no wise extend or be prejudicial, any let, hurt, or impediment to any artificer or merchant stranger, of what nation or country he be, or shall be of, for bringing into this realm, or selling by retail or otherwise, of any manner books written or imprinted, or for the inhabiting within the said realm for the same intent, or to any writer, limner, binder, or imprinter of such books as he hath, or shall have, to sell by way of merchandise, or for their abode in the same realm, for the exercising of the said occupations, this act or any part thereof notwithstanding."
Two other acts of this parliament continue for ten years longer prohibitions passed in the preceding reign against the importation of a great number of foreign manufactured articles. Intervening between these non​importation acts is another of a directly opposite character, ordaining that, for the future, along with every butt of either Malvesy (Malmescy) or Tyre wine brought to the country by the Venetians or others should be imported ten good and able bowstaves. Formerly, it is alleged, bowstaves used to be sold at 40s. the hundred, or 46s. 8d. at most; but now, by the seditious confederacy of the Lombards trading to this country, they had risen to the "outrageous price" of 8l. the hundred. This, it may be observed, was the second attempt that had been made to remedy the grievance in question. The way in which it was first attacked was more direct. In 1482 it was ordained that, whereas the bowyers in every part of the realm sold their bows "at such a great and excessive price, that the king's subjects properly disposed to shoot be not of power to buy to them bows; "therefore, from the feast of Easter next coming, no bowman should take from any of the king's liege people for a long bow of yew more than 3s. 4d. This was certainly carrying faith in the virtue of an act of parliament as far as it could well go.
Here, then, were two legislative modes of keeping down prices. The last of the acts of Richard's parliament which it remains for us to notice furnishes an example of a third. The evil against which this act is directed is the high price of Malmesey wine—a public calamity which is both pathetically and indignantly bewailed. Butts of wine called Malvesy, it is affirmed, were wont in great plenty to be brought into this realm to be sold "before the 27th and 28th years of the reign of Henry IV., late in deed and not of right king of England, and also in the same years;" at which time they held from 140 to 126 gallons a piece; "and then a man might buy and have of the merchant stranger, seller of the said Malveseys, by mean of the said plenty of them, for 50s., or 53s. 4d. at the most, a butt of such wine, he taking for his payment thereof two parts in woollen cloth wrought in this realm, and the third part ​in ready money." But now, the act proceeds to complain, the dealers in these wines have, "by subtle and crafty means," so contrived it that the butts of Malmesey lately imported scarcely hold 108 gallons; "and besides," it is added, "they knowing, as it seemeth, what quantity of such wine may serve yearly to be sold within this realm, where they were wont to bring hither yearly great quantity and plenteously of such wine to be sold after the prices aforesaid, of their craftiness use to bring no more hither now in late days but only as will scantily serve this realm a year, wherethrough they have enhanced the price of the same wines to eight marks (5l. 6s. 5d.) a butt, ready money, and no cloth, to the great enriching of themself, and great deceit, loss, hurt, and damage of all the commons of this realm." The plan adopted for reformation of this inconvenience was simply to ordain that the butt of Malmesey should be again of the old measure. It seems to have been thought that the old measure was the cause of the old price, and that, the one being restored, the other would follow of course.
Little, it is plain, can be said in commendation of the enlightened wisdom of any part of this system of commercial policy. The various facts and statements that have been quoted, however, all go to attest the actual commercial advancement of the country in despite of vicious legislation. The subject of trade is seen filling a constantly enlarging space in the public eye; and even the misdirected efforts of the law show how strongly and generally men's minds were now set upon the cultivation of that great field of national industry.
In Scotland also, as well as in England, the manufactures and commerce of the country appear, on the whole, to have made considerable advances in the course of the fifteenth century. It is recorded that the English vice-admiral. Sir Robert Umfraville, in an expedition upon which he sailed to the Frith of Forth in 1410, besides plundering the country on both coasts of that arm of the sea, carried off as prizes fourteen "good ships " laden with woollen and linen cloth, pitch, tar, woad, meal, wheat, ​and rye, in addition to many which lie burned. This shows that even in the earlier part of the present period Scotland was by no means destitute of trade and shipping. Some of the vessels taken by Umfraville, however, might belong to foreigners; the Lombards, in particular, according to Fordun, already carried on a considerable Scottish trade, and some of the ships in which they resorted to the country were of large burden. The usual staple of the Scottish continental commerce was at Bruges, in Flanders. James I., in 1425, removed it to Middleburgh, in Zealand; but, on an embassy arriving the same year from the Flemings, with concessions on some points as to which the Scottish merchants had felt aggrieved, he agreed to restore the former arrangement. In 'The Libel of English Policy,' however, written nearly twenty years after this, we are informed that the exports of Scotland then consisted only of wool, woolfels, and hides. The Scottish wool, it is added, used to be mixed with the English, and manufactured into cloth, at the towns of Popering and Bell, in Flanders. It seems to have been exported to Flanders in Scottish vessels, which returned home with cargoes of mercery, haberdashery, and other manufactured goods of various kinds, among which are specified cartwheels and barrows. But the most ample information respecting the commerce and manufactures of Scotland during this period is supplied, as in England, by the statute-book. A long succession of enactments relating to this subject commences from the return of James I., in 1424; from which date, it is worthy of remark, the Scottish laws, which had been hitherto in Latin, are written, with a very few exceptions, in the language of the country—an improvement which was not adopted in England till more than sixty years afterwards. We can here, however, only notice, in their chronological order, a few of the more remarkable particulars to be collected from this source. In 1425 it was, among other things, ordained that the merchants returning from foreign countries should always bring back, as part of their returns, ​harness (or defensive armour), spears, shafts, bows, and staves. The same parliament also passed a law for establishin a uniformity of weights and measures. From a law of 1428, permitting merchants, for a year ensuing, to ship their goods in foreign vessels where Scottish ones were not to be found, it would appear that a Scottish navigation act existed before this time, although no record of it has been preserved. In 1430, a law was passed to which the epithet of anti-commercial may be applied, ordaining, that cloths made of silk, or adorned with the finer furs, should not be worn by any person under the rank of a knight, or whose annual income was less than 200 marks. This proves, however, that these expensive kinds of dress were then well known in the country, and were even in use among those who did not belong to the wealthiest classes. This same year King James imported from London for his own use the following articles—which it may therefore be presumed he could not procure at home so readily or of so good a quality:—20 tuns of wine; 12 bows; 4 dozen yards of cloth of different colours; 12 yards of scarlet; 20 yards of red worsted; 8 dozen pewter vessels; 1200 wooden bowls, packed in four barrels; 3 dozen coverels, a basin, and font; 2 summer saddles, 1 hackney saddle, a woman's saddle with furniture; 2 portmanteaus; 4 yards of motley; 5 yards of morrey; 5 yards of black cloth of lyre; 12 yards of kersey; and 12 skins of red leather. These goods were shipped for Scotland in a vessel belonging to London, accompanied by an order of King Henry, securing them from molestation by English cruizers. In 1435 we find James purchasing 30 fodders of lead from the Bishop of Durham; for the export of which, either by land or water, on payment of the usual customs, an order was granted by the English council. A law of the Scottish parliament in 1424 had declared all mines to belong to the crown that yielded three halfpennies of silver in the pound of lead; and Mr. Macpherson thinks that the import of lead from England probably became necessary in ​consequence of the check which this enactment put upon the operations of mining. A scarcity of the precious metals also seems to have been about this time felt, if we may judge by a law of the year 1436, which enacted that the exporters of native produce should give security to bring home, and deliver to the master of the mint, a certain quantity of bullion for every sack of wool, last of hides, or measure of other goods which they carried abroad.
One of the most eminent of the Scottish merchants of this age was William Elphinstone, who is regarded as the founder of the commerce of Glasgow, as his son Bishop Elphinstone, towards the close of the century, was of the University of Aberdeen. Elphinstone's trade is supposed to have consisted in exporting pickled salmon. Two Scottish merchants, George Faulau and John Dalrymple, repeatedly appear soon after this as employed by James II., in embassies and other public business, along with noblemen and clergymen. A law was passed in 1458, prohibiting any person from going abroad as a merchant, unless, besides being a person of good credit, he either possessed or had consigned to him property to the amount of three serplaiths—the serplaith being, according to the common account, eighty stones of wool. Merchants were at the same time forbidden to wear silk, scarlet, or fur of martens, unless they were aldermen, bailies, or in some other capacity members of a town council. The social estimation in which commercial men were at this time held in Scotland may in some degree be gathered from another clause of the act, which commands that poor gentlemen living in the country, having estates of more than 40l. a-year of old extent, should dress as merchants. The dress of the wives of merchants, as well as their own, was regulated by this statute: they are directed to take especial care to make their wives and daughters be habited in a manner correspondent to their estate; that is to say, on their heads short curches, with little hoods, such as aroused in Flanders, England, and other countries; and gowns without tails of unbefitting length, or trimmed with furs, except on holidays. Further, as if it had been ​intended to discriminate the several ranks of the community by so many different colours, like the enchanted fish in the Eastern tale, while merchants were prohibited from wearing scarlet, all hues except grey or white were interdicted to labourers on working days, and on holidays all except red, green, or light blue. So much may serve for sample sufficient of this fantastic piece of legislation. Meanwhile, the growth of the trade of the country is indicated by occasional notices of commercial treaties with foreign governments,—with England, with Denmark, with Flanders, and other continental states. In 1467 various new restrictions were imposed, with what view it is not easy to imagine, upon the pursuit of foreign commerce. It was ordained that no persons should go abroad as merchants except free burgesses, resident within burgh, or their factors and servants; and that even no burgess should have that liberty unless he was "a famous and worshipful man," having at the least half a last of goods in property or trust. Handicraftsmen or artisans, in particular, were debarred from engaging in trade unless they obtained special licences, and renounced their crafts without colour or dissimulation. These prohibitions look very much as if they had been obtained by the influence of the mercantile body, wishing to preserve the monopoly of the foreign trade in their own hands. By another regulation all vessels were prohibited from sailing to any foreign country between the end of October and the beginning of February. Rochelle, Bordeaux, and the ports of France and Norway, are all mentioned in this act as places to which the Scottish merchants were then accustomed to resort. The regulation requiring every merchant to be a burgess made an exception in favour of the nobility and clergy, who were permitted to export their own goods, and import what they had occasion for, by the agency of their servants. In Scotland as well as in England many, both of the nobility and the bishops, had long been accustomed openly to pursue trade as a source of gain. In the beginning of this century, for instance, mention is made of a vessel carrying two surpercargoes and a crew of twenty men, which was freighted by the ​Earl of Douglas to trade with Normandy and Rochelle, and of another navigated by a master and twenty-four sailors, and laden with six hundred quarters of malt, of which the Duke of Albany was proprietor. In 1404 a richly-laden vessel, belonging to Wardlaw, Bishop of St. Andrew's, was taken by the English. In 1473 another, called the Salvator, the property of his successor, Bishop Kennedy, being the finest vessel that had ever been built in Scotland, was wrecked at Bamborough, when the cargo was plundered, and the crew made prisoners by the people of the country,—an outrage for which redress was soon after demanded by the Scottish parliament, and which it was finally agreed should be compensated by the King of England paying the merchants to whom the goods belonged a composition of five hundred marks.
Very few notices respecting the trade of Ireland occur during this period. The exports from that country, according to the author of the 'Libel of English Policy,' were hides, wool, salmon, hake (a kind of fish), herrings, linen, falding (a kind of coarse cloth), and the skins of martens, harts, otters, squirrels, hares, rabbits, sheep, lambs, foxes, and kids. Some gold ore had also lately been brought thence to London. The abundant fertility and excellent harbours of Ireland are celebrated by this writer. In connexion with the subject of trade and commerce it may be mentioned, that to the close of this period we owe the first establishment in England of public posts for the conveyance of intelligence. The plan was first carried into effect in France by Louis XI., about the year 1476, and was introduced in England by the Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III.), while conducting the Scottish war in 1481. By means of post-horses changed at every twenty miles, letters, we are told, were forwarded at the rate of a hundred miles a day. Both in France and in England, however, the post in this, its earliest form, was exclusively for the use of the government.
The English coins of this period were, with one ​exception, to be presently noticed, gold and silver pieces of the same denominations that have been already described. Although, however, the names, and also the relative values, of the coins continued unchanged, their positive values, or the actual quantities of metal of which they were formed, underwent a succession of diminutions. It has been stated that, whereas, originally, 240 pennies were coined out of the Tower pound of silver, weighing 5400 grains troy, Edward III. coined out of the same quantity of silver 270 pennies; thus reducing the quantity of silver in each penny from 22½ to 20 grains. The effect of this would be to depreciate the penny by the amount of about one-third of a farthing, and the nominal pound (which was still held to contain 20 shillings, or 240 pence) by about 6s. 6d. in our present money; thus reducing it from about 56s. 3d. to somewhat less than 50s. The groats, or fourpenny pieces, afterwards issued by Edward III., carried the depreciation still farther than this; each of these coins weighing only 72 grains instead of 90, which they ought to have done according to the original scale, or 80, which even the lately reduced rate would have demanded. A shilling paid in these groats was worth only about 2s. 3d. of our present money, instead of about 2s. 9½d., its original value; and a pound paid in the same coin was only about 46 of our present shillings.
Such, then, were the values of the several silver coins at the accession of Henry IV. That king, in 1412, depreciated the currency still more by coining the Tower pound into 30 shillings by tale—that is to say, into 360 pennies; the effect of which was to reduce the amount of silver in each penny to 15 grains, and the value of the penny to not quite 2d., of the shilling to about 1s. 10½d., and of the pound to 1l. 17s. 9d. of our present money. The strange reason iissigned for this alteration was '"the great scarcity of money in the realm,"—as if money, or anything else of intrinsic value, could be made more plentiful by the easy process of cutting each piece into two. The ordinance, which stands on the rolls of parliament, however, betrays a consciousness that the ingenious expedient was not likely to succeed. The new mode of ​coinage was directed to be tried only for two years; and if, at the end of that time, it should be found against the profit of the king and his realm, then to cease. It must, in fact, even then have been plain to all the world that the measure, the evil effects of which had already been repeatedly experienced, was nothing else than a robbery of the public for the benefit of the royal exchequer. Even to the crown, indeed, the benefit was only temporary; but this deeper truth may not have been so clearly perceived. In the first instance, of course, and for the moment, the base coinage was profitable to the utterer. The different pieces coined by Henry IV. were halfpennies, pennies, and groats of silver, and nobles, half nobles, and quarter nobles of gold. In the last year of his reign he reduced the quantity of gold in the noble from its original amount of 120 grains to 108 grains; in other words, he diminished its intrinsic value by one-tenth. Henry's gold coins exactly resemble those of his predecessor, the only difference being the substitution of the name Henricus for Richardus. His silver coins are also principally distinguished by the name.
The values of the several denominations of English money continued without further reduction during the two next reigns. The silver coins of Henry V. are supposed to be distinguished from those of his father by two little circles on each side of the head, which are thought to have been intended for eylet-holes,—"from an odd stratagem," says Leake, "when he was prince, whereby he recovered his father's favour, being then dressed in a suit full of eylet-holes: from that time may likewise be dated his extraordinary change of manners, which proved so much to the honour of himself and the kingdom, and therefore not an improper distinction of the money of this prince from the others of the same name." The story in question, which is told at great length by Holinshed, Speed, Stow, and other chroniclers of that age, is, briefly, that, when the worst suspicions of the conduct of his son had been infused into the mind of Henry IV., the prince ​regained his father's favour by appearing before him, and offering the king his dagger, that he might, if he pleased, take his life on the spot. On this occasion, it seems, "he was appareled in a gown of blue satin, full of small eylet-holes, at every hole the needle hanging by a silk thread with which it was sewed: about his arm he ware a hound's collar set full of S S of gold, and the tirets likewise being of the same metal." But what particular part in the stratagem this fantastic dress was intended to play does not appear. The story looks at the best as if we had got only the half of it; but it is probably altogether an invention of a later age, and, instead of having been the origin of the eylet-holes on the coin, it is most likely itself the offspring of that device. Henry V. also struck various French coins, among which were muttons (so called from bearing the impression of a lamb, or Agnus Dei) of gold, and groats, half groats, quarter groats, mancois, and petit deniers, of silver. After the treaty of Troyes he coined others called saluts, demi-saluts, blancs, &c., in the legend of which he took the title of Hæres Franciæ, or Heir of France.
The English coins of Henry VI. are supposed to be distinguished from his father's by the arched crown called the imperial, surmounted with the orb and cross. He also issued, as King of France, saluts, angelots, franks, and nobles of gold, and groats, blanks, deniers, &c., of silver.
The English money was again depreciated by Edward IV., who, in 1464, ordered the Tower pound of silver to be coined into 37s. 6d. by tale, that is, into 450 pennies. The penny now, therefore, contained only 12 grains of silver, and its value was little more than 1½d. of our present money; that of the shilling was about 1s. 6d.; and that of the nominal pound about 30s. Edward IV., in 1466, also struck two new gold coins, called angels and angelots, from the figure of an angel on the reverse. These were intended as substitutes for the noble and the half noble, and were, like them, ordered to pass ​respectively for 6s. 8d. and 3s. 4d.; but they were considerably inferior in intrinsic value even to the nobles that had been struck since the last year of the reign of Henry IV.; for, instead of 108 grains, the angel contained only 80 grains. It was, therefore, really worth little more than three-fourths of the late noble, or exactly two-thirds of the original coin of that name. Henry VI. also, during his short restoration to power in 1470, coined angels of gold, and groats and half groats of silver, all after the depreciated standards that had been established by Edward IV. It is not probable that Edward V. coined any money. The gold coins of Richard III. were angels and half angels, of the same weight as his brother's, and bearing Richard's cognizance of a boar's head; his silver money is distinguished from that of Richard II. by being a third lighter.
The depreciation of the coin in Scotland during the present period proceeded much more rapidly, and was carried to a much greater extent, than in England. When James I. returned home, in 1424, he found the real value of the Scottish money very considerably less than that of the English of the same denominations; on which he immediately got an act of parliament passed for restoring the coin to the same weight and fineness with that of England; but it proved of no effect,—the depreciation was carried farther and farther, till at length, at the close of the present period, the Scottish coins were scarcely more than one-fourth of the weight of the English. The pound of silver, which had been originally coined, as in England, into 20 shillings, was coined in 1424 into 37s. 6d.; in 1451 into 64s.; in 1456 into 96s.; and in 1475 into 144s. The value of the Scottish shilling at this last-mentioned date, therefore, was little more than 4½d. of our present money. We shall find, however, that it afterwards declined to a much lower point than this.
* ↑ Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, i. 622
* ↑ Macpherson, i. 611. The whole of the information respecting these countries of the West, preserved by Chalcondyles, has been collected and woven into a spirited sketch by Gibbon, Decline and Fall of Rom. Emp. ch. 66.
* ↑ Copies are given by Capmany, in his History of Barcelona, of two bills of Exchange, dated in the year 1404, which it is believed are the oldest that have been preserved.
* ↑ Stat. 4 Hen. IV. c. 15.
* ↑ Stat. 5 Hen. IV. c. 9.
* ↑ Stat. 6 Hen. IV. c. 4.
* ↑ See these instances quoted with the authorities in Macpherson, i. 619 and G23.
* ↑ 5 Rich. II. st. i. c. 3.
* ↑ Macpherson, i. 634, on the authority of Sanuto, Vite de' Duche di Venezia, ap. Muratori.
* ↑ Printed in Rymer, x. 113.
* ↑ See Macpherson, i. 651.
* ↑ Ibid., i. 654.
* ↑ Capmany, Hist. de Barcelona.
* ↑ Decline and Fall of Rom. Emp. c. Ixv.
* ↑ See Macpherson, i. 637.
* ↑ Cotton's Abridgment of the Rolls of Parliament, p. 647.
* ↑ See Macpherson, i. 629, 650, 666.
* ↑ By the stat. 8 Hen. VI. c. 2.
* ↑ See the list of subscriptions in Rymer, viii. 488.
* ↑ Rymer, xi. 258.
* ↑ Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, i. 670.
* ↑ Ibid. i. 657 and 662.
* ↑ Stat. 8 Hen. VI. c. 24.
* ↑ Stat. 9 Hen. VI c. 2.
* ↑ Stat. 18 Hen. VI. c. 4.
* ↑ Macpherson, Ann. of Com. i. 694
* ↑ 27 Hen. VI. c. 2.
* ↑ Carvel, or Caravel, from the Spanish Caravela, is explained by Johnson to be a kind of ship, with a square poop, formerly used in Spain.
* ↑ Fœdera, xi. 671, 672.
* ↑ Crayer, Crare, or Cray, a small sea-vessel, from the Old French, Craier. "O Melancholy!" says Belarius, in 'Cymbeline,'— "Whoever yet could sound thy bottom? find The ooze to show what coast thy sluggish crare Might easiliest harbour in!"
* ↑ 1 Richard III. c. 8.
* ↑ 1 Rich. III. c. 9.
* ↑ 1 Rich. III. c. 11.
* ↑ 22 Edw. IV. c. 4.
* ↑ Stow.
* ↑ Rymer, x. 470.
* ↑ See Tytler, Hist, of Scotland, iii. 238.
* ↑ Leake's Historical Account of English Money, p. 139.
* ↑ Holinshed.