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descended to become traders. As an illustration of the manner in which Henry VI. contrived to make his mercantile adventures turn to good profit, a curious account is given of his purchase and disposal of a cargo of alum, of the value of £4000, from some Genoese merchants. The king did not pay for the article in money, but he granted an equivalent in the remission of customs' duties, and he sold the alum for twice the sum he paid for it by granting the purchaser a monopoly of the alum trade until the royal cargo was disposed of. By thus buying for nothing, and afterwards enhancing the price by monopoly, the king-merchants were enabled to replenish their exhausted coffers, and to drive all rivals in the trade out of the market. The clergy also engaged extensively in commerce. It is mentioned by Matthew Paris that the Abbot of St. Alban's, in the reign of Henry III., traded very largely in herrings, which his agents cured at Yarmouth, and sold "to the inestimable advantage as well as honour of his abbey." The religious profession was exempted from the payment of customs' duties, and, taking advantage of this privilege, the Cistercian monks became the greatest wool merchants in the kingdom, until Parliament interfered in 1344, and prohibited them from trading. Notwithstanding this proper interference of Parliament, religious communities continued for a long time afterwards to engage in commerce.

Bills of Exchange, as a means for facilitating commercial transactions, were invented in 1255, and the following curious account, highly illustrative of the manners of the age, is given of their origin :Henry III. had contracted a heavy debt to the Pope, in prosecuting his project of making his son Edmund King of Sicily, and his Holiness, who was himself indebted to Italian merchants, from whom he had borrowed the money, became importunate for payment. In this exigency Peter Egibanke, Bishop of Hereford, suggested to Henry that the Italian merchants to whom the Pope was indebted, should draw bills in favour of their creditors in England on all the rich bishops, abbots, and priors in the kingdom for certain sums alleged to have been lent by them to those prelates for the use of their respective churches, that these bills should be sent to the Pope's legate in England, who should compel the prelates to accept and pay them by threats of ecclesiastical censures. This scheme was adopted by the King, who sent the Bishop of Hereford to Rome to procure the Pope's concurrence. When the Bishop had explained this nefarious plan to the

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Pope, the answer of the infallible Head of the Church in the thirteenth century is said to have been, " Go, my dearest friend and brother, and do what seemeth best to thy own industry, which I commend.” Thereupon, bills to the amount of 150,540 marks were drawn and presented, and the ecclesiastics were compelled to pay them by threats of excommunication.

A law was made in 1381 commanding bills of exchange to be used in making remittances to foreign countries, and in the course of the next century the form in which they were drawn and the regulations as to payment were arranged nearly in the manner observed at the present day.

The value of money in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is indicated by the high rate of interest then paid for loans. Twenty per cent. was considered low, and as much as sixty per cent. was sometimes paid for money advanced. Jews were the principal money-lenders, for Christians were prohibited from taking interest, and their extortionate usury increased the prejudice against them on religious grounds. The unfortunate Jew merchants, who had the reputation of being rich, were in return exposed to all species of extortions from the kings and barons. They were fined large sums on the most frivolous pretexts, and often without any pretext at all. When the necessities of the king impelled him, he proceeded to extort money from the Jews, and, if they refused to pay, it was extracted from them by tortures. Henry III. in 1250 exacted 30,000 marks from Aaron, a rich Jew of York, on a charge of forgery, and King John obtained 10,000 marks from a Jew of Bristol by ordering one of his teeth to be drawn each day until he complied. The Jew submitted to the torture of having seven teeth extracted before he produced the money.

The English merchants commenced in the twelfth century to adopt from the Continent the practice of having distinguishing marks, which were painted on their shop-fronts, on the most conspicuous places in their dwellings, and were branded on their goods. When a rich merchant made a gift to a church, his mark was emblazoned on the window, and it was engraved on his tomb. In this manner many merchants' marks are still preserved.

The inland trade was seriously impeded by the bands of robbers who infested the roads, and plundered the merchants and traders in the most barefaced manner. Many of these robberies were committed by or with the connivance of persons about the court, who, not being

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able to obtain payment of their salaries, resorted to all available illegal means to procure money. Two Brabant merchants applied to Henry III. at Winchester for justice against robbers, who had plundered their goods, and they informed him that they knew the robbers, and saw their faces every day in his court. Henry, being provoked by these outrages, ordered the robbers to be tried, but the

गैर नै

MERCHANTS' MARKS OF THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES.

jury, though consisting of twelve men of property in Hampshire, acquitted them. Henry was so highly incensed at the verdict that he committed the jury to prison, and a fresh jury was sworn, who, with that warning before them, convicted the prisoners. Several of the king's household were discovered to have participated in the robbery, and they said in excuse that as they had received no wages from the king they were obliged to maintain themselves.

All travellers were exposed to the danger of being robbed and murdered, and these crimes escaped with impunity, because the ministers of justice were themselves in confederacy with the robbers. Traders who ventured to convey their goods into the country combined together for mutual protection, and went armed ready to offer resistance when they were attacked. The insecurity of property increased to such a degree in the reign of Edward II., after the famine, when the nobility were obliged to dismiss their retainers, that no place was safe from the incursions of robbers, who met in troops, like armies, and overran the country. Even two Pope's legates, though attended by a numerous retinue, were robbed of their goods and equipage when travelling on the highway. The intercourse between different parts of the country must, under these circumstances, have been very restricted. No stronger evidence of the limited internal traffic of England could be offered than is afforded by an Act of Parliament passed in 1440, giving power to collectors of the customs to grant licenses for carrying corn from one county to another, which had been previously interdicted. The state of the roads at that time must have also contributed to prevent communication. Tolls for mending the highways were first levied in the reign of Edward III. The road on which tolls were

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DECLINE OF THE COMMERCIAL NAVY.

collected for the first time was from St. Giles's to Temple Bar in London.

Nearly all the foreign trade of the country was carried on in foreign ships, notwithstanding the encouragement offered, by Athelstane and by succeeding sovereigns, to English merchants to trade to distant ports in their own vessels. There was a great decrease in the number of English ships at the time of Richard II. The Parliament complained that one port formerly contained as much shipping as was then to be found in the whole kingdom, and they ascribed the deficiency to the arbitrary seizure of shipping by Edward III. for his frequent expeditions to France. There was, indeed, but poor encouragement to build ships, when they were liable, at any moment, to be seized for the purposes of war. Until the reign of Henry V., about forty years afterwards, no King of England possessed any ship of his own, and, in case of war, the ships engaged in commerce were taken possession of. With the view of increasing the mercantile navy, an Act was passed in the reign of Richard II., by which all exports and imports were prohibited, except in English ships. This prohibition was relaxed thirty years afterwards in favour of the merchants of Venice. was not, indeed, until the middle of the fourteenth century that English ships began to navigate to the Baltic; and the regular Mediterranean trade was not opened for nearly a century afterwards. The practice of merchant ships carrying cannon as a protection against pirates was commenced in the former period.

It

Security is essential to navigation and commerce, and the great prosperity of many of the seaport towns in this country and abroad depended on the security they afforded. Thus Venice flourished, because it was built upon islands out of the reach of the barbarians who were devastating the north of Italy. The prosperous towns of Antwerp and Bruges were secure by their inland positions, whilst London, Bristol, and York, being remote from the sea, also enjoyed security from piratical attacks. Bruges was highly favoured by foreign trade, as it formed an intermediate port where vessels from the south of Europe to the north could safely unload, and take on board a return cargo to complete the voyage within the year, the distance from Venice to the north of Europe being considered too great to be accomplished in one season. Bruges thus became the great entrepôt for goods from all parts of Europe.

An interesting general account of the commerce of Europe in the

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fifteenth century is contained in a curious poem, written about 1437, called "The Libel of English Policy." The trade of England at that time consisted principally in wool, which was said to have been finer even than the wool of Spain, and was imported into that country for the manufacture of the finer kinds of cloths. This commercial intercourse with Spain was carried on indirectly through Bruges, to which all the Spanish exports were sent. These consisted of the natural produce of figs, raisins, wine, dates, liquorice, Seville oil, grain, Castille soap, wax, iron, wool, saffron, and quicksilver, nearly as at the present day. Similar products were imported to this country from Portugal direct, and the Genoese merchants came here direct in "great carracks," to purchase wool and woollen cloths in exchange for cloth of gold, silks, pepper, woad, wool, oil, cotton, and alum. The trade with Venice and Florence was also carried on directly in large galleys, which brought to this country spices and groceries, wines, apes, and other foreign animals, and articles of luxury. The amount of their imports is stated to have been greater than the value of the goods they exported, the balance being paid to them in gold. The Venetian merchants are said to have so well understood the manœuvres of commerce, that they bought the wool, cloth, and tin they exported on credit, and then sold them at Bruges for ready money five per cent. under cost price, and derived their profits from the interest of the money during the interval. It is stated by the writer of "The Libel" that the English purchased more goods in Brabant than all other nations together. These goods consisted of mercery, haberdashery, and groceries, and the merchants were compelled to complete the sales of the goods they took over, and to make their own purchases within a month. A trade to Iceland for fish had been then established from Scarborough and Bristol, which trade the Danes attempted to prevent.*

About the same time we find the following notice of the trade of England and the prosperity of London by a Byzantine historian, founded on the personal observations made by the Emperor of Constantinople when he paid a visit to England to solicit aid against the Turks :—“ Britain 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 * Macpherson's "Annals of Commerce."