against the power of the nobility and the clergy. Immediately after his accession, he granted three charters to the citizens of London; the first generally confirming all their ancient rights and privileges; the second empowering them to remove all kidells, or wears for catching fish, from the rivers Thames and Medway, the navigation of which had been much impeded by these erections, set up by the keeper of the Tower and others; and the third confirming to them the fee-farm of the sheriffwicks of London and Middlesex at the ancient rent, and also giving to them the election of the sheriffs. For these charters he received 3000l. He also, probably at the same time, addressed letters to the most important commercial towns throughout the kingdom, promising that foreign merchants of every country should have safe conduct for themselves and their merchandize in coming into and going out of England, agreeably to the due right and usual customs, and should meet with the same treatment in England that the English merchants met with in their countries.[1] The places to which these letters were sent were the towns of London, Winchester, Southampton, Lynn, the Cinque Ports, and the counties of Sussex, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Dorset, Somerset, Hants, Hertford, Essex, Devon, and Cornwall; "whence it appears," observes Macpherson, "that the south coast, and the east coast only as far as Norfolk, were esteemed the whole, or at least the chief, of the commercial part of the country." It is certain, however, that several towns beyond these limits had already risen to considerable commercial importance. In a list of towns which in the year 1205 paid the tax called the quinziéme, or fifteenth, which appears to have been a species of excise or tallage exacted from merchants, we find enumerated the following places in the northern part of the kingdom:—Newcastle in Northumberland; Yarum, Cotham, Whitby, Scarborough, Headon, Hull, York, and Selby, in Yorkshire; and Lincoln, Barton, Ymmingham, Grimsby, and
- ↑ Maitland's Hist. of London, i. 73-75. Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 129.
