"that this Gildhall, by the association of the merchants of other cities with those of Cologne, became in time the general factory and residence of all the German merchants in London, and was the same that was afterwards known by the name of the German Gildhall (Gildhalla Teutonicorum). It appears that the merchants of Cologne were bound to make a payment of two shillings, probably a reserved annual rent (for we are not told upon what occasions it was payable) out of their Gildhall, besides other customs and demands, from all which they were exempted in the year 1235, by King Henry III., who moreover gave them permission to attend fairs in any part of England, and also to buy and sell in London, saving the liberties of the city."[1] The principal part of the foreign trade, however, seems to have been in the hands of the Merchants of the Staple, otherwise called the Merchants of England, who, as noticed above, were incorporated at least as early as the year 1313. This society was composed of native merchants.
It has also been affirmed that there existed, so early as the middle of the thirteenth century, an association of English merchants for trading in foreign parts, called the Brotherhood of St. Thomas Becket of Canterbury, from which originated the afterwards celebrated company of the Merchant Adventurers of England; but this story does not rest on any sufficient authority.[2]
The historian Walsingham has preserved the record of a remarkable proposal which was made in 1379 to Richard II. by an opulent merchant of Genoa. This foreigner, it is said, submitted to the English king a plan for raising the port of Southampton to a pre-eminence over every other in the west of Europe, by making it the deposit and mart of all the Oriental goods which the Genoese used to carry to Flanders, Normandy, and Bretagne, which countries would thenceforth be supplied with these commodities from England. All that the Genoese mer-
