There are two or three clues running through the labyrinth of ancient legislation, whose course can be clearly traced in successive centuries. One of these is a strong determination to maintain the commercial isolation of Britain: a second is an early recognition of the advantages of division of labour. The former of these we moderns have discarded: the second we have seized and elaborated. Numberless obstructions were placed in the way of import and export, and the goods of aliens were suspiciously examined for “deceit.” No one was to convey out of the realm brass, copper, laten, bell-metal, pan-metal, gun-metal or shroof-metal. No gold or silver, enacted Henry VI., shall be exported in pain of forfeiting it, save only for the ransom of prisoners, the reasonable cost of soldiers passing beyond the sea, and money to be expended for certain Scotch commodities as are licensed. Although Henry III. decreed that merchant-strangers, except those of an enemy’s country, should come and go, and buy and sell without exaction of excessive tolls, except in time of war, they were gradually harassed with restrictions as we have said. By the reign of Edward III., this comparative welcome had resolved itself into a permission to come to England with their goods and merchandise, to tarry and return if they paid the customs and subsidies. By the reign of Richard II. they were restricted from selling, by retail, wines and “great wares,” such as cloth of gold and silver, silk, sandal, napery cloth and canvas, which were to be sold in whole pieces only. They were to sell their commodities within a quarter of a year after their landing, and employ the money received in exchange in purchasing English goods. Edward III. made it felony for an Englishman, Welshman, or Irishman to transport wool, leather, woolfels or lead; or to transport either of these articles in a stranger’s name, or to keep a servant beyond the sea “to survey the sale thereof, or to receive money for them.”
Italian merchants laboured under distinct disabilities. They were to sell their merchandise at the port at which they landed them in the gross, and this within eight months after their arrival, and they were to purchase English commodities with the money taken in exchange. If they had not sold all their wares by the expiration of the eight months, they were to convey them out of the realm again or forfeit them. Richard III. enumerated a string of articles that were to be confiscated if brought into the kingdom by a foreigner, furnishing a catalogue of mediaeval objects, specimens of which would furnish forth an antiquary’s museum:—Girdles, harness for girdles, points, leather-laces, purses, pouches, pins, gloves, knives, hangers, tailor’s sheers, scissors, andirons, cobbards (irons on which spits turned), tongs, fire-forks, gridirons, stocklocks, keys, hinges and garnets; spurs, painted glasses, painted paper, painted images, painted cloths, beaten gold or silver wrought in paper for painters, saddles, saddle-trees, horse harness, boots, bits, stirrups, bucklers, chains, latten nails with iron shanks, turnels, hanging candlesticks, holy-water pots, chafing dishes, hanging lavers, curtain-rings, cards for wool, roan cards, sheers, bucklers for shoes, spits, bells, hawksbells, tin and leaden spoons, wire of latten and iron, iron candlesticks, grates, and horns for lanterns.
Like all the statutes we have quoted, this was in force in the reign of Charles II.; but the popular monarch had given his own subjects leave to export iron, armour, bandeliers, bridle-bits, halbert-heads, fire-arms, pike-heads, rapier-blades, saddles, snaffles, stirrups, and all manufactures made of leather. He also permitted the export of gunpowder when it did not exceed in price 5l. the barrel. We learn the prices of various comestibles, immediately after the Restoration, in the same incidental way: It shall be lawful (on paying a certain tonnage) to export wheat, rye, peas, beans, barley, malt and oats: beef, pork, bacon, butter, cheese and candles, when they do not exceed at the port whence they are laden, these prices, viz., “wheat, the quarter, 40s.; rye, beans and peas, 24s.; barley and malt the quarter, 20s.; oats, 16s.; beef, 5l. the barrel; pork, 6l. 10s.; bacon, the pound, 6d.; butter, the barrel, 4l. 10s.; cheese, the hundred-and-one-pound, 10s.; candles, the dozen pounds, 5s.” Thus the ale-wife, wishing to purchase a pound of candles, would have given for them the price of five full ale-quarts of her strong beer. Candles were useful in another way besides for lighting. A sale “by inch of candle” was a common proceeding. When the goods of a merchant, or of a company, were sold in lots, the time of bidding for each lot was confined to the period in which a small piece of wax candle kept a-light; when it went out the lot was the purchase of the last bidder. Such a sale must have been a Rembrandtish sight,—the earnest faces of the merchants, in their settings of long locks and vandyked collars, alternately obscured and garishly revealed as the candle flickered in its socket.
The early statutes also show us the continuous efforts made to improve the geographical features of the country. It is somewhat the fashion in the nineteenth century to laud the works of its own time as being without precedent except in the history of the ancient world; but as we scan the mottled pages of the book of abstracts, we are struck with the magnitude of the engineering enterprises of the days to which it relates. There were mediaeval coast-works, sea-defences, harbours and havens, locks, trenches and sewers, as well as illuminated missals and jewelled chalices. Henry VI. despatched a company of gentlemen, called a commission of sewers, into various parts of his realm to inquire into the condition of the existing sea-defences, and to superintend their repair. Edward IV., Henry VII. and Henry VIII., also granted commissions of sewers. The latter monarch declared that the sea-walls, ditches, banks, gutters, calcies, bridges and sewers by the sea-coast, and marshes, had suffered inestimable damage, as much by the rage of the sea as by the making, erecting, and enlarging streams, mills, bridges, ponds, fish-garths, mill-dams, locks, hebbing-wears, hecks, flood-gates; and they were then “dimpt, lacerate and broken.” Both Henry VIII. and Elizabeth passed Acts for the drainage of Plumstead Marsh. Their Scottish kinsman and successor, James, appears to have been still more