[219] Schanz, i. 298.
[220] In 1475, 1486, and 1495. (Schanz, i. 299-304.) In 1475 a proclamation in Cinque Ports forbade Englishmen to buy Gascon wine of an alien. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 494.)
[221] An interesting trace of foreign connections is given in the will of Wm. Rowley, who left money to a parish church and a nunnery at Dam in Flanders, and to two places in Spain. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 326.)
[222] Schanz, i. 275-7.
[223] Ibid. i. 285-90. The Portuguese were among those who were allowed to export woollen cloths under Henry the Sixth. (Proc. Privy Council, v. ii. 11.)
[224] Notices of English trade with Portugal in the second half of the fifteenth century may be found in the complaints of the merchants; Schanz, ii. 496-524. For Portuguese in Lydd in 1456, Hist. MSS. Com. v. 521.
[225] In Piers Ploughman a graphic illustration is taken from the mediæval borough thus isolated and protected.
“He cried and commanded all Christian people
To delve and dike a deep ditch all about unity,
That Holy Church stood in holiness as it were a pile.
Conscience commanded then all Christians to delve,
And make a great moat that might be a strength
To help holy Church and them that it keepeth.”
—Pass. xxii. 364-386.
[226] Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 461.