Before closing this necessarily hurried résumé of mediæval trade, we must say a word or two about early shipping. We have mentioned certain articles, especially those of spicery and wines, which were then used, as the result of foreign merchant enterprise. Much of all this came as the growth and produce of the opposite Continent. Much again reached our shore brought hither from Eastern lands in caravan and caravel by Venetian traders. Our ‘Marchants,’ ‘Merchants,’ or ‘le Marchants,’ we doubtless owe to this more extended commerce. Apart from these, however, we are far from being without names of a more seafaring nature. It is a strange circumstance that our now one general term of ‘sailor’ had in the days we are considering but the barest existence surnominally or colloquially. In the former respect I only find it twice, the instances being those of ‘John le Saillur’ and ‘Nicholas le Saler,’ both to be found in the Hundred Rolls. It may be said to be a word of entirely modern growth. The expression then in familiar use was ‘Shipman,’[[425]] and ‘Shipman’ is the surname best represented in our nomenclature. It is by this name one of Chaucer’s company at the Tabard is pictured forth—
A Shipman ther was woned far by West,
He knew wel alle the havens as they were,
Fro’ Gotland to the Cape de Finisterre,
And every creke, in Bretagne, and in Spaine;
His barge ycliped was the ‘Magdelaine.’
This, intended doubtless to set forth the wide extent of his adventure, would seem cramped enough for the seafarer of the nineteenth century. The word itself lingered on for some length of time, being found both in our Homilies and in the Authorized Version, but seems to have declined towards the end of the seventeenth century. ‘Henry le Mariner’s’ name still lives among us, sometimes being found in the abbreviated form of ‘Marner,’ and ‘Shipper’ or ‘Skipper’ is not as yet obsolete. The strictly speaking feminine ‘Shipster’ comes in the quaint old poem of ‘Cocke Lorelle’s Bote,’ where mention is made among others of—
Gogle-eyed Tomson, shipster of Lyn.
‘Cogger,’ found in such an entry as ‘Hamond le Cogger’ or ‘Henry le Cogger,’ carries us back to the old ‘cogge’ or fishing smack, a term very familiar on the east coast, and one not yet altogether obsolete. It seems to have been often used to carry the soldiery across the Channel to France and the Low Country border, or even further.[[426]] Our cockswain was, I doubt not, he who attended to the tiller of the boat. We still speak also of a cock-boat, written in the ‘Promptorium Parvulorum’ as ‘cog bote,’ and doubtless it was originally some smaller craft that waited upon and attended the other. Thus it is highly probable that ‘le Cockere’ may in some instances have been but equivalent to ‘le Cogger.’[[427]] ‘Richard le Botsweyn,’ ‘Edward Botswine,’ ‘Peter Boatman,’ ‘Jacob Boatman,’ or the more local ‘Gerard de la Barge,’ are all still familiar enough in an occupative sense, but surnominally have been long extinct, with the exception of the last.[[428]]
Coming to port, whether it were York, or Kingston, or Chester, or London, we find ‘Adam le Waterman,’ or ‘Richard Waterbearer,’ or ‘William le Water-leder’ busy enough by the waterside.[[429]] The latter term, however, was far the commonest in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I have already mentioned the sense of ‘lead’ at this time, that of carrying. Piers Plowman, to quote but one more instance, says in one place—