Only and no other, so as they were never used in England before.
To inn and drain [blank] grounds.
To take water fowl.
To make devices of safe-keeping of corn.
To make a device for soldiers to carry necessary provisions.
[311] Quoted, English Patents of Monopoly, Appendix c, W.H. Price, 1603.
15. Instructions Touching the Bill for Free Trade [Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. I, p. 218], 1604.
The Committees from the House of the Commons sat five whole afternoons upon these Bills; there was a great concourse of clothiers and merchants, of all parts of the realm, and especially of London; who were so divided, as that all the clothiers, and, in effect, all the merchants of England, complained grievously of the engrossing and restraint of trade by the rich merchants of London, as being to the undoing, or great hindrance, of all the rest; and of London merchants, three parts joined in the same complaint against a fourth part; and of that fourth part, some standing stiffly for their own company, yet repined at other companies. Divers writings and informations were exhibited on both parts; learned Counsel was heard for the Bill, and divers of the principal Aldermen of London against it; all reasons exactly weighed and examined; the Bill, together with the reasons on both sides, was returned and reported by the Committees to the House; where, at the third reading, it was three several days debated, and in the end passed with great consent and applause of the House (as being for the exceeding benefit of all the land) scarce forty voices dissenting from it.
The most weighty reasons for the enlargement of trade were these:
Natural Right.—All free subjects are born inheritable, as to their land, so also to the free exercise of their industry in those trades, whereto they apply themselves and whereby they are to live. Merchandize being the chief and richest of all other, and of greater extent and importance than all the rest, it is against the natural right and liberty of the subjects of England to restrain it into the hands of some few, as now it is; for although there may be now some five or six thousand persons, counting children and prentices, free of the several Companies of the Merchants, in the whole; yet apparent it is, that the Governors of these Companies, by their monopolizing orders, have so handled the matter, as that the mass of the whole trade of all the realm is in the hands of some two hundred persons at the most, the rest serving for a shew only, and reaping small benefit.