"—Ane furme, ane furlet,
Ane pott, ane pek."
Bannatyne Poems, p. 159.
Skinner derives it from A.-S. feower, quatuor; and lot, hlot, portio (the fourth part); Teut. "viertel."
J.S.
Loscop (No. 20. p. 319).—To be "Louecope-free" is one of the immunities granted to the Cinque Ports in their charters of Liberties.
Jeakes explains the term thus:—
"The Saxon word Cope (in Low Dutch still Kope or Koope), for trade or merchandising, makes this as much as to trade freely for love. So that by no kind of monopoly patent, or company or society of traders or merchants, the portsmen be hindered from merchandising; but freely and for love, be permitted to trade and traffick, even by such company of merchants, whenever it shall happen their concerns lie together."
In my MSS., and in the print of Jeakes, it is "Louecope," with which "Lofcope" may be readily identified; and f may easily be misread for s, especially if the roll be obscured.
If Jeakes's etymology of the word be correct, the inference would rather be that "Lovecope" was a tax for the goodwill of the port at which a merchant vessel might arrive; a "port duty" in fact, independent of "lastage" &c., chargeable upon every trader that entered the port, whatever her cargo might be. And the immunities granted to the portsmen were that they should be "port duty free."