Chief ports of England, and extent of its shipping and commerce.
Fortunately, however, a document has been preserved which furnishes the names of the chief ports of England during the reign of Edward I.[567] It is interesting and instructive. They were then as follows: Dover, Sandwich, Romney, Winchester, Rye, Hythe, Faversham, Hastings, Shoreham, Seaford, Portsmouth, Southampton, Dartmouth, Lymington, Weymouth, Poole, Humble, Lymne, Sidmouth, Chichester, Teignmouth, Frome, Fowey, Looe, Bodmin, Wareham, Falmouth, Bristol, Haverford-West, Caernarvon, Caermarthen, Landpadanour, Conway, Chester, Bridgewater, Cardiff, Oystermouth, Rochester, Gravesend, Northfleet, London, Harwich, Ipswich, Dunwich, Orford, Yarmouth, Blackney, Lynn, Boston, Wainfleet, Saltfleet, Grimsby, Hull, Ravensburg, Scarborough, Tynemouth, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, and Dunbar. Such were the principal ports of England at the commencement of the fourteenth century. Some of these places are now hardly known for their trade, while the very names of others among them have long since disappeared. How changed since then are the seats and centres of England’s maritime commerce!
But we know nothing of the amount of shipping belonging to these ports for more than half a century afterwards; nor, till a comparatively recent period, of the extent of business carried on in England. Had such records been preserved, we should probably have seen that in the port of Liverpool alone, then scarcely recognisable, a larger amount of tonnage now arrives and departs during a week or even a day, than entered and left all these ports in the course of a year. The only document in the shape of statistics referring to shipping of the thirteenth century that can be discovered, is a return which states that, in the year ending 20th November, 1299, there arrived in the port of London, and in all the other ports of the kingdom, except the Cinque Ports, seventy-three vessels with cargoes of wine, of which the smallest had not less than nineteen tuns on board, from each of which the king, by ancient law, had the right to take, at a fixed price, two tuns for the use of his household.
But even this return conveys but a very vague and imperfect idea of the number of vessels then belonging to England, or of the extent of its maritime commerce; moreover, the importation of wine was then much larger in proportion to that of other articles of commerce than it is now. The Cinque Ports, from their wealth and exclusive privileges, were, doubtless, large consumers of wine and had great facilities for its storage.[568] London had long been, as it is now, pre-eminently the port for wine. To Edward I. is due the selection of the Vintry (a name still remaining) on the banks of the Thames, where vessels delivered their cargoes alongside the wharf. Thence they often proceeded up the river Fleet, as far as Holborn Bridge, to take in their return cargoes, the smaller ones occasionally ascending even as far as Battle Bridge, near the present station of the Great Northern Railway at King’s Cross.
Edward II., A.D. 1307-27.
Edward III., A.D. 1326-7—1377.
Extension of English commerce.
The twenty years’ reign of Edward II. is not marked by any events worthy of note relating to maritime commerce. Retrogression rather than progress was the result of his policy and of his constant troubles and contentions with neighbouring nations. When, however, he had been deposed, indeed almost immediately after the accession of Edward III., a considerable step in advance was made by the grant of fresh patents and charters to secure for the merchants of England further staples on the Continent. Nearly the whole of the wool trade had been previously carried on by foreigners, but the English now aimed at having “staples” in Brabant and Artois as well as in Flanders, whither they could freely send their own wool and dispose of it themselves from their own entrepôts. And in this they at length succeeded; for with their own capital they bought their wool, and exporting it in their own bottoms to a staple in Holland, Flanders, or France, disposed of it in those countries without the intervention of any second party or foreign merchant. This privilege was considered at the time a great step in advance; but now it is not easy to understand how the laws of any country could have withheld from its merchants the right to trade wherever or whenever other nations did not object.
The discovery of coal.
Such changes in the mode of transacting business tended materially to enlarge the knowledge of the English merchants, acquiring as they did from year to year, by their intercourse with the more refined and intelligent merchants of Holland and France, much information on subjects they might have learnt at an earlier period of their history had their rulers not embroiled them in constant wars with the very nations with whom they were now in direct communication. Again, though it is certain that, at least on the western side of England, the Romans had worked coal on or near the surface,[569] the opening of the great coal-fields near Newcastle first took place in the reign of this wise monarch—though, curiously enough, its value was sooner appreciated by foreigners than by the people of the country in which this vast source of wealth was found. For a considerable period after its discovery, the consumption of coal was supposed to be so unhealthy that a royal edict prohibited its use in the city of London while the queen resided there, in case it might prove “pernicious to her health.”[570] On the other hand, while England was thus prohibiting the use of the article which has made her by far the most famous commercial nation of either ancient or modern times, France sent her ships laden with corn to Newcastle, receiving coal as their return cargoes, and her merchants were the first to carry this now great article of commerce to foreign countries.