The early trade of London can be approximately arrived at by taking into consideration (1) that London was the principal receiving, distributing, and exporting place; (2) what it had to sell; and (3) what it wanted to buy.
Nearly everything that was wanted was made on the farms and in the towns. On the farms, the butter, cheese, bread, beer, bacon, were prepared; the grain was grown and ground; the fruit and vegetables were grown in the gardens; the honey was taken from the hives; spinning, weaving, carpentering, clothing, shoemaking were all carried on in the house. Nothing that could be made in the house was bought; nothing that could be made in the house was exposed for sale in the market. What, then, did the people want, and what did they buy? First, they wanted, as necessities, metal for working, weapons, knives, and utensils. Next they wanted salt. Iron and salt were the two absolute necessities of life that could be obtained only by purchase or by barter. If we pass on to luxuries, the wealthier class drank foreign wine in addition to home-made beer, cider, and metheglin; they dressed in foreign silk; they used gold and silver cups, which were made by London goldsmiths; they imported foreign glass; spices brought from outre-mer; and weapons made abroad of finer temper and better workmanship than their own. The Church wanted ecclesiastical vestments, pictures, incense, and gold and silver vessels. All these things the City had to offer and to sell. For purposes of purchase or of exchange the City was prepared to buy slaves, wool, metal, corn, and cattle. All over the country the people bred slaves and sold them; they sent to London large quantities of wool; they also sent lead, tin, iron, jet, fish, and cattle. And there was a great demand among the foreign merchants, though there was but a small supply, for the lovely embroidery of the Anglo-Saxon women, and for the beautiful goldwork of the Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths. The position of the goldsmiths in London, where they were the richest and most important citizens, proves that there was more than a home demand for their work. The words used for the arts and for many articles of common use show that they were at first imported, and from a nation where the Latin language was largely used. Common objects, such as candle, pin, wine, oil; names of weights and measures; names of coins are also derived from Roman sources. Wright’s theory that the people in the cities spoke Latin, and that the Saxon gradually became amalgamated with the people in the cities before the grand irruption may account for the survival of Latin names for common objects. One means of introducing these words may have been the communication kept up by the Church with the Continent, and especially between the monasteries of England and France.
SAXON LADIES
Royal MS. 2, B. vii.
That the trade of London was large and constantly increasing is certain. The abundance of gold in the country is instanced by the wealth of the shrines and the monasteries, and the importance and value of the exports. Sharon Turner[23] sums up this advance in trade in such general terms as I have indicated:—
“The property of the landholders gradually multiplied in permanent articles raised from their animals, quarries, mines, and woods; in their buildings, their furniture, their warlike stores, their leather apparatus, glass, pigments, vessels and costly dresses. An enlarged taste for finery and novelty spread as their comforts multiplied. Foreign wares were valued and sought for; and what Anglo-Saxon toil or labour could produce, to supply the wants or gratify the fancies of foreigners, was taken out to barter. All these things gave so many channels of nutrition to those who had no lands, by presenting them with opportunities for obtaining the equivalents on which their subsistence depended. As the bullion of the country increased, it became, either coined or uncoined, the general and permanent equivalent. As it could be laid up without deterioration, and was always operative when it once became in use, the abundance of society increased, because no one hesitated to exchange his property for it. Until coin became the medium of barter, most would hesitate to part with the productions they had reared, and all classes suffered from the desire of hoarding. Coin or bullion released the commodities that all society wanted, from individual fear, prudence, or covetousness, that would for its own uses have withheld them, and sent them floating through society in ten thousand ever-dividing channels. The Anglo-Saxons were in this happy state. Bullion, as we have remarked, sufficiently abounded in the country, and was in full use in exchange for all things. In every reign after Athelstan the trade and employment of the country increased.”
SAXON HORN
The principal work of London was that of collecting and distributing. The port was the centre to and from which the whole business of the country came and went. It was the king’s part to maintain the high roads, but the Roman skill in road-making was lost; branching off from the highways, in connection with the villages, were tracks through the forests and over the moors. It is an indication of the old spirit of tribal separation that merely to be seen on such a track was suspicious. “... If a far coming man or a stranger journey through a wood out of the highway, and neither shout nor blow his horn, he is to be held a thief and either to be slain or redeemed.” Many of the monasteries lay far outside the high road and in the midst of woods; they were apparently in communication with the world by the medium of streams and rivers. Tintern, Fountains, Dryburgh, Crowland, Ely, for instance, stood beside streams or rivers.
