The watermen of London were those who lived by the river and the port. John Taylor, the water poet, says that 40,000 people lived by the labour of the oar and scull. In 1613 there was a petition from the Company of Watermen against the erection of a theatre on the London or Middlesex side of the river, because it drew away so many people who otherwise would have been carried across the river to the theatres on the south bank. John Taylor shows us that many of these watermen had been sailors:—
“I did briefly declare part of the services that watermen had done in Queen Elizabeth’s reign of famous memory, in the voyage to Portugal with the right honourable and never to be forgotten Earl of Essex; then after that, how it pleased God, in that great deliverance in the year 1588, to make watermen good serviceable instruments with their loss of lives and limbs to defend their prince and country. Moreover, many of them served with Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Martin Frobisher, and others. Besides, in Cadiz action, the Island Voyage, in Ireland, in the Low Countries, and in the narrow seas they have been, as in duty they were bound, at continual command, so that every summer 1500 or 2000 of them were employed to the places aforesaid....
Afterwards the players began to play on the Bankside, and to leave playing in London and Middlesex, for the most part, then there went such great concourse of people by water that the small number of watermen remaining at home were not able to carry them, by reason of the court, the terms, the players, and other employments, so that we were enforced and encouraged, hoping that this golden stirring world would have lasted ever, to take and entertain men and boys ... so that the number of watermen, and those that live and are maintained by them, and by the only labour of the oar and the scull, betwixt the bridge of Windsor and Gravesend, cannot be fewer than forty thousand; the cause of the greater half of which multitude, hath been the players playing on the bankside, for I have known three companies besides the bear-baiting at once there, to wit, the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan.”
Loud complaints being made by the artificers of London that foreign goods were underselling theirs, the King in 1461 prohibited the importation or sale of the following articles—the list of which shows some of the manufactures at that time established in London:—
NEAR PAUL’S WHARF
E. Gardner’s Collection.
“Any manner girdles, nor any harness wrought for girdles, points, laces of lether, purses, pouches, pins, gloves, knives, hangers, tailors’ shears, scissors, andirons, cobordis, tongs, fire forks, gridirons; stocks, locks, keyes, hinges and garnets, spurs; painted papers, painted focers, paynted images, painted clothes, any between gold or between silver, wrought in papers for painters; saddles, saddle-trees, horse harness, boocis, bits, stirrups, buckles, chains, laten nails with iron shanks, terrets, standing candlesticks, hanging candlesticks, holy water stoops, chafing dishes, hanging lavers, curtain rings, cards for wool, clasps for gloves, buckles for shoes, brooches, bells (except bells for hawks), spoons of tin and lead, chains of wire as well as of laten as of iron, gratis, horns and lantern horns, or any of these aforesaid wares, ready and wrought, pertaining to the said crafts above specified or any of them uppon payne of forfeture of all the wares.” (Capper’s Port and Trade of London.) We have seen (p. 13) how Henry VII. passed an Act forbidding any stranger, i.e. foreigner, to buy or sell merchandise in the City; in his reign also was passed an Act to compel the country people to resort to the City. For it was ordered that no citizen should carry goods to any market or fair out of the City. The people of the country represented to Parliament the great hardship of being obliged to travel all the way to London in order to procure things that could only be bought in London, viz. chalices, books, vestments, and other church ornaments, victuals for Lent, linen cloths, woollen cloths, brass, pewter, bedding, iron, flax, wax, and other things. The Parliament interfered and the order was removed.
TRADESMEN OF THE PERIOD
From a contemporary print.
Under Henry VII. commercial treaties were concluded with the Danes and with the Florentines. There was a quarrel with Burgundy and a cessation of commercial relations for three years. In 1497 (12 Hen. VII.) was passed an Act entitled “Every Englishman shall have free recourse to certain foreign marts, without exaction to be taken by any English fraternity.” The meaning of the Act was this: the Merchant Adventurers’ Company had arrogated to themselves the right of refusing the right of trade in any foreign port until a fine or fee of £40 should first be paid to themselves. The Act defined the extent of English foreign trade at the time. The Merchant Adventurers sent their vessels to Spain, Portugal, Brittany, Flanders, Holland, Ireland, Normandy, France, Venice, Dantzic, Eastland, Friesland, and other parts. The Parliament allowed the fine, but limited it to ten marks, or £6:13:4. We have seen the jealousy and hatred of foreigners shown by the envious outbreak of “Evil May Day” in 1517 (p. 24). The complaints or the justification of the rioters was that there were so many foreigners employed as craftsmen that the English could get no work; that foreign merchants brought in all silk, cloth of gold, wine, etc., and that no one, almost, bought of an Englishman; that the foreign merchants exported so much wool, tin, and lead, that English adventurers could not make a living; that they forestalled the market, buying up everything all round the City, so that nothing of value came to the City markets, while some of them imported all kinds of goods that were made in this country, such as nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools, tables, chests, girdles, saddles, and printed cloths.