In the year 1237 a Convention, or compact, was entered into between the citizens of London and the merchants of Amiens, Corby, and Nesle, in Picardy; the privileges granted by which will go far towards showing the disabilities and inconveniences under which their less fortunate brethren in trade had to labour. They were from thenceforth to be at liberty to load and unload, and to warehouse, within the City, their cargoes of woad, garlic, and onions, and to sell the same within the City alike to citizens and to strangers of the realm; they were also to be at liberty to carry them out of the City, by land or by water, to such parts of the country as they might deem most advantageous. All their other wares, wine and corn excepted, they were also privileged to load and unload, and to warehouse, within the City, but only for sale to citizens, and not to strangers, if sold within the precincts of the City; though, at the same time, they were equally permitted to carry them to any other part of England, ‘saving the rightful and due customs of the City.’ In return for these concessions, the merchants were to pay yearly to the Sheriffs of London fifty marks sterling at three periods denoted by three of the great Fairs of England, those of Saint Ives (in Huntingdonshire), Winchester, and Saint Botolph’s Town, or Boston, in Lincolnshire.
In addition to these privileges, it was granted that if any ‘companion’ of such merchants should wish to keep hostel for the entertainment of his countrymen, he should be at liberty to do so, provided always that he did not stay in London beyond one whole year. In case, by reason of war, or of command given by the King of England to that effect, the merchants should be precluded from making stay in London, they were to be acquitted of payment of their annual ferm to a proportionate extent. Provisions and arms they were under no circumstances to carry out of the realm; and at the same time they were to make due payment to the Sheriffs of London ‘for all their wares and merchandises, of rightful and due custom, coming into the City, making stay in the City, going forth from the City into the parts of England, returning into the City from the parts of England, and departing from the City unto the parts beyond sea.’ By way of confirmation of this compact, the merchants of the three towns before mentioned very liberally paid down a sum of one hundred pounds sterling towards making the conduit, which was then building, for bringing water into the City from Tyburn spring.
At an early period the traffic of the City of Cologne with England appears to have been considerable. Richard I., in the fifth year of his reign (1194), by Charter, signed at Louvain, granted unto its citizens, upon payment of an annual sum of two shillings, their Guildhall in London, ‘and all other customs and demands’; and King John, it is said, conferred upon them several important privileges. In the fourth year of Henry III., we find them paying into the Exchequer thirty marks ‘for having seisin of their Guildhall in London.’ The same King, in the twentieth year of his reign, by Charter granted unto ‘his well-beloved, the citizens of Cologne,’ quitted claim not only of the aforesaid yearly rent of two shillings, but of ‘all other customs and demands which unto us pertain in London, and throughout all our territories in England.’ They also received permission thereby safely to go and safely to come throughout all his territories, and freely to resort to all Fairs throughout the same, and to sell and to buy, as well in ‘the vill of London’ as elsewhere, ‘saving the franchise of the City of London.’ This Charter was confirmed by Edward I. in the eighteenth year of his reign.
Though, strictly speaking, coming under the denomination of ‘Emperor’s men,’ the Colognese, until near the close of the thirteenth century, continued to form a distinct society from that of ‘the Hanse of Almaine.’ Each of them at this period had its own Guildhall, situate at Dowgate in the City of London; but by the end, probably, of that century they had amalgamated, though the date and particulars of that event do not seem to have been ascertained. Hides and woolfels, apparently, were extensively imported by the traders of Cologne.
The Ordinances for the regulation of the woad-merchants would seem to bear date prior to the Convention made (A.D. 1237) with the merchants of Amiens, Corby, and Nesle; as they are evidently drawn up in a spirit quite incompatible with the provisions of that document, and it was the merchants of Picardy, jointly with those of Normandy, who were in those times the principal importers of woad. In the very perfection of the spirit of corporate jealousy in ancient times, it is authoritatively laid down that all foreign merchants, and more especially the woad-merchants, when they have once come within the limits known as La Newe Were, ‘may not, and ought not, according to the ancient customs and franchises of the City and the realm, to come to, or anchor at, any other place than London only.’ On their arrival there, the merchants are reminded that it is their duty to place their woad upon the quay, and that they may enclose it with hurdles and hatches, if they think proper, but upon no account are they to stow it in houses or in cellars. Here they were to sell it, or give it in exchange for other merchandise, ‘but only to men of the City, and to no one else, and that, by reasonable and ancient measure of the City.’ Nor ought they to, nor might they, buy anything of foreigners, but only of men of the City, for exportation beyond sea; nor might they leave the City for the purpose of visiting any fair, or for going to any other place for the purposes of traffic. If found to be on the road to such a place, and proceeding towards a fair, all their chattels were to be forfeited, ‘seeing that all their buying and selling ought to take place within the City, and that only with the men of the City.’
Even more than this. The said merchants ‘might not, nor ought they to, stay within the City more than forty days’; at the end of which, they were to return to their own country, or else ‘to some other place beyond sea, at as great a distance as the place from which they came.’ To fill up the measure of the woad-merchant’s difficulties, the ‘foreigner’ (foraneus) was also to take care that within such forty days he had sold or exchanged the whole of his wares, without holding back any part thereof, ‘seeing that when such term shall have expired, and it shall be his duty to depart, he may not hand over any part of his wares to his host, or to any other person, nor may he carry them away with him. But let him see that within the time limited he makes sale of the same, as well as he can; for if any part thereof shall be found after the time limited unto him, it shall be wholly lost.’ In the trade of dyeing cloth, on no account were these merchants to interfere.
On reading such astounding regulations as these, one might almost be inclined to believe that the civic authorities had conceived some inveterate hatred against all foreign dealers in woad, accompanied by a wish to put an end to the import of the commodity altogether. Be this as it may, we may safely conclude that the profits realised upon the import of this article were considerable; or assuredly, thanks to their short-sighted rulers, the Londoners would have had to go with their burels, russets, and halberjects undyed, so far at least as the broad acres of Picardy and Normandy were concerned.
At a later date (A.D. 1300) we read of several merchants getting into trouble with the authorities, some of the comparatively favoured Teutonics, or Hanse merchants, in the number, for presuming to keep hostels in the City, for bed and for board, a thing that ‘was allowed to the hostels of the freemen only.’ Time, however, with an unwonted degree of considerateness, was allowed them by the Mayor and Aldermen for getting rid of the obnoxious establishments, ‘under forfeiture of all their moveables.’ Others, again, we find appearing before the Mayor and Aldermen, and submissively making oath that they had prolonged their stay in the City through inadvertence, ‘for that of the custom as to staying in the City forty days only, they were wholly in ignorance.’ At a somewhat earlier date (A.D. 1293) certain merchants of Provence, upon being rigidly questioned by the Warden and Aldermen as to their claims to right of stay and exemption from custom, acknowledge that they have no privileges to assert, as granted them by the King of England, and that they claim no rights or franchises within the City, by land or by water, save only that, in addition to the freemen of the City, they may sell their wares in gross ‘to the great men of the land,’ but only for their own private use, taking due care to have no dealings with other ‘strangers.’ Their former patrons, Eleanor of Provence, Archbishop Boniface, and Peter of Savoy, were now in their graves, or we probably should not have found the worthy Provencals making admissions so alien to the spirit manifested in this country by their money-seeking grandsires of half a century before.
In the 33rd of Edward I. (A.D. 1305), the Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs of London awarded and granted that the merchants of the Hanse of Almaine should be exempted from the customary payment of two shillings, ‘going and coming with their “goods,” at the Gate of Bishopsgate, seeing that they were already charged with the custody and repair of the said Gate.‘
In the twenty-seventh year of the same reign we find a somewhat serious charge brought against these ‘Merchants of Almaine’; to what extent it was justified, we have no means of forming a conclusion. The King had recently, by precept, commanded the Sheriffs of London that they should allow no good money, or silver in bullion, to be carried out of the realm, or any spurious coin to be brought into the City. In spite, however, of this prohibition, it had come to the royal ears that certain merchants of Almaine, resident in the City, and dwelling in houses by the water-side and elsewhere, had, ‘under colour of certain liberties and acquittances,’ unto them by the King and his progenitors granted, harboured certain strange merchants, with fardels and divers packages of goods, both in the night and, clandestinely, by day. Even more than this, the Teutonics had been in the habit (sæpius) of avowing such goods as their own, and, in virtue of their privileges, opening them out and selling them, without any scavage, or examination, on part of the Sheriffs; thereby not only defrauding the revenue of its customs, but affording an opportunity for the concealment and circulation of bad money. The merchants are therefore strictly enjoined in future to avow (or colour) no wares but their own; and on no account to receive any such into their possession, or to open out any such fardels without the Sheriffs duly having view and making scrutiny thereof.