Billingsgate was appointed only for fish, corn, salt, stones, victuals, and fruit. The Bridge House for corn and other provisions. The Steel Yard for merchant strangers of that Guild.

“By far the most important results of the Norman Conquest, as far as English Industry and Commerce were concerned, lay in the new communications which were opened up with other parts of the Continent.” (W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry.) These words strike a keynote. It was necessary for the growth and development of the national spirit that the insular isolation of Britain should be swept away. No doubt the close connection of the country with the richest provinces of France for four hundred years brought with it many serious evils, but the stimulus it gave to trade proved of incalculable advantage. And the isolation of England was swept away just at the right moment, when everywhere in western Europe there were springing into wealth and power and independence cities, which had been the private property of barons, or the mere ruins of what had once been busy and populous places. The first essential to trade is some kind of security that an agreement will be kept and a debt will be paid. This security was then impossible unless in a fair, regularly and lawfully held, with its own court; or in a town when the municipality defended the foreign merchant.

The opening of Europe to England had its other side in the opening of England to Europe. A large number of merchants from Rouen and Caen came over both before and after the Norman Conquest to carry on their trade in London. Flemish weavers came over and sought protection from the Queen, a Flemish Princess. Builders in stone came over in great numbers; most of the Churches throughout the country which were of wood were rebuilt in stone. And in addition to these, there were the foreigners who did not wish to settle, but came and went, bringing their wares with them, carrying away the exports, and while they were in Port, living according to their own rules in their own houses.

Of what kind was the Shipping of London, its growth, and its extent? What were the most important lines of trade? These questions are difficult to answer completely. First, we must remember that a merchant ship was also a man o’ war. The great Flanders Fleet of Venice was provided with a company of thirty-six archers for every galley, and the sailors were all fighting men. Next, the shipping of London meant its foreign trade, and this was continually rising and falling. Attempts were made by King Alfred to create a navy; and Sir John Philpot, when he set off to encounter the pirate, was able to lay his hand upon ships enough to carry a thousand men. When the Bastard of Falconbridge attacked the City there were no ships in the Port able to meet him; this, however, was at the close of a long Civil War which greatly damaged the trade of London.

The sailor has always been a creature distinct from his fellow-man. It would seem, from such scanty notice as we can get, that the London craftsman had never any great love for the sea; the sailor came from Dover, Sandwich, Hythe, Dartmouth, and other places, but not from London. In later years a riverside population grew up from the Tower as far as the Isle of Dogs, and eventually these people were connected with shipping. Among them was a whole multitude of sailors, together with those who lived by working among and for the ships in the Pool. There are glimpses of this invisible population within the walls of the City, especially below the Bridge and near the Tower. To this day the courts and lanes in which they lived remain. They are narrow, dark, and noisome. Only the lowest craftsmen could live in such courts; they contained drinking places for the sailors, native and foreign, sleeping dens for them, fighting places for them, but not decent living houses. In such a narrow street, where the houses were built of wood and closely packed with people, broke out the Great Fire of London. Chaucer’s sailor was a Dartmouth man. There were plenty like him standing about on the quay and drinking in the taverns. Your true seafaring man never does anything while he is on shore except stand about on the quays, lean against a post, or carouse in a tavern. Many a fight took place along these quays and in these narrow courts: fights between Genoese and Venetian; between Englishman and Frenchman; between Englishman and Fleming; fights with knife and dagger; fights which began with a duello and ended in a mêlée, all begun, carried on, and ended in a few minutes, leaving a man dying and half a dozen wounded; fights between a man of Dover and a man of Yarmouth; fights over the reckoning at the tavern; fights over Doll and Moll and Poll. Always the riverside of London has been a place remarkable for its life, and vividness, its riot and noise, the cheerful cry of battle, the inspiriting song of the tippler, and the dulcet voice of love.

Every sailor was a fighting man. Until the reign of Henry IV. it was easy to turn a merchant ship into a man o’ war by placing in her the little “castles” from which the bowmen could work. Henry IV. seems to have begun the practice of building ships exclusively for fighting; his son had three very large ships called the Trinity, the Grace de Dieu, and The Holy Ghost; his navy consisted in all of three great vessels, six “nefs,” six “barges,” ten “balingers.” It is not easy to distinguish between the different kinds of ships. The “nef” was a ship of the largest size until the construction of the three great vessels; the “barge” was a large vessel, as is known by the fact that the City possessed one called the Paul of London, for river defence. You may, if you please, learn how the City barge was equipped and rigged and fitted out for sea from the pages of Riley’s Memorials. The terms used, the nautical terms of the time, are translated in footnotes, moreover they are mostly unintelligible. The list is perhaps too technical for these pages. There were also the “balingers,” the “craiez,” the “cogge,” the “katte,” the “galley,” and others.

As soon as riverside land became valuable and ships grew in size the building of ships was carried on, of necessity, outside the walls. When the Shipwrights’ Company was incorporated, in the reign of James I., they built their Hall at Ratcliffe Cross, in the centre of their industry. Shipbuilding yards were placed all along the north bank of the Thames as far east as Northfleet. Until thirty or forty years ago the industry was one of the most important of those belonging to London. There might be occasionally, though its continuance could not be relied upon, peace on land, but there was never peace at sea. From the time when the Count of the Saxon Shore set up his forts from Porchester to Bradwell, and sent out his fleets to sweep the narrow seas, the pirates continued without cessation; they came out of the Low Country ports, from Calais, from Dieppe, from St. Malo; they came down from Scotland; they even came out of English ports to destroy the English trade. They were attacked and dispersed, but they collected again. If France and England were at open war, as was very often the case, the pirates pretended to be in the service of the King most convenient for the moment. They were called the Rovers of the Sea; there was the instance of that Scottish pirate Mercer, who, as we have seen, was attacked and killed by Philpot, most gallant of Lord Mayors; there was Eustace the Monk, whose life and exploits have been written by Thomas Wright; there was William de Marish, who from the safe retreat of Lundy carried on piracy for a time with impunity; there was Savery de Maloleone, the French pirate; there was John of Newport, who murdered the crews of the ships which he took—he held possession of the Isle of Wight; there were pirates of Lynn, Wells, Yarmouth, and Dartmouth. The Cinque Ports were nests of pirates; the mouth of the Rhine, the harbour of Calais, and that of St. Malo were filled with pirates. The English coasts were ravaged by them; Portsmouth, Rye, Southampton, Sandwich, the Isle of Wight, Scarborough, the coast of Norfolk suffered from descents, from sieges, and from capture, by these Rovers. Letters of license were granted. Henry III. granted license to Adam Robertwolt and William le Sauvage to attack and to pillage the King’s enemies where they could, on condition of giving him half the plunder. In the following reign a merchant, having been plundered, received from the King license to carry on reprisals up to the amount which he had lost, but no more; and there is one instance in which English ships despatched north for the defence of Berwick plundered the coast of England on their way! In the twelfth century the same danger attended men who sailed abroad as in the ninth. But in the ninth century every merchant who voyaged three times over the wide seas in his own ship was “of thane right-worthy.” This distinction the master mariner and merchant lost in later years. Yet this kind of reward was still remembered very unexpectedly, when, in the year 1780, James Cook, who had voyaged three times across the wide seas, received after his death the coat of arms which made his family “of thane right-worthy.” During the later Saxon reigns there was a large merchant navy, together with a regular royal navy. This navy was called out once a year for training. Unfortunately for Harold this annual training was over, and the men had gone home when William sailed. Harold’s son seized the ships and sailed for Ireland, whence he carried on depredations for some years on the west coast. England was for a while without a navy, so the pirates began again, and the merchant service suffered.

The history of the next four hundred years, as regards the shipping and the foreign trade of London, is one either of a weak police, or a strong police in the Channel. The merchants of London never ceased to struggle in order to get the foreign trade into their own hands, but, during all this time, with only partial success: we have seen that the men of Rouen, the men of the Emperor, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, the Lombards, the people of the Hanseatic League, and the Flemings all came to London and carried on their trade themselves. Perhaps the worst time for the London merchant service was the fourteenth century. Yet England still boasted the sovereignty of the sea, and the device of Edward III.’ s gold noble still proudly claimed that supremacy—

“For four things our Noble showeth unto me