Among the foreign traders are mentioned in the Liber Albus the Cologne merchants, the Hanse merchants, and merchants of Lorraine, Bavaria, Lemberg, Flanders, Antwerp, Bruges, Louvain, Perugia, Lucca, Lombardy, Tuscany, Spain, Portugal, Catalonia, Navarre, Provence, Aquitaine, Quercy, Gascony, Bordeaux, Genoa, and the Italian Societies of Frescobaldi and Morori. Liberties are also mentioned as being granted to the Merchants of Douay, Malines, and St. Omer; also to numerous cities and corporations in England; and allocations were granted to the citizens of Dublin and Cork.
All these merchants occupied their own houses, in which they were expected to live by themselves, not associating more than was necessary with the citizens, who, as far down as the nineteenth century, were wont to hustle and abuse any foreigner who ventured unprotected into the streets. The men of Germany had the Domus Teutonicorum, the Steelyard, where is now Cannon Street Terminus: the men of Bordeaux had the “Vintry”: the Flemings their own house near the Vintry. The history of the trade of London for five hundred years is largely composed of the jealousies and quarrels between the foreign merchants and the merchants of London.
In the year 1000, strangers from France, Normandy, Rome, Flanders, Liège, and the Emperor’s men, were permitted to trade at Billingsgate. In the twelfth century a fleet, carrying wine as its principal cargo from Germany, arrived at London once a year. It lay off the bank two ebbs and one flood. This means that the vessels came up the river with the flood, and lay off during the following ebb and one tide afterwards. During this time the men were not permitted to land, nor to sell their cargo. The King’s officers came on board and purchased what was wanted for the King’s use—gems, plate, tapestry, as well as wine. After this the traders were allowed to sell to merchants, but not to go to the open market nor to sell by retail. When they carried their wares on shore the Sheriff examined them, and they had to pay scavage, i.e. “showage.” They could sell for the space of forty days, after which they had to go away. But one suspects that the law was not administered with great strictness. Some things they were forbidden to buy, as lamb skins: and they were not to buy more than three live pigs!
In 1217, a convention was made between the merchants of London, Amiens, and other towns. Those of the convention were permitted to load and to unload, to warehouse in the City, and to sell to citizens, not to foreigners. In return they were to pay fifty marks a year to the Sheriffs. One of them might keep a hostel for a year, but not longer. They were not to take provisions out of the City. These foreigners contributed £100 towards the construction of a conduit from Tyburn into the City. Before this time, in 1194, Richard I. had granted to Cologne merchants the right to attend all Fairs “saving the franchise of the City of London.”
The expansion of trade and the creation of industries in England owed a great deal to the spirit of enterprise made possible, or even engendered, by the new municipal life of the towns. All over the country the towns asked for and obtained charters after the fashion of London. There are everywhere, up to the end of the thirteenth century, signs of activity and of prosperity: churches were rebuilt; bridges were thrown over rivers; walls were repaired; gates, wharves, aqueducts were constructed; new trading-ports arose such as Lynn, Sandwich, Southampton, for instance; new manufactures were started at Norwich, Worcester, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Reading, and elsewhere; there are no complaints of poverty and misery; there is no Piers Plowman for London; the merchants are seen to be buying country estates; and whereas in the twelfth century England exported little besides her wool, in the fifteenth century there are entries of industry and manufactures everywhere. And for all these, London was the recipient and the distributor.
The Hanseatic League was in existence as far back as the eighth century. The members began to trade with London apparently very soon after that date, and were esteemed as merchants who introduced wares very useful and otherwise difficult to procure. In the reign of Ethelred, A.D. 979, the “men of the Emperor” were accounted worthy of “good laws.” They settled by the river-side, where they obtained a house near Dowgate. Either before or after their settlement the “men of Cologne” settled next to them. After disputes between the two Houses they were amalgamated and formed the Gildhalla Teutonicorum. Their merchandise consisted mainly of wheat, rye and other grain, cables, masts, pitch, tar, flax, hemp, linen cloth, wainscots, wax, steel, and other “profitable merchandize.” (Stow).
Not only the citizens of London but the country people looked on the aliens with hate. No royal proclamation was of avail to protect them against this hatred. Partly, no doubt, they were hated because they were foreigners; but mainly, it is certain, because they were monopolists and could charge what they pleased. Thus when Wat Tyler and his merry men held possession of the City they murdered all the foreign merchants, especially the Flemings, dragging them even from the altars. Chaucer says (Nonnes Prestes Tale):—
“Certes, he Jacke Strawe and his meynee
Ne made never shoutes half so shrille,
When that they wolden any Fleming kille,