Alice Green - Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

6. The English to share all advantages the Florentines might win by trading treaties.

7. The wishes of the English to be considered in all new privileges granted in the Florentine dominions.

8. The English King was to allow no stranger to carry wool out of England. The Venetians only might carry 600 sacks.

9. The wool was to be of good quality and well packed. (Schanz, i. 126-137.)

Schanz, i. 119-142; 7 Henry VII. c. 7.

An interesting account of this is given in Hist. MSS. Com. v. 461.

Schanz, i. 298.

In 1475, 1486, and 1495. (Schanz, i. 299-304.) In 1475 a proclamation in Cinque Ports forbade Englishmen to buy Gascon wine of an alien. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 494.)

An interesting trace of foreign connections is given in the will of Wm. Rowley, who left money to a parish church and a nunnery at Dam in Flanders, and to two places in Spain. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 326.)

Schanz, i. 275-7.

Ibid. i. 285-90. The Portuguese were among those who were allowed to export woollen cloths under Henry the Sixth. (Proc. Privy Council, v. ii. 11.)

Notices of English trade with Portugal in the second half of the fifteenth century may be found in the complaints of the merchants; Schanz, ii. 496-524. For Portuguese in Lydd in 1456, Hist. MSS. Com. v. 521.

In Piers Ploughman a graphic illustration is taken from the mediæval borough thus isolated and protected.

Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 461.

Piers Ploughman, passus iv. 386.

Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 466.

“And we use that during the siege if the bailiff be an unable and impotent man or unlearned, to choose us one other for the time being; but not a far-dweller unless by the pleasure of the commonalty.” (Ibid. 488.) See Proc. Privy Council, iv. 217.

Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvii. 463, 488.

In Rye there was a tax “from every stranger, as though from a prisoner taken, payment of his finance for his ransom, and when he has entered the fortresses of the port for his passage thence, 3 s. 4 d. ; he having to pay towards the building of the walls and gates there what pertains to the common weal of the town.” (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 490.) For the strengthening of Canterbury wall against the French, (ibid. ix. 141.) It had twenty-one towers and six gates, and mayors in 1452 and 1460 left money for the gates. (Davies’ Southampton, 62-3, 80, 105. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 167.)

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 518-24, 492-3. The Common House at Romney was only provided with bows until in 1475 a gun was laid on it. Burgesses were sometimes driven from towns by the excessive charges of war and of watch and ward. (Owen’s Shrewsbury, i. 205.) For Southampton, see Davies, 79, 80, Chester, Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 370.