150 TRADE AND MARKETS. 



legislation went further. By 8 Hen. VI, cap. 5, it was pro- 

 vided that a common balance or balances with common 

 weights should be provided in every city, borough, or town, 

 to be in the keeping of the mayor or constable, free for the use 

 of all the king's subjects, and available for foreigners on the 

 payment of small fees. These balances were to be provided 

 within a month after the proclamation of the statute on pain 

 of a fine of .10 in every city defaulting, of loos, in every 

 borough, and of 40^. in every town where there is a constable. 

 In the next year notice is taken that cheese is sold by auncel, 

 and that the poor are defrauded. The public is therefore in- 

 formed that the wey of cheese is and shall be 32 cloves of 

 7 Ibs. each. 



Henry the Seventh seems to have been especially diligent 

 in seeing that weights and measures were properly certified 

 and sealed. He provided a standard to be kept at West- 

 minster, by which all measures and weights should be tested, 

 by 7 Hen, VII, cap. 3, a statute which was re-enacted with 

 additional securities by n Hen. VII, cap. 4, and by 12 

 Hen. VII, cap. 5. 



The avaricious cunning of Henry the Seventh, and the 

 wanton waste of his son, were equal hindrances to that enter- 

 prise which found out the New World, doubled the Cape, and 

 created empires or factories in America and the East Indies. 

 During the sixteenth century, when the rivalry between the 

 profits of the old and new roads to India was still kept up 

 between Venice and the other Italian cities on the one hand, 

 and Portugal on the other, England was supplied with Eastern 

 produce, though at great cost, through Antwerp. By the middle 

 of Elizabeth's reign Portugal was rapidly becoming the entre- 

 p6t of that produce. According to Guicciardini \ the centre 

 of trade in the middle of the sixteenth century was Antwerp, 

 and the chief produce at this mart which England supplied 

 was, as in the time of Henry VIII, wool and cloth. 



1 Guicciardini's account of Antwerp is quoted at length from an English translation by 

 Macpherson, ii. 126. 



