370 A. D. 1203. 



too widely fpread to be governed and defended, and. too expenfive to be 

 fupported, by the republic, foon brought on a greater proportion of feud- 

 al lubordination, and military government, than was confident with 

 the genuine fpirit of commerce. 



The commercial confequence of this great and fudden revolution was, 

 that the whole trade of the Eaftern Roman empire was p.t once transfer- 

 red to the Venetians, who immediately, and without any competition 

 from their merely-warlike affociates, became mafters of the remains of 

 the commerce, which had largely contributed to the opulence of Con- 

 ilantinople. That city had long been the principal feat of the richefl 

 and mofl fumptuous manufidures of filk ; and, as the demand for 

 that luxury was dayly increafing in the weftern parts of Europe, the ac- 

 quilition of the very beft manufadures of it was an objedl: of vaft im- 

 portance to the Venetians. By the poffeflion of Conftantinople they 

 moreover had a monopoly of the trade of the Black fea ; and they alfo fell 

 into, what was to them, a new conveyance of Indian goods by a route 

 over land to that fea, whereby the moll pretious articles of Oriental luxury 

 had been ufually conveyed to the capital. Thefe folid advantages fo 

 greatly extended the fphere of the Venetian commerce, that, during the 

 fubliftence of the Latin empire in Conftantinople, they were almoft the 

 fole and general merchants of Europe. And thus the crufades, whether 

 direded againft the Mohamedans, or againft the Chriftian heretics who 

 denied the fupremacy of the pope, were produdive of profperity and 

 opulence to Venice, as they were alfo, though in a much fmaller de- 

 gree, to the other commercial flates of Italy. [Nicetas, pp. 349-375 — 

 Villehardonin, n". 75-135. — Gejla Innoc. Ill, cc. 91-94. — Danduli Chron. 

 Venet. coll. 322-330, ap. Mur atari Script. V. xii.] 



1 203, April — An afllfe of bread was made by King John andthe barons. 

 The bakers were ordered to afBx their ftamps to their bread : and they 

 were allowed a profit of four pennies, or three pennies with the bran, out 

 of every quarter of wheat. The weight of the farthing loaf of the fineft 

 bread, was ordered to vary from four fifths of a pound, when wheat 

 was at fix fliillings a quarter, to three pounds and feventeen twentieths, 

 when it was at eighteen pennies, the bread of the whole corn being pro- 

 portionally heavier. \^Rot. pat. %Johan. m.i. — M. Paris, p. 208.] This 

 is, I believe, the carlieft notice extant of fuch a regulation in England : 

 but there muft furely have been earlier afllfes, as we find the profits of 

 the baker upon each chaldcr of wheat, and his payment for each batch, 

 were before now regulated in Scotland by the Laws of the burghs, cc. 66, 



April 11"" — Cologne, originally the capital of a German tribe called 

 the Ubii, was made a Roman colony by Agrippina, the wife ot the em- 

 peror Claudius, and it retains to this day fome traces of the Roman po- 

 lity. Its fituation upon the great navigable River Rhine, gave the citi- 

 zens the command of an cxtenfivc inland trade ; and they appear to 



