THE BEGINNING OF TRADE 



adjective is illuminating — for not reminding the King to present a girdle 

 to the Countess of Albemarle. More serious historically is the fact that 

 our modern measure of tonnage was originally tunnage and was intended 

 to indicate the number of tuns of wine that a ship could carry. Rouen 

 was originally the great French wine port and it had its own port of 

 Dunegate in London. But after the English were turned out of this part 

 of France they had to go to Gascony for wine and Bordeaux began to 

 flourish. Henry VIII was the only British monarch until the time of 

 Charles II who had a taste in champagne and he kept a special com- 

 missioner at Ay to select so many casks a year for his personal use. It 

 must be remembered that in those days champagne was a very diflferent 

 wine to the modern vintage, being still and red. Later it was changed 

 to white but was not made sparkling for many years afterwards. 

 Henry I and Trade. 



As far as overseas trade was concerned the reign of Henry I stands 

 by itself through a long cycle of years, and would have been an excellent 

 object lesson for a number of his successors, no matter how selfish, if 

 only they had had the eyes to see. For he was the first sovereign since 

 Canute to realise the futility of trying to get blood out of a stone, and by 

 troubling himself about trade he managed to get infinitely more money 

 out of his people than any of his predecessors and at the same time left 

 them satisfied. It seems wonderful that the merits of his very simple 

 policy were not better recognised. After a few years of his rule the 

 utter futility of King Stephen came as a sad blow to English shipping, 

 for he was so busy with his own aflfairs that pirates swarmed in the 

 narrow seas. British shipping was cut to pieces and foreign merchants 

 soon learned to give England a wide berth. Both before and long after 

 Henry's time, however, foreign trade suffered because English laws 

 were all drafted by clerics who had not the least knowledge of 

 commercial matters. 

 Royal Interference. 



From the Norman Conquest right down to late mediaeval times trade 

 suffered from the constant interference of Kings and their counsellors 

 without the least knowledge of trade or of the inexorable law of supply 

 and demand. Everything had to be regulated by royal will. The wool 

 trade was stifled by the periodical prohibition of exports and time and 

 time again the wine trade practically collapsed because prices were fixed 

 by the King at a level which made it useless to try to import at a profit. 

 In addition traders suffered from State competition because the King 

 took his dues in kind to the extent of many times the amount of his 

 private needs and then sold the excess in the open market. 



The Crusades. 



The Crusades appertain to land rather than sea warfare but it is 

 necessary to mention them here on account of the strong influence they 

 had on British shipping in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The 

 general routine was to go overland to Marseilles and there embark, 

 generally in galleys supplied by the Venetian or other Mediterranean 



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