THE BEGINNING OF TRADE 



profit could be made by this means when he exacted immediate pay- 

 ment but never paid his creditors. In the early days of Henry III the 

 first care of the Regent was to restore the Royal credit, but before long 

 the young king was following exactly the same lines as his predecessor 

 and even carrying them to greater lengths. He not only traded him- 

 self on the same system of credit but he gave orders that no wine was 

 to be allowed to be sold in England until he had unloaded his stock and 

 ships were impressed for the King's purposes without the least regard 

 for the rights or convenience of their owners. To add to the trouble 

 of the merchants the roads to the markets were most insecure and 

 cargoes landed at Southampton were constantly being attacked on the 

 road to London. On one occasion a vigorous counter-attack resulted 

 in a number of the robbers being captured, when it was discovered that 

 they were the King's own personal servants who had not been paid their 

 wages for months and who were adopting this method of getting a living. 

 Finally the finances of Henry III got to such a pitch that he gave orders 

 to his chancellor to borroiv wines and merchandise in Bordeaux and to 

 sell them at whatever they would fetch, no matter at how great a 

 sacrifice, in order to get a little ready money. 



Plunder by Land and Sea. 



From a very early age the wine fleet sailed together for mutual 

 protection and in the fourteenth century they were provided with a suit- 

 able armed escort, generally supplied jointly by the Cinque Ports and 

 the town of Bayonne. In the year 1372 Edward III fixed the reward 

 of this convoy at two shillings for every tun of wine landed safely in 

 England but ordered that all the profits of their own trading and any 

 prizes that they might take in the course of the voyage should be 

 deducted from this. There appears to have been considerable dispute 

 over the accounts. The routine was for the wine fleets to leave England 

 in the autumn, return before Christmas, and then to go down again 

 before Easter. Occasionally summer convoys were formed. Pirates 

 at sea, however, were not the only bandits that the wine trade had to 

 fear. It has already been recorded how the Germans were legally 

 looted off Oueenhythe and in 1505 it became the custom for every wine 

 ship that passed the Tower to give the lieutenant there two black leather 

 bottles, or lombards as they were called, from her cargo. Most of the 

 wine was unloaded at Billingsgate but a few ships came through the 

 drawbridge of London Bridge bringing foreign wines to Queenhythe 

 and also to Vintners' Wharf and Three Cranes Wharf whose position 

 can still be traced. 

 M erchantmen-at-A rms. 



As has already been shown in the history of the early military 

 operations of the Royal Navy, the King's Fleet was generally composed 

 more of armed merchant ships than of regular men-of-war and this 

 requisitioning of merchantmen was always a sore point with the shipping 

 industry. The King had the right from the earliest times, and in the 

 Norman period it was definitely laid down that he could issue writs to 



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