THE BEGINNING OF TRADE 



for the trip, and three years later we appear to have had quite an estab- 

 lished carrying trade, for merchants of Spain and Portugal were taking 

 up British ships to transport their goods to Flanders. Henry V in 1423 

 hired his ship the Holigost to some Lombard merchants for a journey to 

 Zeeland and back for twenty pounds, which has been worked out on 

 modern values as a rate of about eight shillings a ton for a two months' 

 voyage. 



Warships in Trade. 



While the early fighting fleets were composed principally of armed 

 merchant ships there were occasions on which the procedure was 

 reversed and men-of-war were employed in trade. The custom began 

 in the time of Henry III — before which Royal ships were not large 

 enough to attract the traders — and continued down to the reign 

 of Elizabeth. As a rule the King chartered his ships for a lower price 

 than private owners could manage, considering that he obtained a big 

 advantage in keeping them maintained and manned. 



The Perils of the Sea. 



One would have thought that the faulty construction of their ships 

 would have given the early travellers quite enough cause for fear, but 

 they had to add superstition and all sorts of terrors until one cannot but 

 admire the religious fervour of the pilgrims that persuaded them to 

 undertake their voyages at all. Writing in 1350 one Ludolph of 

 Cucham gives a most terrifying catalogue, and among the monsters he 

 mentions there is the sea swine which apparently rises up near a ship 

 and begs. " If the sailors give it bread it departs ; but if it will not 

 depart then it may be terrified and put to flight by the sight of a man's 

 angry and terrible face. He must look at it boldly and severely and 

 must not let it see that he is afraid, otherwise it will not depart but will 

 bite and tear the ship." 



The Wool Trade. 



One of the first great trades in England was the wool trade which 

 was considerable under the Romans, while we contrived to get a far 

 finer material than any of our Continental rivals as early as the thir- 

 teenth century. By the fourteenth it was firmly established and duly 

 taxed by the King, in fact one of the earliest forms of smuggling in 

 England was getting wool out of the country, not smuggling anything in. 

 The Flemish towns existed on British wool and frequently it served the 

 political purpose of the King to embarrass them by prohibiting the 

 export, until finally these occasions got so frequent that Parliament took 

 the matter into its own hands. Some of the towns on the North East 

 coast came into existence almost entirely for the purpose of facilitating 

 the smuggling of wool, although the tax was nominally supposed to go to 

 the maintenance of the Navv for the purpose of protecting merchant 

 ships against piracy. British wool went as far afield as the Mediter- 

 ranean ports, but normally it was only allowed to go through certain 

 ports on the Continent. It was not until the reign of Edward III that 



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