150 



The Merchants of the Staple, fyc. 



The important measure of releasing wool from all export duties, 

 seems, for a time at least, to have produced results, which needed 

 for their correction a statute of rather an opposite tendency. 

 Possibly the allowing unlimited free- trade in wool may have led to 

 so large an exportation of it from England that there was not 

 sufficient material left in the kingdom with which to carry on the 

 home manufacture. Hence in 1338 a statute was passed which 

 altogether forbad the exportation of wool, and allowed none within 

 the realm, save the Royal Family, to wear any cloth that was not 

 made in England, Ireland, Wales or Scotland. And yet further, 

 whilst it was forbidden for any cloth made beyond the seas to be 

 brought into England, free invitation was given to " all cloth- 

 workers of strange lands of whatsoever country they might be," to 

 come within the realm and dwell where they chose, the King 

 promising to grant franchises as many and such as might suffice 

 them. Meanwhile, moreover, we find a foreign staple re-established 

 at Antwerp in 1336, the quarrel with France, in which for a time 

 the Earl of Flanders leagued against England, preventing it being 

 fixed in the dominions of either of those sovereigns. No long time 

 afterwards, however we find it at Bruges. On the surrender of Calais 

 in 1347, we find that town chosen, for obvious reasons, as empha- 

 tically the foreign staple of England. Not only was that place 

 most easy of access from this country, but, whilst it opened the 

 door to the trade of France, it was by no means an inconvenient 

 "staple" for the merchants of Flanders and the Low Countries, 

 Moreover in the time of Edward III. when England had large 

 territorial possessions in the south of France, and the Black Prince 

 for some years held his court at Bordeaux, it was most important 

 that such a port as Calais should be in the hands of England. It 

 was, no doubt, for this reason, that Edward, immediately on the 

 fall of Calais, banished the French and peopled it exclusively with 

 English inhabitants. And ever afterwards, whilst it belonged to 

 this country, it " was governed by Englishmen and by English 

 laws, some particular customs excepted. Of a judgment given 

 there a writ of error did lye retornable into the King's Bench. 

 Children born there were inheritable in England and 



