Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/114

112 the amount paid by which is mentioned; it is set down as paying 158l., and must therefore have already grown to considerable consequence, although only founded little more than a century before this time. Hull also appears for the first time as a place of trade only in the close of the last reign.

That several of the Scotch burghs were at this period possessed of very considerable opulence is testified by their having, in 1209, contributed 6000 marks of the 15,000 which William the Lion bound himself to pay to John by the treaty of Berwick. In this age Mr. Macpherson calculates that 6000 marks would have purchased in Scotland about 240,000 bolls of oats, or 60,000 bolls of wheat. Among other countries, a trade with Norway appears to have been carried on by the Scotch in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Among the articles which are mentioned in the monastic chartularies of the country as paying tithe at this time are wool, corn, butter, cheese, cattle, fish, and flax. From the occurrence of the last article it may be inferred that some linen was already made in Scotland.

It was in the reign of John that their first great naval victory was gained by the English, at the battle of Damme, or of the Sluys, as it is sometimes called, fought in 1213. As yet, however, the country possessed nothing that could properly be called a navy. The royal navy usually consisted merely of merchant-ships collected from all the ports of the kingdom, each of which, as we have seen, was bound, when required by the king, to furnish him with a certain number. In pressing emergencies, indeed, the king seized upon the whole mercantile shipping of the kingdom, or as much of it as he required; "so that in those times," as the historian of commerce observes, "the owners could never call their vessels their own." "A striking illustration," it is added, "of the king's claim of right to the services of all merchant-ships appears in a letter written by Edward II. to the king of Norway, upon the detention of three English vessels, which he concludes by saying, that he cannot quietly put up with the vessels belonging to his kingdom, which ought at all times to be