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Rh the owners of the sheep, and for his own use. In other words, the entire export trade in the commodity was made over to the foreign merchant, and he was at the same time confined to the export trade. The object obviously was to secure to the grower not only his proper profits, but in addition those of the wool-merchant and retailer, in so far as regarded the domestic consumption. But, besides the injury to the native merchant by his exclusion from the export trade, it was strangely forgotten that the monopoly of that trade secured to the foreigner must have deprived the grower of perhaps half his customers,—namely, of all the English dealers who would have purchased the article for exportation; and must thus, by diminishing competition, have tended to depress prices instead of raising them. Such, accordingly, is stated to have been the efFect produced. The contemporary historian Knyghton tells us that, in consequence of this prohibition of the export of wool by English merchants, the article lay unsold in many places for two and three years, and many of the growers were reduced to the greatest distress. In 1391, however, although the quantity of wool exported is affirmed to have been that year much less than formerly, the customs on it amounted to 160,000l. According to Robert of Avesbury, who is supposed to have died about 1356, the annual exportation of wool from England had, in his day, reached to above 100,000 sacks, the customs on which, at the duty of 50s. on the sack, would produce a revenue of above 250,000l, This estimate, however, is very inconsistent with the official account already quoted of the entire exports and imports for 1354, If it is to be at all received, it ought probably to be assigned to a date considerably later than that at which Avesbury is commonly assumed to have died.

The principal society of foreign merchants at this time established in England appears to have been that of the merchants of Cologne, They had a hall or factory in London called their Gildhall, for the saisine (or legal possession) of qhich they paid thirty marks to the crown in A.D. 1220. "It seems probable," says Macpherson,