Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/170

168 that being the place to which all the Spanish exports were sent in the first instance. These consisted of figs, raisins, bastard wine, dates, liquorice, Seville oil, grain, Castile soap, wax, iron, wool, wadmole, skins of goats and kids, saffron, and quicksilver. With Portugal there was a direct intercourse, which was already considerable—wine, wax, grain, figs, raisins, honey, cordovan, dates, salt, and hides, being among the commodities imported from that country. A direct trade was also carried on with the Genoese, who resorted to England in great carracks, to purchase wool and woollen cloths of all colours, bringing to the country cloth of gold, silks, black pepper, great quantities of woad, wool, oil, wood-ashes, cotton, alum, and gold for paying their balances. Europe was now principally supplied with alum by the Genoese, who had obtained from the Greek emperor, Michael Palaeologus, the lease of a mountain on the coast of Asia Minor, containing a mine of that substance, and where a fort which they built became the origin of a town called New Phocæa, after a city which had anciently stood on the same site. Gibbon, however, appears to be mistaken in asserting that the different nations of Europe, and among others the English, resorted to New Phocæa. The alum was carried by the ships of the Genoese themselves to the ports of England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. In 1450, we find Henry VI. making a purchase of alum to the amount of 4000l. from some merchants of Genoa, and afterwards selling it for twice that sum. This transaction curiously illustrates the manner in which trade was at this period carried on by kings. The Genoese merchants were only paid in part by the money which they received, or rather which was promised them; for the bargain was, that their claim was to be discharged by the remission of that amount of custom-duties upon the goods brought and carried away by them: meanwhile, they were licensed by