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Rh lists of articles ordered to be purchased in England for foreign potentates, or permitted to be exported for their use without paying custom. One of these lists, dated in 1428, enumerates the following articles as then shipped for the use of the King of Portugal and the Countess of Holland. For the king, 6 silver cups, gilded, each of the weight of 6 marks (or 4 pounds); 1 piece of scarlet cloth; 1 piece of sanguine, dyed in grain; 1 piece of blood colour; 2 pieces of mustrevilers; 2 pieces of marble colour; 2 pieces of russet mustrevilers; 2 pieces of black cloth of lyre; 1 piece of white woollen cloth; 300 pieces of Essex straits for liveries; 2000 platters, dishes, saucers, pots, and other vessels, of electrum (some unknown substance—perhaps a kind of crockery); a number of beds of various kinds and sizes, with curtains, &c.; 60 rolls of worsted; 12 dozen of lances; and 26 ambling horses. For the countess, quantities of various woollen cloths; 12 yards of red figured satin; 2 pieces of white kersey; 3 mantles of rabbits' fur; 1½ timber of martens' fur; and a quantity of rye, whole and ground, in casks. All these articles, therefore, were at least to be now purchased in England; but it is probable that almost all of them were also the produce or manufacture of the country.

Another indication of the growing extension of the commerce of the kingdom is furnished by the instances now beginning to be of frequent occurrence of individuals rising to great wealth, and sometimes to rank and power, through the successful pursuit of trade. The most remarkable example of this kind of elevation is that of the De la Poles, successively Earls, Marquises, and Dukes of Suffolk, and eventually ruined by a royal alliance and a prospect of the succession to the crown. The founder of the greatness of this family, which shot so rapidly to so proud a height, and filled for a century so large a space in the history of the country, was a merchant originally of Ravensere (supposed to be the same with Ravenspur, on the east coast of Yorkshire, now obliterated), and afterwards of the neighbouring town of Hull, named William de la Pole, who flourished in the time of