Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/184

182 of these advances evinces the opulence which was now not unfrequent among the followers of commerce. In the preceding reign, according to the statement in an act of parliament passed in 1449, the annual revenue derived from the customs at the great staple of Calais, which in the reign of Edward III. had amounted to 68,000l., had then fallen to 12,000l.; under which state of things the commons of the land, it is affirmed, were "not enriched by their wools and woolfels and other merchandise, as they were wont to be, the merchants greatly diminished as well in number as in goods, and not of power nor of comfort to buy the wools and woolfels and other merchandises, as they have done of old time, the soldiers of Calais and of the marches there not paid of their wages, and the town of Calais by default of reparation likely to be destroyed." Within a few years from this date, however, the merchants of Calais were wealthy enough to lend King Edward what was a large amount of money in those days. In 1464 he is stated, in the Rolls of Parliament, to have owed them 32,861l., for payment of which they were assigned a yearly instalment out of the subsidies on wool. He continued, however, to borrow largely in subsequent years; so that in 1468 he was still owing them about 33,000l., a debt which he increased the next year by 10,000l., borrowed of them for payment of a part of his sister's portion to the Duke of Burgundy. On many other occasions he resorted for pecuniary assistance to the same quarter. Another quarter to which he repeatedly had recourse was that of the famous Medici, the princely merchants of Florence. Comines assures us that one of the agents of Cosmo de' Medici was chiefly instrumental in enabling him to mount the throne, by furnishing him at one time with a sum of not less than 120,000 crowns. Florence, we may remark, was now growing rich by the Oriental trade, which had nearly left Genoa, torn as the latter republic was by internal dissensions, as well as deprived of all its possessions in the East by the conquests of the Turks.