Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/186

184 belonging to Lynne, carrying cloth to the value of 3623l., 5s. 11d., besides wine and other goods; and of a crayer belonging to Lynne, laden with osmunds and other goods to the value of 643l. 14s. 2d. Towards the close of the reign of Edward IV., it appears, from the orders issued for the manning of the fleet on the breaking out of the war with Scotland in 1481, the crown was possessed of no fewer than six ships of its own; which was probably the greatest royal navy that had existed in England since the reign of William the Conqueror.

The foreign trade of the country, as one of its most important interests, occupied much of the attention of the parliament called together by Richard III., in the first year of his reign. Of the fifteen acts passed by it, seven relate to commerce and manufactures. The subject of the first was chiefly the fabrication and dyeing of woollen cloths; and the preamble slates that it had been customary for the foreign merchants in their purchases of wool, to procure it sorted and picked, and to leave the locks and other refuse—by reason of which, it is added, there had come to be no manufacture of fine drapery in England. To remedy this evil, it was provided that, for the future, no wool should be sold to strangers cleaned from the locks or refuse, or in any other state than as it was shorn —an enactment conceived in the spirit of the very infancy and rudest barbarism of commercial legislation. The next chapter of the statute, entitled 'An Act touching the Merchants of Italy,' is very interesting for the information which it incidentally furnishes respecting the trade then carried on in this country by foreign merchants. The preamble represents, that