Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/193

Rh harness (or defensive armour), spears, shafts, bows, and staves. The same parliament also passed a law for establishin a uniformity of weights and measures. From a law of 1428, permitting merchants, for a year ensuing, to ship their goods in foreign vessels where Scottish ones were not to be found, it would appear that a Scottish navigation act existed before this time, although no record of it has been preserved. In 1430, a law was passed to which the epithet of anti-commercial may be applied, ordaining, that cloths made of silk, or adorned with the finer furs, should not be worn by any person under the rank of a knight, or whose annual income was less than 200 marks. This proves, however, that these expensive kinds of dress were then well known in the country, and were even in use among those who did not belong to the wealthiest classes. This same year King James imported from London for his own use the following articles—which it may therefore be presumed he could not procure at home so readily or of so good a quality:—20 tuns of wine; 12 bows; 4 dozen yards of cloth of different colours; 12 yards of scarlet; 20 yards of red worsted; 8 dozen pewter vessels; 1200 wooden bowls, packed in four barrels; 3 dozen coverels, a basin, and font; 2 summer saddles, 1 hackney saddle, a woman's saddle with furniture; 2 portmanteaus; 4 yards of motley; 5 yards of morrey; 5 yards of black cloth of lyre; 12 yards of kersey; and 12 skins of red leather. These goods were shipped for Scotland in a vessel belonging to London, accompanied by an order of King Henry, securing them from molestation by English cruizers. In 1435 we find James purchasing 30 fodders of lead from the Bishop of Durham; for the export of which, either by land or water, on payment of the usual customs, an order was granted by the English council. A law of the Scottish parliament in 1424 had declared all mines to belong to the crown that yielded three halfpennies of silver in the pound of lead; and Mr. Macpherson thinks that the import of lead from England probably became necessary in