Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/194

192 consequence of the check which this enactment put upon the operations of mining. A scarcity of the precious metals also seems to have been about this time felt, if we may judge by a law of the year 1436, which enacted that the exporters of native produce should give security to bring home, and deliver to the master of the mint, a certain quantity of bullion for every sack of wool, last of hides, or measure of other goods which they carried abroad.

One of the most eminent of the Scottish merchants of this age was William Elphinstone, who is regarded as the founder of the commerce of Glasgow, as his son Bishop Elphinstone, towards the close of the century, was of the University of Aberdeen. Elphinstone's trade is supposed to have consisted in exporting pickled salmon. Two Scottish merchants, George Faulau and John Dalrymple, repeatedly appear soon after this as employed by James II., in embassies and other public business, along with noblemen and clergymen. A law was passed in 1458, prohibiting any person from going abroad as a merchant, unless, besides being a person of good credit, he either possessed or had consigned to him property to the amount of three serplaiths—the serplaith being, according to the common account, eighty stones of wool. Merchants were at the same time forbidden to wear silk, scarlet, or fur of martens, unless they were aldermen, bailies, or in some other capacity members of a town council. The social estimation in which commercial men were at this time held in Scotland may in some degree be gathered from another clause of the act, which commands that poor gentlemen living in the country, having estates of more than 40l. a-year of old extent, should dress as merchants. The dress of the wives of merchants, as well as their own, was regulated by this statute: they are directed to take especial care to make their wives and daughters be habited in a manner correspondent to their estate; that is to say, on their heads short curches, with little hoods, such as aroused in Flanders, England, and other countries; and gowns without tails of unbefitting length, or trimmed with furs, except on holidays. Further, as if it had been