Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/209

Rh to sell and utter the commodities of their countries, and freely to buy again such thing's as seemed them most necessary and expedient for their profit and the weal of the country and parts that they be come from." Now, however, "the fellowship of the mercers and other merchants and adventurers dwelling and being free within the city of London," had made an ordinance and constitution that no Englishman resorting to the said marts should either buy or sell any goods or merchandises there, unless he first compounded and made fine with the said fellowship of merchants of London at their pleasure, upon pain of forfeiture of the goods so by him bought or sold; "which fine, imposition, and exaction," the petition goes on, "at the beginning, when it was first taken, was demanded by colour of a fraternity of St. Thomas of Canterbury, at which time the said fine was but the value of half an old noble sterling (3s. 4d.), and so by colour of such feigned holiness it hath be suffered to be taken for a few years past; and afterward it was increased to a hundred shillings Flemish; and now it is so that the said fellowship and merchants of London take of every Englishman or young merchant being there, at his first coming, twenty pounds sterling for a fine, to suffer him to buy and sell his own proper goods, wares, and merchandises that he hath there." It is asserted that the effect of this imposition had been to make all merchants not belonging to the London company withdraw themselves from the foreign marts, whereby the woollen cloth, which was one of the great commodities of the realm, "by making whereof the king's true subjects be put in occupation, and the poor people have most universally their living," and also other commodities produced in different parts of the kingdom, were not disposed of as formerly, "but, for lack of utterance of the same in divers parts where such cloths be made, they be conveyed to London, where they be sold far under the price that they be worth, and that they cost to the makers of the same, and at some time they be lent to long days, and the money thereof at divers times never paid." On the other hand, foreign commodities, the importation of which was now wholly