Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/91

Rh by the Conqueror, in 1068, there were in the harbour a great number of foreign merchants and mariners, who were compelled by the citizens to assist them in their defence. These notices occur incidentally in the relation of political transactions or military events; no chronicler has thought it worth his while to enumerate either the various points at which this foreign commerce was carried on, or the articles in the exchange of which it consisted. If our information were more complete, we should probably find that it was shared by various other towns besides those that have been mentioned. There is reason to believe that Hastings, Dover, Sandwich, and the other towns on the coast nearest to France, which afterwards came to be distinguished as the Cinque Ports, and also Lincoln, and York, and other places in the more northern parts of the kingdom, all at this time maintained some commercial intercourse with the continent—with Italy, and perhaps also with Spain, as well as with France and the north of Europe or Germany. An active trade, as noticed in the last Chapter, also seems to have existed between Ireland and both Bristol and Chester on the west coast.

The principal exports at this early period were probably the same that for many ages after constituted the staples of our trade with foreign countries, namely, the natural productions of the island—its tin and lead, its wool and hides, and sometimes perhaps also its beeves, and the other produce of the same description reared in its pastures and forests. We find a regular trade in these and other articles established at the most remote date to which it is possible to carry back the history of English commerce: and it may be safely presumed that they were the commodities for which the island was resorted to by foreign merchants from the earliest times. As for corn, it was probably at this date, as it long afterwards continued to be, sometimes an article of export, sometimes of import. The articles we have enumerated were, no doubt, those in the production of which the industry of the great body of the people was employed. The only manufacture for their skill in which the English were as E 3