Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/255

 1922 LAW MERCHANT IN LONDON IN 1292 247 be confident, this fact, but the presence of both parties at the fair that gave the court jurisdiction. 1 In the fourteenth century the city authorities would seem to have disliked interfering in a case unless some essential act had or ought to have been performed in London, payment or delivery made or account rendered ; 2 and there is preserved a correspondence in 1299 and 1300 with the mayor and the wardens of the fair of Cham- pagne and Brie which points to a reluctance to take proceedings against a foreign subject in the case of a contract executed abroad. After three requests to seize the goods and bodies of certain Florentine merchants to compel payment of a debt and a reply that the debtors had made satisfaction as evidenced by a document under the seal of the wardens of the fair, which the latter repudiate, the mayor finally declines to take action except by special order of the king, inasmuch as the Florentines were not freemen of the city. 3 The international character of the law merchant, if it ever was firmly established in England, was clearly breaking down : even the fear of reprisals which inspired terror in 1292 does not move the city authorities sufficiently in 1300 to execute a request which the theory of the law merchant would seem to make imperative : it is true the reprisals threatened were limited to exclusion from the fair. 4 Two points remain to be noticed. Of the complaint of the men of the craft (de officio), presumably fishmongers, that Thomas Lucas's trickery had stopped all trade at Lynn on the terms customary between merchants, there is no trace in the proceedings in the warden's court : nor, unless we may assume that this was an aspect of the case discussed by the aldermen, is there any trace of the representation of the citizens that unless speedy remedy were given to the aggrieved merchant of Almaine, their own goods might be seized overseas. The endorsement on the last document in the file appears to be an addition made in the chancery when the writ was returned : it is of interest as an early example of a mercantile case being sent for hearing before the council, 5 and as indicating that in the provision of the statute of the Staple which gave jurisdiction in error to the chancellor 1 Ibid. pp. 59, 75. 2 Mun. Gildh. Land. i. 216 ; above, p. 245, n. 6 3 Gal. Letter Book C, pp. 59, 64, 76, 77; Delpit, Documents fran^ais en Angleterre, nos. Ixii, Ixviii, Ixix, Jxxi. 4 Their attitude was perhaps not uninfluenced by the common law. Cf. Abbre- viatio Placitorum, p. 201 (1291): 'Quod non est consuetudo Anglic quod aliquis respondeat in regno Anglie de aliqua transgressione facta in extranea regione tempore guerre vel alio modo.' 5 This is, of course, by no means the earliest case. See Curia Regis Roll, no. 115 B, m. 16d., for an action between Florentine merchants and their agent in 1234. The plaintiffs agree ' quod secundum consuetudinem Regni Anglie deducantur et iusticiam habeant'.