Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/445

 but among all nations on the Baltic Sea. Further, it was declared by the forty-first article of Magna Charta, 1215, "that all merchants shall have safe conduct to go out of or come into England, and to stay there. To pass either by land or by water, and to buy and sell by the ancient and allowed customs without any civil tolls (an excessive tax on sales), except in time of war, or when there shall happen to be any nation at war with us."

Lord Justice Coke, in his comments on this famous charter, is of opinion that the merchants here mentioned were strangers, as few Englishmen at that time traded directly with foreign countries; some years elapsing before an English association began conducting, on its own account, a foreign trade with English wool, tin, lead, and leather. But during the reign of King John, the merchant navy found abundance of profitable employment, for the wars he engaged in required a large amount of tonnage. Moreover, the ship-owners and seamen are known to have supported him in his contentions with the nobles; and William of Malmesbury speaks of the fame of London for its extensive commerce, and of the crowd of foreign merchants, especially Germans, who flocked there, and filled the Thames with their ships. Bristol, also, appears from the same authority to have been then a flourishing port for ships from Ireland, Norway, or other foreign parts. But the people, and especially the monks and nobles,