Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/508

 to export any species of goods not restricted by the staple of Calais. Canynge appears to have been one of the most important ship-owners of England of the period. He is said to have possessed ships of four, five, and even nine hundred tons burden, which were far above the average size of the merchant vessels of the period. On one occasion he supplied Edward IV. with two thousand six hundred and seventy tons of shipping, a fact recorded on his famous monument in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, itself one of the most beautiful structures of the fifteenth century.[2]

As the commercial legislation of England, previously to the reign of Edward IV., had been full of irregularities and inconsistencies, exhibiting itself as at one time liberal in the extreme to foreigners against its own subjects, at another retaliatory to its own prejudice and unwise in its prohibitions; this monarch, on his accession to the throne, introduced various legislative measures professing to regulate upon something like fixed principles the maritime commerce of the country. Thus Parliament, in the third year of his reign, granted the king, for life, a subsidy of 3s. upon every tun of wine imported, and a poundage of twelve pennies in perpetuity on the prime cost of all goods exported or imported for the defence of the realm and especially for the guard of the sea. Another Act