Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/584

 conduct amongst the merchants, and, besides other miscellaneous duties, to prevent "gambling and swearing." Every Eastern consul was allowed a secretary at four florins a month, two attendants, three horses, and a dragoman, with an annual salary of four thousand aspers. He was strictly prohibited from carrying on trade of any kind on his own account, and was not allowed, under a heavy penalty, to act as consul for other nations or advocate the cause of strangers.

In London, the Florentine consul received by way of remuneration one-twelfth of a penny for every pound sterling of exchange; a penny and half-penny on every pound sterling value of merchandize bought and sold; a penny and half-farthing on every pound sterling of securities; and ten pounds sterling on the cargo of any Florentine galley that arrived in England, on board of which the merchants were compelled to embark their goods, or were subject to the freight if they did not do so. Similar privileges were granted to the consuls at Lyons and in Flanders: in Bruges they were even more specially favoured, as there the Florentine establishments, as we have seen, had flourished since the commencement of the thirteenth century, and her merchants were the most wealthy, and probably also the most numerous and influential in the city. Indeed, so powerful had the Florentine merchants and bankers become in foreign ports that, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centu*