Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/694

 APPENDIX No. 8.

The following condensed syllabus from Rymer's "Fœdera," to which great work repeated reference has been made in the fore-*going pages, will serve to indicate the course of commerce between England and various states of the Continent between 1190 and 1460, and to exhibit, by the number of safe-*conducts demanded and granted, the degrees in which it was interrupted by the disputes between the different monarchs of the period, or by acts of piracy. Ample illustration is also therein given of the custom of the day of pressing into the king's service any vessel or vessels he might want for any purpose.

The names of all the states with which England was at war or at peace have been preserved, and a few incidental notices with reference to the course of trade, or of manners and customs. It will be observed that, during the reign of Edward the Third, the impressment of ships for the king's war service descended as low as vessels of twenty tons; and that in one instance, at least, the defence of the sea was specially laid as a duty on the mercantile community. Special forms of safe-conduct, and for the arrest of ships and mariners, are added in illustration from MSS. in the British Museum.

Extracts relating to Maritime affairs from Sir T. Duffus Hardy's "Syllabus of the Documents contained in Rymer's 'Fœdera.'"

1190.—Ordinances by the king for the punishment of crimes committed on shipboard during the voyage to Jerusalem.

1191, 27 March.—The king confirms to the men of Rye and Winchelsea their privileges as under Henry II., they finding two ships to complete the twenty ships of Hastings.

1208, 8 April.—The king requests his mariners and merchants to aid the barons of the Cinque Ports in arresting all ships found on the seas, and conveying them to England.

1213, 3 March.—The king orders the whole shipping from every port in England to be at Portsmouth by mid-Lent.