Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/330

 314 thereof is not now extant. And indeed this is in expres words confeed by tatute 25 Edw. I. c. 7. wherein the king promies to take no cutoms from merchants, without the common aent of the realm, "aving to us and our heirs, the cutoms on wools, kins, and leather, formerly granted to us by the commonalty aforeaid." Thee were formerly called the hereditary cutoms of the crown; and were due on the exportation only of the aid three commodities, and of none other: which were tiled the taple commodities of the kingdom, becaue they were obliged to be brought to thoe ports where the king's taple was etablihed, in order to be there firt rated, and then exported. They were denominated in the barbarous Latin of our antient records, cutuma ; not conuetudines, which is the language of our law whenever it means merely uages. The duties on wool, heep-kins or woolfells, and leather, exported, were called cutuma antiqua ive magna; and were payable by every merchant, as well native as tranger; with this difference, that merchant trangers paid an additional toll, viz. half as much again as was paid by natives. The cutuma parva et nova were an impot of 3d. in the pound, due from merchant-trangers only, for all commodities as well imported as exported; which was uually called the alien's duty, and was firt granted in 31 Edw. I. But thee antient hereditary cutoms, epecially thoe on wool and woolfells, came to be of little account when the nation became enible of the advantages of a home manufacture, and prohibited the exportation of wool by tatute 11 Edw. III. c. 1. is alo another very antient hereditary duty belonging to the crown, called the priage or butlerage of wines; which is coniderably older than the cutoms, being taken notice of in the great roll of the exchequer, 8 Ric. I. till extant. Priage was a right of taking two tons of vine from every hip importing into Rh