fair competition both adequate supplies and low prices. The aims of mediaeval legislators were permeated by conceptions of a 'just price' that was fair alike to producer and consumer. They sought, in terms laid down in a municipal ordinance at Chester, to ensure the sale of "good and wholesome victual at reasonable prices "1. Accordingly prices were often regulated by authority; at Coventry, for example, the mayor compiled a book of the price of victuals" and set it upon the south door of the minster "2. At the same time repeated efforts were made to extirpate the kindred abuses of engrossing, forestalling and regrating 3. Engrossers purchased corn while it was "standing in the field unshorn and growing ", or before it was winnowed or brought to the market, and then kept it back till its value had risen. Forestallers bought up goods or victuals on their way to the market to get them more cheaply. Regrators purchased commodities in the market itself at advantage, and sold them again at higher prices. These offences violated mediaeval conceptions of commercial morality, and were the more dreaded since the narrow area from which supplies were drawn aggravated enormously the evils of a dearth or a corner" in trade. The extent to which forestalling heightened prices may be gathered from complaints made at Norwich in 1375, that "Roger de Bergham to such an extent forestalled divers kinds of corn by himself and his servants in the market, and in the streets, lanes and gates of the city, that the price of one coomb [four bushels] of wheat rose from forty-two pence to five shillings "4. Again in 1411 a commission was appointed to inquire into cases of forestalling, and at Beccles it found that one offender had bought sixty quarters of barley at forty pence the quarter and sold them at double the price 5. Apart from the desire to avoid extortion, the activity of the magistrates was doubtless stimulated by the fact that forestalling involved loss of toll, 1 Morris, Chester, 403. 2 Coventry Leet Book, iii. 589 (1498). For other examples of municipal regulation of prices, infra, p. 339. 3 Statutes, iv. part i. 148. See also Illingworth, Inquiry into Forestalling (1800), 9 seq.; and (for Chester), Morris, 395-403. 4 Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, 64. Similarly 65. and was "to the great hindrance of the city revenues"1. Among the municipal records of Bristol we find a vivid and unsparing denunciation of forestalling in terms that are constantly reproduced in mediaeval documents 2. The forestaller is described as "a manifest oppressor of the poor and a public enemy of the whole commonalty and country, who hastens to buy before others, grain, fish, herrings, or anything vendible whatsoever, coming by land or by water . . . making gain, oppressing his poorer and despising his richer neighbours, and who designs to sell more dearly what he so unjustly acquired. Who also besets foreign merchants coming with their merchandise, offering to sell their goods for them, and suggesting to them that they could sell their goods more dearly than they were proposing to sell them, and so by fraudulent art or craft he misleads town and country". The forestaller was forbidden to dwell in towns, and statute law was reinforced by charters and local regulations by which the burgesses endeavoured to supervise and control the market. To prevent engrossing, we find ordinances that no victualler should conceal the provisions which he had to sell, and that no one should store any grain from one market to another to sell it at a higher price under penalty of forfeiting his stock. The orders of the Court of Admiralty bade inquiry be made concerning merchants and mariners, who went out of the ports to meet ships laden with merchandise and bought up their cargoes wholesale. In London also forestalling was prohibited, and an ordinance against regrating forbade retail dealers to buy corn, fish, poultry, or victuals before sunrise, or "before the reputable men of the city have bought, under penalty of forfeiting the goods bought". In many other towns also, at York, Norwich, Bristol, Chester, Southampton and Beverley, no corn or grain was sold in the market 1 Morris, Chester, 400; Hudson, Leet Jurisdiction, 2, 62. 2 Little Red Book of Bristol, ii. 220. Similarly Statutes, i. 203, etc. For laws against forestalling, see Illingworth, op. cit. 21-89. 3 Birch, Charters of London, 40 (1268); Roberts, Lyme Regis, 27 (1285). 4 Riley, Memorials of London, 312; Little Red Book of Bristol, ii. 225. 5 Black Book of the Admiralty, i. 71. 7 Riley, Liber Albus, i. 263; Letter Book A, 217. (i.) Drake, Eboracum, 213; (ii.) Records of Norwich, i. 181; (iii.) place until the market bell had rung and the citizens had made their purchases: the forestaller was punished by the seizure of his stock, and, if a burgess, sometimes also with the loss of freedom and civic rights1. But the difficulty with which these evils were combated is shown by the remark of a seventeenth-century writer, that in his time these monopolists began to swarm like the frogs of Egypt”. The fishmongers, for example, avoided punishment by concealing their fish and exposing only one at a time for sale 3. It is not unlikely that the ordinances against corn specu- Municipal granaries. lation overstepped the limits of their legitimate application, and led to a shortage of supply by discouraging the qualities of prudence and foresight. In London it frequently became necessary for the municipal authorities to take steps to avert famine; in 1417 the king sent a letter to the Master-General of the Teutonic Order, asking him to encourage the export of corn from Prussia into England. In 1429 there was extreme scarcity, and the common council of London sent abroad to buy corn for the inhabitants 5; ten years later the mayor caused corn to be brought from Prussia. A merchant of Bristol bequeathed to the town a hundred marks to be employed in purchasing corn for the use of the town whenever a scarcity occurred, and at Norwich wheat and other grain were bought for the city and sold in the market to the poor at reasonable prices. Indeed the pressure of circumstances forced upon the municipalities the recognition that, if engrossing and forestalling were prohibited to the individual, it was all the more incumbent upon them to exercise foresight and adopt precautionary measures by the institution of municipal granaries". Little Red Book of Bristol, i. 38, 39; (iv.) Morris, Chester, 395-396; (v.) 1 Records of Nottingham, i. 323 (stock forfeited); Bacon, Ipswich, 54 (citizenship forfeited). 2 Powell, Ancient Courts of Leet, cit. Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction, 114. 4 Letter Book I, 174. 3 Morris, Chester, 400. Ibid. K, 92. • Stow, Survey (ed. Kingsford), i. 109. 7 Little Red Book of Bristol, i. 174 (1434). 8 Records of Norwich, ii. 126 (1550). On municipal granaries, etc., see Ashley, Economic History, ii. 33-38, and Leadam, Select Cases in the Star Chamber, vol. ii. Introd. III. Attention has been drawn to a marked characteristic of English mediaeval towns, the cohesion, self-dependency and jealous isolation of the various municipal units. Nowhere is this characteristic more apparent than in the relations of the burghal communities with one another. They advanced claims for the redress of their wrongs, or made threats of reprisals, after the fashion of independent city-states armed with active powers of coercion and aggression. One illustration will serve as typical of the rest. A letter was addressed by the mayor of London in 1352 to the town of Sandwich, stating that three letters had already been sent desiring redress for an injury done to a London citizen, but without avail. They were again admonished to make satisfaction since no further delay of justice could be tolerated, the complainant having already claimed 'withernam' of the men of Sandwich coming to London with their goods, "which they could not refuse according to the liberties and customs of the city". English towns in fact carried on their dealings with each other exactly in the same way as with foreign towns. Letters to towns abroad are identical in style and contents with those directed to towns in England. A letter sent to Dunkirk, requesting payment of a debt due to a citizen of London, is similar to a letter sent for a like purpose to the town of Colchester 2. Commercial relations were not international but intermunicipal, and each town presented to its neighbours the same impenetrable front which modern nations nowadays exhibit towards one another. The growing practice of commercial treaties between towns was the natural outcome of a condition of society in which burghal development had outstripped national development, and in which the ascendancy of the towns dominated the movements of economic life. When disputes over tolls arose, treaties were a convenient method of settling controversy. In 1265 the citizens of Winchester and the burgesses of Southampton agreed to a 1 Sharpe, Cal. of Letters, 24. At the end of the sixteenth century letters over toll were still being exchanged between municipalities: Jeake, Charters of the Cinque Ports, 57. Sharpe, Cal. of Letters, 2, 4, 14, 16, 58. composition that neither should exact toll from the other 1. In 1279 a similar arrangement was made between Nottingham and Derby 2, in 1304 between London and Winchester 3, in 1329 between Salisbury and Southampton 4, in 1452 between Nottingham and Coventry 5, and in 1549 between Cambridge and Lynn. There was also direct intercourse between towns in England and on the continent; the citizens of Amiens, Corbe and Nestle were admitted to special privileges in London and Norwich as a result of commercial treaties, and London also entered into a commercial treaty with Bayonne (1442) 8. This intercourse was carried on directly, and not through the medium of the central government. In certain directions, however, it is possible to trace from an early date the spread of a uniform economic system and the gradual concentration of national activities in the state. When a town received a charter of enfranchisement it usually adopted the customs of some other town, London, Winchester, Oxford, Breteuil or Bristol, which served as a model for the rest. The charter of the merchant gild at Oxford gave it "all the customs, franchises and laws which belong to the citizens of London", and towns frequently made application to the mother town for information respecting its customs and legal procedure 10. This affiliation of boroughs did not invest the parent borough with any rights of political interference or control over the affairs of the daughter town. Their relations were analogous to those of a Greek citystate and its colonies, which cherished the sacred fire taken 1 Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 256. 3 Letter Book C, 133. 5 Records of Nottingham, ii. 362. 2 Records of Nottingham, i. 55. 4 Oak Book of Southampton, ii. 18. 6 Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. iii. 246. Infra, p. 450. 3 Letter Book K, 270-271. Cf. letters sent abroad to foreign towns complaining of deceits in the textile industries: ibid. I, 257. 9 Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. 671; Collectanea (Oxford Hist. Soc.), iii. No. 45. Henry II. gave Redcliffe the customs and liberties of Bristol (c. 1164) Latimer, Bristol Charters, 7. Preston received "all the liberties and free customs which I have granted to my burgesses of Newcastleunder-Lyme": Abram, Memorials of the Preston Guilds, 3. On the affiliation of boroughs, see Gross, Gild Merchant, i. App. E. 10 Application of Oxford to London: Sharpe, Cal. of Letters, 90, and next note. Application of Droslan to Hereford: Journal British Archæol. Assoc. xxvii. 460. |