Page images
PDF
EPUB

2

On the morrow of S. Laurence1 she embarked at with much pomp and many servants, and after imminent peril to life which they ran on the night of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, at daybreak on the said festival they lowered their sails at Bergen. Shortly afterwards she was solemnly crowned and proclaimed before all men by a distinguished company of kinsmen. She comported herself so graciously towards the king and his people that she altered their manners for the better, taught them the French and English languages, and set the fashion of more seemly dress and food. He only had one daughter by her, who survived her mother but a short time.

4

On the day before the nones of October [occurred] the translation of the blessed Hugh Bishop of Lincoln, which translation Master Thomas de Bek was the means of obtaining and liberally discharged all expenses. On the same day he was consecrated Bishop of S. David's by Friar John of Peckham, of the Order of Minorites, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the presence of Edward King of England and his Queen.

From the beginning of the world 6080 years, to wit, in the year of our Lord 1280, on S. Mark the Evangelist's day, it was decided in the court of Irthington that an attachment upon the elemosynary land of the prior and convent of Lanercost was null and void.

Item-My lord Ralph came to England about Ascension Day, consecrated as Bishop of Carlisle by the Roman Court. In the same year, on Thursday the ninth of the calends of November," a convocation was held by my lord Bishop Ralph in the principal church of Carlisle, and there was granted to him by the clergy a tithe of the churches for two years according to their actual value, to be paid in the new money within a year, wherefore we paid him in all twenty-four pounds. Wherefore Hs said as follows about that transaction :

8

[blocks in formation]

8 Perhaps the chronicler himself. Dr. James Wilson identifies this Brother H. with Henry de Burgo, who became Prior of Lanercost in 1310. Verses cease to appear in the chronicle after 1315, the year of Prior Henry's death.

But if the shepherd must have wool,
He should be tender, just and cool.'1

In the same year my lord . . . 2 received the canonical dress, on the day of St. Agapitus Martyr.3

In the same year, on the third of the Ides of September* my lord Edward King of England and Queen Eleanor came to Lanercost, and the prior and convent met them at the gate in their capes. Item, the king presented a silken robe, and the king in his hunting took, as was said, two hundred stags and hinds in Inglewood.

5

At that time some box of a certain page was broken [into], whereat H. said as follows:

'A pilfered chest yields shameful booty,

The thief, when caught, must learn his duty;
Ill-gotten gains return no profit,

Who steals his wealth makes nothing of it.'"

About the same time a certain young fellow was killed, about whom H. said:

8

'William, poor fellow, has proved by his fate,

He is wanting in prudence who stays out too late.' 7

In the same year, on Sunday, the eleventh of the Kalends. of April, Ralph, Lord Bishop of Carlisle, first came to Lanercost on a visitation, and the monks met him in the manner described above for the king, and afterwards he gave [them] benediction, and received all the brethren to the kiss of peace, and after his hand had first been kissed, he gave them a kiss on the lips; and having himself entered the chapter house, he preached, saying 'Behold I myself shall require.' The preaching being finished, he proceeded with his visitation, in which we were compelled to accept new constitutions.

1 Grex desolatus, pastore diu viduatus,
Sic cito tondere, non indiget, immo foveri ;
Grex desolatus, nimis hactenus extenuatus,
Jam comfortairi debet, non excoriari.
Sed si pastor oves habeat tendere necesse,
Debet ei pietas, modus et moderamem inesse.
4 11th September.

2 Blank in MS. 3 18th August.

8 22nd March.

6 Res, cista fracta, surrepta fuit male nacta;
Juste surreptus fuerat male census adeptus;
Finitur foeda prave saepissime praeda ;
Raro dives erit thesaurum qui male quaerit.
7 Garcifer occisus Willelmus testificatur
Quod non est sapiens nimium qui nocte vagatur.

5 In Cappis.

Scottish Trade with the Plantations before 1707

SCOTL

COTLAND, unlike the other countries in Western Europe, was very little influenced by the exploring and colonising impulses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there are few traces of any Scottish communication with America before the Restoration. One attempt was made to plant a Scottish settlement in America: that of Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, to whom was granted a charter for colonising in America in 1621. The land was called Nova Scotia, and a number of Nova Scotia baronets were created; but no settlement seems to have been made, although the claims of the Alexander family on the country are a subject of controversy later in the century.

A few Scottish ships sailed to Greenland for the whale fishing, but there they came into collision with some ships of the English Greenland Company, who resented the Scottish attempt to share their trade. One Scottish merchant, John Burnett, of Aberdeen, being the sole merchant of our Kingdom of Scotland that hath supplyed the plantacon of that our colony of Virginia,'1 received permission in 1634 to trade with that settlement, and to transport tobacco and any other merchandise.

[ocr errors]

The trade of the west of Scotland with America had scarcely begun before 1660; for in 1656 Tucker, in his Report on the Customs and Excise,' says of Glasgow: 'Here hath likewise been some who have ventured as far as Barbadoes, but the losses they have sustained by reason of their going out and coming home late every year, have made them discontinue going thither any more.' 2 During the Commonwealth about 2000 Scots were forced to settle in America, transported by the Government to Virginia, New England, Bermuda, Barbadoes, and Jamaica. In New England, and doubtless elsewhere, they seemed to have settled peaceably. John Cotton, writing from New England to Cromwell, says: He that brought most of

1 S.P. Col. ix. 118.

2 Report, p. 38.

them buildeth houses for them and layeth some acres of ground thereto which he giveth them as their own . . . and promiseth that... he will set them at liberty.'1

There was very little cause for English jealousy in the slight connection of Scotland with the Plantations; and Scotland might have reasonably hoped to continue at the Restoration her privileges of equal trading rights with English merchants and ships-privileges which had been hers since the union of 1603, unaffected by Cromwell's Navigation Act of 1651. But by the Navigation Act of 16602 she was excluded from all share in the English Plantation trade. This Act declared that no goods should be exported from any of His Majesty's Dominions in Asia, Africa or America except in ships belonging to England, Ireland, Wales, Berwick-upon-Tweed or the Plantations, of which the master and three-fourths of the crew were to be English. No goods of the growth or manufacture of Africa, Asia, or America were to be imported into England, etc., except in English or Colonial ships. No foreign goods were to be brought into England except in English ships or ships belonging to the country where the goods were produced. Aliens were to be excluded from the English coasting trade. Certain plantation commodities, sugar, tobacco, etc., were not to be shipped to any place except England or the English Plantations. By an Act for the Encouragement of Trade,' 1663, it was enacted that no goods were to be taken to the Plantations unless in English ships and shipped in England. Scottish servants and victual were excepted, and might be shipped in Scotland, but in English ships. Penalties for infringement of the acts were made more severe. The aims of the Navigation Acts were set forth in the preamble: And in regard His Majesties Plantations beyond the seas are inhabited and peopled by His subjects of this his kingdome of England, For the maintaining a greater correspondence and kindnesse betweene them and keepinge them in a firmer dependance upon it, and rendering them yet more beneficial and advantageous unto it in the further employment and encrease of English shipping and seamen, Vent of English Woollen and other manufactures and commodities . . and making this Kingdome a staple not only of the Commodities of those

1 Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), ii. p. 264.

212 Car. II. c. 18.

815 Car. II. c. 7.

3

Plantations but alsoe of the Commodities of other Countreyes and Places for the supplying of them..

1

In 1677, in a letter from the Treasury to the Governors of the Plantations, this preamble is recited with the addition : and for the further and more peculiar appropriating the trade of these plantations to the Kingdom of England exclusive from all other His Majesty's dominions': significant words, showing clearly that the Plantations were not intended to be beneficial and advantageous' to His Majesty's dominion of Scotland. Various reasons were given for the change of policy involved in treating the Scots as aliens after they had enjoyed nearly sixty years of free trade with England. One reason probably was that Scotland was independent of the control of the English Parliament, which had no desire to see her accumulate wealth in the disposal of which they could have no voice. Scotland also had had no share in the losses and hardships incurred in settling the Colonies, and therefore, according to seventeenth century ideas, had no claim to share the benefits which might arise from them. It was also feared that her admission to the trade might do actual damage to English interests. They in one word overthrew the very essence and designe of the Act of Navigation.' 'It will very much discourage the Building of English shipps when strangers shall enjoy the same Libtyes upon the English land.'?

[ocr errors]

The jealousy of the powerful East India Company had been aroused by rumours that the West Indian Islands were going to endeavour to produce the commodities of the East Indies, and the fear that Scotland, which had some trade with Barbadoes, might become a market for them. The first difficulty is in the poynt of plantatione exceedinglie stood upon in respect of the great tread at present with the Barbadoes, and hopes of dryving a richer tread heirefter with all the Illandis, they intending to plant synomon, nutmegis, cleues and peper, for they have sent to the East Indies for all thes plantis and they conceauve that if wee sall have any tread we willbe able to tak the tread from thame . . . and furnish many places of Europe with the commodities of these Plantations.'s There

[blocks in formation]

2 Report of the Commissioners of the Customs concerning Navigation, 1663. S.P. Dom. C. II. xliv. 12.

3 Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 565.

« PreviousContinue »