Chapter X: Commerce and Trade (2)

Fish was not allowed to be sold retail upon the quays. The stalls in Stocks Market were occupied by the fishmongers on fish days, and by the butchers on flesh days. Other retail markets for fish were held by the wall of St. Margaret's Church, New Fish Street, by the wall of St. Mary Magdalen's in Old Fish Street, and in Westcheap. Stow writes of the first of these places: 'In this Old Fish Street is one row of small houses, placed along in the midst of Knightrider Street which row is also off Bread Street ward. These houses, now possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable boards or stalls set out on market days to show their fish there to be sold; but procuring license to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little to tall houses of three or four stories in height.' Salmon, cod, and herrings are mentioned in the _Liber Albus_ as being sold in the shops in the neighbourhood of Queenhithe.

Old Fish Street, and Old Fish Street Hill which run from it to the Thames, with Queenhithe as their landing-quay, formed the chief fish market of London before Billingsgate supplanted Queenhithe.

A curious regulation is found in a royal ordinance in existence as early as the reign of Henry III., by which the first boat in the season with fresh herrings from Yarmouth was forced to pay double custom at the quay.

Fishmongers selling fish in large quantities to their customers were to sell by the basket, such basket to be capable of containing one bushel of oats, and, if found deficient, to be burnt in open market. Each basket was also to contain one kind of sea-fish, and the fishmongers were warned not to colour their baskets; or, in other words, not to put good fish on the top and inferior beneath. Very stringent regulations were also made with respect to the size of nets used for fishing in the Thames, and any such which were contrary to these regulations were ruthlessly destroyed.

The trade of the Stock fishmonger was quite distinct from that of the ordinary fishmonger, and these belonged respectively to two separate companies. They were united in 1537. Thames Street was formerly known as Stockfishmonger Row. The Abbot of St. Alban's enjoyed the privilege of buying fish directly of the fishermen, for which he paid the bailiff of the market a fee of one mark per annum. The monks, however, appear to have taken an undue advantage of their privilege, and an order was issued by the Hallmote of the Fishmongers, _temp._ Edward I., 'that good care be taken that the buyers of the abbey take out of the city fish for the use of the abbot and convent only.'[332]

_Poulterers._--Many of the streets of London must have been almost impassable from the stalls of the traders and the chaffering of the buyers and sellers. This evil grew, and the complaints of obstruction were great. Endeavours were made to provide covered markets, but so many of the trades had special stands appropriated to them, as we see on all sides by the names of the streets, that it was impossible to dislodge them.

Free poulterers had several special localities appropriated to their use. One was Cornhill--they were ordered to stand at the west side of St. Michael's Church, and were strictly forbidden to sell to the east of the Tun, the site of which and the Conduit are now marked by an unused pump, nearly facing No. 30 Cornhill. Another standing was close by, and still retains the name of the Poultry. Stow tells that it was once known as Scalding Alley, because the poultry which the poulterers sold was scalded there. Still another standing was in Newgate Street, close by the butchers' shambles. 'Foreign' poulterers were ordered to sell their wares at the corner of Leadenhall, known as the Carfukes (or Carfax).

The articles dealt in by poulterers were rabbits, game, eggs and poultry. Eggs were brought to market in baskets on men's backs, and poultry upon horses. The prices of poultry, like those of other food, were assessed by the Mayor from time to time, and duly proclaimed. In the reign of Edward I. the best hen was sold for 3d., the best rabbit, with the skin, for 5d., and without for 4d., 100 eggs (120 to the hundred) for 8d., a partridge for 3d., a plover for 2d., and eight larks for 1d.[333]

The body of London citizens suffered from one great evil in marketing, and that was that lords and great people were allowed the pick of the market. It was a common practice for the purveyors and servants of these great people to visit the various markets between midnight and prime (6 a.m.), after which hour the poorer classes were allowed to market. It is thus ordered by a proclamation of Edward I., that no poulterer, fishmonger or regrator shall buy any kind of victuals for re-sale until prime has been run out at St. Paul's, 'so that the buyers for the King and the great lords of the land and the good people of the city may make good their purchases, so far as they shall need.'[334]

_Grocers._--The grocers (properly 'grossers,' or wholesale sellers in gross) were for some time the chief of the victualling companies. They were originally known as the pepperers of Soper Lane, and the apothecaries were associated with the grocers until they were incorporated as a distinct company in 1617.

By various charters and ordinances the company of grocers was entrusted with the examining, sorting and passing of spices and drugs. They were empowered to enter the shops of grocers, druggists, confectioners, tobacconists and tobacco cutters within the city and three miles around it, to seize and confiscate adulterated and unwholesome goods, and to fine and, in default of payment, imprison delinquent dealers.

_Brewers and Vintners._--A passing allusion must be made to the sale of drink in London, which has always been very considerable. Mr. Riley tells us that there is no mention of milk as an article of sale or otherwise in the _Liber Albus_, and butter must have been of very inferior quality, for it was sold by liquid measure. The ale tavern, or ale-house, was a distinct establishment from the wine tavern. In 1309 the number of taverns in London was 354, whilst the number of brewers amounted to no less than 1334.[335]

The ale brewed was a very different product from what we understand by the term now, as malt liquor was not hopped in those days. Hops were not used in the making of beer until the early years of the sixteenth century. Mr. Riley says that the best ale was no better than sweet wort, and so thin that it might be drunk in potations 'pottle deep,' without danger to the head. The smallest measure mentioned in the _Liber Albus_ is the quart, so that it was evidently drunk in large quantities. It was used immediately after being made, as may be inferred from the fact that, according to the _Domesday of St. Paul's_, the brewings at the Cathedral brewery took place twice a week throughout the year. Immediately after a brewing was finished it was the duty of the brewer (or rather brewster, for the business was almost entirely in the hands of women until the beginning of the sixteenth century) to send for the ale-conner of the ward in order to taste the ale. If this officer was not satisfied with its quality, he, with the assent of his alderman, set a lower price upon it, which upon sale thereof was not to be exceeded. Fine, imprisonment, and even punishment by pillory was the result of reiterated breaches of the Assize. The Assize price of ale varied at different periods. At one time it was 3/4d. per gallon and no more, but later the price was 1-1/2d. for the best, and 3/4d. to 1d. for the second quality.[336]

The vintners were an important body, and were mostly located in the Vintry, a district which has kept its name to the present time. The Vintners' Company consisted of _vinetarii_, or wine importers and merchants, and _tabernarii_, tavern keepers, or retailers of wine.

The public taste in wine was not a very refined one in the Middle Ages, or possibly the liquor did not keep very well, as new wine was preferred to old. It was enacted that after the arrival of new wine at a tavern none of it should be sold before the old was disposed of. There is no allusion in the _Liber Albus_ to bottles or flasks, and all the wine seems to have been drawn from the wood. Taverners who sold sweet wines were forbidden to deal in other kinds. The sweet wines enumerated are Malvesie, the modern Malmsey, a Greek wine sold in the reign of Richard II. at 16d. per gallon; Vernage (Vernaccia), a red Tuscan wine, sold at 2s.; Crete, sold at 1s; and wine of Provence, sold at the same price, probably a kind of Roussillon. By royal writ of 39 Edw. III., only three taverns for the sale of sweet wines were in future to be permitted within the city,--in Cheap, Walbrook, and Lombard Street. In the class of non-sweet wines were Rhenish, sold in the reign of Richard II. at 8d. per gallon, and Red (Vermaille) at 6d. Other wines came from Gascony, Burgundy, Rochelle, and Spain.

No wine was permitted to be sold till it had been submitted to a scrutiny, and been duly gauged. In the reign of Edward III. four vintners were chosen yearly to assess the prices of wine. King's Prisage, or Custom, was taken according to a certain scale on all imported wines. The wine taverns were furnished with a pole projecting from the gable of the house, and supporting a sign, or a bunch of leaves at the end (the bush of the proverb, 'Good wine needs no bush'). In one ordinance it is stated that the poles of the taverns of Cheapside and elsewhere were of such a length as to be in the way of persons on horseback, and so heavy as to cause the risk of greatly damaging the houses; in consequence of this it was enacted that from thenceforth no sign-pole should be more than seven feet in length.[337]

No ale or wine tavern was allowed to remain open after curfew.

The clothing trades are well represented among the city companies. The Mercers head the list of the 'Twelve,' and the freemen were originally 'chapmen in small or mixed wares,' that is, those articles which were sold retail by the little balance or small scale, in contradistinction to those things sold by the beam, or in gross, and they did business in the Mercery, Cheapside. Wadmal, a coarse woollen stuff, lake or fine linen, fustian, felt, etc., were among these smallwares. Gradually the mercers of Cheap extended their dealings, became vendors of silks and velvets (_temp._ Henry VI.), and formed a mixed body of merchants and shopkeepers, leaving the smallwares, or mercery proper, to the haberdashers. Sir William Stone held the position of mercer to Queen Elizabeth, and supplied her with her wardrobe.

The Haberdashers imported a cloth at first styled _halberject_, and in the fourteenth century _hapertas_, from which, as Mr. Riley suggests, the term 'haberdasher' probably originated. Subsequently the Hurers and the Hatters joined them.

The Merchant Taylors and Linen Armourers are in some documents styled 'Mercatores Scissores,' 'Scissors of London,' 'Scissors and Fraternity of St. John Baptist,'--titles alike pointing to their being anciently both tailors and cutters, and also making the padding and interior lining of armour, as well as manufacturing garments. Tailors made dresses for both sexes, their prices, as usual, being regulated by public enactment. By ordinance of the reign of Edward III. it is declared that 'Tailors shall henceforth take for a robe, garnished with silk, 18d.; for a man's robe, garnished with thread and buckram, 14d.; also a coat and hood, 10d.; also for a lady's long dress, garnished with silk and cendale, 2s. 6d.; also for a pair of sleeves for changing, 4d.'[338]

The Drapers' Company is the third on the list of the twelve great companies, and the second of the clothing companies, the Mercers being the first. Henry Fitz-Ailwin, the first Mayor of London, was a freeman of the Drapers' Gild, to which he left by will an inn, called the Chequer, in the parish of St. Mary Bothaw.

The Skinners represented the trade that dealt with furs. The furs mentioned in the _Liber Albus_ as imported are, marten skins, rabbit skins, dressed woolfels, Spanish squirrel skins, and grysoevere or grey work. In the reign of Edward I. an enactment was made that 'no woman, except a lady who is in the habit of using furs, shall have a hood furred with dressed woolfel' (pelure). Women of ill-fame were forbidden at one period to wear minever or other furs, though at a later date they were permitted to use lambs' wool and rabbit skin. No mixed work, formed of different kinds of skins, was allowed to be made, and no new fur was to be worked up with the old.[339]

'The skynner unto the feeld moot also,
His hous in London is to streyt and scars
To doon his craft; sum tyme it was nat so.
O lordës, yeve unto your men hir pars
That so doon, and acqwente hem bet with Mars,
God of bataile; he loueth non array
That hurtyth manhode at preef or assay.'
(_The Regement of Princes_, by Thomas Hoccleve, II. 477-483.)

The Clothworkers' Company, formed by a junction of the Gilds of Shearmen and Fullers, has already been alluded to.

The minor companies connected with the clothing trades require some notice here. The Cordwainers held a prominent position, but in the reign of Edward I. (1303) there were public complaints of frauds and irregularities brought against them, and charges were made that they mixed inferior with the superior leathers. They were continually at feud with the Cobblers, and every endeavour was made to keep the two trades distinct. The cordwainers were forbidden to mend shoes and the cobblers to make them. Moreover, throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were fixed regulations not only that cordwainers should use new leather in making shoes, but that cobblers should be restricted wholly to the use of old leather in mending them. The latter were even punished for having new leather in their possession.[340]

In the reign of Edward III. the prices fixed for boots and shoes were: a pair of shoes made of cordwain, 6d.; made of cow leather, 5d.; a pair of boots made of cordwain, 3s, 6d.; made of cow leather, 3s.[341] This shows that boots were then very dear.

In Edward IV.'s reign the cordwainers stood up for the defence of their trade against the decree of the Pope. They were decidedly in the wrong, but one cannot but admire their pluckiness. The story is told in William Gregory's _Chronicle of London_, which is thus paraphrased by Dr. James Gairdner, the editor: 'The Pope issued a Bull that no cordwainer should make any pikes [at the toes of the shoes] more than two inches long, or sell shoes on Sunday, or even fit a shoe upon a man's foot on Sunday, on pain of excommunication. Neither was the cordwainer to attend fairs on a Sunday under the same penalty; for not only were fairs held on that day, but the cordwainer's services, it must be supposed, were required at the fairs to adjust the dandy's _chaussure_, just as much as, in a later age, the barber's aid was necessary to dress his wig. The papal Bull was approved by the King's Council and confirmed by Act of Parliament; and proclamation was consequently made at Paul's Cross that it should be put in execution. Yet, with all this weight of authority against a silly fashion, the dandy world had its own ideas upon the subject, and some men ventured to say they would wear long pikes in spite of the Pope, for "the Pope's curse would not kill a fly." The cordwainers, too, had a vested interest in the extravagance, though some of their own body had been instrumental in getting the Pope's interference. They obtained privy seals and protections from the King to exempt them from the operation of the law, which soon became a dead letter; and those who had applied to the Pope to restrain their practices were subjected to much trouble and persecution.'[342]

The Leathersellers had still more to do with leather than the cordwainers, and the same complaints were made against them for passing off inferior for superior leather. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries several ordinances were issued regulating the trade of the leathersellers in the City of London, and for the prevention of deceit in the manufacture and sale of their wares.

Pursers or Glovers were incorporated with the leathersellers in 1502, but in 1638 a new company of glovers was formed.

The Girdlers made belts or girdles for men and women. They were also called Ceinturiers and Zonars. In 1217 (1 Hen. III.) Benedict Seynturer was one of the sheriffs of London. The company still exists, although it cannot be said that the calling survived the reign of Charles II.

The Goldsmiths' Company stands almost alone, on account of the great services to the State which it performs in connection with the important trade it represents, and also in connection with the tryal of the gold and silver coins in the Pyx of His Majesty's Mint, a service which has been performed without intermission, at any-rate since the year 1281. This history also contains a strong argument in favour of the received opinion that the companies are the lineal descendants of the gilds, for the craft of goldsmiths performed by Statute the same duties of assaying vessels of gold and silver that the present company does. The Act (28 Edw. I., cap. 20) recites that: 'The wardens of the craft shall go from shop to shop among the goldsmiths to essay if their gold be of the same Touch that is spoken of before.'

According to Stow's _Chronicle_ a variance fell between the fellowships of Goldsmiths and Taylors in 1268, 'causing great ruffling in the city and many men to be slain, for which riot thirteen of the captains were hanged.'

By the first charter (1 Edw. III., 1327), 'the company were allowed to elect honest, lawful and sufficient men, but skilled in the trade, to enquire of any matters of complaint, and who might, in consideration of the craft, reform what defects they should find therein, and punish offenders. It states that it had been theretofore ordained that all those who were of the goldsmiths' trade should sit in their shops in the High Street of Cheap; and that no silver or plate ought to be sold in the City of London except at the King's Exchange, or in the said street of Cheap amongst the goldsmiths, and that publicly, to the end that the persons of the said trade might inform themselves whether the sellers came lawfully by such vessel or not; whereas of late not only the merchants and strangers brought counterfeit sterling in the realm, and also many of the trade of goldsmiths kept shops in obscure turnings and by-lanes and streets, but did buy vessels of gold and silver secretly, without enquiring whether such vessel were stolen or lawfully come by, and melting it down, did make it into plate, and sell it to merchants travelling beyond seas, that it might be exported; and so they made false work of gold and silver, which they sold to those who had no skill in such things. These abuses and deceptions this charter provides against by ordaining that no gold or silver shall be manufactured to be sent abroad but what shall be sold at the King's Exchange, or openly amongst the goldsmiths; and that none, pretending to be goldsmiths, shall keep any shops but in Cheap.'

The King's Exchange for the receipt of bullion was situated in the street leading from Cheapside to Knight-riders Street, known from the early part of the seventeenth century as Old 'Change. The London goldsmiths chiefly inhabited Cheapside, Old 'Change, Lombard Street, Foster Lane, St. Martin's-le-Grand, Silver Street, Goldsmiths' Street, Wood Street, and the lanes about Goldsmiths' Hall. That part of the south side of Cheapside from Bread Street to the Cross was called Goldsmiths' Row. It was described in enthusiastic terms by Stow as 'the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London or elsewhere in England... the same was [re]built by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, one of the Sheriffs of London, in the year 1491. It containeth in number ten fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly built four storeys high, beautified towards the street with the goldsmiths' arms and the likeness of Woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts, all which is cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt: these he gave to the goldsmiths, with stocks of money, to be lent to young men having those shops. This said front was again new painted and gilt over in the year 1594; Sir Richard Martin being then Mayor and keeping his mayoralty in one of them.'

Sir Walter Prideaux, in his valuable _Memorials of the Goldsmiths' Company_, says that the native and the foreign goldsmiths appear to have been divided into classes, and to have enjoyed different privileges. First, there were the members of the company who were chiefly, but not exclusively, Englishmen; their shops were subject to the control of the company; they had the advantages conferred by the company on its members, and they made certain payments for the support of the fellowship. The second division comprised the non-freemen, who were called 'allowes,' that is to say, allowed or licensed. There were 'allowes Englis,' 'allowes Alicant,' 'Alicant strangers,' 'Dutchmen,' 'Men of the Fraternity of St. Loys,' etc. All these paid tribute to the company, and were also subject to their control.

All the livery companies possessed a class of young unmarried members called 'The Bachelors,' and in the Goldsmiths' Company a special place was reserved for their lodging. This was known as Bachelors' Alley or Court, and was situated between Foster Lane and Gutter Lane. The lodgings were supplied at 'very small and easy rents,' the greatest not to exceed 8s. per annum. The tenants could continue as long as they were unmarried, but difficulties arose by reason of attempts at underletting without authority, and disorderly persons gave much trouble. In 1595 an order was promulgated 'that from henceforth no goldsmith shall have his dwelling in any of the tenements in Bachelors' Alley before he be admitted by the wardens for the time being; and that everyone so admitted shall forthwith enter into a bond to deliver to the wardens, at his departure, the key of his tenement, and quietly to quit possession of the same.'

Sir Walter Prideaux states that at the early period of the first charter the goldsmiths acted as bankers and pawnbrokers. They received pledges not only of plate, but of other articles, such as cloth of gold and pieces of napery. Saint Dunstan was the patron saint of the company, and feasts were held on his day, when also bells were set ringing. This saint's likeness in wood (gilt) formed the figure-head of the company's barge. There was also a Chapel of St. Dunstan in St. Paul's Cathedral which was attached to the company.

In the foregoing remarks there are some references to the livery companies, but these are introduced more particularly on account of the light thrown by them upon the trade of London. The work of the gilds was devoted to the trades which they represented, but in course of time many of the companies lost touch with the trades whose names they bore. This largely came about in a quite natural way, and the privilege of introduction to a company by patrimony caused the addition to the list of freemen of a large number of those who were engaged in other occupations.

The relative position in precedence of the various companies have continually altered, and there is no information to show how the twelve chief companies have attained that commanding position.

The feuds between the trades continued to comparatively late times. Pepys relates, in 1664, how there was a fray in Moorfields between the butchers and the weavers, between whom there had ever been a competition for mastery. At first the butchers knocked down all the weavers that had green or blue aprons, but at last the butchers were fain to pull off their sleeves that they might not be known, and were soundly beaten out of the field.[343]

Some note must be made here of the Jews and of the Italian moneylenders who for so long carried on the financial business of the country.

One of the many hardships which the Jews suffered in this country was that wherever they might dwell they were compelled to bury their dead in London. This regulation was abolished by Henry II. in 1177.

The cruel calumny that the Jews at Lincoln crucified a Christian child brought them into great trouble, and in 1256 one hundred and two Jews were brought from Lincoln to Westminster charged with this crime. Eighteen of them were hanged, and the remainder lay in prison for a long time.

Clipping of money became very general about 1278, and the Jews were supposed to be the chief culprits. Those who were suspected, with their Christian accomplices, were arrested, and at the end of the trial 300 Jews were condemned to be hanged as well as three Christians. Nearly all the goldsmiths and moneyers escaped the death penalty. In 1290 came the final blow, when every Jew was expelled from England. It is difficult to understand Edward I.'s motive in banishing a class of men who were so useful to him. In Stow's _Chronicle_ it is said that as their houses were sold 'the King made a mighty mass of money,' but the action certainly added to his difficulties, and drove him to resort to the Italian financiers, who were no more popular with the citizens than the Jews. The expulsion was ascribed to the instigation of the King's mother, Eleanor, widow of Henry III., but it certainly expressed the will of the nation. Stow gives the number of Jews banished as 15,060, but this is probably an exaggeration. The number of London Jews is estimated at 2000.

The Old Jewry was originally the Ghetto of London, and the burial-place of the Jews was on the site of Jewin Street. Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who compiled a valuable account of the Old Jewry, is of opinion that the Jews no longer lived in this place at the time of the expulsion. There was a Jewry within the Liberty of the Tower in the thirteenth century, and there is still a Jewry Street, Aldgate.

The republics of Italy during the Middle Ages were the home of finance, and had advanced far before the other states of Europe in wealth and civilisation. The necessities of the great countries of Europe, caused by the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were the opportunity of companies of moneylenders, who acted as the Pope's collectors.

Before the close of the reign of Henry III. the Italians had gained a firm footing in England as merchants and moneylenders. Citizens of Sienna, Lucca and Florence came here, and fought with the Jews for the financial control of the country.

Matthew Paris relates that Roger, Bishop of London, anathematised the Caorsins and banished them from his diocese in 1235 in spite of the support of 'judges that were servants (_familiaribus_) to the Caorsins, whom they had elected for their will.'[344]

In the early years of Edward I.'s reign, there were four companies of merchants of Sienna acting under the title of 'Campsores Papæ.' In his ninth year the keepers of the Exchange delivered £10,000 to Lombard merchants (as they are styled in the record) in part payment of sums they had lent to the King. It is recorded that between the twenty-third and twenty-seventh years of his reign Edward I. contracted a debt to the Friscobaldi alone of not less than £15,800.[345]

The King wanted much money for his wars, and, as he could no longer look to the Jews he was forced to apply for aid to the Italians. These loans grew so formidable that they caused considerable financial embarrassments in the reign of Edward II.

There were a large number of companies such as the Ricciardi, the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and the Spini, but the Friscobaldi, of which family there were several companies, occur most frequently in London history. Amerigo de' Friscobaldi was constable of Bordeaux in the first year of Edward II.'s reign.

Here are two entries from the city records:--

'14 Feb. 1299-1300.--Thursday after the Feast of St. Valentine came John de Pounteysse, goldsmith, and acknowledged himself bound to Faldo Jamiano, of the society of Frescobaldi, in the sum of £8 and 45d. sterling, to be paid at Easter next.'[346]

'2 Feb. 1305-6.--Andrew le Mareschal acknowledged himself indebted to Bettinus Friscobalde and his partners, merchants of the company of Friscobaldi, in the sum of £102, 13s. 4d.'[347]

The loans in the reign of Edward III. were very considerable, and the unpopularity of the Italians was great. In 1376 a petition was presented to the King by the Mayor, Aldermen and Commons of the City of London against usurious foreign moneylenders dwelling in London, asking that the Lombards might be forbidden from dwelling in the city, or acting as brokers and buying and selling by retail which they alleged to be against their ancient franchises. The King answered the petition to the effect that if the citizens would put the city under good government for the future no foreigner should be allowed to dwell, act as broker, or sell by retail in London or the suburbs save and except the merchants of the Hanse towns.[348]

On the whole we must extend our sympathy to the Italians, for the King was not very prompt in paying his debts, and he considered it immoral to have promised any interest. The effect was that he ruined many of these unfortunate foreigners. The name of Lombard Street occurs in the city books in 1382, and was in common use at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is a remarkable fact that the locality in which the Italian financiers first settled in London should obtain a name which has continued to the present day as a synonym of finance, and was used by the late Mr. Bagehot as the title of his great work.

Matthew Paris tells us that the houses which the Italian moneylenders built for themselves were so costly that, although at one period the Italians were anxious to leave the kingdom to escape the persecutions they suffered from, they were constrained to remain by the loss they feared to incur by deserting their houses.[349]

In 1456 a serious attack was made upon the houses of the Lombards by the mercers and other crafts led by William Cantelowe, alderman and mercer, who was summoned before the King's Council and imprisoned. We learn also from the Paston Letters that two of the men who joined in the attack were hanged (ed. J. Gairdner, 1872, vol. i. p. 387). In Gregory's _Chronicle_ it is said that the Lombards were compelled to quit London and take up their residence in Southampton and Winchester. Dr. James Gairdner writes of this outbreak: 'The withdrawal of the Lombard merchants in all probability produced a sensible effect upon the commerce of the city; for they made a bye-law among themselves that no individual merchant of Northern Italy should henceforth go to London and trade there.' This ordinance the Signory of Venice ratified by a decree of the Senate, and prohibited, under a heavy fine, all Venetian vessels from visiting the port of London.[350]

In spite of all this turmoil affairs settled down again, and the foreigners appear to have returned to their London houses.

In connection with the introduction of Italian bankers into London, the popular derivation of bankrupt from a broken bench is naturally called to mind, and I have tried to find some allusion in the city records to a broken bench in Lombard Street, but without success.

In Florio's _A New Worlde of Wordes_; or, _Dictionarie in Italian and English_ (1598), we find the following entries:--

'Banca, a bench or a forme.

'Bancarotta, a bankrupt.'

In Torriano's edition of Florio (1650) we come upon these amplified entries--

'Banca-rotta, a bankrout merchant, one that hath broken his credit.

'Banca fallito, a bank broken, a merchant's credit crackt.'

This is the explanation that commends itself to Dr. Murray (_New English Dictionary_), who writes that he cannot trace the reference to a broken bench earlier than that of Dr. Johnson, who introduced the suggestion with the formula 'it is said.'

There is, however, an early note bearing on this derivation in Sir John Skene's remarkable little book, _De Verborum Significatione_ (1641),[351] where we read under the words 'Dyour, Dyvour' this explanation: 'In Latine, _cedere bonis_, quhilk is most commonly used amongst merchandes to make bankrout, bankrupt or bankrompue; because the doer thereof, as it were, breakis his bank, stalle or seete quhair he used his traffique of before.'

No earlier date for the use of the word than the reign of Henry VIII. has been found by Professor Skeat or Dr. Murray, but surely an earlier reference must be lurking somewhere. In the First Folio of Shakespeare the word is printed 'bankeroute' (pronounced as four syllables), but this was altered in later editions to bankrupt. There can be no doubt that the word is directly derived from _bancarotta_, and that the form bankrupt is an afterthought of the learned to connect it with the Latin language.

The point that has to be accounted for is the strange appropriation of an expression meaning broken bench or broken bank to the individual whose credit is broken. This one would naturally expect to be a secondary meaning.

In concluding this chapter it is necessary to make an allusion to the Statute merchant (11 Edw. I.) for the recovery of debts. The first two Letter Books of the City of London are chiefly concerned with recognisances of debts, and they are of great value as illustrating the commercial intercourse of the citizens of London in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with Gascony and Spain, more especially in connection with wine and leather.

By the Statute of Acton Burnel (11 Edw. I.) it was enacted (_inter alia_) that recognisances of debts should be taken before the Mayor and a clerk appointed by the King. Nevertheless within a very short while after the passing of this Statute and notwithstanding its express provision to the contrary, we find the Mayor, sheriffs and aldermen declaring that such recognisances should be made before the city chamberlain, who might, if he liked, receive, as he frequently did, the recognisances at his own house instead of at the Guildhall.[352]

It was ordered that the recognisances should bear 'the debtor's seal and also the King's seal,' to be provided for the purpose. This latter seal appears to be no longer in existence. From impressions of it preserved at King's College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, it is found to have been circular, and nearly three-quarters of an inch in diameter, with the King's bust between two castles, with a lion of England in base. Legend--'S^{+} Edm Reg^{+} Angl^{+} ad recogn Debitor^{+}.'[353]

The following entry from Letter Book A forms an interesting illustration of the contents of these books:--

'Laurence de Gisors acknowledged before H. le Galeis the Mayor that he owed Sir Philip le Taylor a cask of wine to be delivered on a certain love day (_diem amoris_) because the said Laurence killed a dog belonging to him.'