Neverthelesse Our intent and meaning is, That the sayd Muscovie Company, and none other, shall or may buy, and sell, barter, or contract for, any such Whalefinnes, as being imported contrary to this Our Proclamation shalbe confiscate and seized, and the same, being sold by the sayd Company, may be afterward bought, contracted for, and used by any other Our Subjects at their wil and pleasure. Any thing heerein contained to the contrary notwithstanding.
Given at Our Mannour of Greenwich, the eighteenth day of May, in the seventeenth yeere of our Raigne of England, France, and Ireland, and of Scotland the two and fiftieth.
Imprinted at London by Bonham Norton and John Bill, Printers to the Kings most excellent Majestie. Anno. M.DC.XIX.
_2 pp. folio. There are two issues slightly varying in set-up. Copies in Antiq., B. M., Dalk., I. T., P. C., P. R. O., and Q. C._
[1] Refers to the proclamation of September 11, 1614. In 1618 the East India Adventurers had joined stock with the Muscovy Company to form one joint company for the whale fishery, but after two years of unsuccessful adventuring the agreement was dissolved (Anderson, _Origin of Commerce_, ii, 360, 367).
[2] Spitzbergen, rather than Greenland proper.
AN ABSTRACT OF SOME BRANCHES OF HIS MAJESTIES LATE CHARTER, GRANTED TO THE TOBACCO-PIPE MAKERS OF WESTMINSTER; DECLARING HIS MAJESTIES PLEASURE TOUCHING THAT MANUFACTURE, AND ALSO ALL PERSONS WHOM IT MAY CONCERNE.
James by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, &c. Whereas Wee have been informed by the complaint of divers of Our poore Subjects, the ancient Makers of Tobacco-Pipes within this Our Realme, That for want of power and priviledge to retaine their Apprentises and Servants during their Apprentiship (who commonly depart from them before they have served their tearmes, or attained to the knowledge of their Art) they are much prejudiced both in their Trades and meanes of living, by their excessive making and uttering of ill Ware, And Our Subjects who have use of that Manufacture, are thereby greatly abused and deceived: And not only so, but to their Masters farther impoverishment, these loose and idle persons doe instruct and teach others of as bad qualitie as themselves, to make and sell like ill and deceitful ware. Besides, for that the said Art of making Tobacco Pipes is easily learned, sundry of our Subjects trained up in other Trades more useful for the Realme, doe forsake the same and take up this of making Tobacco-Pipes: And others who have other good Trades to live upon, intrude themselves into this also, and use both, to the hinderance and overthrow of those who anciently practised the same. And whereas for the better reforming of all those disorders, to cut off the superfluous straglers and late intruders, to reduce them to a competent number, and to settle good government amongst them (this Trade being a new Trade, never yet ordered by any Law or Policie, and which concerneth not any Commoditie of necessitie for our Common-weale, but a superfluous pleasure, necessarie to be regulated by Our Royall power and authoritie) We have therefore thought fit by Letters Patents under Our Great Seale, to Incorporate a certaine number of choice and selected persons, who have either served as Apprentices, or have otherwise practised that Art by the space of seven yeers, to whom and whose Servants, Apprentices, and such others as shall be by them admitted into that Societie for their skill and honest conversation, Wee intend to appropriat the said Art, and to restraine all others from taking that benefit which in no right belongeth unto them.