3. The English were to be free from personal services and from taxes which might be raised on trade.
4. The merchants might form a corporation in Pisa.
5. Quarrels between Englishmen to be settled by their own head. Quarrels between an Englishman and a foreigner to be decided by the municipality and the English consul. Criminal cases by the municipality alone.
6. The English to share all advantages the Florentines might win by trading treaties.
7. The wishes of the English to be considered in all new privileges granted in the Florentine dominions.
8. The English King was to allow no stranger to carry wool out of England. The Venetians only might carry 600 sacks.
9. The wool was to be of good quality and well packed. (Schanz, i. 126-137.)
[217] Schanz, i. 119-142; 7 Henry VII. c. 7.
[218] An interesting account of this is given in Hist. MSS. Com. v. 461.
[220] In 1475, 1486, and 1495. (Schanz, i. 299-304.) In 1475 a proclamation in Cinque Ports forbade Englishmen to buy Gascon wine of an alien. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 494.)
[221] An interesting trace of foreign connections is given in the will of Wm. Rowley, who left money to a parish church and a nunnery at Dam in Flanders, and to two places in Spain. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 326.)
[223] Ibid. i. 285-90. The Portuguese were among those who were allowed to export woollen cloths under Henry the Sixth. (Proc. Privy Council, v. ii. 11.)
[224] Notices of English trade with Portugal in the second half of the fifteenth century may be found in the complaints of the merchants; Schanz, ii. 496-524. For Portuguese in Lydd in 1456, Hist. MSS. Com. v. 521.
[225] In Piers Ploughman a graphic illustration is taken from the mediæval borough thus isolated and protected.
“He cried and commanded all Christian people To delve and dike a deep ditch all about unity, That Holy Church stood in holiness as it were a pile. Conscience commanded then all Christians to delve, And make a great moat that might be a strength To help holy Church and them that it keepeth.”
[229] “And we use that during the siege if the bailiff be an unable and impotent man or unlearned, to choose us one other for the time being; but not a far-dweller unless by the pleasure of the commonalty.” (Ibid. 488.) See Proc. Privy Council, iv. 217.