which an English fleet had accomplished so long and various a navigation; and, under the conduct of so energetic a commander, it could not fail to give an impulse to the naval progress of the country, and to raise both the military skill and the seamanship of English sailors.
The kingdom had not yet recovered from the exhausting exertions it had made in fitting out this great fleet and army, when it was called upon to raise what was in those days an immense sum for the king's ransom. The agreement was, that before Richard's liberation, his jailor, the emperor, should be paid 100,000 marks of silver, besides 50,000 more afterwards—an amount of money then deemed so great, that a contemporary foreign chronicler, Otto de St. Blas, declines mentioning it, as he could not, he says, expect to be believed. It does not clearly appear how much of the 150,000 marks was paid in all; but it is stated that 70,000 marks of silver, equal in weight to nearly 100,000l. of our money, were remitted to Germany before the king was set free. This money was only raised by the most severe and grievous exactions. It was not all obtained till three successive collections had been made. Four years before this, it may be noted, in the beginning of Richard's reign, the much poorer kingdom of Scotland had repurchased its independence at the cost of 10,000 marks.
A few laws for the regulation of trade are recorded to have been enacted by Richard after his return home. The same year in which he returned, a prohibition was issued against the exportation of corn, "that England," as it was expressed, "might not suffer from the want of its own abundance." The violation of this law is stated to have been punished in one instance with merciless severity: some vessels having been seized in the port of St. Valery, laden with English corn for the King of France, Richard burned both the vessels and the town (which belonged to that king), hanged the seamen, and also put to death some monks who had been concerned in the illegal transaction. He then, after all this wild devastation, divided the corn among the poor. In 1197, also, a law was passed for establishing a uniformity of weights and
