parliament to export from the south part of England any staple wares whatever, till the debt due to them should be paid. Out of this permission they would, no doubt, contrive amply to reimburse themselves for any sacrifice they may have made in the price at which they had disposed of the alum to the king. Then, on the other hand, to the merchants to whom his purchase was immediately resold by the king for ready money, and at so immense an advance of price, the parliament also gave what was, we may be certain, deemed sufficient compensation, in a grant of the monopoly of the whole trade in the article for the next two years—all persons being prohibited during that period from importing, buying, or selling any other alum. So that the king's profit of 4000l. was really extracted out of the pockets of his own subjects, partly in the shape of an imposition upon all consumers of alum, partly by the still more oppressive method of an invasion of the equal rights of all the native importers and exporters of that and every other commodity in which the Genoese traders dealt. The Genoese soon lost their establishment of Phocæa; but in 1459 they found new alum mines in the Isle of Ischia, by means of which they were enabled to continue their former commerce.
The balance of the trade of England with Venice and Florence would seem, according to the author of the 'Libel of English Policy,' to have been what is called favourable to the Italian communities; that is—contrary, as we have seen, to what other authorities assert to have been the case, at least in so far as Venice was concerned—it left a certain amount of money to be paid every year by England. He complains that these foreigners "bear the gold out of this land, and suck the thrift out of our hand, as the wasp sucketh honey of the bee." Their imports, which were brought in large galleys, consisted in spiceries and groceries, sweet wines, apes and other foreign animals, and a variety of other articles of luxury. In return for these, besides money, they carried away wool, cloth, and tin, which they were accustomed to travel to Cotswold and other parts of
