the grateful assistance of one of his clerks, he recovered some part of his property which was in foreign countries; and, being appointed by the pope to command a division of his fleet, he died in that service at Chio in the year 1456."[1]
In this age, both in our own and in other countries, commerce was not only carried on by kings and nobles as well as by the regular merchant, but among the most active traders were some of the higher clergy. In England, indeed, it had long been customary for the greatest dignitaries in the church to engage in mercantile pursuits. Matthew Paris tells us that William of Trumpington, abbot of St. Alban's, in the reign of Henry III., traded extensively in herrings, for the purchasing of which at the proper season he had agents at Yarmouth, where he had bought a large house for fifty marks, in which he stored the fish till they were sold, "to the inestimable advantage," says the historian, "as well as honour of his abbey." Frequent mention is made in those early times of trading-vessels which were the property of bishops and other ecclesiastics of rank. Nor did these eminent persons sometimes disdain to take advantage of very irregular and questionable ways of pursuing their extra-professional gains. One transaction in which two bishops of Iceland figure the Historian of Commerce does not hesitate to designate as a scheme of smuggling. They were in the habit, it seems, of requesting and obtaining licences from Henry VI. for sending English vessels to Iceland on various pretences, which have all the look of being collusive arrangements between them and the owners of the vessels for carrying on an illicit trade.[2] Iceland, it may be observed, in passing, is stated, at this time, to have possessed neither cloth, wine, ale, corn, nor salt; almost its only produce seems to have been fish. Licences were often obtained from the English kings by popes, cardinals, and other foreign ecclesiastics, to export wool and other goods without payment of the usual
VOL. I.
I
