that age, but much superior to some drawn at a later date.[1]
Veer, otherwise called Campvere, or Terveer, in Zealand, had now become the Scottish staple in the Netherlands, and Ludovico Guicciardini states that it owed its principal commerce to that circumstance. The principal foreign trade of Scotland, as of England, was, during the whole of this period, with the Netherlands. The office of Conservator of the nation's mercantile privileges in that country is mentioned in an act of parliament passed in one of the first years of the sixteenth century, and is thought to be of still earlier origin; an act of 1579 imposes a payment of 10l. Flemish (about 6l. sterling) as entrance-money upon every person becoming a member of the association of merchants trading to the Netherlands; and another act of the same year (repeated in 1597) confiscates all the goods of non-freemen trading thither, two-thirds to go to the crown, and the remaining third to the conservator. This office, which was similar to that of a foreign consul, was preserved, it may be added, down almost to our own times. In the latter years of the sixteenth century mention is made of Scottish ships trading both to the Azores and the Canaries. Wine was probably the principal commodity which they brought from those islands.
The commercial legislation of the northern kingdom continued to be of the same restrictive character as ever to the end of the present period. In 1579 the exportation of coals and of salted meat was strictly prohibited. In 1581 and 1582 certain sumptuary regulations were promulgated by the parliament for the avowed purpose of putting down or diminishing the use of foreign commodities, in the notion that thereby home manufactures would be encouraged and the poor better employed. All persons, not being dukes, earls, lords of parliament, knights, or landed gentlemen possessed of at least 2000l. of yearly rent (that is, 250l. sterling), were prohibited, under heavy fines, from wearing in their clothing or lin-
- ↑ Note by Macpherson, in Annals of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 86.
