inquire discovered that the Steel-Yard traders, though exempted from the alien duties, had largely defrauded the revenue by giving rights of denizenship to foreigners, the Crown deprived them of many of their most valuable privileges, and practically revoked their charter.
Mode of conducting business.
Mistaken laws.
Nor is it surprising that foreigners should have so
long held in their hands the largest share of the maritime
commerce of England, though when Henry VIII.
ascended the throne there were no reliable accounts
of its extent. A sort of haphazard mode of conducting
business was then the rule of her merchants, who
had then no means of early and accurate information
of what their foreign competitors were doing, or of
the quantity or quality of merchandise they themselves
required; moreover, their commercial laws
were so ill defined and so liable to uncertain and extraordinary
changes that no dependence could be
placed upon them. Hence it was that Henry endeavoured
to give consistency to his legislative
measures, though even these (as might have been
expected) were in most instances far from perfect;
as, for instance, when he attempted to regulate the
price of labour, and to determine by law what
sum each employer should pay to the labourers
and others they employed.[1] No doubt there was*
- ↑ From the middle of the thirteenth to the close of the sixteenth century, wheat, which has always, in a greater or less degree, regulated the price of all other commodities, averaged about seven shillings the quarter; sometimes, however, reaching twenty shillings, and at other times sinking as low as eighteenpence the quarter. When the price was above the average, importation was allowed (3 Edw. IV. ch. 2); when below, exportation to foreign markets might be made (10 Hen. VI. ch. 1). By an Act of Henry VIII. the price of beef and pork was fixed at one halfpenny a pound, and mutton at three farthings. Fat
