And then we find the first statute restraining what we should now call chancery jurisdiction, complaining that the law of the land and common right was delayed by letters issued under the king’s will, and ordaining that henceforth they shall not be disturbed by said letters and nothing done in any of the places of the court of the king or elsewhere by such letters against right or the law of the land shall avail.

In 1313 the coming armed to Parliament is forbidden.  These were troublous times and there was little legislation in consequence, and in 1322 Edward II secured the revocation of the New Ordinances themselves, but as in all such cases of royal grant and withdrawal the principles shown are even the more important historically.  Of uncertain period is the Statute of Jewrie forbidding usury to the Jews, and Christians from living among them, but permitting them freedom of trade and exempting them from taxation except to the king; and a statute of the usages and customs of the men of Kent beginning with the statement that “all the Bodies of Kentishmen be free, as well as the other free Bodies of England,” which dates at least as late as the early part of the fourteenth century, but still exemplifying the notion that a statute should only express law or custom previously existing.

(1327) The Statute of Northampton, at the beginning of the reign of Edward III, confirms many of the earlier statutes, but abolishes all staples beyond the sea and on this side, on the ground that they tended to monopoly, and provided that all merchants, strangers, and citizens may go and come with their merchandises into England after the tenor of the great charter (cap.  IX).  In the next year is another provision for annual parliaments, and in 1335 the Statute of York again allows merchants to buy and sell freely except only enemies, and giving double damages for the disturbance by any one of such freedom of trade, and the Statute de Moneta, forbidding carrying money abroad; which is notable to the student of economics as showing how early what we now call the fallacy of the mercantile system appeared.  Our ancestors thought that there was something peculiarly advantageous in a tariff or system of duties which put all the money into a country and allowed only goods to go out; and that opinion is perhaps not yet extinct.

There always seems to have been a notion that there is something peculiarly sacred about wool.  So we find that in 1337 they made it a felony to carry wool out of England, or to wear cloth made out of England; and no clothes made beyond the seas were to be brought into England.  That notion that a man ought to dress on home products lies behind our present McKinley tariff.  Then, in 1340, you will find another statute for the liberties of merchants, that they should be allowed the freedom of the kingdom; and a new duty is imposed on wool.  Then we find the abolition of the laws of “the staple”; foreign staple towns had been abolished just before.