Cinque ports, being exempted from the duty on wine, would import much more than any other equal number of ports.  From a charter granted to foreign merchants in 1302, it appears that they came from the following countries to trade in England:—­Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Navarre, Lombardy, Tuscany, Provence, Catalonia, Aquitaine, Thoulouse, Quercy, Flanders, and Brabant.  The very important privileges and immunities granted to them sufficiently proves, that at this period the commerce of England was mainly dependent on them.  That there were, however, native merchants of considerable wealth and importance, cannot be doubted.  In the year 1318, the king called a council of English merchants on staple business:  they formed a board of themselves; and one was appointed to preside, under the title of mayor of the merchants, or mayor of the staple.

About the middle of this century, Dover, London, Yarmouth, Boston, and Hull, were appointed places for exchanging foreign money; and the entire management was given to William de la Pole.  His name deserves particular notice, as one of the richest and most enlightened of the early merchants of England.  His son, Michael, was also a merchant, and was created earl of Suffolk by Richard II.  “His posterity flourished as earls, marquises, and dukes of Suffolk, till a royal marriage, and a promise of the succession to the crown, brought the family to ruin.”

When Edward III. went to the siege of Calais, the different ports of England furnished him with ships.  From the list of these it appears, that the whole number supplied was 700, manned by 14,151 seamen, averaging under twenty men for each vessel.  Gosford is the only port whose vessels average thirty-one men.  Yarmouth sent forty-three vessels; Fowey, forty-seven; Dartmouth, thirty-one; Bristol, twenty-four; Plymouth, twenty-six; London, twenty-five; Margate, fifteen; Sandwich, twenty-two; Southampton, twenty-one; Winchelsea, twenty-one; Newcastle, sixteen; Hull, seventeen.

In the year 1354 we have a regular account of such exports and imports as paid duty; from which it appears, that there were exported 31,651 sacks of wool, 3036 cwt. of woad, sixty-five wool-fells, 4774 pieces of cloth, and 8061 pieces of worsted stuff; and there were imported 1831 pieces of fine cloth, 397 cwt. of wax, and 1829 tuns of wine, besides linen, mercery, groceries, &c.  As tin, lead, and several other articles are not enumerated, it may be inferred that they paid no duty.  In the year 1372 there is the earliest record of direct trade with Prussia.  As the woollen manufactures of England began to flourish, the importation of woollen cloths necessarily diminished; so that, in the act of 1378, reviving the acts of 1335 and 1351 for the encouragement of foreign merchants, though cloth of gold and silver, stuffs of silk, napery, linen, canvas, &c. are enumerated as imported by them, woollen cloth is not mentoned.  The trade to the Baltic gradually increased as the ports in the north