Chartered by the crown in 1474, the Merchant Adventurers was
England's preeminent regulated international trading company until
the early nineteenth century. It functioned as a guild, with
members who were the only merchants entitled to export finished
cloth from the growing English woolen industry, which gave them an
unchallenged monopoly. It was the only company entitled to export
cloth from England to other countries. The organization served as a
social channel for its members, who built The Merchant Adventurers
Hall at York in the North of England after the group was formed in
1357. This source book collects eighteen substantial documents
written between 1407 and 1805, the most important years of the
society's history. This group includes the Charter of 1407,
extracts from the Charter of Edward IV (1462) and the Laws and
Ordinances of 1608. Taken together, these records form one of the
most detailed pictures of business organizations and methods during
the later Tudor, the Stuart, and the early Hanoverian eras. With
detailed notes and an extensive introduction.CONTENTSThe Merchant
Adventurers, A Brief HistoryThe Laws and OrdinancesThe Rise and
State of the FellowshipThe Statute of 1497Extracts from Wheeler, A
Treatise of CommerceResidence towns of the AdventurersThe number of
freemenExtract from "the Debate betweene the Heraides" The Charter
of 1407Extracts from the Charter of Edward IV, 1462Extracts from
the Charter of Elizabeth of 1464List of the Foreign Grants and
Privileges of the FellowshipAbstract of the Privileges of the
Merchant Adventurers at DortExtracts from the Court Register of the
Company Ordinance of the Lords and Commons, 1643Extract from the
Act of 1688, "laying open "the trade of the Society Correspondence
by Wm. Rycant, Resident at Hamburg Letter from the States General
of Holland concerning those of the Society still left in the City
of Dort, 1751 Letter from Lord Bute to Mr. Mathias, 1761, and the
French note concerning the establishment of a French Company
Correspondence of Thornton, 1805 By-law of 1688 (continued from
pages 197) "The bulk of this volume is devoted to the "Laws,
Customes and Ordinances of the ffellowshippe of Merchantes
Adventurers of the Realm of England, etc.," a large folio volume of
over 200 pages kept since 1852 among the additional manuscripts of
the British Museum, and probably compiled between 1608 and 1611. In
these pages we have the public and official side of one of the
great mediaeval industries of England-the continental distribution
of the woollen goods for which that kingdom was once so remarkable.
Though the society may be said to have lived for six centuries,
from the twelfth to the beginning of the nineteenth, its chief
activity seems to have been from the fifteenth to the middle of the
eighteenth, first in the North of France and in the Low Countries,
and then at Hamburg. The extensive private records of the "Merchant
Adventurers" have not yet been found but enough original material
exists in this volume to throw much light on the beginnings of the
continental commerce of England, especially in the period when the
English were ceasing to export the raw wool and taking up at home
the manufacture of cloth for the continental market. Thereby the
prosperity of Florence and other cities of Northern Italy was
affected in no small degree, and the balance of industrial daring
and consequent wealth moved northward. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the rivalries of the Emperor and the Crown of
England transferred the "Staple" or warehouses of the society from
Antwerp to Hamburg, and brought on a long warfare with the
Hanseatic League, that ended disastrously enough for the
former."Thomas J. Shahan, The Catholic University Bulletin, Volume
8, No. 4, October, 1902
General
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