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. CONTENTS The Merchant
Adventurers, A Brief History The Laws and Ordinances The Rise and
State of the Fellowship The Statute of 1497 Extracts from Wheeler,
A Treatise of Commerce Residence towns of the Adventurers The
number of freemen Extract from "the Debate betweene the Heraides"
The Charter of 1407 Extracts from the Charter of Edward IV, 1462
Extracts from the Charter of Elizabeth of 1464 List of the Foreign
Grants and Privileges of the Fellowship Abstract of the Privileges
of the Merchant Adventurers at Dort Extracts from the Court
Register of the Company Ordinance of the Lords and Commons, 1643
Extract 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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