ything French; the Normans had already been absorbed; modern
England was beginning to appear.

(1344) And now comes a liberal statute, repealing those restrictions
on wool, and allowing it to be exported; and another statute that "the
Sea be open to all manner of merchants." Now this is the origin of the
great English notion of freedom to trade with foreign parts; and was
principally relied upon three centuries later in the great case of
monopoly (7 State Trials) brought against the East India Company. And
England has assumed dominion of the sea ever since; "the boundaries of
Great Britain are the high-water mark upon every other country."

(1348) This year was the plague of the Black Death, and the following
year is the first Statute of Laborers discussed in an earlier chapter
and elaborately amended in the following year. In 1350 also we find
the Statute of Cloths, providing again for free trade in victuals,
cloths, and any other manner of merchandise in all the towns and ports
of England, and punishing forestalling of any merchandise with two
years' imprisonment and forfeiture of the goods, one-half to go to the
informer. Two years later the forestalling and engrossing of Gascony
wines is forbidden and even the selling of them at an advanced price,
and this offence is made capital!--and the next year we have the most
elaborate of the Statutes of the Staple re-established. This ordinance
(1353) provides for a staple of wools, leather, wool fells, and
lead in various towns in England, Wales, and Ireland. The safety of
merchant strangers is provided for, and it is again made a felony for
the king's subjects to export wool; and more important still, all
merchants coming to the staple and matters therein "shall be ruled by
the Law-Merchant and not by the common Law of the Land nor by Usage
of Cities, Boroughs or other Towns," and any plaintiff is given the
option whether he will sue his action or quarrel before the justices
of the staple by the law thereof, or in the common-law court.
Merchandise may be sold in gross or by parcels, but may not be
forestalled; and the goods of strangers suffering shipwreck shall be
restored to their owners on payment of salvage. Houses in staple towns
must be let at a reasonable rate, and conspiracies or combinations
against the law of the staple made criminal. Again our ancestors
showed themselves more civilized than we, this time in their
Custom-house proceedings; for Article 26 of this