but a merchant from a French town might still have his
person and property seized for a debt of which he may have had no
previous knowledge. External trade was thus not so much individual,
between some Englishmen and others; or international, between
Englishmen and Frenchmen, Flemings, Spaniards, or Germans, as it was
intermunicipal, as it has been well described. Citizens of various
towns, London, Bristol, Venice, Ghent, Arras, or Lubeck, for instance,
carried on their trade under the protection their city had obtained
for them.

*21. Foreign Trading Relations.*--The regulations and restrictions of
fairs and town markets and gilds merchant must have tended largely to
the discouragement of foreign trade. Indeed, the feeling of the body
of English town merchants was one of strong dislike to foreigners and
a desire to restrict their trade within the narrowest limits. In
addition to the burdens and limitations placed upon all traders not of
their own town, it was very common in the case of merchants from
abroad to require that they should only remain within the town for the
purpose of selling for forty days, and that they should board not at
an inn but in the household of some town merchant, who could thus keep
oversight of their movements, and who would be held responsible if his
guest violated the law in any way. This was called the custom of
"hostage."

The king, on the other hand, and the classes most influential in the
national government, the nobility and the churchmen, favored foreign
trade. A series of privileges, guarantees, and concessions were
consequently issued by the government to individual foreign merchants,
to foreign towns, and even to foreigners generally, the object of
which was to encourage their coming to England to trade. The most
remarkable instance of this was the so-called _Carta Mercatoria_
issued by Edward I in 1303. It was given according to its own terms,
for the peace and security of merchants coming to England from
Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Navarre, Lombardy, Tuscany,
Provence, Catalonia, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Quercy, Flanders, Brabant,
and all other foreign lands. It allowed such merchants to bring in and
sell almost all kinds of goods, and freed them from the payment of
many tolls and payments habitually exacted by the towns; it gave them
permission to sell to strangers as well as to townsmen, and to retail
as well as sell by wholesale. It freed them from the necessity of
dwel