ιι8 THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
foreign source, that English cheese was exported to Flanders
as early as 1036.1 Further north some intercourse with Scan-
dinavia seems probable.2 The merchants who frequented
York at the end of the tenth century are said to have been
chiefly Danes,3 but may have come from other parts of the
Danelaw. In the south-west the burgesses of Exeter, when
preparing to defend themselves against the Conqueror in 1068,
enlisted the aid of certain foreign merchants,4 skilled in war,
who happened to be in their city.
A picture that does not include the two cities, the weights
and measures of which had some claim to be considered the
norm for the whole kingdom,5 is of course very imperfect.
But fortunately the omission in Domesday Book of any de-
scription of either London or Winchcster is more or less com-
pensated by the survival of an older London record and
a later Winchester one probably based upon the original
Domesday returns. The Liber Winton is not much more
informative on the trade of the city than a more succinct survey
in Domesday Book would have been, but the summary of
customs in the port of London about IOOO a.d., which is con-
tained in the fourth law of Ethelrcd II,6 shows already in
existence that active trade with the southern coast of the
Channel from Flanders to Normandy, with the cities of Lower
Lorraine along the Meuse and with the “ men of the emperor ”
generally which is recorded in a London document of about
1130,’ often in similar terms, and by other post-Conquest
evidence. The chief defect of the earlier record is that while
telling us much about imports, it is silent about exports.
Yet English merchants still, as in Offa’s day, made their way
far into the Continent. Cnut in 1027 obtained from the
1 G. W. Coopland, '' The Abbey of St. Bertin, 900-1350 ” (Oxford
Studies, ed. Vinogradoff, vol. IV), p. 51. For the participation of Anglo-
Saxon merchants in international trade at Bruges and Tiel in the period
on either side of ɪɪoo, see Pirenne, Hist, de Belgique, i. 2c livre, § ι.
2 Cf. F. M. Stenton, The Danes in England, Proc, of Brit. Acad, xiii.
(1927), p. 233. The direct evidence does not go back beyond the reign
of Henry I, but earlier intercourse may not unfairly be presumed. Alex.
Bugge in an article on North European trade routes in the Middle Ages
(Vierteljahrschrift für Social- and Wirtschaftsgeschichte, iv. (1906), 255 ff.)
is less cautious.
a Vita S. Oswaldi (Hist, of York, Rolls Series, i. 454).
4 " Mcrcatores advenas, bello habiles ” (Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv.
140, и.) For extranei mercatores at Canterbury, D.B. i. 2a, ι.
5 Liebermann, Ges. i. 204, iii. 137.
β Ibid, i. 232-5. The heavy penalty of ^5 for evading toll is noticeable.
1E.H.R. xvii. (1902), 499 if.
TRADING
119
masters of the Alpine passes protection for his subjects,
“ merchants or pilgrims,” going to Rome.1
The Winchester survey, though full for its particular object,
which was to ascertain what “ customs ” were due from the
tenements of the city, yields nothing to the present purpose
save the- occasional mention of burgess occupations, for
which we look in vain to the Domesday notices of pre-Conquest
boroughs. There is no hint of the vigorous cloth industry
which flourished at Winchester in the thirteenth century.
The burgess population was probably mainly occupied in
providing for the needs of an important administrative and
ecclesiastical centre and its surrounding district. But in-
tensive industry and commerce in the larger sense were not
invariable features even of the later medieval country boroughs.
It was in their borough courts that the burgesses must have
enforced and, if need were, enlarged their borough usages
in matters of trade, besides exacting the penalties imposed
by the king and his witan on those guilty of the more serious
offences to which it was exposed. The London pound was,
as we have seen, known as the pound of the husting.2 The
Londoners secured from Ethelred a confirmation of their
customs and sought his permission to exact a special fine of
305. for breach of the borough peace from those who resorted
to violence in their disputes instead of seeking legal redress :
“ If he cares for the friendship of this port, let him make
emends with thirty shillings, should the king allow us (to take)
this.” 3
Whether the gilds in which the English were fond of com-
bining, in boroughs as elsewhere, were ever formed or used
for the promotion of trade, like the merchant gilds which
sprang up after the Norman Conquest, is disputable. Such
descriptions of thegn gilds and cniht gilds in boroughs as
have survived do not suggest that they were, and indeed the
ninth century cniht gild of Canterbury is distinguished from
the burgesses within the city.4 Yet two centuries later
Dornesday definitely records gilds of burgesses at Dover and
Canterbury in 1066.6 The “ gihalla burgensium ” in the former
town does not admit of dispute, but the evidence for the
Canterbury gild has been called in question. Gross maintained
l Liebermann, Ges. i. 276, 6. 2 Above, p. 40.
3 Liebermann, op. cit. i. 234, 4, 2. To be additional to the king’s
°wn fine of £5 for breach of his peace. Cf. ibid. iii. 165, и. 3 on 4, I. It
was the same penalty as for disobedience to the hundred.
4 Cart. Sax. ii. 128, no. 515. 5 D.B. i. ɪa, ɪ ; 2a, ι.