The Maritime Trade of the Smaller Bristol Channel Ports in the Sixteenth Century
North Devon Ports :: Port of Bridgwater :: Port of Gloucester :: Port of Cardiff :: Port of Milford :: Conclusion :: Appendices :: Bibliography
Chapter One : Introduction
Anyone wishing to understand the maritime trade of the Bristol Channel in the late medieval and early modern periods will have great difficulty proceeding any further than Bristol in their quest. Historians have tended to assume that Bristol’s trade, and in particular Bristol’s overseas trade, was the only trade that mattered. Although E.M. Carus-Wilson was able to take a wider view when writing of the trade of the East Anglian ports, when she turned her attention westwards she became the first of many who concentrated her attentions wholly on Bristol.[1] Despite studying only Bristol, Jean Vanes nevertheless confidently concluded that by the end of the century Bristol’s pre-eminence as the commercial centre for the Severn valley and the whole of the Bristol Channel was unrivalled.[2] P. McGrath similarly focused only on Bristol, as did David Harris Sacks who made the implicit assumption that it is sufficient to know about Bristol’s trade in order to be able to draw conclusions about the wider region, since Bristol was ‘typical in that it set the pattern for all who related to it’.[3] More recently Evan Jones work on maritime trade is also limited to Bristol and to Bristol’s overseas trade.[4]
In contrast to the attention which the sixteenth century maritime trade of Bristol has attracted, the trade of the minor ports in the Channel has been almost wholly ignored by economic historians. There has been no survey at all for instance of the Somerset ports, and study of Gloucester has not extended beyond a transcription of the coastal customs accounts.[5] In mitigation there have been two studies of the north Devon port of Barnstaple. Alison Grant traced the westward expansion of the interests of the town’s merchant elite, but her survey did not begin until 1560 and drew no comparisons with other ports.[6] Joyce Youings wrote about the port as part of a wider study of Devonian maritime trade published in 1992, but as such the smaller northern port was overshadowed by consideration of the larger south Devon ports of Plymouth and Dartmouth.[7] More fundamentally this survey was largely descriptive and impressionistic acknowledging that ‘it is far easier to describe the overseas trade of the Devon ports in the sixteenth century than it is to quantify it or to determine long term trends’.[8] It did not include the north Devon port of Ilfracombe, and did not draw any comparison between Barnstaple and other regional ports. Turning to the Welsh ports of the Channel the situation is similarly sparse. E.A. Lewis included tables summarising some branches of trade in the introduction to the volume of Welsh port books which he transcribed in 1927.[9] Spencer Dimmock has written in detail about the port of Chepstow, and noted in 2003 how the Welsh ports have been ‘largely ignored in the study of English commerce and urban networks’.[10] This observation remains true, and apart from Dimmock’s study there has been no survey of the trade of any Welsh port to the east of Carmarthen. The one work dealing with Pembrokeshire, written in 1964, was very wide in its scope ranging from the Iron Age to 1900, and was consequently neither very detailed nor comprehensive so far as the sixteenth century is concerned.[11] There have been two county based studies of the trade of Carmarthenshire. That of M.I. Williams lacked quantitative data and was essentially a guide to the available sources rather than an analysis of trade.[12] M.C.S. Evans compiled some quantitative data from the port books in 1960, but confined his analysis solely to this source and seemed unaware of the shortcomings of port books; he also failed to set his findings within a wider context or to draw wider conclusions.[13] There is of course an abundance of local histories of particular ports, but these do not deal in more than a passing manner with commerce and trade in their own right, and few are concerned with the sixteenth century.[14] There has therefore been no systematic study based on the available quantitative data for the smaller ports of the region, nor any thorough analysis made of related source material, and more importantly none which looks beyond the immediate locality of a particular port.
The smaller ports of the Bristol Channel are not alone in this neglect. Historians have tended to assume that minor ports were simply satellites of great ports, reflecting them and serving them in a minor way; that the large ports acted as regional economic hubs and that the smaller ports were peripheral actors around the rim; or put another way that they were acted upon, but were not themselves actors in the wider economic story. Despite their prevalence, little attention has been paid by economic historians to smaller ports. So far as England is concerned the economic histories of minor ports during this period are confined to those of Hull, East Anglia, Blakeney, Rye, Poole and Chester.[15] Boston, Newcastle upon Tyne, and the ports of North East Yorkshire can be added for the medieval period; and Chichester, Faversham, Weymouth, Lyme Regis and the Cornish ports can be added for the seventeenth century.[16] This is an extraordinarily limited list given the length of the British coastline and the span of time involved. Other than N.J. Williams study of the east Anglian ports, there has been no attempt to look at minor ports on anything wider than a county basis, nor any attempt to place them within a wider economic context. There has been no comparative study of the trade of smaller ports, nor any which looks to trace their interaction. There has thus been a concentration on the trade of the larger ports, and especially on the overseas trade through these ports, at the expense of consideration of the role played by smaller ports.
Having noted the lack of work that has been done on the region’s smaller ports, it nonetheless remains true that the recorded overseas trade of Bristol far exceeded that at any other port in the Bristol Channel. Figures from the mid century overseas customs accounts indicate that Bristol’s trade was some twenty times greater than that at neighbouring Bridgwater for example, and even at the end of the century when Gloucester had been hived off from Bristol to form an independent port, its recorded trade still dwarfed that of any other port in the Channel. The evidence from this source indicates that even the combined recorded international trade of all of the other ports in the Channel would not have challenged the pre eminence of Bristol.
However, when consideration is given to factors other than crude totals from overseas customs data, the focus which historians have placed on Bristol begins to look misplaced. The Bristol Channel as defined here has been drawn in a broad sense to include economically significant centres from the westward tip of Pembrokeshire via the lower reaches of the Severn, and along the English coastline as far as Hartland Point in north Devon. By the end of the sixteenth century this region encompassed over 200 recorded landing places through which trade was conducted. Amongst these were the county towns of Worcester with a population of around 6,000, Gloucester with around 4,000, Carmarthen with around 2,250 and Cardiff with perhaps 1,100.[17] Along with the towns of Haverfordwest and Barnstaple (each with an estimated population of around 2,000), Minehead, Bridgwater, Chepstow, Tenby and Pembroke, these figures represent an immediate market well in excess of the estimated 9,500 plus inhabitants at Bristol.[18] Moreover, waterborne commerce was clearly important to these places where the principal merchants were often synonymous with the mayoralty and council. Men such as Luke Garnons at Gloucester, or John Newport and Richard Godbeare at Bridgwater, or John Delbridge at Barnstaple who became the town’s MP, were all at the forefront of both maritime trade and civic life.[19] An example of the importance which such elites attached to maritime trade is outlined in Chapter Four which charts the considerable energy and expense that Gloucester council men expended on securing control of the Exchequer customs in their city. Could it really be the case that the customs accounts reflected true levels of trade when revenue at Gloucester was collected on trade valued at just over £14 in 1597/98, whilst that at Bristol was valued at £32,263 in 1594/95?[20] If this was really the underlying commercial reality then why had the city’s authorities fought so hard to secure independent port status, or their counterparts at Bristol mounted so vigorous a defence to retain their jurisdiction over the city? Is it feasible that the difference would be of this order of magnitude when the population of Bristol was less than that of the combined populations of Gloucester and Worcester, (which was served by traffic passing through the port of Gloucester up the Severn)? Moreover the term ‘Bristol Channel’ is anachronistic so far as the sixteenth century is concerned when the waterway described above was referred to as either the Severn Sea or simply the Severn.[21] If contemporaries did not perceive the waterway as being simply a conduit to and from Bristol, then why should historians make this assumption? Despite acknowledging the deficiencies of overseas customs accounts as a source for understanding true levels of trade, have Carus-Wilson, Vanes, Sacks and others perhaps fallen into the very trap which they describe, and might the customs accounts at the smaller ports be hiding more than they reveal? This thesis aims to address this question by focusing on the ‘Channel’ part of the Bristol Channel, rather than on its better known and more extensively studied precursor.
In this respect it picks up the baton passed on by Christopher and Alan Dyer, Peter Clark, Paul Slack, and others who have shifted the attention which urban historians had previously placed upon large towns and cities at the expense of smaller communities.[22] Whilst it is now recognised that study of such places considerably shapes and amends previous interpretations which had been made concerning urban hierarchies, and around issues such as specialisation in marketing and production, there has been no similar reassessment of smaller port towns in relation to large port towns. This thesis will therefore examine the role of minor ports in the regional economy of the Bristol Channel during the sixteenth century. It will establish whether the port towns around the peripherary of the Channel had their own dynamic, or whether they were simply mini versions of Bristol, essentially trading in the same goods to the same places but on a smaller scale. It will establish the extent to which the trade of the minor ports differed from that of Bristol, and chart changes in trading relationships over the course of the century.
The concentration of historians on larger ports described above is a reflection of their focus on overseas customs accounts as a source for understanding maritime trade. This is understandable given that these records exist in far greater numbers for the major ports such as London and Bristol than they do for smaller ports where far fewer records were kept, and those that survive are often fragmentary. Although it is recognised that there are limitations to what the overseas customs accounts can tell us about true levels of trade, they nevertheless remain the bedrock for any work in this area.[23] This thesis is no exception and the compilation of a database containing 124 customs accounts underpins the following study.[24] Whilst it was not possible to include every surviving account, in common with similar studies for the period, as representative a sample as possible was taken to discern trends of trade over the century.[25] The overseas customs accounts do not represent the totality of maritime trade however, even if allowance is made for evasion and under reporting. This thesis therefore adopts a multi source approach to supplement the data which they contain, and so provides a more complete picture of the waterborne trade of the Bristol Channel and its tributaries.
As well as overseas accounts, coastal customs accounts are also used here to assess flows of trade within the Channel, and to determine the relationship between different ports. Comparatively little work has been done using this source. Since Willan’s overview of the coasting trade published in 1938 the only substantive work on the subject has been the Gloucester Port Book Database compiled in 1995.[26] Even this extensive resource however has resulted in only one monograph on the data which it contains - and this incorporates coastal accounts from more than one port jurisdiction only for the limited period of 1695-1704.[27] This thesis will therefore make a significant contribution to this neglected topic.
Local port records have also been employed as a further quantitative source. The advantage of these is that they supply information about trade in a range of goods which were actually traded but which were not liable to customs, and which do not therefore appear in the customs accounts; they have the added advantage of providing a means of verifying the information in the customs accounts in relation to those goods which were liable. N.J. Williams used the Yarmouth and Lynn water bailiffs’ accounts in this manner for the sixteenth century, and a similar comparative exercise was conducted by D.M. Woodward for Elizabethan Chester, by J.L. Wiggs for Southampton in the sixteenth century, by H.S. Cobb for Southampton in the fifteenth century, and by Maryanne Kowaleski for the port of Exeter in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century.[28] The Bridgwater water bailiffs’ accounts however have not been used in this way before, and indeed have not previously been recognized other than by local historians.[29] They therefore make a distinctive contribution of this thesis.
Additionally a range of qualitative sources have been used to supplement this data. Local corporation and borough records, contemporary descriptions of trade, Exchequer commissions of enquiry, cases bought in Chancery, and State papers have been used to either substantiate or to modify assessment of the quantitative data described above.
The coastline of England and Wales was divided into a series of ‘ports’ for customs purposes. Port in this sense refers to a jurisdiction over a defined stretch of coastline, rather than to a harbour with ships. These jurisdictions took their name from the head port of the area. Thus the port of Bridgwater ran from Porlock bay in the west to the mouth of the River Axe in the east. As well as the head port, there were also member ports subordinate to and smaller than the head port, and creeks which were smaller still. The construction of the chapters adopts the pattern of Exchequer ports and follows a simple geographical progression around the Channel starting in north Devon, which lay within the port of Exeter, and then proceeding via the ports of Bridgwater, Gloucester, Cardiff and finally Milford. Consideration will be made of the basic patterns and trends of trade in the major commodities recorded in the port books over the course of the century. The extent to which these records are a full reflection of trade subject to duty will be examined, with particular reference to differences in compliance between different ports, and by implication differences in the extent of Crown authority in these places. The coastal accounts will be used to supplement this information and to illustrate that any consideration of overseas trade must also take account of this source. A major theme of this thesis however is the uncovering of trade which was not recorded in the Exchequer sources, not because it was being illicitly conducted, but because it fell outside the scope of customs control. Based on a multi sourced approach it will be argued that Exchequer customs accounts are a necessary but not sufficient source for understanding maritime trade in the period, and more importantly for drawing conclusions about economic activity in the ports’ hinterlands. Patterns of trading relationships between different ports will also be considered to determine how open the market structure was, and the degree of specialisation, if any, that existed at different ports towns. The conclusion draws on these chapters to assess the extent to which the smaller regional ports had their own dynamic and considers the wider implications of this.
Before this
metaphorical journey around the Bristol Channel can begin it will be helpful to
lay some groundwork regarding the operation of Exchequer customs during the
sixteenth century, and the means of measurement employed in the following
pages.
There were three principal customs officials stationed at each head port with deputies at the member ports: the customer, the controller and the searcher. The customer was responsible for determining and collecting duties, and for accounting for this revenue to the Exchequer. Accordingly he kept a ledger of all ships which sailed overseas either to or from the port with goods which were liable to customs. As well as the ship’s name and the date of the ledger entry, he was required to list the ‘home port’ of the vessel, details of its manifest, of the merchant or merchants freighting particular goods, of the notional value of these goods, and of the duty consequently payable.[30] When a ship had cleared customs the customer was responsible for issuing a written cocket for outbound cargoes to the master or purser of the vessel. The controller was required to draw up an independent set of less detailed records which could be used to corroborate the information compiled by the customer. The searcher, as the name suggests, was responsible for physically checking cargo to ensure that it matched to the cocket. In addition he had the power to seize any vessels which were unlading before they had cleared customs, or which were sailing outbound with goods which he suspected had not cleared customs.
Turning to the coastal accounts, there is very little surviving documentary evidence for controls on the coastal movement of goods prior to 1549.[31] After this date records began to be kept more consistently, but a comprehensive national system of recording and control was not introduced until 1565 when separate port books for domestic coastal trade began to be routinely kept at all ports.[32] No duty was payable for goods shipped coastally, the intention being not to raise revenue from domestic trade but to bolster the controls in place to prevent overseas customs evasion. To this end merchants were required to lodge a bond with the customs authority at the port of despatch for goods which would normally have been liable to customs if they were shipped overseas. They were then issued with a cocket or certificate to authorise their passage. The bond was subsequently cancelled on presentation of a signed certificate from another domestic port verifying that the cargo had indeed reached its destination and had not been spirited overseas. Additionally certificates were usually issued for goods which had been imported from overseas and which had paid duty but were then being shipped elsewhere domestically. This certificate therefore proved to the inbound port that the goods had cleared customs.[33] The coastal customs accounts during this period are thus essentially a record of the issuing of outbound certificates and of the presentation of these certificates at inbound ports. Like their overseas counterparts the coastal accounts list the names of ships, and the details of their manifest, the names of the masters, and usually the merchants concerned, often with their location. However, because no duty was paid the coastal accounts do not detail the value of the goods entered for customs. Whilst it is possible to infer the notional value of many of the goods listed by cross referencing to the values contained in the overseas accounts for the same commodities, this is not always possible as many goods shipped coastwise cannot be traced as having been traded overseas. Additionally the coastal accounts can sometimes contain inexact volume indicators, such as a barrel or a bundle, which would have been sufficient for the purposes of checking the load at the quayside but are not adequate for comparative valuation purposes.
The value of trade recorded in the overseas customs accounts was not the real or market value of the goods which were subject to customs, but a notional value used to calculate the duty payable. The majority of types of goods subject to customs paid an ad valorum tax known as poundage which was levied at five percent of their notional value These values were recorded in books of rates issued by the Exchequer to customs officers.[34] The disadvantage of these figures is that they do not reflect the true commercial values of underlying trade, but their advantage for historians is that they provide a consistent basis on which comparisons can be made between different ports and across different years. Two potential difficulties with this data present themselves however. Firstly, wine and some types of cloth paid a specific duty based on the quantity of goods, rather than the ad valorum tax. These goods were not therefore valued in the customs accounts but were simply recorded with the amount of the duty which had been levied against them. Secondly, the notional rates drawn up by the Exchequer were subject to periodic revaluation, and meaningful direct comparisons can therefore only be made within periods subject to the same rating.
The method for valuing customs data adopted in this thesis incorporates the same principals as those for the database compiled as part of the Economic and Social Science Research Council funded research into ‘Ireland-Bristol Trade in the sixteenth Century’ by Dr. Jones at Bristol University.[35] This dealt with the problem of valuing goods which incurred different rates of duty by ascribing a reconstructed value to goods which were liable for specific duties. With respect to wine this was estimated at £4 per tun in line with its likely commercial value at the time that the customs rates were drawn up. This was raised to £8 for the period after 1558 when there was a revision of the Book of Rates used to calculate dutiable values which approximately doubled the value of most goods paying the ad valorum tax. With respect to cloth, the situation is less straightforward as the customs duties varied according to the type being exported. Some cloths, known as ‘country cloths’, were liable for the ad valorum tax called poundage and calculated at five percent of their notional value. Other cloths however, paid specific duty based on their size. The size of the fixed rate cloth, known as broadcloth or cloth of assize, was set by statute at 24 yards long by 2 yards wide, but in practice many cloths were smaller than this prescribed size, and were therefore charged proportionally less: Bridgwaters for instance paid half the standard cloth rate, and Dunsters paid one quarter.[36] Since the cloths exported were of different types and sizes, and were valued by different methods, it is no easy matter to determine overall changes in value or volume over the century. The approach adopted by Wendy Childs, and subsequently by other historians of the period, has been to value cloth of assize at a fixed rate of £2 for the period before 1558 in line with their likely commercial value.[37] The problem of valuation over a wider time frame is that the revision of the Book of Rates used to calculate dutiable value in 1558, which doubled the value of most goods paying poundage, increased the fixed rate for cloth of assize nearly six fold.[38] This level of increase did not reflect the rise in the commercial value of cloth in the intervening period, but was an ambitious attempt by the crown to maximise revenue from taxation of this leading export. Cloth of assize and its derivatives have therefore been valued at £4 each or pro rata for the period after 1558.
In order to avoid the
difficulties inherent with using the valuations contained in the Exchequer
accounts over extended periods, wherever possible this thesis adopts volume
rather than value measurements for comparative purposes. Where necessary any
clarifications concerning the particular method used to make volume comparisons
are detailed in the accompanying notes. Sum
totals of the value of trade, commodities traded, calculations concerning merchants’
market share and so forth are based on the sample of Exchequer customs accounts
(TNA E122) and Exchequer port books (TNA E190) detailed in Appendix A and
valued as described above. Details of these sources will not be repeated unless
the source is unclear.
[1] Eleanora Mary Carus-Wilson, 'The Medieval Trade of the Ports of the Wash', Medieval Archaeology, 6-7 (1964), 182-201; Eleanora Mary Carus-Wilson, The Merchant Adventurers of Bristol in the 15th century, Local history pamphlets (Historical Association, Bristol Branch), 4 (Bristol, 1962); E.M. Carus-Wilson, The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Later Middle Ages, Vol. VII, Bristol Record Society (Bristol, 1937); E.M. Carus-Wilson, 'The Overseas Trade of Bristol', in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. by Eileen Power and M.M. Postan, (London, 1933), pp. 183-246.
[2] Jean Vanes, 'The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Sixteenth Century' (PhD, University of London, 1975), 85; J. Vanes, Documents Illustrating the Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Sixteenth Century, Vol. XXXI, Bristol Record Society Publications (Kendal, 1979); Jean Vanes, The Port of Bristol in the Sixteenth Century, (Historical Association, Bristol Branch), 39 (Bristol, 1977).
[3] Patrick McGrath, 'The Society of Merchant Venturers and the Port of Bristol in the 17th Century', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 72 (1954), 105-28; Patrick McGrath, The Merchant Venturers of Bristol: a History of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol from its Origin to the Present Day (Bristol, 1975); David Harris Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics in Bristol, 1500-1640, 2 vols, Vol. 1 (New York, 1985); David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 (Berkeley, CA., 1991), 14.
[4] Evan T. Jones, 'Illicit Business: Accounting for Smuggling in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Bristol', Economic History Review, LIV (2001), 17-38; Evan T. Jones, 'The Bristol Shipping Industry in the Sixteenth Century' (Phd Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1998); Evan Jones, Inside the Illicit Economy: Reconstructing the Smugglers' Trade of Sixteenth Century Bristol (draft manuscript, 2008).
[5] M.D.G. Wanklyn et al., 'The Gloucester Port Book Database, 1575-1765', (Colchester: UK Data Archive, 1996).
[6] Alison Grant, 'Breaking the Mould: North Devon Maritime Enterprise, 1560-1640', in Tudor and Stuart Devon: The Common Estate and Government; Essays Presented to Joyce Youings, ed. by Todd Gray, Margery M. Rowe, and Audrey Erskine, (Exeter, 1992), pp. 119-40.
[7] Joyce Youings and Peter W. Cornford, 'Seafaring and Maritime Trade in Sixteenth-Century Devon', in The New Maritime History of Devon, ed. by Michael Duffy, et al., 2 vols, Vol. 1, (Exeter, 1992), pp. 98-107.
[8] Ibid., 101.
[9] E.A. Lewis, The Welsh Port Books, 1550-1603, with an analysis of the customs revenue accounts of Wales for the same period., Vol. XLVII, Cymmrodorion Record Series, 12 (London, 1927).
[10] Spencer Dimmock, 'Urban and Commercial Networks in the Later Middle Ages: Chepstow, Severnside and the Ports of Southern Wales', Archaeologia Cambrensis (2003), 53-68; Spencer Dimmock, 'The Custom Book of Chepstow, 1535–6', Studia Celtica (2004), 131-50.
[11] B.J. George, 'Pembrokeshire Sea-Trading before 1900', Field Studies, 2 (1964), 1-39.
[12] M.I. Williams, 'Carmarthenshire's Maritime Trade in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, 14 (1978), 61-70.
[13] M.C.S. Evans, 'Carmarthen and the Welsh Port Books 1550-1603', The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, 3 (1960), 72-87.
[14] Jamie Rose Campbell, Barnstaple: A Selective Bibliography with a short History of the Town (Barnstaple, 1998); Duncan Fielder, A History of Bideford (Chichester, 1985). L. Lamplugh, Barnstaple: Town on the Taw (Chichester, 1983). Hilary Binding and Douglas Stevens, Minehead: A New History (Minehead, 1977); Edgar L. Chappell, History of the Port of Cardiff (Merton Priory, 1994); R.W. Dunning, Bridgwater: History and Guide (Stroud, 1992); L. Lamplugh, A History of Ilfracombe (Chichester, 1984); A.L. Wedlake, A History of Watchet (Dulverton, 1973). J.W. Dawson, Commerce and Customs: A History of the Ports of Newport and Caerleon (Newport, 1932); William Henry Jones, History of the port of Swansea (Carmarthen, 1922). Eija Kennerley, 'River Trade and Shipping in Caerleon from the 16th to the 19th Century', Gwent Local History, 47 (1979); W. H. Morris, 'The Port of Kidwelly', The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, XXVI (1990); J.F. Rees, The Story of Milford (Cardiff, 1954); W.S.K. Thomas, The History of Swansea: from Rover Settlement to the Restoration (Llandysul, 1990); I. Waters, The Port of Chepstow (Chepstow, 1977).
[15] Basil Cozens-Hardy, The Maritime Trade of the Port of Blakeney which included Cley and Wiveton, 1587-1590, Vol. 8, Norfolk Record Society Publications (Norwich, 1936), pp. 15-37; R. Davis, The Trade and Shipping of Hull, 1500-1700, East Yorkshire Local History Series 17 (York, 1964); Stephen Hipkin, 'The Maritime Economy of Rye, 1560-1640', Southern History, 20-21 (1998-99), 108-42; Robert Tittler, 'The Vitality of an Elizabethan Port: The Economy of Poole c.1550-1600', Southern History, 7 (1985), 95-118; N.J. Williams, The Maritime Trade of The East Anglian Ports, 1550-1590 (Oxford, 1988); D.M. Woodward, The Trade of Elizabethan Chester, ed. by John Saville, Occasional Papers in Economic and Social History no. 4 (Hull, 1970).
[16] J. H. Andrews, 'The trade of the port of Faversham, 1650-1750', Archaeologia Cantiana, 69 (1956), 125-31; J. H. Andrews, 'The port of Chichester and the grain trade, 1650-1750', Sussex Archaeological Collections, 92 (1954), 93-105; W.I. Haward, 'The Trade of Boston in the Fifteenth Century', Reports and Papers of the Associated Architectural Societies, 41 (1935), 169-78; W.B. Stephens, 'The Trade and Fortunes of Poole, Weymouth and Lyme Regis 1600-1640', Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 95 (1974), 71-73; J.F. Wade, 'The Overseas Trade of Newcastle upon Tyne in the Late Middle Ages', Northern History, 30 (1994), 31-48; Bryan Waites, 'The Medieval Ports and Trade of North-East Yorkshire', Mariner's Mirror, 63 (1977), 137-49; J.C.A. Whetter, 'Cornish Trade in the 17th Century: An Analysis of the Port Books', Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, n.s 4 (1964), 388-413.
[17] W. G. Hoskins, 'English Provincial Towns in the Early Sixteenth Century', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1956), 1-19, 5; W.S.K. Thomas, 'Tudor and Jacobean Swansea: The Social Scene', Morgannwg, 5 (1962), 23-48, 25.
[18] Hoskins, 'English Provincial Towns', 5; Philip Jenkins, 'Wales', in The Cambridge Urban history of Britain, 1540-1840, ed. by Peter Clark, 3 vols, Vol. 2, (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 133-50, 134; John M. Wasson, Records of Early English Drama: Devon (London, 1986), xii.
[19] Alison Grant, 'John Delbridge, Barnstaple Merchant, 1564-1639', in Innovation in Trade and Shipping: Exeter Maritime Studies, 6, ed. by Stephen Fisher, (Exeter, 1989), pp. 91-109, 96.
[20] TNA E190/1241/8 cf. E190/1131/10. 'Ireland-Bristol Trade in the Sixteenth Century ', University of Bristol, (2008) <http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/Ireland/research.htm> [January 2009].
[21]
For example preparations for the defence against the armada at Milford Haven
referred to the enemy entering the ‘Severn’s mouth’ ('Queen Elizabeth - Volume 254: November 1595’, Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Elizabeth,
1595-97 (1869) 121-138 < http://www.british-history.ac.uk> [03 December 2008]); or see the map of the Somerset
and north Devon coasts, Cotton MSS Aug. Vol. 1 Temp HVIII, ‘The Coast of
England upon Severne’.
[22] Peter Clark and Paul Slack, English Towns in Transition, 1500-1700 (London, 1976); Christopher Dyer, 'Small Places with Large Consequences: the Importance of Small Towns in England, 1000-1540', Historical Research, 75 (2002), 1-24; Alan Dyer, 'Small Market Towns, 1540-1700', in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, 1540-1840, ed. by Peter Clark, 3 vols, Vol. 2, (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 425-50; Alan Dyer, 'Small Towns in England, 1600-1800', in Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland: Change, Convergence and Divergence ed. by Peter Borsay and Lindsay J. Proudfoot, (Oxford, 2002), pp. 53-67.
[23] J.H. Andrews, 'Two Problems in the Interpretation of the Port Books', Economic History Review 2nd Ser., 9 (1956), 119-22; Sven Erik Astrom, 'The Reliablity of the English Port Books', Scandanavian Economic History Review, XVI (1968), 125-36; E. Carson, 'Customs Records as a Source of Historical Research', Archives, 13 (1977), 74-80; G.D Ramsay, 'The Smuggler's Trade: A Neglected Aspect of English Commercial Development', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New series, 2 (1952), 131-57; N.J. Williams, 'Francis Shaxton and the Elizabethan Port Books', English Historical Review, 66 (1951), 387-95; Neville Williams, Contraband Cargoes: Seven Centuries of Smuggling (London, 1959).
[24] A full list is given in Appendix A.
[25] See for instance 'Ireland-Bristol Trade in the Sixteenth Century', University of Bristol, (2006) <http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/Ireland/index.htm> [March 2008]; P. Wakelin, 'Pre-Industrial Trade on the River Severn: a Computer-Aided Study of the Gloucester Port Books, c.1640-c.1770' (PhD, Wolverhampton Polytechnic, 1991).
[26] T.S. Willan, The English Coasting Trade, 1600-1750 (Frome, 1938). Armstrong acknowledges the paucity of work in this field and his reliance on secondary works in his study of coastal shipping (John Armstrong, 'The Importance of Coastal Shipping in British Domestic Transport, 1550-1830', International Journal of Maritime History III (1991), 63-94); Wanklyn et al., 'Gloucester Port Book Database'.
[27] David Hussey, Coastal and River Trade in Pre-Industrial England: Bristol and its Region, 1680-1730 (Exeter, 2000), 18.
[28] Henry S. Cobb, The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439-40, Vol. V, Southampton Record Series (Southampton, 1961); Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Customs Accounts of the Port of Exeter, 1266-1321, Vol. 36, Devon and Cornwall Record Society (Exeter, 1993); J.L. Wiggs, 'The Seaborne Trade of Southampton in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century' (MA, University of Southampton, 1955); Williams, East Anglian Ports; Woodward, Trade of Elizabethan Chester.
[29] Cobb does not mention them in his survey of local port records, (Henry Stephen Cobb, 'Local Port Customs Accounts prior to 1550', Journal of the Society of Archivists, 1 (1958), 213-24).
[30] N.S. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, MA., 1918), 94-100; R.W.K. Hinton, The Port Books of Boston, 1601-1640, Vol. 50, Lincoln Record Society (Hereford, 1956), xiv-xv; T.S. Willan, ed., A Tudor Book of Rates (Manchester, 1962).
[31] Gras, Early English Customs, 145.
[32] ‘Port Books 1565-1799’, The National Archives Research Guides: Domestic Records Information 9
< http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/RdLeaflet.asp?sLeafletID=83&j=1> [June 2009].
[33] Gras, Early English Customs, 144-46,770; Willan, English Coasting Trade, 1-4; Williams, East Anglian Ports, 18-20.
[34] The first national rate was established in 1536 prior to which ‘the evidence rather suggests that [provincial] ports used the same valuations as those in the [London] Book of Rates, at least for some goods’. The first surviving national Book of Rates is from 1558. (Willan, ed., A Tudor Book of Rates, xxi).
[35] A full explanation of this can be found at <http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/Ireland/datasets.htm.>
[36] 1 RIC3 C8.
[37] Wendy Childs, 'Ireland's Trade with England in the Later Middle Ages', Irish Economic and Social History, IX (1982), 5-33, 18.
[38] G.D. Ramsay, The English Woollen Industry, 1500-1750 (London, 1982), 59.