1. Charles M. MacInnes, A Gateway of Empire (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1939), p. 9.

2. Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 27.

3. For a brief overview, see E. M. Carus-Wilson, The Merchant Adventurers of Bristol in the Fifteenth Century (Historical Association, Bristol Branch, Pamphlet 4, 1962).

4. See H. R. Fox Bourne, English Merchants: Memoirs in Illustration of the Progress of British Commerce, 2 vols. (London: R. Bentley, 1866), vol. 1, p. 106; Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: North Somerset and Bristol (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), p. 403.

5. E. M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, 2d ed. (London: Methuen, 1967), pp. 72, 75, 79, 89–90; see also William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. John Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 130–33.

6. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 67–73.

7. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 248, 257; Y. Renouard, “Les Relations de Bordeaux et de Bristol au Moyen Age,” Revue Historique de Bordeaux n.s. 6 (1957), pp. 105–6; M. K. James, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, ed. E. M. Veale with introduction by E. M. Carus-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 93–108.

8. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 269–71; James, Medieval Wine Trade, pp. 1–37; Renouard, “Les Relations de Bordeaux et de Bristol,” pp. 106–8; J. W. Sherborne, The Port of Bristol in the Later Middle Ages (Historical Association, Bristol Branch, Pamphlet 13, 1965), pp. 9–13; Théophile Malvezin, Histoire du Commerce de Bordeaux depuis les Origines jusqu’à nos Jours, 2 vols. (Bordeaux: A. Bellier, 1892), vol. 2, p. 199.

9. James, Medieval Wine Trade, pp. 38–42; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 40–43; Sherborne, Port of Bristol, pp. 21–22; Renouard, “Les Relations de Bordeaux et de Bristol,” pp. 109–10, 111; see below, Tables 1 and 2.

10. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 50, 58–59, 257; V. M. Shillington and A. B. Wallis Chapman, The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1907), pp. 13, 14, 18, 49, 56, 68; Sherborne, Port of Bristol, p. 11.

11. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 28–40, 246–48, 269–71; Y. Renouard, “Les Conséquences de la Conquête de la Guienne par le Roi de France pour le Commerce de Vins de Gascoigne,” Annales du Midi 61 (1948–49): 16–18; Renouard, “Les Relations de Bordeaux et de Bristol, ” pp. 104–5; M. G. A. Vale, English Gascony, 1399–1453: A Study of War, Government and Politics during the Later Stages of the Hundred Years War (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 11–26; Robert Boutruche, La Crise d’un Société: Seigneurs et Paysans du Bordelais pendant la Guerre de Cents Ans (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1947), pp. 141–65.

12. Malvezin, Histoire du Commerce de Bordeaux, vol. 2, p. 199.

13. The history of Bristol’s trade just before and just after the English loss of Bordeaux shows how precipitous was the decline in both cloth exports and wine imports. Between 1440 and 1460 an average of 4,231 whole cloths were exported annually from Bristol; in the same period an average of 1,738 tons of wine were imported annually. But during the first five years of this period, from 1440 to 1445, the annual averages were 5,427 whole cloths and 2,411 tons of wine. In the last five years, the annual averages were 2,943 whole cloths and 814 tons of wine. In three years in this half-decade, wine shipments were under 800 tons for the year. For detailed figures see E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, eds., England’s Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 95–100. See also Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 41–45, 265–78; James, Medieval Wine Trade, pp. 40–45, 111–12; Renouard, “Conquête de la Guienne,” pp. 18–24; Boutruche, La Crise d’un Société, pp. 170–71, 219–31, 399–411.

14. Bristol produced about £1,450 of customs revenue per year in the 1490s. In the same period London produced about £8,520 per year, Southampton about £6,365 per year, and Exeter about £1,000 per year; see Georg von Schanz, Englische Handelspolitike gegen Ende des Mittelalters mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Zeitalters der beiden ersten Tudors, Heinrich VII. und Heinrich VIII., 2 vols. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1881), vol. 2, pp. 37–46; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 284. Note, however, that the ratio between customs rates and market prices varied somewhat from item to item, so port totals never reflect the volume of trade in exactly the same way for each port. These totals also vary according to the proportion of denizen, alien, and Hanseatic merchants in each port’s trade, since these groups paid customs on different scales, with foreigners paying higher rates. In the case of Bristol and its near neighbor and rival Exeter, 90 to 95 percent of trade was consistently in the hands of denizens. For London, however, the figure was approximately 50 percent, and for Southampton, 25–30 percent. Finally, those totals apply properly to customs jurisdictions, not just to one port. In the fifteenth century, Bristol did include some adjacent ports in Wales and in the Severn River valley, but with Bridgewater under a separate jurisdiction, Bristol’s totals are for a relatively well-defined area. Indeed, most of the traffic from the minor ports associated with it passed through Bristol both to and from overseas. London was perhaps even better defined, extending only to Gravesend and Tilbury. With Southampton and Exeter, however, the areas covered by the above customs totals are larger and more diffuse. Southampton included Portsmouth, and Exeter included Dartmouth. Hence the figures represent the significance of each port in the system of customs collection better than their actual place in the hierarchy of port cities. Nevertheless, they undoubtedly give us the right order of precedence and suggest in terms of order of magnitude something of the differences among these ports.

15. I. S. Leadam, ed., Select Cases before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber commonly called the Court of Star Chamber, II: 1509–1544 (Selden Society 25, 1911), p. 266.

16. Ibid., p. 268.

17. See Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 284; E. M. Carus-Wilson, The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages: The Harte Memorial Lecture in Local History, University of Exeter, 12 May 1961 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1963).

18. See G. D. Ramsay, English Overseas Trade during the Centuries of Emergence: Studies in Some Modern Origins of the English Speaking World (London: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 134–38; D. Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, 1460–1540 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1947), pp. 161–63, 234.

19. A. K. Longfield, Anglo-Irish Trade in the Sixteenth Century (London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1929), p. 216.

20. On Anglo-French commercial relations in the early sixteenth century, see P. Boissonade, “Le Mouvement Commercial entre la France et les Iles Brittaniques au XVI^e Siècle,” Revue Historique 134 (1920): 192–228, and 135 (1921): 1–27; Robert Boutruche, ed., Bordeaux de 1453 à 1715 (Bordeaux: Fédération Historique du Sudouest, 1966), p. 93; M. Mollat, Le Commerce Maritime Normand à la Fin du Moyen Age: Etude d’Histoire Economique et Sociale (Paris: Plon, 1952), pp. 139–45; Gordon Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A Study of English Trade with Spain in the Early Tudor Period (London: Longmans, Green, 1954), pp. 41, 60–61; Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, pp. 163, 235–36; Jacques Bernard, Navires et Gens de Mer à Bordeaux (vers 1400–1550), 3 vols. (Paris: SEVPEN, 1968), vol. 2, p. 508; vol. 3, Appendices.

21. Shillington and Chapman, Commercial Relations of England and Portugal, pp. 133–34.

22. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 34, 41, 54, 60–62, 105–6, 124, 207–12; T. S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), pp. 84–85; D. M. Woodward, The Trade of Elizabethan Chester (Hull: University of Hull Publications, 1970), p. 40n.

23. For discussion of the idea of an urban crisis in the later Middle Ages see Charles Phythian-Adams, “Urban Decay in the Later Middle Ages,” in Philip Abrams and E. A. Wrigley, eds., Towns and Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 159–85. For a general overview of the concepts of urban function, urban network, urban system, and urban hierarchy, see Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 118, 167–68, 171; E. A. Wrigley, “Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the Early Modern Period,” in E. A. Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 157–93. For additional discussions, see Alan Dyer, “Growth and Decay in English Towns, 1500–1700,” in Urban History Yearbook, 1979 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), pp. 60–72; Charles Phythian-Adams, “Dr Dyer’s Urban Undulations,” ibid., pp. 73–76; S. Rigby, “Urban Decline in the Later Middle Ages,” ibid., pp. 46–59; A. R. Bridbury, “English Provincial Towns in the Later Middle Ages,” EcHR, 2d ser., 34 (1981): 1–24; R. B. Dobson, “Urban Decline in Late Medieval England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 27 (1977): 1–22; N. R. Goose, “In Search of the Urban Variable: Towns, 1500–1650,” EcHR, 2d ser., 39 (1986): 165–86; D. M. Palliser, “A Crisis in English Towns? The Case of York, 1480–1640,” Northern History 14 (1978): 108–25; Charles Phythian-Adams and Paul Slack, “Urban Decay or Urban Change?” in Charles Phythian-Adams et al., The Traditional Community under Stress (Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press, 1977), pp. 5–29.

24. See Tables 3 and 4, above; C. G. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England, 1500–1700, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 108ff.; Steve Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 87–96; D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England under the Later Tudors, 1547–1603 (London: Longman, 1983), pp. 278–91; D. C. Coleman, The Economy of England, 1450–1750 (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 51; W. G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: King Henry’s England, 1500–1547 (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 178–80; Ramsay, English Overseas Trade, pp. 1–33; F. J. Fisher, “Commercial Trends and Policy in Sixteenth Century England,” in E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed., Essays in Economic History, 3 vols. (London: Edward Arnold, 1954–1962), vol. 1, pp. 153–55; Lawrence Stone, “State Control in Sixteenth-Century England,” EcHR 17 (1947): 104 ff.; J. D. Gould, The Great Debasement: Currency and the Economy in Mid-Tudor England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 115ff.; Carus-Wilson, The Expansion of Exeter.

25. Leadam, ed., Select Cases before the Star Chamber, II, p. 146.

26. L. and P. 13, part 2, p. 322; Stat. Realm 32 Hen. VIII, c. 18, lists Bristol in 1540 among the thirty-six English towns which “nowe are fallen downe decayed and at this day remaine unreedified and doo lye as desolate and vacante groundes”; see also Jean Vanes, ed., Documents Illustrating the Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Sixteenth Century (BRS 31, 1979), pp. 28–31.

27. Leadam, ed., Select Cases before the Star Chamber, II, p. 250; SMV, Book of Trade, p. 36; BL, Lands. MS 86/13; Ramsay, English Overseas Trade, p. 137.

28. G. C. Moore Smith and P. H. Reaney, The Family of Withypoll, with Special Reference to the Manor of Christchurch, Ipswich, and Some Notes on the Allied Families of Thorne, Harper, Lucar and Devereaux (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 34, 1936); George F. Bosworth, George Monoux: The Story of a Waltamstow Worthy—His Foundations and Benefactions (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 3, 1916); George F. Bosworth, George Monoux: The Man and His Work (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 17, 1927); George S. Fry, Abstract of Wills Relating to Walthamstow, co. Essex (1335–1559) (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 9, 1921), pp. 20–46; A. H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers of London: Preceded by an Introduction on London and Her Gilds up to the Close of the XVth Century, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914–1922), vol. 2, pp. 14–15, 21, 79, 136; Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 8–10, 19–20, 60–65; Ramsay, English Overseas Trade, pp. 135–36.

29. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. xii–xiv, 9–19; Gordon Connell-Smith, “English Merchants Trading to the New World in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 23 (1950): 53–67.

30. Johnson, Drapers of London, vol. 2, p. 79; Smith and Reaney, Family of Withypoll, pp. 14–23. Withypoll was a Merchant Adventurer and even governor of the Company.

31. PRO, PROB 5/18 Thrower; a copy appears in E. W. W. Veale, ed., The Great Red Book of Bristol, 5 vols. (BRS 2, 4, 8, 16, 18, 1931–1953), vol. 16, pp. 124–29.

32. Gordon Connell-Smith, “The Ledger of Thomas Howell,” EcHR, 2nd ser., 3 (1950–51): 365–66, 368–69; Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 10, 19–21, 24, 67, 69, 75–76; Connell-Smith, “English Merchants Trading to the New World,” p. 61; Johnson, Drapers of London, vol. 2, pp. 251, 252–54; PRO, PROB 5/24 Alen.

33. Johnson, Drapers of London, vol. 2, pp. 252, 253; Connell-Smith, “Ledger of Thomas Howell,” p. 365; Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 61–65, 69.

34. Johnson, Drapers of London, vol. 2, pp. 252–54.

35. SMV, Book of Trade, p. 36. On Bristolians becoming non-resident members of the London Drapers’ Company, see Johnson, Drapers of London, vol. 2, pp. 258–59, 261; Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 35, 61.

36. See Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, pp. 96ff.

37. E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed., The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Later Middle Ages, 2d ed. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967), pp. 37–39, 70–71, 83–85, 101–2, 104–5; Veale, ed., Great Red Book of Bristol, vol. 8, p. 1; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 9–10, 64–65; A. A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270–1600 (Southampton, England: University College, 1951), pp. 18, 41, 44–45, 115, 188, 265; Olive Coleman, “Trade and Prosperity in the Fifteenth Century: Some Aspects of the Trade of Southampton,” EcHR, 2d ser., 16 (1963–64): 11–12.

38. Carus-Wilson, ed., Overseas Trade of Bristol, pp. 84–85, 113–15, 117–18; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 67–68, 70, 71–73; James Dallaway, Antiquities of Bristow in the Middle Centuries Including the Topography by William Wyrcestre and the Life of William Cannynges (Bristol: Mirror Office, 1834), pp. 78, 109; Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France in Two Parts, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811), p. 633; Robert Ricart, The Maire of Bristowe Is Kalendar, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith (Camden Society n.s. 5, 1872), p. 41; Calendar of the Patent Rolls (1452–1461), p. 517; see also Jacques Heers, “Les Genois en Angleterre: La Crise de 1458–1466,” in Studi in Onore de Armando Sapori, 2 vols. (Milan: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1957), vol. 2, p. 810.

39. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., 2d ed. trans. Siân Reynolds (London: Collins, 1972–73), vol. 1, p. 612.

40. Carus-Wilson, ed., Overseas Trade of Bristol, pp. 234–35, 260–64; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 60, 92. A similar relation probably also existed with the Canary Islands, with trade proceeding through Cádiz, Puerta Santa Maria, San Lucar de Barremeda, and Seville: J. A. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., 120, 1962), pp. 14–15; J. A. Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth: A New History of Sir John Hawkins and the Other Members of His Family Prominent in New England (London: Argonaut Press, 1949), pp. 16–17; Carus-Wilson, ed., Overseas Trade of Bristol, p. 267.

41. J. A. Williamson, The Voyages of the Cabots and the English Discovery of North America under Henry VII and Henry VIII (London: A. and C. Black, 1929), pp. 18, 128; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 14–15; D. B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620, From the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth: The Exploration, Exploitation and Trial-and-Error Colonization of North America by the English (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) p. 57.

42. See T. E. Reddaway and A. A. Ruddock, The Accounts of John Balsall, Purser of the Trinity of Bristol, 1480–1, Camden Miscellany 23 (Camden Society, 4th ser., 7, 1969).

43. There were two Brasil traditions of the Middle Ages. One was the product of Celtic legend, which spoke of a Land of the Blest (Hy-Brasil, in Gaelic). Maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries usually depicted it as a round or semicircular island located near the west coast of Ireland. The second tradition was Italian and Portuguese in origin. It postulated an Isle of Brasil in the mid-Atlantic, southwest of the Iberian peninsula. Usually maps depict it, together with several larger land masses which were identified as the Island of the Seven Cities and Antilla, somewhere in the mid-Atlantic along the tropic of Cancer. It was almost certainly this Brasil that the Bristolians were seeking in the 1480s; see Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500–1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 102–4; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 59–60; Williamson, Voyages of the Cabots, pp. 125–26, 132–33; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, p. 21; see also Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 41–43.

44. Carus-Wilson, ed., Overseas Trade of Bristol, pp. 157, 161–65; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 20, 188–89; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 8–10, 72–73; Worcestre, Itineraries, pp. 308–9; W. E. C. Harrison, “An Early Voyage of Discovery,” Mariner’s Mirror 16 (1930): 198–99; D. B. Quinn, “Edward IV and Exploration,” Mariner’s Mirror 21 (1935): 283–84. For evidence of other voyages in the 1480s and 1490s see CSP (Spanish) (1485–1509), p. 177; H. P. Biggar, The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497–1534 (Ottawa: Government Printing Office, 1911), pp. 27–30; L. A. Vigneras, “New Light on the 1497 Cabot Voyage to America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 36 (1956): 506–9; L. A. Vigneras, “The Cape Breton Landfall, 1494 or 1497?” Canadian Historical Review 38 (1957): 219–28; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, part 1; Williamson, Voyages of the Cabots, pp. 23–24, 149–52; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 19–32, 210–12, 310–14; A. A. Ruddock, “John Day of Bristol and the English Voyages Across the Atlantic before 1497,” Geographical Journal 132 (1962): 225–33; Morison, European Discovery of America, pp. 166, 205–9, 220; Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 43–44, 46–47. Quinn provides a strong circumstantial case for a Bristol discovery of America predating 1497; Morison has firmly questioned several of the assumptions upon which Quinn’s case is built. Andrews cuts to the heart of the matter by arguing that the Bristolians’ quest for Brasil “led to the discovery of North America” whether the actual landfall occurred in 1497 or before.

45. Morison, European Discovery of America, p. 166; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 30, 47–54; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 129–30; Williamson, Voyages of the Cabots, pp. 8–10, 128–30; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 13–14, 23, 175–77; Harold A. Innes, The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 11n.; C. B. Judah, The North American Fisheries and British Policy to 1713, Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences 18, nos. 3–4 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1933), p. 13.

46. Biggar, Precursors of Jacques Cartier, pp. 7–10.

47. Williamson, Voyages of the Cabots, pp. 24–32, 144, 148, 149–58; J. A. Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, 1485–1558 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), ch. 3; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 33–53, 201–14; Morison, European Discovery of America, pp. 159, 165–66; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 14–17; Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 50ff.

48. Vigneras, “New Light on the 1497 Cabot Voyage,” pp. 507–8; Vigneras, “Cape Breton Landfall,” pp. 226–28; Morison, European Discovery of America, pp. 170–72, 178–79, 209; Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 44–46, 47.

49. CSP (Milan), vol. 1, no. 552, see also no. 535.

50. Biggar, Precursors of Jacques Cartier, pp. 13–15.

51. The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London: George W. Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1939), pp. 287–88; introduction to Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 93, 101–15; Morison, European Discovery of America, pp. 189–91; Polydore Vergil, The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, ed. and trans. Denys Hay (Camden Society, 3d ser., 74, 1950), pp. 116–17; Biggar, Precursors of Jacques Cartier, pp. 27–29.

52. Based on analysis of PRO, E 190/1129/11 and 1129/12. For a full discussion of the reasons for using this method and some remarks on trade conditions in 1575–6 and the limitations of the Port Books as a source, see Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 309–14; vol. 2, Appendix 1 (pp. 723–44), and p. 846n.1.

53. See Table 6 below. The figure of seven hundred and forty-nine cloths refers only to exports to the Continent. A bit less than twenty-eight cloths plus a small quantity of new draperies were shipped to Ireland in this year. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 351.

54. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 322–46.

55. Ibid., pp. 314–22.

56. Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, p. 298; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 321–22.

57. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 322–28.

58. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 329–45.

59. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 356–57; vol. 2, pp. 745, 749. About 80 percent of the inward and 95 percent of the outward trade was in the hands of the Irish.

60. Woodward, Trade of Elizabethan Chester, p. 5; Longfield, Anglo-Irish Trade, chap. 2.

61. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 351–54.

62. J. E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England from the Year after the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the Commencement of the Continental War (1793), 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882–1887), vol. 4, pp. 409, 689; William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London: Frank Cass, 1939), pp. 36, 75.

63. Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, pp. 442–43; see also Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, vol. 2, chap. 4.

64. The discussion in this and the following section is based on analysis of PRO, E 190/1129/11, 1129/12, 1130/5, 1131/5, 1131/10, 1132/8, 1132/12, 1133/1, 1133/8, 1133/11, 1134/3, 1134/7, 1134/10, 1135/6, 1136/3, 1136/1, 1136/8, 1139/10. The results are tabulated and explained in Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, chaps. 8 and 9, and in Appendix 2 (vol. 2, pp. 745–51).

65. The following account is based on analysis of PRO, E 190/1135/6. This year is the best available in this period, in part because we have a complete set of Port Books on which to base our analysis. For discussion of trade conditions in this year, see Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 372–73.

66. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 373, 377, 380.

67. But definite conclusions as to the scale of the increase cannot be reached, because the rates upon which the Port Books relied were twice revised upward early in James I’s reign: see T. S. Willan, ed., A Tudor Book of Rates (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), p. xlii. Still, the increase in wine shipments suggests considerable growth in the size of Bristol’s trade, even if the improvement in ad valorem duties is only illusory.

68. See Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 429–54.

69. PRO, E 190/1134/7.

70. See, e.g., Adams’s Chronicle, pp. 185–86; Latimer, Annals, p. 34.

71. PRO, E 190/1134/3, 1134/10, 1135/6. For evidence of Bristol’s trade elsewhere in this region, see PRO, E 190/1134/3, 1136/8, 1136/10; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 384–85.

72. Reddaway and Ruddock, eds., Accounts of John Balsall, pp. 1–29; Antonio de Capmany Sur;aa fis y de Montpalau, Memorias Históricas sobre la marina commercio y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona, 2 vols. (Madrid: A. de Sancha, 1779–1792), vol. 1, part 2, p. 137; Jean Vanes, ed., The Ledger of John Smythe, 1538–1550 (BRS 28, 1974), pp. 97, 106–7, 154, 158, 188, 217, 233, 235, 253, 262.

73. The Bristol merchant John Browne makes no mention in his Marchants Avizo of ports beyond Gibraltar. On Gibraltar as a barrier to shipping see Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, pp. 117–20, 609–10, 622–23.

74. See, e.g., PRO, E 190/1134/3, 1134/7.

75. Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, pp. 587ff.

76. Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, p. 523; Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), pp. 262–82; E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of Building Wages,” in Carus-Wilson, ed., Essays in Economic History, vol. 2, pp. 168–78; E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-Rates,” in Carus-Wilson, ed., Essays in Economic History, vol. 2, pp. 179–96.

77. See, e.g., Vanes, ed., Ledger of John Smythe, pp. 4, 13, 20, 89, 169, 287, 295.

78. Marchants Avizo, pp. 16–17; Ruth Pike, Enterprise and Adventure: The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), chap. 4; Henri Lapeyre, Une Famille des Marchands: Les Ruiz (Paris: A. Colin, 1955), pp. 113, 120, 122–23, 146.

79. Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, p. 536; Hamilton, American Treasure, pp. 33ff., 278–81; Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l’Atlantique (1504–1650), 8 vols. in 11 (Paris: SEVPEN, 1959), vol. 8, part 2, section 2, pp. 1263–64.

80. Chaunu, Séville et l’Atlantique, vol. 8, part 2, section 2, pp. 1158–87, 1458–1569.

81. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 394–95.

82. Reddaway and Ruddock, Accounts of John Balsall, pp. 1–29; Roger Barlow, A Brief Summe of Geography, ed. E. G. R. Taylor (Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., 69, 1931), p. 100.

83. Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any Time within the Compasse of These 1600 Yeeres (Hakluyt Society, extra ser., 12 vols., 1903–1905), vol. 6, pp. 136, 138–39; Willan, Elizabethan Foreign Trade, pp. 92ff.

84. See, e.g., PRO, E 190/1133/1, 1133/8; Willan, Elizabethan Foreign Trade, pp. 163–87, 279ff.

85. See, e.g., PRO, E 190/1134/3, 1134/10; “Special Direction for Divers Trades,” in R. H. Tawney and E. Power, eds., Tudor Economic Documents, Being Select Documents Illustrating the Economic and Social History of Tudor England, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, 1924), vol. 3, p. 202; Willan, Elizabethan Foreign Trade, pp. 104, 107–14, 240–68.

86. PRO, E 190/1129/11; Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, pp. 555, 606–42, and vol. 2, 1139–42; Fernand Braudel and R. Romano, Navires et Marchandises à l’Entrée du Port de Livorne (1547–1611) (Paris: A. Colin, 1951), pp. 50–51; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 311, 342–43.

87. Lewes Robertes, The Marchants Mappe of Commerce wherein the Universal Manner and Matter of Trade is compendiously Handled (London, 1638), pp. 40, 42.

88. See, e.g., PRO, E 190/1135/6; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 389–92.

89. Innis, Cod Fisheries, pp. 12–13; Biggar, Precursors of Jacques Cartier, pp. 134ff.; Williamson, Voyages of the Cabots, ch. 8; Judah, North American Fisheries, pp. 11–17; Gillian T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland, 1577–1660 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 3.

90. E. G. R. Taylor, ed., The Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, 2 vols. (Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., 76, 1935), vol. 1, p. 123; see also Cell, English Enterprise, pp. 22–23; Innis, Cod Fisheries, pp. 30–33; R. G. Loundsbury, The British Fishery at Newfoundland, 1634–1763 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), pp. 22–23; D. W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland from the English, Colonial and Foreign Records (London: Macmillan, 1895), pp. 31–50; Judah, North American Fisheries, pp. 17–23.

91. Taylor, ed., Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, vol. 1, pp. 123, 128; Cell, English Enterprise, pp. 23–25, 78, 132, 135; Innis, Cod Fisheries, pp. 33ff.; Judah, North American Fisheries, pp. 24ff.; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 403.

92. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. 8, p. 155; Pauline Croft, “Free Trade and the House of Commons, 1605–6,” EcHR, 2d ser., 28 (1975): 21.

93. See PRO, E 190/1131/3; Cell, English Enterprise, pp. 24, 31–33, 47–52, 134; Innis, Cod Fisheries, pp. 39, 50, 52; Judah, North American Fisheries, pp. 31–39; Prowse, History of Newfoundland, pp. 79–84; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 404–6.

94. Taylor, ed., Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, vol. 1, pp. 123–34.

95. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrims Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others, 20 vols. (Glasgow: J. MacLehose and Sons, 1905–1907), vol. 19, pp. 405–24; C. T. Carr, ed., Select Charters of Trading Companies, A.D. 1530–1707 (Selden Society 28, 1913), pp. 51–62; J. W. Damer Powell, “The Explorations of John Guy in Newfoundland,” Geographical Journal 86 (1930): 512–18; Cell, English Enterprise, pp. 53–61; Gillian T. Cell, “The Newfoundland Company: A Study of Subscribers to a Colonizing Venture,” WMQ, 3d ser., 23 (1966): 611–25; Innis, Cod Fisheries, pp. 53–56.

96. SMV, Book of Charters, vol. 1, p. 57; McGrath, ed., Records, p. 200; Cell, English Enterprise, pp. 87–88.

97. SMV, Book of Trade, pp. 104–11, 123, 141–45; Miller Christy, “Attempts toward Colonization: The Council for New England and the Merchant Venturers of Bristol, 1621–23,” AHR 4 (1898–99): 678–702; Henry S. Burrage, The Beginnings of Colonial Maine, 1602–1658 (Portland, Maine: Printed for the State, 1914), pp. 142–43, 144–59; R. A. Preston, “Fishing and Plantation: New England in the Parliament of 1621,” AHR 46 (1939–40): 29–43; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 408.

98. Burrage, Beginnings of Colonial Maine, pp. 26, 142–43, 143n., 180n., 217–19.

99. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. 9, pp. 338ff., and vol. 10, p. 6; Connell-Smith, “English Merchants Trading to the New World,” pp. 57–60.

100. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. 10, pp. 82–88, 193; I. A. Wright, ed., Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569–1580 (Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., 71, 1932), pp. 102–8, 187–88, 192–93, 196–99, 204, 208–10; PRO, E 190/1134/3; Sacks, Trade, Society, and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 412–13.

101. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 139, 143–47; G. P. Winship, Cabot Bibliography, with an Introductory Essay on the Careers of the Cabots (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1900), pp. xvii–xviii; Biggar, Precursors of Jacques Cartier, pp. 134–42; PRO, SP 12/115/35, 122/62; George Best, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India by the North-west, A.D. 1576–8, 2 vols., ed. Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Eloise E. McCaskill (London: Argonaut Press, 1938), vol. 2, pp. 109–10, 123–26; David B. Quinn, ed., The Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 2 vols. (Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., 83–84, 1940), vol. 2, pp. 347, 350–51; Miller Christy, ed., The Voyages of Captain Luke Foxe of Hull and Captain Thomas James of Bristol in 1631–32, 2 vols. (Hakluyt Society, 88–89, 1894), vol. 1, pp. cxxxiv–clxviii, 455, 456, 594.

102. T. S. Willan, The Moscovy Merchants of 1555 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953), p. 118; T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956); Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 2, pp. 735–37; MacInnes, Gateway of Empire, pp. 74–86; McGrath, ed., Merchants and Merchandise, p. 51n.; Alfred Lewis Pinneo Dennis, “Captain Martin Pring: Last of the Elizabethan Seamen,” in Tercentennary of Martin Pring’s First Voyage to the Coast of Maine, 1603–1903 (Portland, Maine: Maine Historical Society, 1905), pp. 24ff.

103. See W. E. Minchinton, “Bristol—Metropolis of the West in the Eighteenth Century,” TRHS, 5th ser., 4 (1954): 69–85.