The Queen's Hythe (Queenhithe) appears to have been the most favoured landing-place after the Conquest. In 1224 Henry III. directed the officers of the Tower to arrest the ships of the Cinque Ports which arrived in the river, and to compel them to bring their corn to the Queen's Hythe only; and two years afterwards the same officers were ordered to seize all fish offered for sale at any other place. The privileges of the Queen's Hythe extended from the Steelyard to Blackfriars. In 1244 the bailiffs of the Queen's Hythe complained of an infringement of their rights, fourteen foreign ships having arrived at Billingsgate with fish, instead of being brought to their landing-place. A penalty of forty shillings was to be inflicted in future for this violation of their interests; but the ships belonging to the citizens of London might land their cargoes wherever the owners might appoint. In 1246 Richard Earl of Cromwell disposed of his rights, privileges, and customs in the Queen's Hythe to the city for an annual sum of 50., to be paid in two instalments at Easter and Michaelmas. This landing-place was now under the charge of the Sheriffs of London, and was so much frequented in 1302 by vessels bringing fish, salt, fuel, and other merchandise, as to require the service of more than thirty meters and porters. The principal meter had eight chief master-porters under him, each of whom employed three underporters. The porters were to find one horse and seven sacks under pain of losing their office; and notwithstanding these charges and the small stipend which they received, they lived well of their labours." In 1345 ships and vessels landing at Down Gate (Dowgate) were ordered to pay the same customs as if they rode at Queenhithe. A century afterwards it was ordered that if two vessels came up at the same time, one should go to Billingsgate; if three, two were to land their cargoes at the Queen's Hythe, and the other at Billingsgate, but « always the more" at Queen Hythe. At length, however, Billingsgate asserted its preeminence. Situated east of the bridge, it was naturally more convenient for large vessels with topmasts than the other port. Fabyan, who wrote at the close of the fifteenth century, says that the customs of Queen's Hythe had so fallen off in his time as to be worth but 157. a-year. A century later Stow speaks of it as being then "almost forsaken." He confirms the superiority of Billingsgate, which, he "is now the largest water-gate on the river of Thames, and therefore the most frequented. Ships and boats arrived here with fish, both fresh and salt, shell-fish, salt, onions, oranges and other fruits and roots, wheat, rye, and grain of divers sorts" for service of the city and the ports of this realm adjoining." The meters and porters of the Queen's Hythe, who formerly each employed a horse for the delivery of corn and other articles in the city, no longer flourished in prosperity; and to add to their discouragement Stow informs us that "the bakers of London, and other citizens, travel into the countries and buy their corn of the farmers after the farmers' prices."

says,

All along the northern bank of the river, in Thames Street, there were landing-places, warehouses, and cellars belonging to the merchants, who had their houses in the streets leading from the river. A few years before Stow wrote, the number of householders in the ward of Billingsgate who were aliens was fifty-one, although thirty years earlier there were but three Netherlanders. These aliens inhabited the best houses in the ward, and willingly paid 207. a-year rent for houses which had before let only for four marks. The rent was highest for those

66

houses nearest the water-side. At this period the foreign trade of the country was still almost entirely in the hands of aliens. They are described in an Act passed in 1377 as not only trading in the goods imported by themselves from abroad, but also as buying in the ports where they were established and elsewhere, at their free will, the various commodities which were the produce of this realm, and selling them again at their pleasure within the country as generally and freely as any of the King's subjects. At the end of the fifteenth century England was passing through the second stage of commercial progress of a country. 'First, its poverty and barbarism invite only the occasional resort of foreigners, without offering any temptation to them to take up their residence within it: then, as its wealth increases, foreigners find even its home-trade an object worth their attention, and one which they easily secure by the application of their superior skill and resources; lastly, in the height of its civilization, and when the energies of its inhabitants have been fully developed—in a great measure revived by the impulse received from these stranger residents-its traffic of all kinds, as well as all the other businesses carried on in it, naturally falls into almost the exclusive possession of its own people."* In the early part of the fifteenth century acts were passed (in 1411 and 1415) prohibiting the circulation of silver coin, known as galley halfpence, which was brought by the Genoese, who came to London in their galleys with wine and other merchandize. Stow says that in his youth he had seen this foreign coin pass current, though with some difficulty. Galley Quay, the name of which is still preserved, was the place where the galleys of Italy and other parts discharged their cargoes; and some buildings, which were dilapidated in Stow's time, and were let out for stabling of horses and as tippling-houses for beer, are supposed by him to have been the houses and storehouses of these merchants, as those of Bordeaux were licensed to build in the Vintry. Thames Street, in those days, must have been thronged with foreigners from all the countries which had intercourse with England; and a tippling and victualling house near Galley Quay, described by Stow, doubtless often witnessed the drinking-bouts of sailors from the Hanse Towns, Venice, Genoa, and other parts. It was kept by one Mother Mampudding, as they termed her;" and the hall of the house had apparently been built by shipwrights, the roof resembling a galley with the keel upwards, and being otherwise more like a ship than a house.

Before the foreign commerce of the country was in the hands of native merchants, the king, the nobility, and the higher clergy engaged in mercantile pursuits. Licences were not unfrequently obtained from the kings of England by popes, cardinals, and other foreign ecclesiastical dignitaries to export wool and other commodities without the payment of duties, from which the religious persons of all kinds resident in the country were exempt. The Cistercian monks had become the greatest wool merchants in England; and though the Parliament interfered in 1344, neither ecclesiastical communities nor individuals were driven from the pursuit of trade by its edicts. The exemption of laymen from the payment of duties was, on the other hand, a great favour. In 1296, by writ of privy seal, Aylmer de Valence was allowed to export twenty sacks of wool free of duty," so that the same was done with as much privacy as could be, that other persons might not take example thereby to desire the like permission."

* Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p. 181.

There were custodes or customers at the different ports, and the barons of the exchequer were in the habit of directing inquisitions to be taken respecting the defrauding of the king's customs on wool, &c. The "customers were not to be owners of ships. Merchants who attempted to evade the customs forfeited their cargo. In 1297 the mayor and citizens of London, in obedience to the king's orders, caused a scale to be made for weighing of wools, similar to the one used for the same purpose in London; and after being examined at the Exchequer, it was sent to Lynn. The place where this scale was kept, and the wharf where the wool was shipped, was, in every sense of the word, a custom-house. In 1382 John Churchman, a grocer or wholesale merchant of London, "for the quiet of merchants," says Stow, built a house upon a quay called Wool Wharf. It was to serve "for troynage or weighing of wools in the port of London ;" and we are told that " whereupon the king granted that, during the life of the said John, the aforesaid troynage should be held and kept in the same house, with easements there for the balances and weights, and a counting-place for the customer, comptrollers, clerks, and other officers of the said troynage, together with ingress and egress to and fro the same, even as was had in other places where the said troynage was wont to be kept." The king was to pay "yearly to the said John during his life forty shillings, at the terms of St. Michael and Easter, by even portions, by the hand of his customer, without any other payment to the said John." This is said to have been the first Custom House in the port of London; but a wharf for shipping wool and other articles, and scales for weighing them, must have been established at some fixed place from the earliest time when they were subject to customs; and officers appointed by the king, to sce that he was not defrauded of his dues, would necessarily be stationed at such wharf when shipments were made. In Arnold's Chronicle,' written probably at the close of the fifteenth century, there is a curious table entitled, "Thoos things that longith to Tronage and Poūdage of our Soueraine Lord the Kynge in the Cite of London."

Before the sixteenth century London had not established its commercial supremacy on a scale so greatly exceeding that of any other port. The quinzième, a duty of the nature of which no very definite explanation has been given further than that it was an impost on foreign commerce, produced in 1204 a sum of 836. for the port of London, 780. at Boston, 650l. at Lynn, and 712/. at Southampton. Apparently, therefore, these places did not differ much from each other in the scale of mercantile rank; and though there may be difficulties in this view of the case, yet undoubtedly the inferior means which London then possessed for the internal distribution of merchandise which arrived by the river must have checked its career, and given to other ports in different parts of the country a larger comparative share of trade than they have since possessed. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, these out-ports had fallen into decay, and the commerce of London was in a state of prosperity which it had never before experienced. The general complaint was that London had drawn from them "traffic by sea and retailing by land, and exercise of manual arts also;" and Stow, in answer to this, confesses that navigation "is apparently decayed in many port-towns, and flourisheth only or chiefly at London." The decay of the staple was also very favourable to the commercial progress of the capital. In

1353 the staple was fixed at nine different cities and towns in England, and here all merchandise for exportation was compelled either to be sold or brought for shipment; and native merchants were prohibited on pain of felony from exporting the staple commodities, which consisted of wool, woolfells (sheepskins), leather, lead, and tin-in fact, the chief exportable articles which the country produced. The object of the staple was the convenience of foreign merchants, and the more secure collection of the duties on exportation. In 1613 the customs of the port of London amounted to 109,572., and those of the out-ports only to 38,502/.; and we shall subsequently see the proportion still further increased in favour of London.

In 1559, in the first year of the reign of Elizabeth, important steps were taken which may be said to have been the commencement of the present system of collecting the customs. It was ordered that "all creeks, wharfs, keys, lading and discharging places in Gravesend, Woolwich, Barking, Greenwich, Deptford, Blackwall, Limehouse, Ratcliffe, Wapping, St. Katherine's, Tower Hill, Rotherhithe, Southwark, London Bridge, and every of them, and all and singular keys, wharfs, and other places within the city of London and the suburbs of the same, or elsewhere within the said port of London (the several keys, wharfs, stairs, and places before limited and appointed only except), shall be from henceforth no more used as lading or discharging places for merchandises, but be utterly debarred and abolished from the same for ever." For "the better answering of the revenues of the queen," twenty quays and wharfs were appointed within the port of London, where alone merchandise and produce could be shipped or landed. Some were for all manner of merchandise; others for wine and oils; one for corn only; and Billingsgate was for fish, corn, salt, victuals, and fruit, but groceries were excepted. The owners of these twenty quays were required to give security that no goods should be laid on or shipped from their wharfs until the queen's duties were paid, and that all ships were laden and unladen in the presence of the proper officers. The first three quays on the list arc Old Wool Quay, New Wool Quay, and Galley Quay. Wool Wharf or Customers' Quay is applied by Stow to one landing-place, which, he says, " is now of late most beautifully enlarged and built." The quays appointed as above are still known as the legal wharfs. They are all between the Tower and London Bridge. As the commerce of London increased other wharfs were appointed called "Sufferance Wharfs," of which five were east of the Tower and eighteen on the Surrey side of the river.

The London Custom House establishment of 1559 consisted of eight principal officers, each of whom had from two to six others under him, but the principal "Waiter” had sixteen subordinates. Until 1590 the dutics were farmed for 20,000l. a-year, but on the Queen's government taking the collection of the duties in its own hand they yielded about 30,000l. a-year. The control of the Government necessarily led to many improvements in the Customs establishment. The formation of the East India and other great trading companies during the latter half of the sixteenth century, and the growth of colonial commerce, augmented the trade of London and rendered the customs a much more. profitable source of revenue than they had yet been. Little attention, however, was paid to the policy at that time pursued in Holland, by which, as Sir Walter

Raleigh remarked, they drew all nations to trade with them. From 1671 to 1688, according to D'Avenant, the first inspector-general of imports and exports, the customs of England averaged 555,752. a-year.

The old Custom House destroyed during the Great Fire was replaced by one of rather more pretensions, which is said to have cost 10,000l., and was at least of more dignified appearance than the adjoining warehouses. In the fifty years after its erection the trade of the country had greatly increased, and from 1700 to 1714 the customs for England averaged 1,352,764/. each year. In 1718 the Custom House was burnt down, doubtless not before it had been found very inconvenient for the transaction of the increased mass of business which had arisen out of a more wide and active commerce.

A new Custom House soon arose on the site of the old building, in which the inconveniences formerly experienced were for a time remedied. The apartments for the different officers were better arranged, and accommodation was provided for a greater number of clerks, so that the delays of which the merchants had before complained were obviated. The length of the building was 189 feet, and the centre was 29 feet deep. The edifice was constructed of brick and stone, and the wings had a passage colonnade of the Tuscan order towards the river, the upper story being relieved with Ionic pilasters and pediments. But the most striking feature of the building was the" Long Room," extending nearly the whole length of the centre, being 127 feet long, 29 wide, and 24 high. Here were a number of officers and clerks attached to various departments, and the general business of the room was superintended by the Commissioners themselves, but they were then more numerous than at present, their number in 1713 being thirteen. In 1725 the customs of the port of London produced nearly 1,500,000l., being more than the whole customs revenue of England between 1700 and 1714. At the close of the century the revenue collected in the port of London exceeded 6,000,000. The building was now becoming, like its predecessor, too small for the mass of business required to be transacted, when, on the 12th of February, 1814, it was also totally destroyed by fire, being the third Custom House whose destruction was caused by this element. But in the present case a new Custom House had been commenced before the old one had become a heap of ruins. The flames spread to the houses on the northern side of Thames Street, and in a short time ten were destroyed. Besides the loss of valuable property in the cellars and warehouses, the destruction of documents and papers was also to be regretted. The inconvenience to the shipping and mercantile interests was of course very great. Ships which were ready for sailing were delayed for want of the necessary papers, and the delivery of goods for home consumption and exportation, and the discharge of cargoes, was suspended. The fire occurred on Saturday, and by Monday morning temporary arrangements were made for conducting the public business in the Commercial Sale Rooms, Mincing Lane.

Several years before the occurrence of this fire the enlargement of the old Custom House had been contemplated, and it was at first proposed to build an additional wing, but, on a survey of the edifice, it was found too much decayed and dilapidated to warrant a large expenditure in its renovation and extension. The Lords of the Treasury therefore directed designs and estimates to be prepared for an entirely new structure; and those by Mr. Laing were finally