ient and established usages of the
Mediterranean states: and Pisa may very probably have taken a great
share in first practising what a century or two afterwards was rendered
more precise at Barcelona.

[614] Macpherson, p. 358. Boucher supposes them to be registers of
actual decisions.

[615] I have only the authority of Boucher for referring the Ordinances
of Wisbuy to the year 1400. Beckman imagines them to be older than those
of Oleron. But Wisbuy was not enclosed by a wall till 1288, a proof that
it could not have been previously a town of much importance. It
flourished chiefly in the first part of the fourteenth century, and was
at that time an independent republic, but fell under the yoke of Denmark
before the end of the same age.

[616] Hugh Despenser seized a Genoese vessel valued at 14,300 marks, for
which no restitution was ever made. Rym. t. iv. p. 701. Macpherson, A.D.
1336.

[617] The Cinque Ports and other trading towns of England were in a
constant state of hostility with their opposite neighbours during the
reigns of Edward I. and II. One might quote almost half the instruments
in Rymer in proof of these conflicts, and of those with the mariners of
Norway and Denmark. Sometimes mutual envy produced frays between
different English towns. Thus, in 1254 the Winchelsea mariners attacked
a Yarmouth galley, and killed some of her men. Matt. Paris, apud
Macpherson.

[618] Muratori, Dissert. 53.

[619] Du Cange, voc. Laudum.

[620] Rymer, t. iv. p. 576. Videtur sapientibus et peritis, quod causa,
de jure, non subfuit marcham seu reprisaliam in nostris, seu subditorum
nostrorum, bonis concedendi. See too a case of neutral goods on board an
enemy's vessel claimed by the owners, and a legal distinction taken in
favour of the captors. t. vi. p. 14.

[621] 27 E. III. stat. ii. c. 17, 2 Inst. p. 205.

[622] Rymer, t. i. p. 839.

[623] Idem, t. iii. p. 458, 647, 678, et infra. See too the ordinances
of the staple, in 27 Edw. III., which confirm this among other
privileges, and contain manifold evidence of the regard paid to commerce
in that reign.

[624] Rymer, t. ii. p. 891. Madox, Hist. Exchequer, c. xxii. s. 7.

[625] In the remarkable speech of the Doge Mocenigo, quoted in another
place, vol. i. p. 465, the annual profit made by Venice on her
mercantile capital is reckoned at forty per cent.

[626] Muratori, Dissert. 16.

[627] Bizarri, Hist. Genuens. p. 797. The rate of discount on bills,
whic