Jus imponendi vectigana, or, The learning touching customs, tonnage, poundage, and impositions on merchandizes, asserted as well from the rules of the common and civil law, as of generall reason and policy of state / by Sir John Davis ...

CHAP. XII.

Of the ancient Customes payable for Wines, called Prizage and Butlerage.

THe most ancient Custome paya∣ble for Wines is Prizage,* 1.1 which is not any sum of Money, but two Tunns of Wine in specie, out of every Ship freighted with twenty Tun, the one to be taken before the Mast, and the other behind the Mast of the Ship; and the price which the King himself did limit to pay, was twenty shillings onely, for every Tun, as appeareth by an ancient Record of 52 Hen. 3.* 1.2 whereby we may conjecture, what easie rates the King gave for the prizes of other Merchandizes. This Custome of Prizage was meerly an Imposition, for it could not be granted by the Merchants of Forreign Nations, being no body politique, as is before de∣clared; neither is there any Act of Par∣liament wherby our own Merchants did ever grant it unto the Crown.

This duty of Prizage was remitted

unto the Stranger, by the Charter of 31 Edw. 1.* 1.3 before mentioned, and in lieu thereof, by vertue of the same Charter, the King before mentioned receiveth two shillings for every Tun of Wine brought in by Strangers, which we now call Butlerage; but Prizage is paid in Specie by all our own Merchants at this day, the Citizens of London only excep∣ted, who having remissiō of Prizage by a special charge, were charged with a new Imposition called Gauge, viz. de quolibet dolio 1 d.de vinis venientibus London, which was accounted Forreign, Magno Rot. An. 1 Edw. 1. in the Office of the Pipe at West∣minster; the last of these Impositions, which by the continuance have gotten the name of Custome, was laid and im∣posed three hundred years since, and have ever since been approved, and are now maintained by the Common Law of England, as the lawfull and ancient Inheritance of the Crown.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Prizage and But∣lerage.
• * 1.2

  52 H.3
• * 1.3

  31 Ed.1.