The history and antiquities of Boston, and the villages of Skirbeck, Fishtoft, Freiston, Butterwick, Benington, Leverton, Leake, and Wrangle; comprising the hundred of Skirbeck, in the county of Lincoln. Including also a history of the East, West, and Wildmore fens, and copious notices of the Holland or Haut-Huntre fen ... sketches of the geology, natural history, botany, and agriculture of the district; a very extensive collection of archaisms and provincial words, local dialect, phrases, proverbs, omens, superstitions, etc. By Pishey Thompson. Illustrated with one hundred engravings.

338 BOSTON MADE A STAPLE TOWN, 1369.
the taxation of the district to the subsidy raised 25 Edward 1. (1297), we
find, that there were at that time only ninety-five sheep in the nine parishes
which constitute the hundred. This flock must have increased twenty-fold in
the forty-four intervening years to produce the quantity of wool which was, in
1341, allowed to be exported duty-free.
The Staple of wool was ordered by Edward I. to be held at Westminster.1
Lincoln, however, had its Mayor of the Staple, and the returns of its market for
wool were second only to those of Westminster.~ In 1352, Edward III. appointed the Staple of wool to be kept only at Canterbury for the honour of
St. Thomas. In 1354, the Staple of wool, before kept at Bruges in Flanders,3
was appointed to be held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York, Lincoln, Norwich,
Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, and Bristol. The
staple commodities named were wool, leather, woolfels, and lead.4
Edward III., in 1360, directed Roger de Meres and William de Spayne, of
St. Botolph, to allow Lamkin Borkyn and his associates, merchants of Almain, to ship a great quantity of cloths, sent from various parts of the kingdom
to Boston, for that purpose, paying a duty of 4d. upon each piece. Each piece
to be sealed, upon payment of the said duty, and not to be shipped before it was
sealed. A jury, composed of half natives and half aliens, to inquire upon oath
respecting such cloths as have paid the subsidy of 4d. each piece at the places
where they were purchased, and to allow such payment; and to diligently
examine all the cloths, and to see that they were such as they were represented
to be. Which duties were performed, and the said Lamkin Borkyn and his
associates reported to have acted truly, and in good faith, in all things relating
thereto.5
To the Staple established at these different places, it was directed that wool,
&c., should be brought and weighed by the standard; and every sack of wool so
weighed to be sealed under the seal of the Mayor of the Staple; it was then to
be forwarded to the following ports, viz., from York to Hull, from Lincoln to
Boston, from Norwich to Yarmouth, from Westminster to London, from Canterbury to Sandwich, and from Winchester to Southampton; and there the
wool was again to be weighed by the customers assigned to the said ports. In
1369, the Staple for wool was ordered to be held at Newcastle, Kingston-uponHull, St. Botoiph's, Yarmouth, Queensborough, Westminster, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, and Bristol; York, Lincoln, Norwich, and Canterbury, were
not included in this appointment. The counties of Lincoln, Nottingham,
Leicester, and Derby, in the year 1].376 petitioned that the Staple might be held
at Lincoln, as in the ordinance of 27th Edward III., and not at St. Botolph's.
To this it was answered that it should continue at St. Botolph's during the
King's pleasure.
WEAvER defines a Staple town "to be a place to which, by authority and
privilege, wool, hides, wine, corn, and other foreign merchandise, are conveyed
to be sold; or, it is a town or city whither the merchants of England, by
common order or commandment, did carry their wool, lead, tin, or other home
produce for sale to foreign merchants."' Boston probably combined both these
characteristics of a Staple, being at once the place of deposit for the goods which
the foreign merchants trading with Boston had to dispose of; and also of those
which the English merchants had to offer in exchange for the foreign articles of
convenience and luxury which their own country could not supply them with.
STOW'S Chronicle of London, p. 168. lead was first held to be a staple "' comrmodity."2 BROOIsc'S Lincoln, p. iii. FROST'S Hull, p. 90.
3 STOW, p. 168. 5 Inquis. ad quod damnum, 34 Edward III.
By the statute called Ordinacio Stapularium, WEAVER'S Funeral Monuments.