ABSTRACT
The following digests are an attempt to make available from the fifteenth century such information as Schanz published almost fifty years ago for the reign of Henry VIII. 1 It is the information contained in the “Enrolled” Customs Accounts 2 relative to English foreign trade. Schanz has described the aspect of the accounts and has noted the injuries which some of them have suffered. Written on both sides of membranes five or six feet long, some fifty of which are sewed together at one end to form cumbrous rolls, the accounts are none the less written in the admirable hand characteristic of English government documents to which final form has been given. In this and in general aspect they differ from the “Particular” accounts from which they have been compiled; for, when the collectors and the controller of customs at any port periodically rendered their accounts, their port book or small roll 3 might or might not be well written, systematic or balanced. The labour of exchequer clerks in balancing, summarizing, co-ordinating and condensing these numerous returns was not inconsiderable. If they had not done the work, we of to-day in search of knowledge about early English trade should have had to do so, could we find courage.
