First published in 1967, this superb collection of essays on trade in the Middle Ages has been a major contribution to modern medieval studies. Professor Carus-Wilson examines: * fifteenth-century Bristol * trade with Iceland * the Merchant Adventurers of London * the thirteenth-century cloth industry (with its highly developed capitalist system) * the export of English woollen cloth * the wine trade. Each paper is firmly rooted in original research and contemporary sources such as customs returns and company minutes, and, in addition, her expose of the dubious accuracy of Aulnage accounts is widely recognised as a classic.

In January 1682, William Culliford, a loyal and experienced officer in the King's customs service, began an extraordinary journey under Treasury orders to investigate the integrity and efficiency of the customs establishments of southwest England and south Wales as part of a drive to maximize the Crown's income from customs duties (on which it relied for much of its revenue). Starting at Bristol, Culliford eventually completed this daunting task in Cornwall over two years later in the spring of 1684. His report on each of the ports he inspected (the primary source for this book) revealed widespread smuggling and fraud in the context of a customs service both lacking in efficiency and riddled with corruption. The book documents the varied frauds and wide-ranging abuses uncovered and their facilitation by customs officers only too ready to collude with smugglers, dishonest merchants and seamen and to accept bribes to ignore tax evasion. It describes, too, Culliford's assessment of the administrative practices of each port inspected and his judgment on the levels of probity and efficiency of individual officers, detailing his recommendations for procedural improvements and the treatment of the corrupt and incompetent and, incidentally, of those suspected of political and religious dissent. Additionally, the book presents a body of statistical data on the customs revenue actually collected at individual ports in the 1670s and 1680s and surveys the extent and nature of the maritime trade of the ports Culliford examined. It thus not only throws light on the history of the customs service, but provides a rare insight into the interactions of economic, social and political issues in the later seventeenth century, and makes a valuable contribution to the particular histories of the ports and maritime districts visited by this energetic and tenacious investigator.

Analyses data from the Bristol Port Books to rewrite the history of trade in Bristol, including the city's early involvement with the slave trade. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a transformative period for global commerce, with the principal focus of England's trade shifting away from trade with Europe, primarily in woollen cloth, to a new Atlantic system, with trade in a diverse range of commodities. Based on the fantastically detailed Bristol Port Books, previously thought impenetrable, and using new computer technology to analyse the vast amount of data, this book provides the first long duration history of a major Atlantic port in this period. It rewrites the history of Bristol's trade, overturning much established thinking, for example showing that trade flourished in the late Tudor and early Stuart period, demonstrating that Bristol was involved in the slave trade much earlier than was previously thought and charting the growth of commerce with North America and the Caribbean from nothing to three quarters of Bristol's imports in the short period from the 1630s to the 1650s. Overall, the book represents a major contribution to understanding how the Atlantic economy worked and how it developed in this crucial period.

This book shows how England's conquest of Mediterranean trade proved to be the first step in building its future economic and commercial hegemony, and how Italy lay at the heart of that process. In the seventeenth century the Mediterranean was the largest market for the colonial products which were exported by English merchants, as well as being a source of raw materials which were indispensable for the growing and increasingly aggressive domestic textile industry. The new free port of Livorno became the linchpin of English trade with the Mediterranean and, together with ports in southern Italy, formed part of a system which enabled the English merchant fleet to take control of the region's trade from the Italians. In her extensive use of English and Italian archival sources, the author looks well beyond Braudel's influential picture of a Spanish-dominated Mediterranean world. In doing so she demonstrates some of the causes of Italy's decline and its subsequent relegation as a dominant force in world trade.

A complete edition of primary sources concerning dramatic and musical performance in Bristol from the Middle Ages until the time of Oliver Cromwell.