national point of view. The cities in which they lived possessed im-
portant privileges enjoyed only by a favored few, even among
English merchants, and the conflict between these privileges and
those granted by king and parliament to aliens forms one of the
problems of mediaeval economic history. Moreover, many of the
difficulties of foreign merchants were mercantile in origin and were
adjustable in local courts administering merchant law. But the con-
nection between aliens and the central courts and departments of the
state is equally important and less generally known. Their privileges
from the king and their obligations to him determined very largely
their economic position and influence. Their legal privileges and their
access to the courts of common law and equity determined their
status as individuals, and provide us with important information
concerning naturalization laws and legal developments during the
fourteenth century. It is worth while, therefore, for the sake of under-
standing the position of alien merchants, and also for the sake of
sharpening the outlines of certain legal and economic developments,
to focus attention upon the merchants and their relations with the
central government during a short but important period.

The period from 1350 to 1377 is useful and interesting for this
purpose. The half century preceding the accession of Edward III
saw the definition of the position of alien merchants in England in
the Carta Mercatoria of 1303. The next twenty-five years, which in-
cluded the first campaigns of the Hundred Years' War, marked the
increase of their importance as commercial, diplomatic, and financial
agents of the crown, but saw also the beginning of their decline. The
latter half of Edward's reign is in some ways an anti-climax; but the
absence of experimental innovations in finance and, to a great extent,
in trade makes possible a more thorough examination of the normal
activities and position of alien merchants than is feasible during
the period immediately preceding. The enrolled customs accounts
for the period from 1350 to 1377 contain abundant material for
determining the commercial functions of aliens and for appraising
the value which the government put upon their presence, while the
records of suits to which aliens were parties in the common law
courts, the council, and the exchequer provide the facts from which
their legal status can be defined.

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