successors forever, upon payment of a rent; and the mayor and common
council were empowered to make laws and ordinances for the local
government, and to fine, imprison, and sometimes whip and otherwise punish
offenders, so as their statutes, fines, pains, and penalties were
reasonable and not repugnant to law. [Footnote: _History of
Tiverton_, App. 5.] The foreign trading company was an offshoot of the
guild, and was intended to protect commerce. Obviously some such
organization must have been necessary, for, if property was insecure
within the realm, it was far more exposed without; and, indeed, in the
fourteenth century, English merchants domiciled on the Continent could
hardly have been safer than Europeans are now who garrison the so-called
factories upon the coast of Africa.

At the Conquest, the Hanse merchants had a house in London, which was
afterward famous as the Steel Yard. They lived a strange life,--a
combination of that of the trader, the soldier, and the monk. Their
fortified warehouse, exposed to the attacks of the ferocious mob, was
occasionally taken and sacked; and the garrison shut up within was subject
to an iron discipline. They were forbidden to marry, no woman passed the
gates, nor did they ever sleep a night without the walls; but, always on
the watch, they lay in their cells ready to repulse a storm. For many
years these Germans seem to have monopolized the carrying trade, for it
was not till the thirteenth century that Englishmen appear to have made an
effort at competition. However, about 1296 certain London mercers are said
to have obtained a grant of privileges from John, Duke of Brabant, and to
have established a wool market at Antwerp. [Footnote: Andersen's
_History of Commerce_.] The recognition of the Flemish government was
of course necessary; but they could hardly have maintained themselves
without some support at home; for, although their warehouse was abroad,
they were English merchants, and they must have relied upon English