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- Title
Corn, Coal and Commerce: Merchants and Coastal Trading in Early Jacobean King's Lynn.
- Abstract
The English coastal trade – along with one of the principal sources for its study, the exchequer port books – has been rather neglected by historians in recent years. Yet both are worthy of further investigation. The discussion in this essay is based primarily upon an exhaustive analysis of the trading activities of all the merchants named in the King’s Lynn port books for the two years, 1607-1609, with some comparison with overseas trading for the eight years for which similar evidence exists within the decade 1604-1614. Lynn was an important east coast port at this time, and it has long been maintained that its greater merchants made their fortunes from the corn trade. The port’s coastal trade was dominated by coal shipments inwards from the North East of England. This trade has to be seen against the pattern of goods and shipping involved in all exchanges with other coastal ports, and the personnel involved in this commercial activity have been examined in depth. The leading merchants have been identified and a distinction made between them and the shipmaster-merchants who invariably entered coal shipments in their own names rather than those of the likely true owners of their cargoes. Other evidence from both local and national sources has been used to show that many of the port’s leading commercial and political figures were actively involved in the shipping of coal, which may have been at least as important to them as the export of corn.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; KING'S Lynn (England); ENGLAND; COASTWISE shipping; MARITIME shipping; CORN industry; COAL industry
- Publication
International Journal of Maritime History, 2011, Vol 23, Issue 1, p149
- ISSN
0843-8714
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1177/084387141102300109