any of the premisses, shall be courted to come to the sᵈ City of London, to their importable Costs & Charges, wʰ if the sᵈ act should endure, shall grow great hurt & prejudice to the common weal of this your Realm, & shall cause many pernicious strifes & debates between your said liege people, & the said Mayor, Aldermen & Citizens in time to come, by the making the sᵈ Ordinance, the wʰ is thought may not continue & stand with good charity, the premisses considered, wherefore it may please your said Highness most noble & abundant Grace, in consideration of the Hurt likely to grow of & by the premises, that it may be enacted: The King Lords and Commons therefore enacted that every freeman and citizen of London then or thereafter, might go with his victual ware or merchandise, at his or their liberty to any fair or market that should please him within the realm of England, any act, statute or ordinance to the contrary notwithstanding. Any disregard of the statute to incur a penalty of £10 to the king. 1496. The Company of Merchant-Adventurers of England which was said to have been in existence for nearly two centuries—although not actually chartered until 1505—took steps about this period calculated to interfere with the freedom of British merchants to attend fairs and marts in foreign countries. The merchants who traded on their own individual account residing in various parts of England and of the City of London, sent up a petition to the House of Commons, (as against the claims of the said Company of Merchant-Adventurers) wherein it was set forth that they traded beyond the sea with their goods and merchandise, as well into Spain, Portugal, Bretagne, Ireland, Normandy, France, Seville, Venice, Dantzic, Eastland, Friseland and many other parts—the geography is often a little hazy in these early documents—there to buy and sell and make their exchanges, according to the laws and customs of those parts: every one trading as seemed most to his advantage, without sanction, fine, imposition or contribution, to be had or taken of them, or any of them, to for, or by, any English person or persons. And in like sort they, before this time had used, and of right ought to have and use the like commerce into the coasts of _Flanders_, _Zealand_, _Holland_, _Brabant_, and other adjacent parts, under the obedience of the Archduke of Burgundy; in which places are usually kept the universal marts or fairs, four times in the year; to which marts all Englishmen, and divers other nations in times past, have used to resort, there to sell their own commodities, and freely to buy such merchandise as they had occasion for: till now of late, the Fellowship of Mercers, and other merchants and adventurers, dwelling and being free within the City of London by confederacy amongst themselves, for their own singular profit, contrary to every Englishman’s liberty, to the liberty of the said mart there, and contrary to all law, reason,