In London during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although the time was one of commercial decline, there were still rich merchants. It is in a time of decay that the merchants make complaints of aliens; that they clamour for protection; that they demand the import and the export of merchandise in English ships; that they would prohibit the sending of gold and silver out of the country; let the foreign merchants be paid in kind. The melancholy condition of the country at the beginning of the sixteenth century is described most vividly by Cunningham:— “There is less mention made of decay in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century; but the facts were again brought forcibly forward when the Parliament of Henry VIII. began to put pressure on the owners of houses to repair their property and to remove the rubbish that endangered life in the towns. Norwich had never recovered from the fire of 1508; the empty spaces at Lynn Bishop allowed the sea to do damage in other parts of the town. Many houses were ruined and the streets were dangerous for traffic in Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Bridgenorth, Queenborough, Northampton and Gloucester; there were vacant spaces heaped with filth, and tottering houses in York, Lincoln, Canterbury, Coventry, Bath, Chichester, Salisbury, Winchester, Bristol, Scarborough, Hereford, Colchester, Rochester, Portsmouth, Poole, Lyme, Feversham, Worcester, Stafford, Buckingham, Pontefract, Grantham, Exeter, Ipswich, Southampton, Great Yarmouth, Oxford, Great Wycombe, Guildford, Stratford, Hull, Newcastle, Bedford, Leicester and Berwick; as well as in Shaston, Sherborne, Bridport, Dorchester, Weymouth, Plymouth, Barnstaple, Tavistock, Dartmouth, Launceston, Lostwithiel, Liskeard, Bodmin, Truro, Helston, Bridgewater, Taunton, Somerton, Ilchester, Maldon and Warwick. There were similar dangers to the inhabitants of Great Grimsby, Cambridge, the Cinque Ports, Lewes; and even in the more remote provinces things were as bad, for Chester, Tenby, Haverfordwest, Pembroke, Caermarthen, Montgomery, Cardiff, Swansea, Cowbridge, New Radnor, Presteign, Brecknock, Abergavenny, Usk, Caerlon, Newport in Monmouthshire, Lancaster, Preston, Liverpool and Wigan, were taken in hand in 1544. In trying to interpret this evidence, however, we must remember that we are reading of attempts to repair, not of complaints of new decline; the mere fact that such attempts were made was perhaps an indication that things had reached their worst; and we are perhaps justified in inferring from the double mention of some few towns that a real improvement was effected in the others.” (_The Growth of English Industry._)