Hallows the More. Opprobrious language towards one another, blows or drawing of knives was fined by a hundred shillings paid into the common fund; a high sum truly if we consider that five pounds sterling was worth, in the fourteenth century, about four times its present value. They were even forbidden to fence or to play tennis with their English neighbours under out paying a penalty of twenty shillings. Every merchant was bound to have in readiness in his room a full suit of armour, and all the needful weapons in case of an attack on the Steelyard, or on the Bishopsgate. For the City of London had ceded to the Hanseatics this gate, which they had to guard and keep in repair, relieving them instead of the annual tax towards the preservation of the town walls known as wall-money, of bridge money, and paving money. They also managed to obtain special privileges with regard to shipwrecked goods; the English being obliged to pay them damages provided that something living, if only a dog, or cat, or cock reached the shore alive from the shipwrecked vessel. This secured them greatly from the perils of wanton wreckage. In London none of those gross manners and customs prevailed that we find at Bergen or Novgorod. The Hanseatics knew that in England they found themselves among a people fully their equals, and were careful not to offend them in any respect. Indeed they did all they could to conciliate them, and were liberal in presents. Thus the Lord Mayor of London received from them yearly a cask of the finest sturgeon, or two barrels of herring, or a hundredweight of Polish wax. An English alderman, annually chosen to adjust disputes between the natives and the foreigners, was presented each New Year's Day with fifteen golden nobles, wrapped up in a pair of gloves, by way of tender consideration for the feelings of the recipient. The Chief Inspector of Customs received about twenty pounds sterling, intended probably to make him indulgent in the exercise of his duties. And so forth, making as a whole a most goodly sum thus wisely spent in fees and in conciliating those in power and office. Every point relating to this as well as to the inner statutes of the factory was most carefully recorded in writing, and has, in large part, been preserved to us. It is a record of most quaint regulations, every one of which no doubt had its wise purpose and scope.