But the regulation of the relations between king and merchant denizens, and incidentally through them, his relations (aside from the New Customs) with the aliens, is not so briefly told. Throughout the reign of Edward III the question was being quietly fought out as to whether or not the king might tamper with the wool customs irrespective of parliamentary sanction. In 1332 Edward issued an ordinance which provided for the collection of a subsidy on the wool of denizens; the rate was to be half a mark on the sack and 300 woolfells, and twenty shillings on the last of leather. A year later on the 30th June, 1333, Edward recalled his ordinance, but he did not relinquish his grasp upon the customs; by negotiation with the merchants, he received ten shillings on the sack and 300 woolfells and a pound on the last. In order to bolster up the legality of the proceeding, he issued a royal ordinance to the same effect.[212] [The wool customs] In August of the year 1336, when the king’s arms were meeting with great success on the northern border, Edward, confident in his popularity, sent out royal letters forbidding the export of wool.[213] Parliament met at Nottingham the following month full of pride in the military prowess of the king, and granted him liberal aids. Not only did the barons and knights contribute a twentieth, the towns a tenth, the clergy a sixth, but the merchants, who were at this moment, so it appeared, on the verge of attaining to the dignity of a fourth estate in Parliament, granted him forty shillings on the sack of wool; and the foreign merchants were to pay an additional twenty shillings.[214] In the hope that its action would encourage the domestic manufacture of cloth, Parliament in March, 1337, passed a statute forbidding the exportation of wool, and offering foreign operatives special inducements to settle in England.[215] The embargo was to continue until the king and his Council should decide otherwise. Thus empowered, Edward and his Council issued an ordinance imposing upon denizens a custom of £2 on the sack and on 300 woolfells, and £3 on the last of leather; the unfortunate aliens were to pay double.[216]