I wasn’t going to write in detail about Cornish smuggling, because its golden age is three centuries beyond the game period. If you go onto Wikipedia, as it reads while I write, it says that there was no smuggling before Edward I established customs payments in 1275. That sounds plausible. On a whim I followed the footnotes on the article, and the author Wikipedia is quoting says precisely the opposite. In “The early English customs system; a documentary study of the institutional and economical history of the customs from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century” by Norman Gras, there’s a chapter on customs before the “Old Custom” of 1275. Looking at the early law, it occurred to me that House Mercere isn’t just a merchant company: it also needs to engage in smuggling. It really has no choice.
Prise
The oldest royal tax on merchants is “prise” and for magi it’s the most troublesome. This word, which becomes both the modern “prize” and “price”, describes the royal right to seize useful material, then pay for it at a rate that is either historical, or pegged to a particular market. The prise is only levied on material being exported. It is most well known on wine. The king’s court needs a heap of wine, and his people have the right to grab as much of it as they like, then pay for it at a rate determined by the merchants of London.
During the game period, prise expands to other luxury goods. Here’s a quote from the game period “Within the term of…three tides, the sheriff and the king’s chamberlain are to come to the ship and, if there is a vessel of gold or silver of Solomon work, or precious stones, or cloth of Constantinople or of Regensburg, or fine linen, or coats of mail from Mainz, they shall take them for the king’s use, by the view and appraisal of the loyal merchants of London and within a fortnight pay the money.” This means that a heap of stuff that House Mercere is moving about for magi, particularly forms for making magic items, can be lawfully seized.
In other accounts, wool, cloth and wax are also prise. These are of value to magi, particularly wax, which is what they use to create light when not using magic.
A larger problem is that the king infeudates the right to collect prise. It’s all very well saying the king will take your stuff, then pay for it at the price assessed by your business rivals in the city of London, but when the king sells the prise rights for a port to some minor noble in the middle of nowhere, and that noble gives the right to assess to the local church steward, who may be his brother, things just become ridiculous.
Lastage and scavage
In nine, or perhaps ten, of the biggest ports in England, merchants are required to pay “lastage”. This word has several meanings, and may have multiple derivations. It is paid per ship, on exports. Although some places call it ballastage, there’s no proof that it was a charge for rocks to use as ballast – which was apparently a thing in some places. Lastage doesn’t affect coastal trade within England, so if you are shipping grain from Kent to Cornwall, you are exempt. Scavage is a similar fee charged on imports.
It only affects goods for sale, but if a redcap is dressed shoddily and he has some magic items for emergencies, it’s hard to prove they are personal possessions, not trade goods. Worse, if he’s carrying stuff for someone else, that he’s doing so without an expectation of sale is hard to prove. Say he’s carrying the Robes of Ruby Dawn to the new Primus of Ex Miscellanea, its tricky to prove these are aren’t a commissioned work of cloth being taken to a churchman in Normandy. Lastage and scavage are probably farmed out, like the prise. That is, a person pays the king an annual fee to be able to collect it in an area.
Petty port customs
Lords who have the control of a port have a series of rights. These include anchorage, keelage, ballastage, lestage, busselage, prisage, towage, wharfage, morage, housellage, terrage, tronage, cranage, and measurage. Basically the person in charge of the port could nickel and dime you for every little thing, from dropping anchor, to using a crane, using a wharf, putting stuff on his land, using a warehouse, exporting stuff in barrels, and so on. Townsmen don’t pay petty noble customs – which is why so many villages with rich people in them want to become towns, and pay the king for the privilege.
Tin and Pewter
Cornish tin was taxed through the Stanneries, a sort of Parliament of miners. Smuggling lets you avoid those. Pewter was exported, at times in large quantities, from Bristol, London, Exeter and Dartmouth. It attracted a tax, so again if your covenant is selling tin, you need to smuggle or pay the tax.
Town customs (custuma ville)
Most towns have a custom which is paid whenever material either enters or leaves the town. One of the key features of this system, however, is that local notables do not pay these tolls. Burgesses do not pay the tolls in their own towns and, if from certain special towns, do not pay town tolls anywhere in England. I believe Bristol is such a town. The king can give the same right to ignore tolls to anyone, and often gives it to his own merchants, and to the representatives of religious houses.
Time for another quote “So great indeed was the list of exemptions by the end of the twelfth century that it was chiefly aliens, the poorer citizens of towns, and peasants, who paid the town tolls.”
As an example the Billingsgate tolls, which are for London, covered
wood, cloth, fish, wine, oil, pigs, pepper, gloves, vinegar, fowl, eggs, cheese, and butter in the Eleventh Century. You can see why House Mercere wants its Mercer House in London, and a pawn as its face, so that they can avoid much of this hassle.
The Fifteenth of King John
The fifteenth was a tax on all goods exported or imported, but not coastal trade. It was not farmed out: it was enforced by the King’s own men, the chief of whom was called a custumarius It was novel in that it was only charged once, no matter how many towns the goods touched in their travel to final owners. This did not replace the local systems, which continued to tax people. The Fifteenth was by weight or value, and so this meant that you owed 16d per pound. It’s around 6 percent, but given that an international trader paid it both on the cargo coming in, then the new cargo going out, and that it sat atop local charges, this creates a price differential which makes smuggling profitable.
Under the new custom of 1275, indefinite prise is discontinued. The custom was not a pure percentage, it was a series of dues on different products. For example, wine was 2 shillings per tun. Wool was 3s/4d per sack, the same for 300 woolfells, and 6s/8d. for a last of hides. Wine and wool are mainstays of the later smuggling trade. Shipping wool to Flanders is so important to the English economy that eventually it caused wars with the French, and the Speaker of the House of Lords still sits on a woolsack. Wine was the counter-cargo. To explain the other two, a woolfell is a hide with the fleece still attached, and a last is a standard cargo (in this case 200 hides). Cloth (2s or less, by quality) , wax (12d per hundred pounds) “All other wares, exported or imported, fine cloths, animals, com, and general merchandise at 3 d. per £ value”.
So, these gives us scope for actual smuggling, despite the claims to the contrary in a surprising number of sources.
Games From Folktales 