¹ Shillington, V. M. and Chapman, A. B. Wallis, The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal (1907Google Scholar: reprinted 1970). The quality of this pioneering work is illustrated by the scarcity of new work and by the decision to reprint the book in 1970.

² Carus-Wilson, E. M., ‘The overseas trade of Bristol in the fifteenth century’, in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Power, E. and Postan, M. M. (1933)Google Scholar. Work on specific ports and areas also allows the Portuguese role on England's overseas trade to be set in a clearer framework: see Childs, W. R.Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978)Google Scholar; The Overseas Trade of London. Exchequer Customs Accounts 1480–1, ed. Cobb, H. S., London Record Society, 27 (1990)Google Scholar.

³ Livermore, H. V., ‘The “Privileges of an Englishman in the Kingdoms and Dominions of Portugal”’, Atlanta, 2 (1954)Google Scholar; see also Russell, P. E., English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar.

⁴ Heers, J., ‘L'expansion maritime portugaise à la fin du moyen âge: la Mediterranée’, Revista da Faculdade de Letras, Lisboa, 2nd ser., 22 (1956)Google Scholar; de Oliviera Marques, H. H., A History of Portugal, 2 vols. (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; idem, Hanse e Portugal na Idade Media (Lisbon, 1959); idem, ‘Navigation entre la Prusse et le Portugal au début du XVe siècle’, Vierteljahrschrift für Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 46 (1959); idem, ‘Notas para a Historia da Feitoria Portuguesa na Flandres no Sécolo XV’, Studi in Onore di A. Fanfani, ed. A. Guiflre, II (Milan, 1962); Rau, V., ‘A family of Italian Merchants in Portugal in the XVth century: the Lomellini’, Studi in Onore di A. Sapori, I (Milan, 1957)Google Scholar; Verlinden, C., ‘Deux aspects de l'expansion commerciale de Portugal au moyen âge’, Revista Portuguesa de Historia, (1949)Google Scholar; for colonial expansion Boxer, C. R., The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (1969)Google Scholar remains the starting point; Scammell, G. V., The First Imperial Age (1989)Google Scholar provides a recent synthesis, and idem, The World Encompassed. The First European Maritime Empires c. 800–1650 (1981), 298–300 also provides a useful bibliographical note.

⁵ Earlier writers spoke of exploration as underpinned by a flourishing trade with England and Flanders. More recently emphasis has been put on the importance of royal and aristocratic investment in exploratory and colonial voyages, and the northern trade has, more realistically, been seen as modest. This still leaves questions of precise scale unanswered. Slowness in providing a scale for Portugal's northern trade has not, in the last few years, been due to lack of interest but rather to scarcity of good serial sources. No customs accounts or similar serial material seems to survive in Portugal until the early years of the sixteenth century, and few survive in her northern markets with the exception of England. English customs accounts themselves pose problems of interpretation, rate of survival, and reliability, but there are enough of them to provide a fairly clear idea of the normal trade between England and Portugal at various periods, and to give adjectives such as flourishing, vigorous, or modest a more precise meaning.

⁶ Sailing Directions for the Circumnavigation of England and for a Voyage to the Straits of Gibraltar, ed Gairdner, J., Hakluyt Society, LXXIX (1889)Google Scholar.

⁷ At Bristol in the late fifteenth century about 85 per cent of the shipping movements to and from Portugal were to and from Lisbon and about 10 per cent to and from the Algarve.

⁸ ‘William Gregory's Chronicle of London’, in The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Gairdner, J. (1876), 159–60Google Scholar. On this visit he was given two golden jars decorated with precious stones and pearls valued at £700; Proceedings and Ordinances of the Pray Council of England, 10 Richard 11–33 Henry VIII, Nicolas, N. H., ed., 7 vols. (1834–1837), III, 180Google Scholar.

⁹ Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae …, ed. Rymer, T., 4 vols. (Record Commission, 1816–1869), IV, iv, 140, 151Google Scholar; ‘Gregory's Chronicle’, 165.

¹⁰ Calendar of Patent Rolls (hereafter CPR) 1446–52, 421, 520, 521.

¹¹ For this family's later claim to English blood, see Riley, Carlos Guilherme, ‘Da Origem Inglesa dos Almadas: Genealogia de uma Ficção Linghagística’, Arquipélago, Revista da Universidade dos Açores, serie Historia, XI (1989), 153–69Google Scholar. I am indebted to Dr Anthony Goodman of the University of Edinburgh for this reference.

¹² CPR 1429–36, 469; PRO, C1/9/177–8; SC8/6719.

¹³ Carus-Wilson, E. M., The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Later Middle Ages, Bristol Record Society, VII (Bristol, 1937)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ CPR 1467–77, 357, 359, 362, 509; for Brampton see R. Horrox in the revised Dictionary of National Biography (forthcoming).

¹⁵ The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, ed. Warner, G. (Oxford, 1924)Google Scholar, lines 130, 132–34. A similar list which includes a greater variety of wines, ‘osseye, ryptage, bastarde, caprike’ is provided by the treatise The Commodyties of England, sometimes attributed to SirFortescue, John, ed. RevPayne, T. O. for Clermont, Lord (1863), 6Google Scholar.

¹⁶ ‘Ribatejo, e dallmadãa, e dazoya de villa lõgua, e pedra da estrema, e Ribas dallamquer’; cited by the English in their petition of 1458. See Schanz, G., Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1881), II, 520Google Scholar; Livermore, , ‘The “Privileges of an Englishman”’, 72Google Scholar. Ribatejo, Almada, Alenquer are all around Lisbon. Wine of Azoia was also sent to Flanders and Germany; Marques, Oliviera, ‘Feitoria portuguesa’, 463Google Scholar.

¹⁷ British Library (hereafter BL), Cotton MS. Vespasian E IX, fos. 100v–101. For part of the text see Hall, H. and Nichols, F.J., eds., ‘Select Tracts and Table Books relating to English Weights and Measures, 1100–1742’, Camden Miscellany XV, Camden Society 3rd ser., XLI (1929)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ PRO, E122/19/4, 20/9. For Castilian wines see Childs, , Anglo-Castilian Trade, 126–36Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Oil does not appear to be such a frequent import to the Low Countries: Marques, Oliviera, ‘Feitoria portuguesa’, 465Google Scholar.

²⁰ PRO, E122/20/5.

²¹ PRO, C1/61/580.

²² BL, Cotton MSD. Vespasian E IX, fo. 101.

²³ Calendar of Close Rolls (hereafter CCR) 1422–9, 368.

²⁴ Childs, , Anglo-Castilian Trade, 33, 40–43Google Scholar.

²⁵ See particularly the Bristol customs accounts and the Butler's accounts of alien wine imports: PRO, E122/15/8, 16/2, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17–22, 26, 28, 30, 34, 40/12; E101/80/20, 22, 23, 25.

²⁶ CCR 1349–54, 491.

²⁷ Livermore, , ‘The “Privileges of an Englishman“’, 65–6Google Scholar. See also Shillington, , Commercial Relations, 53–4Google Scholar. Her analyses of Bristol accounts need minor corrections. In 1378–82 the balance of Portuguese to English ships overall is nearer 1:1 and in 1390–1 there were 21 ships laden with cloth, of which 17 were Bristol owned, three were from the Low Countries, and one was probably of Oporto; in all 9 cloths belonged to Portuguese merchants.

²⁸ For instance in 1403–4, Bristol saw 1, Southampton 5, and Exeter 1; no account survives for London that year. PRO, E122/17/9, 10, 12, 18/13; 139/4, 7; Devon Record Office, Exeter local customs roll, 5–6 Hen. IV.

²⁹ PRO, E101/81/1, 3, 5, 8.

³⁰ In the 40 year period 1420–1460 surviving customs accounts show altogether 124 Portuguese vessels and 67 Spanish ones in English ports. See note 34.

³¹ PRO, E122/141/21–23, 25, 29, 31, 209/1, 140/62; The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1435–36, ed. Foster, B., Southampton Record Series, VII (1963), 8, 14, 30, 46, 50, 60–2, 66Google Scholar; The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439–40, ed. Cobb, H., Southampton Record Series, V (1961), 15–17, 22, 30, 48, 104–5, 107, 109Google Scholar. Portuguese ships and cargoes are as follows:

³² Rau, ‘A family of Italian merchants’, passim; PRO, C76/134 m. 12.

³³ PRO, E122/141/22, 23.

³⁴ PRO, E122/141/21. Portuguese ships can be outstripped by smaller number of Spanish ships. In 1435–6 for instance seven Portuguese ships exported at least 111 English cloths, but the three Castilian ships exported 330 cloths; their imports of over 431 tons of iron worth at least £863 were similarly certainly larger than those of the Portuguese; Foster, , Port Book, 36, 52–4, 58–60Google Scholar.

³⁵ PRO, E122 40/30; see also E122/126/12, 36–8 (Sandwich), 139/4, 7, 8 (Southampton); DRO, Exeter local customs rolls, 5–7 Henry IV. Others put into Dartmouth for shelter, , CPR 1436–41, 515Google Scholar.

³⁶ PRO, E122/141/21, 22.

³⁷ Libelle, 1. 135.

³⁸ CPR 1429–36, 527; PRO, C76/118, mm. 3, 7.

³⁹ PRO, E122/73/10, 12, 20, 23, 25, 76/34, 38, 77/1, 3, 4, 203/1, 2, 3. Portuguese ships and cargoes were as follows:

Cloths in brackets are those belonging to English merchants shipped on Portuguese vessels. No account is taken of small amounts of worsted exported. In the poundage accounts, 1438–9 and 1442–3, English ships are also recorded to and from Portugal.

⁴⁰ PRO, E122/77/1.

⁴¹ Goods were sent to a carrack at Sandwich 1437–8; PRO, E122/77/3.

⁴² PRO, E122/76/34.

⁴³ See below, note 85.

⁴⁴ For Afonso see above, 203. There are two masters named John Peres. Both were in London in December 1431; one or other of them was back in February 1432; at Southampton in April 1433; in London on 2 September 1433. This last was probably the same ship which then left Southampton on 12 September, including in its shippers William Saxby of London and Alvero Vasques who had also been included among the London shippers of 2 September. The ship was back at Southampton on 20 December 1433. There is of course difficulty of clear identification with a common name such as John Peres. PRO, E122/77/1, 203/1, 141/21, 22.

⁴⁵ PRO, C76/134 m. 12 (St Marie Grace of Lisbon, owned by Marco Lomellini and Dominico Scoti), 139 m. 22, 142 m. 25 (Holy Spirit, 440 tuns). With the Anglo-Portuguese treaty in force such safe-conducts were legally unnecessary, but it was sometimes safer to obtain them.

⁴⁶ PRO, E179/144/54.

⁴⁷ CCR 1435–41, 381.

⁴⁸ PRO, E101/128/33.

⁴⁹ CCR 1454–61, 300.

⁵⁰ PRO, E28/82, 9 March 30 Hen. VI; CPR 1446–52, 536; ibid. 1452–61, 61, 165.

⁵¹ Carus-Wilson, E. M., The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the later Middle Ages (1937), no. 87Google Scholar.

⁵³ The treaty of Windsor meant Portuguese merchants would not appear in some records where Spaniards are recorded as enemy aliens, but this does not affect customs accounts, local London records, and many legal records.

⁵³ Livermore, ‘The “Privileges of an Englishman”’, passim.

⁵⁴ PRO, C76/119 m. 5, 120 m. 4, 123 m. 18; E122/73/12, 76/38, 77/3.

⁵⁵ For London see PRO, E122/73/10, 12, 20, 23, 25, 74/11, 76/34, 38, 77/1, 3, 4, 203/1, 2, 3. Of the English cargoes one, for 25 Englishmen and Jeronimo Spinola, included 140 tuns of oil (£606 13s. 4d.), kermes (£104 18s. 4d.), wax (£47), and small amounts of oranges, salt, vinegar, and bowstaves; the other, for 37 Englishmen, was also predominantly of olive oil (136 tuns, £585), with wax (over £151), small amounts of cordwain, oranges, salt, and 58½ tuns of wine: E122/77/4.

⁵⁶ No national accounts for Bristol survive; shipping movements at Bristol in 1432, cited in a fraud case, show no Portuguese ships, and only two locals sailing for Lisbon (PRO, E159/210 Recorda Mich. m. 34); a local account for 1437–8 shows only one possible Portuguese ship, Bristol Town Duties, ed. Bush, H. (Bristol, 1828), 17–25Google Scholar. For the London connection see PRO, E122/76/38; and above, 206 and n. 51.

⁵⁷ CPR 1429–36, 351; for more on Dartmouth carrying trade see Childs, W. R., ‘The Overseas Trade of Devon in the later Middle Ages’, in A New Maritime History of Devon, I, ed. Dufiy, M. et al. (Conway Maritime Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar; for Gille see de Azevedo, P., ‘Comércio anglo-português no meado do sec. XV’, Academia da Sciências de Lisboa, Boletim da Segunda Classe, VIII (1913–1914), 55–6Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Numbers of Portuguese there increased at this time. Marques, Oliviera, ‘Feitoria portuguesa’, 458Google Scholar; see below, 216.

⁵⁹ PRO, PRO31/8/153, fos 632–64, 671–2; Azevedo, , ‘Comércio anglo-português’, 53–66Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Azevedo, , ‘Comércio anglo-português’, 61, 65–6Google Scholar; PRO, PRO31/8/153, fos. 632, 640; Schanz, , Handekpolitik, 511–13Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Shillington, , Commercial Relations, 68–9, 113–26Google Scholar; livermore, ‘The “Privileges of an Englishman”’, passim.

⁶² See above note 14; PRO, E122/194/23 shows Deniz exporting on ships of Andree Perus and Gonçalvo Fons in May 1478.

⁶³ Journal of Roger Machado, ed. Gairdner, J., Rolls Series, X (1856), 333–6, 364–5Google Scholar; I am indebted for discussion on the origins of Machado to Dr Michael Jones of the University of Nottingham.

⁶⁴ PRO, E122 passim; DRO Exeter local customs rolls, Edw. IV-Hen. VII; The Port Books or Local Customs Accounts of Southampton for the Reign of Edward IV, ed. Quinn, D. B. and Ruddock, A. A., Southampton Record Society, 37–8 (1937–1938)Google Scholar; Southampton Civic Centre, Local Port Books for 1484–5 and 1494–5.

⁶⁵ PRO, E122/142/11.

⁶⁶ PRO, E122/20/9.

⁶⁷ PRO, E122/194/23, 24, 78/7, 9, 79/5, 80/3.

⁶⁸ PRO, E122/20/1, 5, 7, 9.

⁶⁹ Overall they handled about 14% of general imports, 15% of wine, and 10–14% of cloth exports, but in 1492–3, with some large sugar cargoes, they brought 38 per cent of imports from Portugal by value and 37 per cent of Portuguese wine; they still took only 10 per cent of the cloth sent to Portugal, leaving the bulk of the trade in the hands of the English.

⁷⁰ It should of course be remembered that the destinations given in the accounts may not indicate the only market, and that ships sailing to Andalusia might call at Lisbon too.

⁷¹ A shortage of capital is also evidenced by all really expensive cargoes being in the hands of Italians or Englishmen.

⁷² Trade with Portugal and Andalusia is impossible to disentangle if ships and all shippers are English. I have used data from 11 ships with cargoes of wine, oil, and other southern goods, but they may be from either area.

⁷³ In 1487–8, and 1494–5 they still carried single consignments of sugar worth £403 and £555 for individual Italians, but this is becoming a smaller amount of the trade they carry, [33% in 1487–8, 19% in 1494–5]. In 1480–1 they brought sugar worth about £430 for Alessandro Portinari, a Genoese who traded much with the Burgundian court, but the Italians engaged in direct Anglo-Portuguese trade are more often those domiciled in Lisbon; Rau, ‘A family of Italian merchants’; Verlinden, C., ‘La colonie italienne de Lisbonne et le developpement de l'économie metropolitaine et coloniale portugaise’, Studi in more di Armando Sapori, I (Milan, 1957)Google Scholar; Heers, J., Gênes au XV siècle, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Vie section, Centre de Recherches Historiques, Ports, XXIV (Paris, 1961), 485–7Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Total annual cloth exports to Portugal from Bristol were c. 1000–1500. Exports by Portuguese themselves reached 440 at their peak in London, but were counted in scores in southern ports; supplements on English ships from these ports ran into hundreds. For totals see Carus-Wilson, E. M. and Coleman, O., England's Export Trade 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar; for Spanish totals see Childs, , Anglo-Castilian Trade, 89–90Google Scholar. Portugal supplied 200–250 tuns of wine and sometimes 500 tuns a year to Bristol; Childs, op. cit., 133 (where the final figure for Portugal should read 499). It rarely supplied over 100 tuns and frequently none to southern ports. The Portuguese themselves brought only 117 tuns to London in their peak year. For total wine imports see James, M. K., Studies in the English Wine Trade, ed. Veale, E. M. (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar. The import values of general merchandise can be estimated only roughly from customs particulars, as numerous adjustments have to be made to petty custom and poundage totals.

⁷⁵ In English records for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of the Portuguese ships identified by a home port name, 45% came from Lisbon, and 45% from Oporto.

⁷⁶ The Travels of Leo of Rozmital, ed. Letts, M., Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., CVIII (1957), 100–107, 119, 123Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ In 1384 the Holy Ghost belonging to the king of Portugal was seized by English pirates off Harfleur, and a ship of his brother, João, Master of Aviz, was wrecked off the Isle of Wight. In 1416 the Katherine of the king of Portugal was in England ready to sail to Calais. In 1439 pirates robbed a ship of João Alvar, a Portuguese knight, in Mountsbay. In 1445 Alvaro Vaz d'Almada, count of Avranches, owned a ship which arrived in London. In 1454 Alvaro de Cayado, knight of the Order of Christ, owned a carvel which sailed into Southampton and possibly also owned another carvel of Setubal. In 1455 a knight of Portugal, named as Albuquerque (Alvokyrk), was recorded as owner of one of six Portuguese ships taken at sea. A few cases where Portuguese knights are included among shippers may indicate an interest in the vessel as well as the goods. CCR 1381–5, 358, 380; PRO, C76/99, m. 21; CPR 1436–41, 409; PRO, C76/128 m. 2; E28/84; CPR 1452–61, 172, 254, 281.

⁷⁸ Chaunu, P., European Expansion in the Later Middle Ages (Eng. trans., Amsterdam, 1979), 309Google Scholar; and see note 4.

⁷⁹ Childs, W. R., ‘Ireland's trade with England in the later middle ages’, Irish Economic and Social History, 9 (1982), 9–10, 30, 32–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Childs, W. R. and O'Neill, T., ‘The Overseas Trade of Ireland in the later Middle Ages’, A New History of Ireland, II, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, ed. Cosgrove, A. (Oxford, 1987), 489, 498, 507–8, 511Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ PRO, E101/184/19, 185/7, 9, 11, 188/12, 14, 190/6, 191/3, 192/1, 194/3, 195/9; BL, Additional MS 15524; Ducaunnes-Duval, M. G., ‘Registre de la Comptablie de Bordeaux 1482–3’, Archives Historiques du département de la Gironde, L (1915), 1–166Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Trocmé, E. and Delafosse, M., Le Commerce rochelais de la fin du XVe siècle au début du XVIIIe (Paris, 1952), pp. 69—72Google Scholar; see below, 216 and note 89.

⁸² Touchard, H., Le Commerce maritime breton à la fin du moyen âge (Paris, 1967), 143–4, 150, 210–14Google Scholar.

⁸³ Verlinden, , ‘Deux aspects de l'expansion commerciale’, 177–9Google Scholar; Mollat, M., Le Commerce maritime normand á la fin du moyen âge (Paris, 1952), 15–16, 43, 217–26Google Scholar; idem, Comptabilité du port de Dieppe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1951). 94, 97.

⁸⁴ For detail about many of the following points see Marques, Oliviera, ‘Feitoria portuguesa’, 440–5, 453–60, 475–6Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 458. See also Finot, J., Etude historique sur les relations commerciales entre la Flandre et l'Espagne au moyen âge (Paris, 1899), 141–6, 195–203, 209–12Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 217–220, 232–3.

⁸⁷ Verlinden, , ‘Deux aspects de l'expansion commerciale’, 202–09Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Oliviera Marques, Hanse e Portugal, passim.

⁸⁹ Rau, V. and de Macedo, J., O Açúcar da Madeira nos fins do século XV. Problemas de Produção e Comércio (Funchal, 1962), 14Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Carrère, C., Barcdone: centre èconomique à l'époque des diffcultés, 1380–1462, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967), 557–8Google Scholar; Heers, ‘L'expansion maritime portugaise’, passim.

⁹¹ PRO, E122/194/20, 22, 24.

⁹² Heers, ‘L'expansion maritime portugaise’ idem, ‘Le commerce des Basques en Mediterranée au XVe siècle (d'après les archives de Génes)’, Bulletin Hispanique, LVII (1955).

⁹³ See above note 85.

⁹⁴ Munro, J.H., Wool, Cloth, and Gold. The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade 1340–1475 (Toronto, 1972), 115–17, 134–7Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Childs, , Anglo-Castilian Trade, 53–65Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ Reforms and revaluation were also uncomfortable for commercial classes; Magalhães-Godinho, V., L'économie de l'empire portugais aux XVe et XVIe siècles, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, VIe section, Centre de Recherches Historiques, Ports-Routes-Trafics, XXVI (Paris, 1969), 147–67Google Scholar. For comment on a similar relationship of bullion shortage and political problems, see , A. MacKay, Money, Prices and Politics in Fifteenth Century Castile (1981), 40–1Google Scholar.