![]() But they were to a large extent still subject to their episcopal lord: that charter and most subsequent ones included clauses saving the rights of the bishop of Norwich and it was he, not the burgesses, who in 1315 was granted the privilege of return of writs in Lynn and, later, the keeping of a gaol there. 16īy royal charter dated 1204 the burgesses of Lynn secured the same liberties and privileges as were enjoyed by the citizens of Oxford, a fact which Henry Betley put forward in 1383 to justify his defiance of the royal escheator. The town made a loan of 500 marks to Henry IV in 1402 and, later on, another to his son. Lynn ranked high in the list of wealthy towns: in 1386 its loan of £100 to Richard II equalled Norwich’s contribution and was less than that of only five other urban centres and the contribution required of it in 1397 (400 marks) was smaller only than those of London, Norwich, Boston and Bristol. However, this was by no means the full picture other evidence, including a notably high level of investment in building, both public and private, suggests that in the 15th century Lynn may have returned to its former prosperity. Although at the beginning of our period a fleet from Lynn regularly made an annual voyage to Iceland in February, returning in August or September with cod or herring, from about 1409 onwards increasingly violent attacks on English merchantmen and heavy losses from other causes rendered these ventures less attractive, with the eventual consequence that trade with Iceland was prohibited. Trading activities, which had reached their peak in the 13th century, had suffered a decline in the 14th due, at least in part, to the encroachments of Hanse merchants into the North Sea and Baltic trade. When, in 1373, Lynn was constituted a staple port, it was claimed in Parliament that it supplied the counties of Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire with imported goods (timber, iron, fish, foodstuffs, wine, spices, furs and Flanders cloth), but the town’s prosperity depended, too, on the agricultural produce of this hinterland, which its people exported to the Low Countries, the Baltic, Scandinavia and Gascony. The town had been founded at the end of the 11th century by the bishop of Norwich, at the request of a group of traders already established on the western boundaries of his manor of Gaywood, and situated where road, river and sea transport met on the southern shores of the Wash. A large port by contemporary standards, it was slightly bigger than Boston, nearly twice the size of Great Yarmouth and double that of Southampton and Kingston-upon-Hull. ![]() The population of Bishop’s Lynn in 1377 has been estimated as 4,691 about 1,300 less than that of Norwich. ![]()
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