Four Books of Rates (1507, 1536/45, 1558, 1604)

These Books of Rates list – for the use of English customs officials – the official values of hundreds of products commonly traded overseas in the sixteenth century. What goods needed to be listed and what their official valuations were held to be, had been the subject of wary negotiations between the crown and the Merchants Adventurers. These lists thus offer us four snapshots of the shape of Eng...