Introduction
Edward Miller
Writing in the year 1805, David Macpherson summed up his reflections on economic legislation of later medieval England following words: ‘From perusal … most ancient statutes relating to commerce, manufactures, fisheries and navigation, it is evident that legislators knew nothing affairs which they undertook regulate, also their ordinances, either from want precision, or ordering what was impossible be obeyed,… must have been inefficient. No judicious commercial regulations could drawn by ecclesiastical military men (the only classes who possessed any authority influence) despised trade consequently know it.’
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