Maritime Trade and the Granting of Port Status

Formal recognition of Lowestoft’s status as a trading port might never have been given in 1679, had the town not managed to free itself from Great Yarmouth’s claim to control all maritime traffic in local waters – especially that connected with the herring trade. Articles relating to this long-running and contentious issue are to be found elsewhere in LO&N’s History pages (The Lothingland-Lowestoft-GreatYarnouth Disputes (Parts 1 & 2) and a summative comment can be added to this. Much of the 300 year old wrangle is too intricate to repeat here, but certain aspects of it will serve to demonstrate Lowestoft’s way of dealing with what was widely perceived in the town to be unnecessary and unreasonable interference from an over-mighty neighbour.

The trouble began in 1357, when Great Yarmouth exercised sufficient influence on both Crown and Parliament to have the Statute of Herrings passed in its favour (being the most important port on the East Coast of England and a major supplier of ships to the Crown in times of foreign conflict). Its leading citizens were worried about problems caused by silting-up of the harbour mouth and by the growing emergence of Lowestoft as a maritime rival. The main provision of the act, in practical terms, was to give Yarmouth complete control of the local trade in herrings during the period of its great autumn fair (29 September to 11 November) within a seven league distance of its town quay. However, the specific extent of the leuk or leucawas not defined (perhaps deliberately) and three centuries of dispute followed as to the actual length, with Yarmouth arguing for two (or even three) miles and Lowestoft resolutely maintaining that the distance was one – the latter placing it just beyond the Yarmouth’s sphere of jurisdiction.

The issue dominated relationships between the two towns for over two centuries, until some attempt at a resolution was attempted late in the reign of Elizabeth I. By Act of Parliament in 1597, the leuk or leuca was fixed at one mile only and a post ordered to be set up on the shoreline to mark the southern limit of Great Yarmouth’s area of control – an action which was duly carried out. However, the Yarmouth authorities refused to accept the judgement and continued to press their case for another sixty years or more. Eventually, in February 1662 (1663, after introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752), the judgement of 1597 was confirmed by the House of Lords and the order given for the erection of a new post. 

This was carried out, in June 1663, when a standard oak from the parish of Sotterley (some eight or nine miles to the south-west of Lowestoft), duly burned at one end to harden it, was set up on the Denes at Gunton, a mile or more north of the town – somewhere to the north of Lopham Score (long known, now, as Tramp’s Alley). Edmund Gillingwater, in his An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790) p. 236, gives an account of this – drawing upon the accounts kept by James Wilde (merchant) of the expenses incurred in contesting, in the House of Lords, Great Yarmouth’s claim to dominance. And, in fact, the Great Yarmouth civic heads did make one last attempt, in 1729, to assert their supposed privileges, but the leading Lowestoft merchants raised a contingency fund of £445 to oppose the legality of this claim, and it was not proceeded with. See Gillingwater, pp. 216-20.

Apart from the long-running dispute over the herring trade, there was another bone of contention between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft – one in which the Norfolk town had a certain degree of legality on its side. As head-port for its sector of the East Anglian shoreline, Yarmouth exercised control over lesser coastal stations, especially those in the bottom echelon. These were officially designated as creeks. They had no resident customs officers of their own and they were supposed to have all their traffic pass through the head-port or, at least, be entered in its records. This must have been regarded as inconvenient by the Lowestoft merchants and seafarers, if not totally unreasonable, and thus the law was routinely flouted – with as much trade as possible being conducted in and out of the town’s own haven. The level above creeks consisted of members(such as Southwold and Aldeburgh) which had their own customs officers and kept their own records, thereby enjoying greater autonomy.

Outward bound cargoes of red herrings were one of Lowestoft’s staple exports abroad, and had been since at least the 15th century. But, another notable, inward, coastal trade was that in coal from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which was already well established by the early 16th century. However, it was not any irregularity in this particular traffic which seems to have concerned the authorities in Yarmouth. They were much more interested in the illegal import and export of wine, grain, malt and other commodities, with both Lowestoft craft and foreign ships involved in the traffic, which can be traced back in both the Calendar of Patent Rolls and Calendar of Close Rolls to the first half of the 14th century.

It was this kind of irregularity which led the Great Yarmouth head customs official to declare that Lowestoft was “a town of great smuggling” and which led to incidents of the kind involving George Whelplay (haberdasher, of London), a paid informer in the service of the Crown. On 17 December 1539, Whelplay seized victuals that were being illegally exported from Lowestoft and he acted again on 3 March 1540, when a quantity of brass, lead, worsted cloth and victuals was confiscated. Eighteen months or so later, on 1 November 1541, a meeting of the Privy Council at Hampton Court heard John Lissle of Lowestoft testify that Thomas Bocking and others had illegally exported grain from the town. Incidents like these probably occurred regularly, and it can only have been Great Yarmouth’s determination to subordinate its neighbour which prevented Lowestoft from gaining some kind of recognition as a port and having its own customs officials.However, in spite of the public rivalry between the two towns, at civic level, a number of the leading citizens in each community were able to sink their civic differences and co-operate in matters of business.

It has been said that the officials in Great Yarmouth were of the opinion that most of Lowestoft’s trade went unrecorded. However, some idea of the goods which were entering and leaving the latter’s waters can be derived from regulations governing its establishment as a port in 1679. Coal, salt, timber, marine stores, pantiles, corn, butter, cheese and fish are all referred to – the third and fourth of them both connected with a flourishing Baltic trade which had been going on for generations. From 1640 onwards, the Customer (chief officer) at Great Yarmouth had sent a waiter over to Lowestoft to see that nothing was loaded or landed there. The success of this must have been very limited, because on 11 November 1677 the Customs Commissioners requested that the Treasury pay a salary of £10 per annum to an able officer based in Lowestoft. Lord Treasurer Danby acceded to the request five days later, but stipulated that the payment was not to be made to the current officer.

Within a year, the townspeople of Lowestoft petitioned the Treasury for the privilege of being granted port status, claiming that the duties imposed on their goods at Great Yarmouth were a great burden on trade – as was the transporting of merchandise overland to and from the head-port. It was stated that the landing of gruff goods there, and the subsequent conveyance to Lowestoft, took away 25% of the profit, with salt being particularly affected by the journey and susceptible to considerable loss. Moreover, it was pointed out that the town had sixty vessels at the time, which was a greater number than either Southwold or Aldeburgh – both of which places (as members to the head-port) had a customs officer to receive entries and grant cockets (documents confirming that duty on goods had been paid). The number of vessels cited was almost certainly an inflated one and probably included craft from Kirkley, Pakefield and Kessingland. And, in a sense, this was a legitimate tactic to adopt, because the one haven and its inshore roads served those other communities.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the petition was successful and on 31 January 1679 Lord Treasurer Danby accepted the Customs Commissioners recommendation that Lowestoft be allowed to import gruff goods(namely, salt, timber, deal boards, pitch, tar, resin, iron, hemp, rope, cordage and pantiles) and export butter, cheese and fish. The salt was probably brought in from the Bay of Biscay coastline, or possibly from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; the timber and marine stores came from the Baltic ports; and the pantiles would have been shipped across the North Sea from Holland. Entries of such merchandise were to be made first at Great Yarmouth and an officer sent over to Lowestoft, whenever necessary, to supervise proceedings there. It was the opinion of Mr. Dunstar, a general customs surveyor, and also that of the Great Yarmouth officers, that acts of fraud might well take place if Lowestoft had its own resident customs officer. Fraudulent practices of one kind or another had only been brought under control in the head-port itself with the greatest difficulty.

Just over three months later, on 13 May 1679, Treasurer Danby wrote to the Customs Commissioners, informing them that the citizens of Lowestoft were now requesting the right to export and import both coal and grain, in addition to the privileges already granted. The formal decision was not long in coming and on 24 May it was decreed that the town be allowed to export grain but not import it, and to import coal but not export it. Entry of all merchandise was to be at Great Yarmouth and the Lowestoft traders were to pay the daily allowance of any customs officer sent over from the head-port. Six months later, on 22 November 1679, Thomas Glover was recommended for the post of waiter and searcher at Lowestoft (he actually became resident in the town), while on 16 October 1680 William Weddle, a tidesman at Great Yarmouth, was appointed as his assistant because of the great increase in shipping which had taken place. Lowestoft, it would seem, was benefiting from its new-found maritime status as member to the head-port.

All of the information in the three preceding paragraphs is to be found in W. Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books, vol. v, ii (London, 1911), pp. 1218-19 & p. 1266, and vol. vi (London, 1913), p. 65. And, by the early 18th century, the town had its own established, resident customs officers. Furthermore, by the 1780s, it also had its own revenue cutter based in the town, named Argus (al. Argos Panoples, the many-eyed giant of Greek mythology, who served Queen of the gods, Hera, as her watchman). So, no guesses are needed as to the significance of this vessel’s name, in keeping an eye upon what was going on in local coastal waters with regard to the inward and outward passage of goods! The artist Richard Powles seems to have taken a particular interest in the craft, since it features somewhere in frame in all of his surviving views of the Lowestoft beach environment (either as ink-and-wash studies or as scenic views on the pieces of Lowestoft porcelain which he decorated) – distinctive by its single mast, with pennon flying at the head. Perhaps he was even using the vessel as a symbol of the town’s autonomy and growing confidence in itself. Who knows?

CREDIT:David Butcher