While Britain was in recession and at war with Spain in Tudor times, smuggling in Somerset soared bringing illegal wealth to the county.

The research has been carried out by Dr. Duncan Taylor who specialises in economics and history.

He´s discovered that people risked their lives to smuggle calf skins to Spain even though this was punishable by death if they were caught.

Other goods smuggled out included dried beans grown on the Somerset Levels.

“Important food stuff”

Dr Duncan Taylor teaches economics at Queen´s College, Taunton, and also specialises in maritime history and maritime trade of the Bristol Channel ports in the 16th Century.

“During the Tudor period, smuggling was extremely popular,” said Dr Taylor.

“It would be fair to say it was the mainstay of the economy of the port towns in Somerset, Bridgwater in particular and Minehead.

“There were also some of the smaller ports that we perhaps don´t recognise anymore, particularly a place called Axwater as it was then known, which is the mouth of the river Axe near Uphill and was a major centre for smuggling.”

Although smuggling is associated with bringing goods into the country illegally, people in Somerset smuggled more products out in order to avoid customs taxes and make more money.

“Smuggling out was the bigger part of the illegal or illicit economy from Axwater. A particular type of dried bean was a very popular thing to be smuggled out as it was an important food stuff and it was smuggled across to Ireland and also down to Spain.

“In Spain there was big demand for it to feed the horses, the Spanish war horses that were the pride of the Spanish nobility.

“As well as smuggling out beans, calf skins were also very popular – it was illegal to export out calf skins and you could even face the death penalty for exporting them out.”

“Backhanders and corruption”

The surprising aspect of this illicit trade was that Britain was at war with Spain but this had no impact on Somerset traders and Britain´s economy was struggling.

“This is generally being considered as a time when Somerset was in decline and there was prolonged economic recession but we now know that wasn´t the case, it´s just that people weren´t declaring the trade they were doing.”

According to Duncan´s research, hundreds of tonnes of beans were smuggled out, and so were thousands of calf skins, with around 300 ships being sailed from Spain and Ireland to ports along the Bristol Channel every year.

Meanwhile the most popular product smuggled into Britain was wine, mainly from France, and so was an expensive blue clothes dye called woad which came from the Azores and Toulouse, France.

“In theory it was difficult to smuggle and at large ports like Bristol it was probably a lot harder than at relatively small ports like those in Somerset.

“There were customs officers but they were generally corrupt and could be bought off quite easily by a wealthy merchant, and with a coastline like Somerset you can easily bring in a small ship and load stuff onto it without too much difficulty.”

At least half of the trade in towns like Minehead and Bridgwater was created in this way, with the chief smugglers often being the town mayor himself or someone who held another important position in the community.

Smuggling eventually fell into decline, after changes in the way customs officials operated.

“What we start to see is the professionalism of customs. Customs became a lot more independent in the way we would expect it to be now and started to act on behalf of the government rather than on behalf of themselves, accepting backhanders and all the corruption that was going on.

“As the centuries go on you get increasingly professional and effective law enforcement by central government.”

If you would like to learn more about maritime trade in Somerset, visit Dr Duncan Taylor's website .

via BBC – Teacher discovers Somerset’s bean smuggling history.