Did "respectable" 16th- century Bristol merchants such as brothers William and Robert Tyndall, and John Smyth of Ashton Court, engage in smuggling? Was tax evasion, in fact, the secret of their enormous wealth?
Bristol historian Dr Evan Jones is of the opinion that many Bristol merchants did in fact practice some deceit in order to increase their revenue – especially when export licences for some commodities proved very expensive.
"Trying to work out why some export accounts of John Smyth did not tally with those of the customs officers, the answer suddenly came to me," explains the academic, the author of a new book about the subject.
"My 'respectable' merchant, a pillar of Bristol's commercial community, was smuggling."
In his lifetime John Smyth was once sheriff and twice mayor.
From the moment that governments decided to levy duty on imported goods in the 13th century, a percentage of businessmen set out to avoid paying.
Bribery of officials, especially amongst the tide-waiters – the men responsible for monitoring shipping between the mouth of the Avon and Bristol docks – was common practice among certain merchants.
Using Bristol's records as a case study, Dr Jones has now provided historians with the most sophisticated study ever undertaken of the smugglers' trade.
Despite its romantic, 18th-century, swashbuckling image, his research has led him to believe that 16th-century smuggling was, in fact, a large-scale and systematic fraud that relied on the connivance of well-connected merchants and customs officers.
Here were pillars of the community, respectable and respected citizens, intent on cheating the Crown out of its legal revenue in order to line their own purses.
Rather than illicit brandy, the goods involved were more likely to be far more down to earth – wool, hides (leather) grain or cloth.
Duties on wool and hides were, in fact, much higher than on other goods, giving the merchants more incentive to smuggle these above other commodities.
For such illustrious men – Bristol's mayors, sheriffs and MPs – crime really did pay, as they were never caught.
The merchants did keep personal records of their imports and exports but were safe in the knowledge that they would never be seized by the authorities – or used against them in a court of law.
"Smugglers could be extremely candid about their activities when writing to a trusted accomplice," says Dr Jones.
"It mattered little whether the costs imposed on him stemmed from ancient custom, a royal prerequisite, a Crown licence, an imposition, or the price of belonging to a monopoly company.
"What mattered was the overall costs of complying with official policy."
The physical geography of the Bristol and Severnside area also played its part in the illicit trade, says the historian.
A survey of the extensive Port of Bristol in 1565 – it stretched up-river as far as Worcester – noted that there were 59 creeks, pills, and havens that were capable of being used by merchant vessels, about half of which were said to be used for illicit trading.
Boats could slip into these "havens" on a high tide, load up as the waters ebbed and be away on the next tide before the customs men even became aware of their existence.
The only official customs wharves were in Bristol and the places where all goods had to be unloaded, by law, were on the Quay (St Augustine's Reach) – and the Back (now Welsh Back).
As regards exports, illicit merchandise was covertly loaded on to vessels either at the Hungroad (between Shire and Ham Green) or the Kingroad (between Avonmouth and Portishead).
Sixteenth-century Bristol was unusual, says Evans, in that both trade and shipping was dominated by local merchants – businessmen who also controlled the political life of the city.
"Bristol was above all a commercial city, controlled by a mercantile class who faced little competition in the shape of a great lord, a powerful gentry or strong manufacturing interests," says the lecturer.
"If Bristol's merchants supported each other (then) there was the potential for them to use control over the city's corporation, and through it, the city's courts, to limit interference in their illegal activities."
"It's own sheriffs, who were generally merchants, presided over the County Court.
"In the case of John Smyth, his illicit trade (in grain and leather) constituted a key component of his business. Indeed, while 62 per cent of the profits he recorded in an account of his 'gains' were from his (legal) imports of iron, wine, oil and woad, he may well have regarded his largely illicit exports of grain and leather as the most important branch of his trade."
Smyth, says the historian, was responsible for about five per cent of all Bristol's Continental trade through- out the 1540s.
"Smuggling in Bristol (at this time) appears to have been restricted to just two trades," he says.
"It was, nevertheless, a large scale, extremely profitable and highly organised business, which was responsible for the great bulk of export profits achievable at this time.
"Such was the apparent scale of their illicit activities that in many years the amount of Crown money lost to smuggling would probably have exceeded the customs revenue collected in the port."
As regards the Tyndall brothers, at the time of his death in 1558, William, who was an MP, was facing prosecution for illicitly exporting wheat and butter.
Jones' research would suggest that he had been involved in smuggling since at least 1544.
Informers, it seems, were difficult to bribe.
Later in the century large amounts of cloth and, as duties rose, of wine, were smuggled.
With a government cap on the prices at which wine could be sold, profits were squeezed.
But with wine imports vital to the city's whole economy many merchants, says Jones, engaged in illicit trading not just for greed, or increased profit, but for their very survival.
"A willingness to break the law would certainly have been essential for anyone who wanted to engage in the wine trade after 1558," adds Dr Jones.
Inside the Illicit Economy by Evan T Jones is published by Ashgate.
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