Legal Quays

The act was enacted largely at the instigation of Sir William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester and long-serving Lord Treasurer. It established the Legal Quays and appointed commissioners to designate such quays at every port in the realm. At the most important port by far, London, Paulet himself was appointed along with Sir Richard Sackville and Sir Walter Mildmay, the Under-Treasurer and Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively, to undertake "the limitation, assigning and appointing of all the quays and wharves and places appertaining and belonging to the Port of London for the loading and lauding, discharging, unloading and laying on land thereof wares and merchandises". Their role consisted of surveying London's wharves and quays to recommend which should be designated as Legal Quays. ==Legal Quays in London==

Although many quays already existed along the Thames shoreline, Paulet, Sackville and Mildmay decreed that "all creeks, wharves, quays, loading and discharging places" in Gravesend, Woolwich, Barking, Greenwich, Deptford, Blackwall, Limehouse, Ratcliff, Wapping, St Katherine's, Tower Hill, Rotherhithe, Southwark and London Bridge should be "no more used as loading or discharging places for merchandise". ==Expansion==

The regime set out in the 1559 act lasted into the 18th century. Seventy-four English towns were eventually designated as ports and authorised Legal Quays were established within them. They were used to land low-duty goods, but with no expansion in the list of ports or Legal Quays, or increases to the size of the quays themselves, quay space was constantly in short supply and was not remotely adequate for the demands of increasing levels of trade. == Notes ==