Loscop

To be "Louecope-free" is one of the immunities granted to the Cinque Ports in their charters of Liberties. Jeakes explains the term thus:— "The Saxon word Cope (in Low Dutch still Kope or Koope), for trade or merchandising, makes this as much as to trade freely for love. So that by no kind of monopoly patent, or company or society of traders or merchants, the portsmen be hindered from merchandising; but freely and for love, be permitted to trade and traffick, even by such company of merchants, whenever it shall happen their concerns lie together." In my MSS., and in the print of Jeakes, it is…