The First Passports

The idea of giving people some kind of document affording them safe passage through another country may go back as far as the Egyptian pharaohs, who are thought to have issued their subjects with cartouches bearing the ruler's name.
One of the first references to an English passport was in the reign of King Henry V, who, in an act of 1414, issued "Safe Conducts," warning foreigners to allow his subjects to move around unmolested within certain parameters of destination, time and purpose. In return, no Englishman would injure or rob a foreigner who carried one of Henry's Safe Conducts.