Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

38

Luchaire, 288-9.

39

Luchaire, 64, 137.

40

M. Jusserand in his Epopée Mystique du Moyen Age has well pointed out that the war with France was royal rather than national. Pp. 7-9, 117.

41

Stubbs, Lectures on Mediæval History, p. 342; Friedman, Anne Boleyn, i. pp. 1-4; Gneist, La Constitution Communale, trans. by Hippert, i. p. 334, &c. “England at the accession of Henry the Seventh was far behind the England of the thirteenth century.” (Denton, Lectures on the Fifteenth Century, 120, 118.) “This low and material view of domestic life had led to an equally low and material view of political life, and the cruelty which stained the Wars of the Roses was but the outcome of a state of society in which no man cared much for anything except his own greatness and enjoyment. The ideal which shaped itself in the minds of the men of the middle class was a king acting as a kind of chief constable, who, by keeping great men in order, would allow their inferiors to make money in peace.” (Gardiner’s Student’s History, 330-1.) “The despondency of the English people, when their dream of conquest in France was dissipated, was attended with a complete decay of thought, with civil war, and with a standing still or perhaps a decline of population, and to a less degree of wealth.” (National Life and Character, by Charles Pearson, p. 130-1.) “There are few more pitiful episodes in history. Thirty-five years of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortunate had both soured and demoralised the nation.” “England had entirely ceased to count as a naval power.” As for the burgesses, “if not actively mischievous they were sordidly inert.” (Oman’s Warwick, 4-11, 67, 133.)

42

In Ricart’s Calendar in Bristol he enters duly the fact that a battle had been fought and that one side or other was victorious without further comment. He misplaces the date of the murder of Suffolk three years, though he might well have remembered it; and he writes as a sort of after-thought in the margin of his record, “and this year the two sons of King Edward were put to silence in the Tower of London.” (Ricart, 40-46.) In 1460 Norwich had its captain and 120 soldiers with King Henry in the north, and all the rest of its available forces had to hurry off to Edward at his accession. (Blomefield iii. 162-163.) The city raised £160 for the coming of Richard the Third to the city, and £140 for the coming of Henry the Seventh. (Ibid. 173-174.) For Nottingham, see vol. ii. There is no mention of Bosworth in Canterbury, and Henry the Seventh was received with the same pomp as former kings. (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 145.) For Bosworth, where men stood afar off waiting to join the victorious side, see Fabyan, 672-673. The policy of the burghers was the same in this respect as that of the great Churchmen, who were entirely passive in the real crises of the civil war, and so ready to serve every king, that not one of them suffered loss from fidelity to any side. (Rogers’ Agricul. and Prices, iv. 9, 10.) The people in general were equally indifferent. “I have read thousands of documents penned during the heat of the strife, and have found only one allusion to the character of the times in the earlier, and one about the later war of 1470-1.” (Ibid., 19.) An interesting parallel to the indifference of the trading communities of the fifteenth century during the Wars of the Roses may be seen in the action of the Merchants’ Company in the civil wars of the seventeenth century. (Lambert’s Gild Life, 177-178.)

43

See vol. ii. ch. i.

44

In Lydd corn was given to the poor at Christmas and Easter, and gifts to lepers; payments made from 1480-1485 for Goderynge’s daughter, “poor maid,” “hosen, shoes, her keep, kertyl-cloth and for making thereof;” also in 1490, “paid to the poor man keeping the poor child 12 pence.” After a long list of expenses for a thief and making stocks for him and a halter, “paid for one pair of shoes to his daughter 3d.,” and “given to the quest of women 4d.”; summoned perhaps in reference to the daughter. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 527, 526.) In Rye sums were paid to the poor on opening the box of maltotes. (Ibid. 494.) For Southampton, Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 112; the steward’s book in 1441 contains a list of alms, £4 2s. 1d., given away every week to poor men and women. (Davies, 294.) According to the usual calculation at this time in almshouses of a penny a day for living, this sum would mean that the corporation paid weekly for the mere subsistence of 140 persons. For Bristol, Ricart’s Kalendar, 72-80, 82, &c. For Chester, Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 371. For Romney, Hist. MSS. Com. v. 535-6. The Mayor of Sandwich had to manage the hospitals of S. Bartholomew and S. John, to appoint their officers, to audit their accounts, and administer their estates made up of innumerable parcels of land and houses left by pious people. (Boys, 17-21, 526.) The municipal council of Exeter appointed every year a Warden of the Poor to look after their many charitable foundations. It had charge of Magdalen Hospital, of the Ten Cells Hospital for Poor, founded in 1406 by Simon Grendon, Mayor; the Combrew Almshouse, founded by Sir William Bonville, 1408; and an almshouse founded by John Palmer. (Freeman’s Exeter, 175-6.) There was a municipal almshouse in Hereford supported by way of payment to the corporation from ecclesiastical tenants for a share in the city’s privileges. (Arch. Ass. Journ. xxvii. 481.) In the fifteenth century bequests by burgesses for these purposes were very frequent and were usually left to the management of the corporation. In all large towns the mayor and aldermen presided over the court of orphans. (Davies’s Southampton, 239.) The indications of poor relief by the towns must modify Mr. Ashley’s conclusion (Economic History, I. part ii. 338) that “no attempt was made by the State as a whole, or by any secular public authority, to relieve distress. The work was left entirely to the Church, and to the action of religious motives upon the minds of individuals.” It seems difficult to follow in this connexion his distinction drawn between the craft associations which had or had not grown out of religious fraternities (p. 325).

45

Besides the customary Latin prayers a Norfolk guild used English prayers for Church and State, harvest and travellers, like our Litany. (English Guilds, 111-114.) The play of the Lord’s Prayer was performed by a York guild. “They are bound to find one candle-bearer, with seven lights, in token of the seven supplications in the Lord’s Prayer.” “Also they are bound to make, and as often as need be to renew, a table showing the whole meaning and use of the Lord’s Prayer, and to keep this hanging against a pillar in the said cathedral church near to the aforesaid candle-bearer.” (Ibid. 137-9.) See also Hibbert’s Shrewsbury Guilds, 62. For Pecok as “the first author of the Middle Ages who propounded reason as a judge of faith,” and one who “might be claimed as at once the forerunner of the Erastian theory of the church, and of the Rationalist interpretation of its theology”; and for the place now given to general councils see Rogers’s Agriculture and Prices, iv. 11-13. For the first signs that the revenues of monastic houses were to be devoted to other purposes. (Ibid. 101.)

46

Agriculture remained stationary during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was in fact but little changed from the time when Walter of Henley published his treatise until the time when Fitz Herbert wrote his work about 1523 embodying most of the rules which Walter had given before him. The real progress lay not in the country but in the town.

47

Nott. Records, ii. 143, 145, 167, 179, 191; iii. 21, 29.

48

Clément, Jacques Cœur, 196-7. Nicholas Sturgeon was ordered by the Privy Council in 1442 “to go and choose six singers of England such as the messenger that is come from the Emperor will desire for to go to the Emperor.” Proceedings and Ordinances of Privy Council, ed. Sir Harris Nicholas, 1834, v. 218.

49

Mr. Jacobs tells me that he has found no direct evidence of Jews lending to townspeople in the twelfth century; there are only some indications such as that they sought for debtors in S. Paul’s; (The Jews of Angevin England, p. 45) and that they claimed to attend the assizes at Bury. (Ibid. 142.) If their business lay, as it seems, with nobles and landowners, it would prove the absence of any demand for capital in the towns.

50

For an account of the Staple see Schanz, i. 327 et seq.; von Ochenkowski, Englands Wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters, 220; Stubbs, ii. 446-8.

51

Schanz, i. 329, &c.

52

Ibid. 657.

53

Schanz, i. 543; von Ochenkowski, 216-7. For the Law Merchant see Mr. Maitland’s Pleas in Manorial Courts (Selden Soc.), p. 137. For Staple Statutes see 14 R. II. cap. 3, 4.

54

Schanz, i. 332, 338.

55

See Paston Letters, iii. 166.

56

Schanz, i. 501.

57

Von Ochenkowski, 202, 210; Schanz, 495-500. Petition of merchants in 1442 to be relieved from these rules refused. Proc. Privy Council, v. 217.

58

In 1442 the merchants of the Staple of Calais begged that payment should be made to the soldiers for the surety of the merchants’ wools. (Proceedings of Privy Council, v. 215, 216.) When the lords seized Calais in 1459, “they shifted with the Staple of Calais for £18,000” to carry on the war with. After Edward’s accession, in 1462, the merchants claimed repayment. Edward refused, and after long efforts the merchant who represented them and had borne the chief charges died a ruined man in sanctuary at Westminster (Fabyan, 635, 652-3).

59

A sack was 364 lbs. of 16 oz. each (Schanz, ii. 569).

60

Stubbs, iii. 69, Stat. 27, H. VI. c. 2.

61

Schanz, ii. 15.

62

Under the system of paying a fixed sum in good and bad years alike the poor merchants became bankrupt, and in the middle of the sixteenth century the number of wool exporters fell enormously (Schanz, ii. 17). An extremely interesting statement by the Staplers of the causes of their decay is given by Schanz in vol. ii. 565-9.

63

In the years from 1485 to 1546 general trade had increased by one-third, while the wool trade had decreased by one-third (Schanz, ii. 12).

64

In the Paston Letters there is even in the fifteenth century complaint of the quality of Norfolk cloth, i. 83.

65

Ashley’s Woollen Industry, 39, afterwards expanded in his Economic History, part ii., chap. iii. This book was published after these pages had been printed. Riley’s Mem. London, 149-50; Schanz, i. 436-440, 588-9.

66

The first charter to the company of drapers or dealers in cloth in London was in 1364.

67

This statement is made by Schanz, i. 441, and his reasons are given, ii. 1-7. 31 H. VI. c. 8.

68

4 H. VII. c. 11; Schanz, i. 449.

69

Schanz, i. 11; ii. 17, 18.

70

Schanz, ii. 571-2.

71

In 1472 the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, buys from a London alderman two pieces of cloth for gentleman’s livery, nine for yeoman’s, and five for groom’s, the price, £39 14s.; from a “raymaker” in New Salisbury he buys similar cloths in 1475 and 1480; again from Hadley, in 1499, he got eighteen pieces, and russet cloths from a Cranbrooke clothier. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 436-7, 459.) Fastolfe bought cloth for his soldiers at Castlecoombe, Wilts (Paston Letters). The Warden of Merton, Bishop Fitz James, bought for his fellows and himself at Norton Mandeville in Essex. (Rogers’ Economic Interpretation of History, 151.)

72

Paston Letters, ii. 235. 1465.

73

Debate between the Heralds of France and England, probably published from 1458 to 1461, translated by Pyne, p. 61. Published in French by the Société des Anciens Textes Français. In 1454 the commons petitioned that silver mines in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, should be worked (Schanz, i. 493). For coal see Paston, iii. 363. Nottingham Records, i. 145. In 1307 there were complaints about the corruption of London air by use of coal. Cruden’s Gravesend, 84-5.

74

Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 347.

75

Rogers’ Econ. Interpretation, 276.

76

Brazen pieces, invented 1340 or 1370, were first used in England at the siege of Berwick, 1405 (Eng. Chron. 1377-1461, p. 184); not known in France so well (Three books of Polydore Vergil’s English History, 9-1 °Camden Society). For the Lydd gun of 1456 the gunmakers were paid 11s. 8d.; the binding and iron for it cost 18s. “Guns with six chambers” mentioned as early as 1456 in Cinque Port towns. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. xvii.)

77

Journ. of Archæl. Association, 1871, p. 416; Hist. MSS. Com. vi. 489.

78

Pirenne, Dinant, 102, 94, 95. In the fifteenth century the Dinant traders sent their wares by Antwerp, not by Damme.

79

For English brick building see Rogers’ Agric. and Prices, iv. 440. First notice of bricks at Cambridge 1449, in London 1453, in Oxford 1461; common in eastern counties before end of fifteenth century. Ibid. iii. 432, 433. The proverb, “as red as Rotherham College,” refers to one of the first brick buildings in Yorkshire.

80

There is good fifteenth century English glass at Malvern and elsewhere. But according to Dugdale English glass was forbidden in the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick.

81

Turner’s Domestic Architecture, 98.

82

Silk manufacture in London in the fifteenth century was carried on by women; their complaints of the Lombard merchants noticed in Act of 1454 (33 H. VI. c. 5). A bill with the royal sign manual prays that the king would grant to Dom. Robert Essex his frames “ordeigned and made for the makyng of sylkes,” with their instruments which now “stondith unoccupyed within your Monastery of Westminster,” and he will ordain workmen to use them. Temp. Edward the Fourth, Hist. MSS. Com. iv. I, 177.

83

Libel of English Policy. (Political Poems and Songs, composed between 1327 and 1483, ii. ed. Wright Rolls Series.) For export of English beer to Flanders, see Fœdera, xii. 471 1492. Beer was a “malt liquor flavoured with bitter herbs,” as distinct from ale, made before 1445, though commonly ascribed to a century later.

84

Blomfield, iii. 160. 33 H. VI. cap. vii.

85

Piers Ploughman, Introduction to Text C, xxxi.

86

Schanz, ii. 35, 36.

87

Italian Relation, 42-3 (Camden Soc.); Schanz, i. 513; Heralds’ Debate, 65.

88

Plummer’s Fortescue, 114-5, 132. Compare Bacon’s Henry the Seventh, 71-72.

89

Heralds’ Debate, 61, 1453-1461.

90

Richard the Redeless, passus iii. 172.

91

Brinklow’s Tracts, published in the first half of the sixteenth century, afford interesting illustrations of the type of radical politician formed in the towns. His proposal for a single chamber and the list of reforms sketched out are not more significant than his criticism of parliamentary despotism and inefficiency, “This is the thirteenth article of our creed added of late, that whatsoever the Parliament doth must needs be well done. and the Parliament, or any proclamation out of the parliament time cannot err … then have ye brought Rome home to your own doors and given the authority to the King and Parliament that the cardinal bishops gave unto the Pope … if this be so, it is all vain to look for any amendment of anything.” Brinklow’s Complaynt, E. E. Text Society, 35. See also pp. 8, 12.

92

Libel of English Policy (Political Poems and Songs, ii. 157-205. Roll’s series, ed. Wright). The Libel was probably written after 1436. The Bishop was murdered in 1450. (Agric. and Prices, iv. 533.)

93

Wright’s Pol. Poems, ii. 282-7. Schanz, i. 446.

94

Compare the very similar expression of faith in a modern labour paper. “To this island, small as it is, has been given the work of leading the industrial organization of the world; that is to say, of governing and ordering the affairs of the world.” Trade Unionist, Dec. 26, 1891.

95

Compare Paston Letters, i. 531; Brinklow’s Complaynt 11.

96

Pauli, Drei volkswirtschaftliche Denkschriften, s. 61, 75.

97

In 1447 exactions in England were so heavy “as that the minds of men were not set upon foreign war, but vexed above measure how to repel private and domestical injuries, and that therefore neither pay for the soldier nor supply for the army were as need required put in readiness.” (Polydore Vergil, 77 Camden Soc.) For interruption of trade by the war, Paston, i. 425-6. Davies’ Southampton, 252-3. The Staplers complain that before the war the French bought yearly 2,000 sacks of wool, now only 400 (Schanz, ii. 568). For effect of the war on the salt trade, Rogers’ Econ. Interpretation of History, 100. For the wine trade, &c., Schanz, i. 299-300, 643-50. “It cannot be brought to pass by any mean that a French man born will much love an English man, or, contrary, that an English will love a French man; such is the hatred that hath sprung of contention for honour and empire.” (Pol. Vergil, 82.)

98

Schanz, i. 32-33.

99

See the series of statutes with which the reign of Edward the Fourth opens. 4, Ed. IV. c. 1-8. Schanz, i. 447.

100

Ashley’s Wool. Ind. 81-2; expanded in his Economic History, part ii. Schanz, i. 445.

101

Schanz, i. 446. “The caryage out of wolle to the Stapul ys a grete hurte to the pepul of Englond; though hyt be profitabul both to the prynce and to the marchant also.” (Starkey, England in the Reign of Henry the Eighth. Early English Text Society, p. 173.)

102

Brinklow’s Complaynt, E. E. Text Soc. p. 11. Schanz, i. 479, note.

103

The fellowship of the mercers and other merchants and adventurers living in London “by confederacy made among themselves of their uncharitable and inordinate covetous for their singular profit and lucre contrary to every Englishman’s liberty, and to the liberty of the Mart there” made an ordinance and constitution that every Englishman trading with the marts of Flanders or under the Archduke of Burgundy should first pay a fine to the Merchants’ Fellowship in London on pain of forfeiture of all their wares bought and sold. The fine was at first half an old noble, and demanded by a colour of a fraternity of S. Thomas at Canterbury, and “so by colour of such feigned holiness it hath been suffered to be taken for a few years past.” Finally, however, the London Fellowship raised the fine to £20, then the other merchants began to withdraw from the marts and the cloth trade to suffer. On the complaint of the merchant adventurers living outside London Parliament ordered that the fine should only be ten marks. (12 Henry VII., cap. 6.) For the complaint of the Hull traders against the merchant adventurers of London in 1622 see Lambert’s Gild Life, 171-2.

104

Schanz, i. 342.

105

Schanz, ii. 571.

106

3 Ed. IV. c. 4.

107

Schanz, i. 618-19.

108

Bacon’s History of Henry the Seventh, 38.

109

The men of Cologne had a house in London as early as 1157.

110

Founded before 1240 (Schanz, i. 291-3). Some interesting details are given in Mr. Hudson’s Notes on Norwich (Norfolk Archæology, xii. 25; see section on madder and woad.) For merchants of Lorraine, Denmark, &c., Liber Custumarum, Nunimenta Gildhallæ Londiniensis (Rolls Series), vol. ii. part 1, xxxiv. &c.

111

In the beginning of the fourteenth century (Schanz, i. 113-8).

112

See Keutgen, Die Beziehungen der Hanse zu England, 40.

113

Boys’ Sandwich, 375; Paston, iii. 436. The foreign trade is illustrated by some of the things in Fastolf’s house; the Seeland cloth, i. 481; iii. 405 – brass pots and chafferns of French making, i. 481 – silver Paris cups, 475; iii. 270-1, 297-8 – blue glasses, i. 486 – habergeons of Milan, 487 – ”overpayn of Raines,” 489 – cloth of Arras, 479 – harness from Almayne, iii. 405 – German girdles, iii. 270-1 – the treacle-pots of Genoa, ii. 293-4, bought of the apothecary. The merchant’s marks were especially noted for fear of adulteration. The grocer, or dealer in foreign fruits, also sold hawks, iii. 55-6. In the reign of Henry the Eighth about a dozen shops in London sold French or Milan cups, glasses, knives, daggers, swords, girdles, and such things. Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 93. “A discourse of the commonwealth of this Realme of England.”

114

Libel of English Policy; Political Poems and Songs (Rolls Series), ii. 173, 172. Fabyan, 630. See petition of burghers against the Lombards, 1455, in Rot. Parl. v. 334

115

Schanz, i. 65. Strangers exporting wool had to pay 43s. 4d. a sack, English merchants only 5 nobles or 33s. 4d. (Fabyan, 594-5).

116

In 1372 there is a receipt by two of the company of the Strozzi for money from Archbishop Langham. Hist. MSS. Com. iv. part 1, 186.

117

Clement, Jacques Cœur, 23-4.

118

For the failure of this company in 1437 and its effect on English traders, see Bekynton’s Corres. i. 248-50, 254.

119

Libel of English Policy. Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 172.

120

Schanz, i. 124-6.

121

Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 11, 87. 11 H. IV. c. 7. Yarn and unfulled cloths paid only subsidy – finished cloths paid also customs and measuring tax. Schanz, i. 448, note.

122

Davies’ Southampton, 254.

123

Denton’s Lectures, 192; Paston Letters, iii. 269.

124

Pauli’s Pictures, 126-132.

125

Keutgen, 41.

126

Keutgen, 41. Dinant was the only town outside German-speaking countries that belonged to the Hanseatic League. It entered the League in the middle of the fourteenth century as a sort of external member – only sharing its privileges in England and never voting in its assemblies – tolerated rather than holding its right by formal grant. Pirenne, Dinant, 97-102.

127

Keutgen, 5, 30.

128

Keutgen, 14-18.

129

For a description of the Steel-yard see Pauli’s Pictures.

130

The ordinary size of French ships seems to have been 1,000 or 1,200 tons. (Heralds’ Debate, 51-2.) Cannyngs, of Bristol, had in his little fleet vessels of 900, 500, or 400 tons. (Cruden’s Gravesend, 131.) The “Harry Grace à Dieu,” built at Woolwich, 1512, was of 1,500 tons, and cost £6,472. (Ibid. 143-9.)

131

1382; 5 Richard II., Stat. 1, c. 3. See Schanz, i. 360, for the scope of this law.

132

6 Richard II., Stat. 1, c. 8.

133

A small war vessel with probably about forty sailors, ten men-at-arms, and ten archers. Nott. Rec. i. 444.

134

Southampton had to keep a ship, “le Grâce de Dieu,” at its own expense for the king’s service. In the last year of Henry the Sixth its master received from the mayor £31 10s. 0d. In the first year of Edward the Fourth the mayor paid for the victualling and custody of the ship £68 5s. 10d. In 1470 there was a great deal of difficulty about the matter. The king ordered certain payments to be made for the ship which the town for some months absolutely refused to carry out. The sheriff at last stepped into the breach and paid the sums due from money in his own office, and the next year the town was forced by the king to refund what he had spent. Three successive sheriffs were in difficulties about this dispute between the king and the town. They made payments as best they could, and were afterwards given indemnity for the sums they spent. (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 98-100; Davies, 77. See also H.M.C. xi. 3, 215-16, 188-191, 221-2; Ibid. iv. 1, p. 426, 429-31; Ibid. v. 517-18, 521, 494; Boys’ Sandwich, 663; Nottingham Records, i. 196; Paston Letters, ii. 100-105; Rot. Parl. i. 414, ii. 306-7.) Full accounts of the making of a barge in Ipswich in 1295 are given in Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 257-8.