Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2

117

Retaliation in taking of toll is expressly mentioned in the charter of London. Stubbs’ Select Charters, 104.

118

1238. Gross, ii. 173-174.

119

Gross, ii. 256.

120

Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 16. For agreement between Southampton and Portsmouth 1239, Marlborough 1239, Bristol 1260, Netley Abbey 1288, Bishop of Winchester 1312, Lymington 1324, New Sarum 1329, Coventry 1456, see Davies’ Southampton, 225-228; Abbot of Westminster Rot. Parl. i. 20-21. Other instances Rep. on Markets, 40-41. Select Civil Pleas (Selden Soc.), i. 11. Nottingham Rec. i. 55, ii. 349, 362. Gross, ii. 389-90, Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 212.

121

Journ. Arch. Ass. xxvii. 416-7. When a gun was made for Lydd, metal for it was bought at Winchelsea and Hastings. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 516-517, 521.) The Nottingham founder sent to Lincolnshire for his bell metal. (Nott. Rec. ii. 143, 145).

122

Ibid. ii. 179; iii. 19, 21, 29.

123

Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 414.

124

Select Pleas of the Crown (Selden Soc.), i. 89. Rep. on Markets, 50-52.

125

See Calendar of Letters from Corporation of London. 1350-1370, ed. by Dr. Sharpe.

126

Piers Ploughman. Pass vii. 250.

127

These can be traced from 1285 to the time of James I.; they were probably Jews who had come with the Conqueror and were allowed to get land. Survey of Birmingham, 50.

128

For example William Hollingbroke of Romney, whose wife Joanna sold blankets in 1373, was one of the members sent to Parliament and headed the list of taxpayers in a ward named after him Hollingbroke Ward from 1384 till 1401. Then his widow took his place till she retired from business in 1404, and the once opulent family, for a time represented by a single trader Stephen, seems finally to have become extinct in 1441. The chief position in local trade then passed to the Stuppeneys who settled in the town in 1436 and whose local fame is still recalled by the fact that even now the yearly election of the Mayor of Romney takes place in the church of S. Nicholas at the tomb of one of them who was Jurat of the town.

129

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 523-531.

130

Between 1353 and 1380. Ibid. vi. 545. Ibid. iv. 1, 424-8. Ibid. v. 533. The mayor of Liverpool, who in 1380 had property to the value of £28 6s. 4d., made up of domestic utensils, grain in store, wheat sown, nine oxen and cows, six horses, and eighteen pigs, was no doubt a very rich man in his own borough. Picton’s Mem. Liverpool, i. 30.

131

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 534, 535, 536, 539, 541-3.

132

Piers Ploughman. Pass. iv. 83. A prosperous cook at Oxford in 1400 married his daughter to one Lelham “Dominus de Grove.” By the marriage contract the cook was to give to Lelham twenty marks to be paid at intervals; to the bride and bridegroom he was to give three tenements in Oxford; he was to make provision for them in his own house for eight years, and when after that they were to be set up in a house of their own he was to provide them with a bed, blankets, sheets, and all other furniture needful for the same bed, a vessel for water, a wine vase, two tablecloths, two towels, twelve silver spoons, two cups, two brass pots, one chawfre, four plates, one dozen vessels for garnishing the supper, two salts, two candle-sticks. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 75-6.

133

See Nott. Rec. iii. 74-76, 342, 353, 358-60, 461, 463. The holding offices of all kinds by victuallers and brewers was forbidden (Stat. 12, Ed. II. cap. 6. 6 Ri. II. st. 1, cap. 9, H.M.C. ix. 174, xi. 3, 19), as a protection to the people from fraudulent administration of the laws concerning food; but these statutes were everywhere broken.

134

(See pp. 352-3.)

135

H.M.C. ix. 173-4.

136

According to Thorold Rogers (Agric. and Prices, iv. 502-5) about 20 per cent. in excess. Skilled workmen, such as architects, artists, trained clerks, &c., were paid at very modest rates, though sometimes they were given honour by being boarded as gentlemen.

137

Statutes, 12 Richard II. cap. 3.

138

Riley’s Liber Albus, 261-2.

139

For particulars of truck wages see Stat. 4 Edward IV. cap. 1. This payment on the truck system was spoken of as a new thing in the middle of the fifteenth century (Wright’s Political Songs, ii. 285), and is referred to in Libel of English Policy. It was forbidden by town ordinance in Winchester and Worcester. (English Guilds, 352, 383.)

140

Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 213-14.

141

Piers Ploughman. Passes vii. 215-249.

142

For a description of the various deceits practised in cloth-making see 3 Richard II. stat. cap. 2. Stat. of Westminster 7 Richard II. cap. 9; 15 Richard II. cap. 10. In 1221 the jurors of Worcester were already complaining that the assize of the breadth of cloth was not observed. Select Pleas of the Crown, Selden Soc. 97.

143

Piers Ploughman. Pass. i. 33-4.

144

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 259; xi. 3, 70-73, 111. Davies’ Southampton, 82. Hunt’s Bristol, 74, 97-8.

145

Survey of Birmingham, 50, 51, 52. See above, p. 63.

146

Journ. Archæol. Ass. xxvii. 110-148. This as one among many proofs tends to show how wealth was passing not so much to the mere land-owners as to the new tenants who were combining the cloth trade with big sheep farms – the enterprising speculators who were on the watch for the cheap lands of ruined lords to increase their own business.

147

Members of the Pepperers Company began to replace the Jews at the King’s exchange in the thirteenth century (Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company, i. x-xii.)

148

Von Ochenkowski, 112, 125. The upgrowth of the true class of merchants is shewn in the Hull Guild whose ordinances date from 1499 (Lambert’s Guild Life, 157-160) and the York Mistery of Mercers of 1430, (Ibid. 167).

149

For the forbidding of exportation of gold and silver and the consequent regulations about travellers by sea, see 5 Richard II. St. i. cap. 2.

150

The Chancellor of England was given power to enquire and judge on dealings of “dry exchange,” and also Justices of the Peace of the neighbouring counties. Stat. 3 Henry VII. cap. 6. Compare Luchaire, Communes Françaises, 242-4.

151

When in the parable of Piers Ploughman the wicked Lady Mede defends corrupt gain by the argument that merchandise cannot exist without meed or reward the answer of Conscience is that trade is nothing but pure barter.

“In merchandise is no meed I may it well avow

It is a permutation apertelich [evidently] one penny-worth for another.

” – Piers Ploughman. Pass. iv. 282, 315, 316.

See also the limits set even on barter —

“For it is simony to sell what sent is of grace

That is wit and water, wind, and fire the forth:

These four should be free to all folk that it needeth.”

Ibid. Pass. x. 55-7. Here, however, he has doubtless in his mind the lord’s mill on the hill or by the stream, the rights of turbary and of gathering wood in the forest, and the great need of the people – protection in the law-courts.

152

Von Ochenkowski, 165, 167, 245-9.

153

Piers Ploughman. Passus x. 26.

154

“And though they wend by the way the two together,

Though the messenger make his way amid the wheat

Will no wise man wroth be, nor his wed take;

Is not hayward yhote [ordered] his wed for to take;

But if the merchant make his way over men’s corn,

And the hayward happen with him for to meet,

Either his hat or his hood, or else his gloves

The merchant must forego, or the money of his purse.”

– Piers Ploughman. Pass. xiv. 42-50.

155

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 443. For merchants’ marks in S. George’s Church, Doncaster, see Hunter’s Deanery of Doncaster, i. 14.

156

Plummer’s Fortescue, 235.

157

Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 278-285.

158

Ibid. Pass. xiv. 50-51.

159

See Ship of Fools, Barclay, 43, st. 4.

160

Lib. Eng. Pol. Wright’s Political Poems, ii. 178.

161

Hist. MSS. Com. v. 601-4.

162

Hunt’s Bristol, 75, 93-5; 126-8.

163

Hunt’s Bristol, 94-5, 108. A Bristol grocer left 350 ounces of silver plate to be divided among his children. Ibid. 108. The first fork we hear of in England in 1443 belonged to a citizen family in York. “Unum par cultellorum vocat’ ‘karving knyves’ et unum par forpicum argenteorum.” (Plumpton Correspondence, xxxiv.)

164

Piers Ploughman. Passus, xv. 90. For Wood’s account of Oxford houses, see Boase’s Oxford, 48-9.

165

Boys’ Sandwich, 149, 185, 186.

166

The plate of S. Mary’s, Sandwich, amounted to about 724 ounces of silver, and there was a good deal of silver gilt; it had splendid brocade of gold of Venice and of Lucca, and a mass of vestments of white damask powdered with gold of Venice, and blue velvet powdered with fleurs de lis, or with moons and stars, and so on. (Boys’ Sandwich, 375.) A burgess of Wycombe, Redehode, fitted up the church with beautiful screens of carved wood, and added other gifts to its store of jewels and gilt crowns for Our Lady, and other ornaments of amber, silver, jet, turquoises, with rich garments and ermine fur, damasks, velvets, silks, a baldachino bearing green branches with birds of gold, magnificent robes of cloth of gold, &c., and splendid plate. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 554-5.)

167

An ironmonger, Richard Fallande, set up a tablet in Hospital Hall to remind the townsfolk of the dangers and terrors of the old ford, of passengers drowned, of poor people pitilessly turned back, or wayfarers robbed of hood or girdle to satisfy the ferry-men’s greed. People were constantly drowned and

“Few folke there were coude that way wende

But they waged a wed or payed of her purse

And if it were a begger had breed in her bagge

He schulde be ryght soone i bid for to goo aboute

And of the poor penyles the hireward wold habbe

A hood or a girdel and let him goo withoute.”

(English Illustrated Magazine, May 1889, p. 951.) For Rochester Bridge, see Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 285.

168

Davies’ Southampton, 115.

169

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 247. For similar bequests, Ibid. x. 4, p. 529-30. Ibid. ix. 208-10. The Common Weal (ed. E. Lamond), 18, 19.

170

Ibid. xi. 7, 169, 174, 175, 180-1. Ibid. ix. 57, 275, 137, 145. Davies’ Walks through York, 30-1.

171

Piers Ploughman. Pass. i. 22.

172

See the surprising lists of these stores in the Paston Letters, iii. 312, 270-4, 297-8, 282-9, 436, 313. Compare vol. i. p. 259.

173

Hist. MSS. Com. x. 4, 297. Paston Letters, iii. 23, 35, 46, 49, 219, 258. See vol. i. 260-2.

174

Paston Letters, iii. 114-15.

175

Paston Letters, iii. 194. Hist. MSS. Com. vii. 599.

176

Richard the Redeless, Passus iii. 145, &c.

177

Plumpton Correspondence, xxxix. xl.

178

Sometimes their servants also reached posts of importance. John Russel, one of Fastolf’s servants, paid a sum down to be appointed Searcher at Yarmouth. And Thomas Fry, a steward of the Berkeleys under Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth, was “raised by them to be of principal authority and in commission of the peace of the city of Coventry, and a steward of great power in that Corporation.” (Berkeleys, ii. 215.)

179

The Poles of Hull were rising into importance. (Paston Letters, ii. 210.) Sir John Fastolf possibly sprang from this class, for his relation Richard Fastolf was a London tailor. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 265.) Two London drapers, a mercer and a grocer were among the forty-seven Knights of the Bath created at the coronation of Elizabeth, queen of Edward the Fourth. (Three XV. century Chronicles, 80.) See the marriage of Whittingham, Mayor of London, whose son entered the Royal Household (Verney Papers, 15-17); of Verney, mayor in 1465 and knighted in 1471 (Ibid. 13, 22); of Sir William Plumpton (Plumpton Correspondence, xxvii.); of Sir Maurice Berkeley (Hunt’s Bristol, 101).

180

Paston Letters, iii. 383.

181

For the whole story see Paston Letters, ii. 341, 347, 350, 363-5.

182

Paston Letters, iii. 109, 219, 278.

183

Nottingham Records, i. 169.

184

Plumpton Correspondence, 12. The lady was sister to Godfrey Green, who seems to have been of good family, possibly a connexion of Sir William Plumpton (17 note). Green did a good deal of business for Plumpton (22-3), and was one of the trustees of a settlement, lxxii. note.

185

See Clément, Jacques Cœur.

186

Ibid. 134.

187

Clément, Jacques Cœur.

188

(See p. 327).

189

See Hist. of Eng. People, ii. 142-3, 151, 164-6, 170-2, 188. Brinklow’s writings afford a very good illustration of the radical temper in politics which at this time was developed in the towns.

190

Stat. 3 Henry VII. cap. 11. The Common Weal, 88-90.

191

It was often forbidden to employ any woman save the wife or daughter of the master (Hunt’s Bristol, 82; Riley’s Mem. 217).

192

Lambert’s Guild Life, 238-9; Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, p. 11, 87.

193

Kent had sunk from the fifth to the tenth place in wealth among counties during the Hundred Years’ War. In 1454 the wool of Lincolnshire, Shropshire, and the Cotswolds, represented the best, and that of Kent almost the worst quality; this may account for the decline of Canterbury. The difference in quality would of course tell much more on the prosperity of a district when the home manufacture of cloth was developed.

194

Schanz, i. 610-11 (1455); 33 Henry VI. cap. 4; Rot. Parl. v. 324.

195

Schanz, i. 600; Stat. 11 Henry VII. cap. 27.

196

Lib. Cus. 127. I suspect that the question of these fulling-mills in London was much complicated by the supply of water becoming inadequate to the needs of the growing city, and the great resentment felt by the fullers of cloth against the intrusion of the cap-makers on their domain over the running streams. There is some evidence that this was the case, and it is probable that the want of water-power was one of the causes which drove the woollen manufacture from certain towns.

197

22 Edward IV. cap. 5. There had been trouble about fulling machinery in London as early as 1298. (Lib. Cust. Rolls, Series, 127-9.)

198

In 1416 £22 6s. 8d. was received as a fine for offences from foreigners in Romney. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 539.) In Sandwich the tax on foreigners was assessed by the mayor and jurats. Every indweller having aliens in his service was to keep back as much of their wages as would pay his tax. (Boys’ Sandwich, 787.)

199

See Schanz, i. 414-6.

200

Hunt’s Bristol, 82, 93, 111. The complaint seems to have been against master-weavers who employed their own servants and not the Bristol journeymen. See Rymer’s Fœdera, v. 137.

201

See Hibbert’s Influence of Eng. Gilds, 64.

202

See the Commons’ Petition in Parliament, 50 Edward the Third (1376), Rolls of Parliament, vol. ii., p. 332. “Et come les bones gentz des touz Citees & Borghs parmy ceste terre si pleignent durement, ̃q … toute manere de gentz Aliens, & autres qi ne sont pas Frauncs en les dites Citees & Borghs, poent venir illeõqs demourrer auxi longement come lour plest, & tenir overtz Hostiels, & recepter ̃q coñqs persones qe lour plerra: Et s’ils eiount ascunes Marchandises ils les vendent as autres Estraungers, pur revendre si ̃bn par retail come autre ̃qcoñq manere ̃q lour mieltz semble pur lours Profitz demeisne. Par qi les Marchauntz Denizeins sont trop anientiz, la Terre voide de Moneie, les closures des Citees & Borghs desapparaillez, la Navye de la terre ̃bn pres destruite, le Conseil de la terre par tout descovert, toute manere d’estraunge Marchaundise grandement encherie; & qe pys est, par tieles privees receites les Enemys auxint priveez ou ̃q les loialx Liges: De qi n’ad mestier de autres tesmoignes fors ̃q sentir & vewe ̃q molte app’tement en touz degreez la provent.”

203

Stat. 1 Richard III. cap. 9.

204

Stat. 1 Richard III. cap. 9. About 1528 the London shoemakers complain that whereas the King had granted leave that a fraternity of forty-four foreigners might exercise the craft of shoemakers in the city, by colour of this grant 220 foreign householders employing over 400 apprentices and servants, had set up in the business. An amusing account is given of the attitude of this foreign company to the English searchers of the craft. There had once been 140 Englishmen of the cordwainers’ livery but now there were only twenty, and the wives and children of those who had been ruined were turned into water-carriers and labourers. These foreigners did not come to settle, but having made their fortunes went off home, while others took their places. (Schanz, ii. 598-600.)

205

Schanz, ii. 596-8. They pray that the former laws may be put in force, ordering strangers only to dwell in the houses of Englishmen, to sell only in gross and not by retail, and to remain only a month in any town after their first coming.

206

In the same way Bristol in 1461 forbade its weavers to employ their wives, daughters, and maidens at the loom, lest the King’s people likely to do the King service in his wars should lack employment. (Hunt’s Bristol, 82.)

207

The customs of Coventry in this respect are exceedingly interesting.

208

Stat. 25 Henry VIII. cap. 18.

209

Stat. 21 Henry VIII. cap. 12. In the reign of Henry the Eighth there were complaints that Worcester, Evesham, Droitwich, Kidderminster, and Bromsgrove, had fallen into decay from the growth of the free-traders. (Stat. 25 Henry VIII. cap. 18.) See also the coverlet makers of York. (34 and 35 Henry VIII. cap. 10.)

210

Piers Ploughman. Passus ix. 187.

“‘It is nothing for love they labour thus fast,

But for fear of famine, in faith,’ said Piers.”

Passus ix. 214, 215.

211

“Fridays and fasting days a farthingworth of mussels

Were a feast for such folk, or so many cockles.”

Pass. x. 94, 95; see 72-87. Pollard’s Miracle Plays, 31-2.

212

Children who had served in husbandry till the age of twelve “shall abide at the same labour without being put to any mystery or handicraft” (Stat. 12 Rich. II. cap. 5).

213

It is important in the town ordinances to observe the effect of local circumstances. For instance, in Coventry the weavers were allowed in 1424 to take as many apprentices as they liked, “sine contradictione alicujus,” while the number in other trades was limited. This was just such an order as might be expected of a town council of rich merchant clothiers and drapers.

214

See Chap. V.

215

The customs of Norwich, 1340, forced some responsibility for these servants on the masters. (Leet Jurisdiction (Selden Soc.), lxvi.)

216

No general laws for the whole kingdom which seriously limited the employment of apprentices were passed before the sixteenth century, but the various towns made such local laws as seemed necessary. In most cases masters were bound to enrol their apprentices in the town court; and at the end of the fifteenth century the Town Councils and the Guilds were making serious efforts to enforce the law. Miss Dormer Harris tells me that the capper’s apprentices in Coventry were bound by surety for £5 to fulfil their covenant. If an apprentice left his master before the seven years were over, the master might not take another till the time had expired unless he delivered the £5 to the keepers for the use of the craft. The masters of crafts there appear to have been very reluctant to take apprentices, especially after 1494.

217

In Norwich in spite of the statutes of 1436 and 1503 (15 Henry VI. cap. 6; 19 Henry VII. cap. 7) the crafts persisted in making rules by which apprentices were compelled to pay 20s. or 30s. for entry into the common hall (compare the composition of 1415 in the Norwich documents) – a fine which meant that the craftsmen were practically denied the freedom of the city, and therefore the position of master, and were thus forced to swell the body of journeymen. An Act passed in 1531 ordered that no apprentice should pay more than 2s. 6d. for entry into the common hall; or 3s. 4d. at the end of the term for the freedom of the company; but the companies evaded this law by asking only the statute sum for the freedom of the company, but making the candidates swear they would not trade without license, for which they had to pay at the company’s pleasure. This was again forbidden by Henry in 1537 (Blomefield, iii. 181-2). Among the weavers of Newcastle in 1527 all who had finished their apprenticeship were admitted to membership on payment of 13s. 4d., but any man of the craft desirous to be of the fellowship a brother thereof, with power to set up shop, had to pay £20 (Newcastle Guilds). The London grocers in 1345 paid 20s. for each apprentice; the apprentice who wished to belong to the fraternity paid 40s. on leaving his master (Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company, i. 11, 12).

218

Compare Riley’s Mem. Lond. 244, 181, 278, 354. Black’s Leathersellers, 39.

219

In London no apprentice after his term was to use his trade till he had been sworn to the franchise. (Liber Albus, 272.)

220

Journeymen among the cutlers and founders who had not served their time as apprentices could only get such wages as the overseers of the trade allowed to them after examination. (Riley’s Mem. Lond. 439, 514.) The system was probably widespread to judge from the many ordinances concerning wages. Unskilled journeymen must be spoken of in the ordinances of the bladesmiths. (Riley’s Mem. 570.) For serving-men who worked by the day for the glovers see ibid. 246. In 1449 at Coventry a reasonable wage seems to have been 4d. a day; but a capper’s journeyman in 1496 got 12d. a week working twelve hours a day (reference to Coventry records given me by Miss Dormer Harris).

221

7 Henry IV. cap. 17.

222

The law was done away with when it turned to the hurt of the employers. In a later state of the cloth industry some of the old centres of industry such as London and Norwich and Bristol found their wealth decayed; and decided that their trade was starved for want of workmen while the young people were growing up to idleness and vice. Then the masters, actually threatened with the loss of their manufacturing industries, insisted on new laws allowing them to take apprentices without regard to the Act of Henry the Fourth (11 Henry VII. cap. 11; 12 Henry VII. cap. 1).