MERCHANTS CAPTURE GOVERNMENT OF CITY

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handmaiden Margareta, remain shadowy impersonalities. Except the very liberal allowances for drinks, there is little to bring home to us that we are dealing with men with like passions as modern men. But the atmosphere changes, and after 1420 the documents are full of personal details which bring before us a crude, reckless, possibly dishonest crowd; but men who unconscientiously were doing their part as pioneers of the empire. A comparison of the list of members in 13681 and 1420,2 at once strikes the keynote of the change. The miscellaneous tradesmen, and members from other towns of the earlier list, had been eliminated; there were no longer any representatives from Whitby, Newcastle, Hull; cooks, butchers, potters, bakers, spicers, bowers, tilers, cutlers, had disappeared; the mistery stands out as a specialised body of merchants and mercers of York. The middleman had stepped in between buyer and maker. A new class had emerged who, though they did not of necessity cease to be manufacturers, did tend to become more mercantile in their operations. A still more important development, however, had taken place; the mercers had captured the government of the city. The civic records show this conclusively; but even without that evidence, a comparison of the two lists proves how interdependent were the offices of mayor of the city and master of the company.

3

The result of these changes culminated in the third decade of the fifteenth century in an entire change in the legal status of the mistery. There is no evidence to show by what authority the mercers had enforced their ordinances, for, unlike the other crafts, they had never been brought into the council chamber for ratification or revision. But in 1430, the mercers, probably anxious to differentiate their wealthy mistery from the crowd of small unimportant misteries, sought and obtained royal authorisation. Except the weavers, whose charter was 1 Text, pp. 16-26.

2 Book A.

3 The light thrown by the Freemen's roll on this question is of some interest. During the century from 1272 to 1372, 229 mercers, 17 merchants, and 66 mercators were enrolled. From 1373 to 1472, evidently the word merchant came into general use, for the roll contains the names of 311 mercers, 239 merchants, and 235 mercators.

4 York Memorandum Book, op. cit., passim, vol. ii, pp. xxix-xxxii,

granted by Henry II, no York mistery had any higher authorisation than the mayor's court. A complete picture of the preliminaries, which lead to the granting of the boon, is furnished by several documents still preserved in the merchants' archives. The prime mover, John Lyllyng, was not, as we should have expected, a woollen merchant and a civic dignitary, in fact, his mercantile career was certainly chequered. But he was connected with the second great York medieval industry, the trade in lead. Probably the shrewd burghers thought that his lack of personal probity was counter-balanced by his familiarity with the ruling party, for his business had brought him into touch with the court, lead being constantly sent from Hull to London for the repair of the royal or other great houses. The story of his knavish dealings fills many pages of the city records. In 1422 he had been accused in the lord mayor's court of "forgyng of fals osmundes of drosse and of landyren, and of utteryng of them in foule deceyte and ryght grete harme of the Kynges people and ryght gret sklaundre of the cite of York, and agayne the course of trewe merchaundise." The story is one of the most complete examples of the tricks of the medieval trader. He seems to have thought that confession was his safest course, "to thys he answered and sayd, that he perceyved wele that iren waxed skant and dere, and he had mykell with hym of drosse and landiren, and tharfore he gart forgeit in shappe of osmundes for utteryng of his iren so into Iseland."1

Fortunately he had friends at court, the queen, the archbishop, and Lord Beaumont interfered on his behalf; though he had been sentenced to lose his franchise and pay a heavy fine, the punishment seems to have been remitted later. Whatever strictures may be passed on his morals, his management of the merchants' affairs was masterly. A scrap of paper on which is untidily written "the spences and costages made by John Lyllyng was found inside one of the more elaborate vellum rolls. Most of the items are reasonable, but that "us

1 York Memorandum Book, fos. 264b-266b, printed in vol. lxxxv, pp. 1-10 (Surtees Soc.). A treaty had been made in 1479 forbidding English ships visiting Iceland without licence. The Cely Papers, p. xxxv (Royal Hist. Soc., 3rd series, vol. i).

THE MERCERS' CHARTER (1430)

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and our horse" only cost eightpence on the journey to London sounds improbable.1 The total, £91 9s. 10d., is almost double the total of the separate items. Lord Cromwell, a prominent member of the council, was given £3 6s. 8d.; the clerk of " the councelhous," 20s.; the clerk of the rolls, 15s. 4d.; the clerk who copied the charter, 6s. 8d. On wine and dinners to "men of lawe and clerks," 40s. was spent. Lyllyng spent nearly seven weeks in London on three different occasions, but he only put his expenses at £11; had he been avaricious in former years, his bitter experience of 1422 had cured him. Thomas Haseley's letter throws additional light on the way in which the charter had been obtained. Gratitude was especially due, he wrote, to the archbishop, as he was chancellor his voice. carried much weight in the council, and he assures the merchants that the easy terms were due to his influence; as fore the small and easy fyn that he hath assessed in that cas, for by my trouthe I sahy never noon so litell in so grete a matter." Nor was this mere official flattery, for the payment for charter and seal was only £5,2 the privy seal 6s. 8d., the silk lace 20d., the grene wax ls. Haseley himself had already received £3 13s. 4d. for his services, but £2 was still owing; evidently

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1 Possibly this was his daily allowance, and this may account for difference between items and total. Mr. Hamilton Thompson tells me that there is a similar charge in the Kirby Muxloe Account Rolls MS. The master-mason, John Cooper of Tattershall, employed by lord Hastings at Kirby Muxloe Castle, near Leicester, in 1481, was allowed 8d. a day as journey money between Tattershall and Kirby. The fees of Richard Assheton, abbot of Peterborough, who went to Woodstock to do homage and get back his temporalities from Henry VI in 1439, were as follows: for the king's letters patent, 68. 8d.; to the king's secretary, 18. 8d.; to the notary who made out his instrument of fealty, 68. 8d.; to the notary's clerk, 18.; to master Richard Dyglyng, his advocate, 68. 8d.; to Dyglyng's clerk, ls.; to master Robert Parlyngton, notary, who had drawn up the instruments attesting his election, 138. 4d.; to the duke of Gloucester, high chamberlain, £5; to the master of the rolls, £5; to the keeper of "le petybagge," £2 10s. Od.; for the seal, £1; to the crier of chancery, 4d.; in addition to £40 paid to the clerk of the privy seal as a composition for the temporalities. Peterborough Reg. Assheton, fo. 4d. The following sums were paid by the London Company of Mercers for their charter in 1393-4: To the king for a fine, 100 marks, £66 138. 4d.; to the queen for her dues, 10 marks, £6 138. 4d.; for affixing the great seal, £8 10s. Od. Legal consultations with Penrose Searle, &c., £5 128. 01d. Total, £87 8s. 81d., a very heavy payment when the total property of the company did not exceed £400, as Sir John Watney justly remarks, op. cit., 39, 40.

2 If the charter still in possession of the merchants is the original, it is a small piece of vellum, no silk lace is attached, and the seal has been removed though the vellum hanger still remains.

Lyllyng had not impressed him so favourably as the second York representative "in witnesse of Burneley," was obviously his reason for thinking the money would be paid. His compliments to Lyllyng for his conduct of the affair were perfunctory, but he had a hearty admiration for his companion, "the which is a trewe and a diligent and a kunnyng pursuer, to whom the lordes gaf ryght gode favour." Haseley dismisses his own reward without thanks, "for I have deserved it." But the next sentence is cryptic; does it mean that Haseley is to be included among the benefactors to the gild and prayed for by name, or is the word "preied " a mistake for paid, and the whole sentence the repetition of a creditor wishful to bind a slippery debtor? The pious sentiments with which the letter ends seem, however, to support the idea that Haseley is really anxious to be a brother of the fellowship "with the grace of God that have you alle in his blessed kepyng and governaunce and send sadness and substance of lyflode to our new fraternitie."1

The charter2 is a document of about five hundred words. It is addressed, "Pro hominibus mistere mercerie civitatis Ebor'," which, omitting the adjectives, is probably best translated by the expression used by Haseley in the address of the letter quoted above, "to the worthy companye of the noble craft of mercers in the citie of York." It begins with the usual plea of the abject poverty of many of the members of the fellowship, and the king by the mouth of his councillors replies sympathetically; the demands of etiquette having been observed, the charter becomes businesslike. For £41 11s. the king grants that the mistery may be one perpetual community, that it may elect every year one governor and two wardens, who may purchase lands, tenements and rents, and other possession yearly to the extent of ten pounds. But these rents and possessions were only held in trust "in aid and relief of the poor and indigent of the community aforesaid, and the support of one chaplain to celebrate for ever divine things daily." A comparison of the licence granted to the fraternity, 1 Text, pp. 33, 34.

2 Ibid., pp. 35, 36,

THE MERCERS AND THE HOSPITAL

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and the charter granted to the mercers affords many points of contrast. But one salient fact stands out, the mercers intend to retain their hold on the hospital, and attain their will by keeping in the hands of the governor and wardens the financial upkeep of the institution. The salary of the chaplain and the food of the hospitallers comes out of a purse, the strings of which are in the hands of the mistery's annually elected officers. There is abundant documentary evidence to show that the merchants were very jealous of ecclesiastical interference; it seems as if these fraternities, which honeycombed the whole of English social life, owed some of their popularity to the fact that they provided an outlet for the spiritual aspirations of their members without bringing them into too close contact with the ecclesiastical power. Were they not, in fact, an early pre-Reformation attempt to take what appealed to people as of practical importance from the teaching of the church, but to modify and adapt it according to their special needs? The complete severance between things secular and things spiritual, which is such a pronounced feature of the self-conscious twentieth century, is entirely absent from the fifteenth. The misteries did not attempt to exclude religion from its place in their ceremonies, or to modify or change it; but in their fraternities they used it for their own ends. In fact, these fraternities form one of those characteristic attempts at the kind of compromise which is the idiosyncrasy of the English race.

Just as many of the chantry priests were servants of the municipality rather than of the church, so these fraternity priests were servants of the misteries rather than of the church. The excessive care they bestowed on the burial of the dead is in startling contrast to the callous disregard of life, which characterises medieval times. Was this the sentimentality of a sensitive people? or was it the practicality of an industrial folk anxious to erect some sort of barrier against the rapacity of a church that they had learned to distrust? The fraternities of the misteries seem to represent a real endeavour on the part of the industrial and mercantile classes, in fact, of the whole populace, for the professional and leisured classes were non

b