MERCER AND MERCHANT (1495)

xliii

prominent wealthy York citizens, were claimed by the Archbishop, but both established their free condition, the one by an appeal in the Mayor's Court, the other by a patent from the King,1

Intermingled with these ordinances about foreign trade are many of purely local application. No one, who has been through the York documents, can fail to see that the mercers were primarily connected with the various branches of the woollen industry. From the evidence of the roll of freemen it seems probable that while wool was still the chief export, and before the local retailer had been differentiated from the wholesale foreign dealer, mercer was indiscriminately applied to both sections. The merchant emerges as cloth took the place of wool, and as the exporter increased in industrial and social importance. The spicer, or grocer, or apothecary, who from the seventeenth century figures so largely in the history of the company, seldom appears in the early records. The demand for silk, spicery, and wine would be satisfied from Mediterranean sources, and though doubtless the Hull boats brought back, especially when Bergen-op-Zoom was the mart town, for the merchants a certain amount of these articles, “merchandise of oreante," the chief cargoes of the vessels returning from Flanders and the Baltic would be of a more bulky nature, as timber, tar, tallow. The mistery of York silk mercers is of very late formation.2

Gower's well-known picture of the mercer's shop, with its stock of "beds, kerchiefs, and ostrich feathers, sandals, satins, and stuffs from overseas," was doubtless authentic, as he was a London merchant himself, but the demand for articles of this kind would be greater in London than York; cloth, iron, and lead are the only articles referred to in the early register. Chaucer, with one of his inimitable touches, in a pregnant

1 York Memorandum Book, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 249, 250, lxi.

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2 Professor Unwin informs me that both London and Shrewsbury mercers dealt principally in woollen goods. Sir John Watney holds the same view, The Mercers' Company, pp. 1-3. Mr. A. H. Johnson writes: curiously enough, a mercer, William Hauteyn, both buys wool and sells cloth at the fairs of St. Ives and St. Botolph and at Winchester " in the thirteenth century. The Drapers of London, vol. i, p. 77.

phrase gives the keynote to the whole social development of the fifteenth century; he says of the merchant:

"For sothe he was a worthy man with-alle,

But sooth to say, I noot how man him calle."

Gower, too, has no great respect for his fellow-traders:

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He followeth straight after his own lucre,

And thinketh scorn of the common good."

Langland, although he speaks bitterly of falseness being apparelled by the merchants to serve in their shops as an apprentice, and of the compassion they show to guile, gives them good advice, as if he thought their case was not hopeless. He owns that they do not observe the saints' days as holy church teaches, but advises them to buy boldly, sell again, and save their winnings, and with them build maisons Dieu, help those in misery, mend bad roads, repair bridges, endow maidens in order that they should marry, or endow nunneries in order to provide a home for them. The poets give us vivid pictures of the merchant's moral characteristics, his anomalous social status, but unfortunately no hint as to his stock-in-trade, the articles the sale of which brought him wealth. That the York mercer kept a shop, and even in the fifteenth century jealously guarded the mistery from being monopolised by the non-shopkeeping section, is clear from the ordinances of the mistery; but it is equally clear that his chief business was the exportation of cloth. One of their regulations reads as if an attempt had been made to seize the governorship for someone not intimately connected with the mercery trade, possibly a merchant who had larger dealings in lead than cloth. Under the heading "eleccon off the maister," it is explicitly stated, sall none be chosen to occupy as Maister of the said company, but anely ane able persone, thatt occupyse in a shop in the mercery."

9:1

The financial affairs of the company were managed by master, constables, and searchers. But each year the master had to present his accounts, which were rigorously supervised by the whole fellowship. The common box in which the money was 1 Text, p. 93.

THE STATUTE OF 1497

xlv kept could only be opened with the knowledge of all the three financially responsible officers. The master "sall have the comon box in kepyng, that langs to the entre and qarterage of the bretherhede. The constables, that sall occupy for the yere, sall have a key of the same box in thaire kepyng, and the sersoures of the mercer craft sall have another key in thaire kepyng, and that the common fe all be lokked in the seid box."

secure.

For twenty years the merchant adventurers dwelling “out of London " made intermittent efforts to frustrate the efforts of the London merchants to monopolise foreign trade, but without success. The increased power of the central authority under Henry VII enabled the parliament of 1497 to deal in a more decisive way with the difficulty than had been possible to Edward IV, whose tenure of kingship had always been inThe evil, too, was greater than when John Pickering had attempted to drive the northern traders from the field. The fine levied by the London company of mercers had risen from the original fee of "halfe a olde noble sterling " to "cs. Flemmysh," and "nowe it is soe that the seid feleship and Merchauntes of London take of every Englishman or yonge merchaunte beyng there att his first comming xxli. sterlinge for a fyne, to suffre him to bye and sell his owen propre goodes wares and merchaundises that he hath there." The picture given in the statute of the result of this conduct dictated by "uncharitable and inordinate covetise for their single profite and lucre," and "contrarie to all lawe reason charite right and conscience," is fantastically gloomy. "By reason wherof all the cities townes and burghs in this Realme in effecte be falle into great povertie ruyne and decaye, and as nowe in maner they be withoute hope of comforte or relief,

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1 Text, p. 95. The chest in the hall at the present time has two padlocks and one fixed lock; it seems too large for the purpose of a money-box, and is more probably the "evedence chest " to which allusion is often made. cf. A. H. Johnson, op. cit., vol. i, p, 109. "In 1414 we hear of only one box, the box de Dieu or spiritual box. Subsequently a temporal box was also established. Into the spiritual box were paid the rents, the quarterage, and the fees for apprenticeship, into the temporal the fees for entry in the freedom and the livery, fines, and subscription.'

2 Value 68. 8d. or 108. See Glossary.

3 The Flemish shilling was worth less than the English shilling, but rates of exchange varied.

and the Kinges Customes and Subsidies and the Navie of the land greatly decreased and mynysshed, and daily they be like more and more to decaye, if due reformacion be not had in this behalf."

The reformation was drastic. All Englishmen were by this statute allowed to resort to all the marts in the Low Countries and buy and sell freely on paying a fine of ten marks terling. This statute remained in force until the reign of lizabeth. There is no allusion to the power of any proincial company of mercers to impose fines on their fellowitizens trading across the seas, that was a matter for local ot central organisation.

2

The account roll for 1498, where allusion to this extremely mportant act would probably appear, is unfortunately missing. new ordinance, which may have some connection with the decreased fine to be paid in the mart towns, was passed at the March meeting of that year. No brother of the fellowship was to export any goods to the Low Countries or Normandy unless the owner of the vessel paid to the "Trenitie gilde six shillings and eight pence for each voyage. That the ordinance was regarded as being a leap in the dark by the conservative burghers is proved by its having a time limit "for the space of iij yeris." But the supervision of shipping was evidently becoming more difficult; three years later it was enacted that if a shipman was discovered taking on board goods belonging to a foreigner, to convey them from Hull to York or York to Hull, any brother of the fellowship, who employed the offender before the space of two years had elapsed after the offence, should be fined twenty shillings, and the informer was to have three shillings and fourpence for the information that should lead to the discovery of the delinquent. A new official, a brogger, i.e. a broker, is appointed; from his oath he seems to have acted as a middleman between buyer and seller; again the objectionable informer appears, who is to have the one-half of the forfeit in case he can find the official tripping.

1 The mark was 138. 4d.

2 Statutes of the Realm, 12 Hen. VII, c. 6.

YORK AND HANSE MERCHANTS

xlvii

An interesting but bewildering document belongs to this period. The paper is dirty and torn, the writing illegible, the language uncouth, but as a contemporary account of north country feeling about the Hanse or German merchant it is valuable. It is not unusual to find among the merchants' papers a rough set of notes, compiled possibly at a meeting of the mercers, and a well-written intelligible copy, but unfortunately there is no duplicate of this tantalising petition. Nor is it clear to whom it is addressed, or by whom written. The subject matter, however, is quite clear; the Easterlings or Hanse merchants are depicted as visiting the North of England, selling goods for ready money, and returning with their illgotten gains to their own country without having spent a penny on "the comodytes growynge within the sayd northe partis." The exasperated complainants want to know whether the aliens have the right to inundate the whole country with their wares, for English merchants are allowed very limited privileges in the "steydes " and in Danzig. "Alsoo the sayd Esterleyns2 wold not sover your marchands off York to mayk no sall to no stranger but to the fre men of Dansk.......... nor no stranger comeing to the port derst not by nor sell unto non off us Engles marchauntes." The rest of the document is very confused; apparently the writers are fifteenth century tariff reformers, and blame some council for delaying reforms, "you shall destroye all our shipyng (and) maroners to our pure porttes belongyng, for at thes dayes you (they?) know all manner off men that byes and sells bytwixt Trent and

1 In 1335 a statute passed at York allowed merchant strangers to trade freely throughout the realm, but in 1337 London was exempted from this by letters patent, the legislation under Richard II see-saws in an extraordinary way. In 1377 strangers could not sell to other foreigners or by retail; in 1378 strangers were given the right to sell by wholesale or retail; in 1383 their trade was restricted; in 1388 free trade was declared throughout the Kingdom; in 1404 strangers were ordered to expend the money they gained by sale on commodities of the realm. cf. A. H. Johnson, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 25, 31. G. Unwin, The Gilds of London, pp. 126–154.

2 Grocelinus del Haghe, esterling, took up the freedom of the city of York in 1349. Pat. R., 26 Edw. III, rt. iii, m. 18 (1352), Peterkyn Pouchemaker, de Estland, Freemen of York, op. cit., p. 45. Mr. Hamilton Thompson has drawn my attention to an interesting memento of a foreign merchant in Lincolnshire. In the north aisle of Boston church there is a fine incised slab of black marble, originally in the Greyfriars church, with effigy of an Easterling, “Wisselus" (Wisselinus) de Smalenburg, 1340.