Alice Green - Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2

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).

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.

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.

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.

Von Ochenkowski, 165, 167, 245-9.

Piers Ploughman. Passus x. 26.

“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.

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

Plummer’s Fortescue, 235.

Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 278-285.

Ibid. Pass. xiv. 50-51.

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

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

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

Hunt’s Bristol, 75, 93-5; 126-8.

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.)

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

Boys’ Sandwich, 149, 185, 186.

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.)

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.

Davies’ Southampton, 115.

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.

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

Piers Ploughman. Pass. i. 22.

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.

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

Paston Letters, iii. 114-15.

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

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

Plumpton Correspondence, xxxix. xl.

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.)

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).

Paston Letters, iii. 383.

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

Paston Letters, iii. 109, 219, 278.

Nottingham Records, i. 169.

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.