Alice Green - Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 1

The more important side of the movement, however, was the growth of private enterprise as shown in the associations of merchants formed in all the bigger towns for trading purposes. Already in the time of Richard the Second there was a “Fellowship of Merchants” in Bristol who directed the whole foreign trade and the import of foreign merchandise, and who even then did business on a very considerable scale, for when in 1375 Bristol ships laden with salt were captured and burnt in the Channel the losses were set down at £17,739. Before fifty years were over their trading vessels were known in every sea from Syria to Iceland. The richer merchants built up by degrees little fleets of ten or twelve vessels varying from 400 to 900 tons; and one of them, William Cannynges, an ancestor of Lord Canning, who in 1461 had ten ships afloat (one The Nicholas of the Tower from whence came Suffolk’s headsman), employed 800 seamen and 100 carpenters, masons, and artificers. 144 144 Hunt’s Bristol, 74, 94-96. Nor was Bristol singular in its activity. The Guild of Merchants at Lynn rivalled that of York. “With the Divine assistance, and the help of divers of the King’s subjects,” John Taverner of Hull in 1449 built a great “carrack” on the scale of the mighty ships of Genoa and Venice. Far and wide the movement spread till the brief tale of 169 merchants which had been counted up by Edward the Third when he wanted to borrow money from them, expanded towards the close of the fifteenth century into a company of more than 3,000 traders engaged in sea-commerce alone. 145 145 Schanz, i. 328. For St. Mary’s Gild in York see Hist. MSS. Com. i. 109, 110. This “mystery of Mercers,” or “Community of Mercers” in York formed into a body with a governor in 1430 – in fact, became a company of Merchant Adventurers. (Gross, ii. 280.) The Shipmen’s Guild of Holy Trinity in Hull drew up its constitution in 1369, but got its first royal grant in 1443. The Merchant Guild of S. George also dates from the fifteenth century. (Lambert’s Guild Life, 128-131, 156-161.)

From whatever town they came these traders with foreign ports were all alike known to the men of the fourteenth century by one significant name – the Adventurers. For since there was but one protected industry in England, the Staple, every merchant who was not a Stapler was a free Adventurer. All trade that lay outside the Staple was for his winning. 146 146 In 1422 a writ was issued by the Privy Council to permit a Bristol merchant to take two vessels laden with cloth, wine, salt, and other merchandise not belonging to the Staple. The cloth and wine were to be sold, and meat, hides, salmon, herrings, and fish to be bought, and the salt used for salting these provisions. Proc. Privy Council, ii. 322-3. Bound to no place or company or government or laws, he was left to discover for himself a corner in the world’s market, and to protect himself on sea and land. A perfectly indifferent State gave him no help in his first ventures to become the carrier of English commerce, and vouchsafed no encouragement to shipbuilder or master by offers of special favours or grants of reduced tolls on a first voyage. 147 147 When Taverner built his ship for the Mediterranean trade he got no reduction of tolls, but had to pay the high export dues fixed for foreigners. Schanz, i. 367. He sailed out of port into a sea of peril. Pirates of all nations, Vitalien Brüder in the Baltic and the North Sea, Likedelers of Calais, 148 148 Keutgen, 79; Plummer’s Fortescue, 232-3. Breton cruisers, vigorous monopolists of the Hanse, outraged merchants of the South burning for vengeance, lay in wait on every quarter of the horizon. In 1395 Norfolk traders were robbed of £20,000 “by the Queen’s men of Denmark, the which was an undoing to many of the merchants of Norfolk for evermore afterwards;” 149 149 Eng. Chron. 1387-1461, 113. French pirates “whirling on the coasts so that there dare no fishers go out,” (Paston Letters, iii. 81) behave “as homely as they were Englishmen.” (Ibid. i. 114-116.) and frequent and piteous were the complaints that went up to the Privy Council from English shippers begging redress and protection as outrage followed outrage. 150 150 For the frequent disputes in the reign of Henry the Fourth see Hist. MSS. Com. v. 443. In 1419, when some Bristol merchants had seized vessels belonging to the Genoese, the King sent a messenger to choose for him a portion of the prize, for which, however, he promised honestly to pay the merchants. Proc. Privy Council, ii. 267. The mayor of Lynn attended by two proctors travelled with the King’s embassy to Bruges in 1435 “for the worship of the town” as its representative to declare the wrongs done to Lynn merchants “by the master of Pruce and his subjects and by them of the Hanse.” Hist. MSS. Com., xi. 3, 163; Polydore Vergil, 159; Davies’ Southampton, 252-3, 275, 475. But a State which was without any organized naval force was powerless to establish order. Whether it gave the charge of keeping the peace on the high seas to the merchants themselves, or to the Staplers, or by special commission to the Admirals 151 151 Stubbs, ii. 314, iii. 57, 65; Plummer’s Fortescue, 235-7. From time to time money was collected for the protection of trade; (Nott. Rec. ii. 34-36). In 1454 Bristol gave £150 for this purpose – the largest sum given by any town save London. (Hunt’s Bristol, 97-8.) of the coast, or to a committee of lords, or to the foremost among the offenders, the Captain of Calais himself, its experiments were equally vain. In self-protection town barges and merchants’ ships sailed in companies under an admiral of their own choosing, armed to the teeth like little men of war against the enemy, and even carrying cannon on board as early as 1407, before any kind of hand-guns had been invented. 152 152 Rymer’s Fœdera, viii. 470. If when disaster overtook them their masters appealed for compensation to the government they did not wait solely on the State for redress; and English rulers seem to have been often less perplexed to bring a remedy to their sufferings than to conciliate the great foreign confederations whose anger had been roused by their swift and violent retaliation. There were indeed probably no more formidable pirates afloat than these English cruisers themselves, for they were hard fighters who took a prompt revenge; and among foreigners at all events they won the reputation of using their shipping for no other purpose than to harass all trade of other peoples in the narrow seas, and “obstruct the utility of commerce throughout all Christendom.” 153 153 Debate of Heralds, 49. In 1488 a letter from London to the money-changer Frescobaldo, at Venice, told that Flanders galleys which left Antwerp for Hampton fell in with three English ships, who commanded them to strike sail, and though they said they were friends, forced them to fight. Eighteen English were killed. But on the complaint of the captain of the galleys the King sent the Bishop of Winchester to say he need not fear, as those who had been killed must bear their own loss and a pot of wine would settle the matter. Davies’ Southampton, 475.

Under these conditions we can easily understand that throughout the century whenever the question of the English navy emerges in Rolls of Parliament and Statutes and official statements, we have a contemporary picture drawn in the gloomiest colours. 154 154 See Libel of English Policy, Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 164-5. For complaints in 1444 and 1485 see Rot. Parl. v. 113. Statesmen heap up details to show how badly the merchant service fulfils its vague functions as a royal navy. Ship-owners bring their loud complainings to prove how ill they have been used by the State. Each side burns to waken the other to a sense of its duty, and talk of the decay of English power by sea might be pressed into the service of either, while the loss of Southern France and the temporary blow which this gave to English shipping was used to point the argument on both sides. The sea was our wall of defence, it was said; but now the enemy was on the wall and where was our old might of ships and sailors? The very Dutch were laughing at our impotence, and when they insolently jested at the ships engraved on the coins of Edward the Third and asked why we did not engrave a sheep on them instead, the pun was felt to inflict a deep wound on the national honour. 155 155 Libel of English Policy, Pol. Poems and Songs, ii. 159. Capgrave de Illust. Henricis, 135. A man at Canterbury was accused in 1448 of saying that the king was not able to bear the fleur-de-lys nor the ship in his noble. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 455.)