Chapter III

THE SOCIAL POSITION OF THE MEDIÆVAL MERCHANTS.

Though the commerce of England has now attained to such vast dimensions, and forms so much larger a proportion of the national wealth and greatness than at any former period, yet we are inclined to think that, in the times of which we write, the pursuit of commerce held a higher and more honourable place in the esteem of all classes than it does with us.

It is true that one class was then more distinctly separated from another, by costume and some external habits of life; the knight and the franklin, the monk and the priest, the trader and the peasant, always carried the badges of their position upon them; and we, with our modern notions, are apt to think that the man who was marked out by his very costume as a trader must have been "looked down upon" by what we call the higher classes of society. No doubt something of this feeling existed; but not, we think, to the same extent as now. Trade itself was not then so meanly considered. Throughout the Middle Ages the upper classes were themselves engaged in trade in various ways. In the disposal of the produce of his estates the manorial lord engaged in trade, and purchased at fairs and markets the stores he needed for himself and his numerous dependants. Noblemen and bishops, abbots and convents, nay kings themselves, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had ships which, commanded and manned by their servants, traded for their profit with foreign countries. In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monks had become the greatest wool-merchants in the kingdom. In the fifteenth century Edward IV. carried on a considerable commerce for his own profit. Just as now, when noblemen and gentlemen commonly engage in agriculture, and thus farming comes to be considered less vulgar than trade, so, then, when dignified ecclesiastics, noblemen, and kings engaged in trade, it must have helped to soften caste prejudices against the professional pursuit of commerce.[406]

A considerable number of the traders of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were cadets of good families. Where there were half a dozen sons in a knightly family, the eldest succeeded to the family estate and honours: of the rest, one might become a lawyer; another might have a religious vocation, and, as a secular priest, take the family living, or obtain a stall in the choir of the neighbouring monastery; a third might prefer the profession of arms, and enter into the service of some great lord or of the king, or find employment for his sword and lance, and pay for himself and the dozen men who formed the "following of his lance," in the wars which seldom ceased in one part of Europe or another; another son might engage in trade, either in a neighbouring town or in one of the great commercial cities of the time, as Bristol, Norwich, or London.[407]

The leading men of the trading class stood side by side with the leading men of the other classes. They were consulted by the king on the affairs of the kingdom, were employed with bishops and nobles on foreign embassies, were themselves ennobled. And the greatness which men attain in any class reflects honour on the whole class. The Archbishop of Canterbury's high position gives social consideration to the poor curate, who may one day also be archbishop; and the Lord Chancellor's to the now briefless barrister who may attain to the woolsack. The great free towns of the German Empire reflected honour on every town of Europe; and the merchant princes of Venice and Florence and the Low Countries on the humblest member of their calling.

But what, perhaps, more than anything else tended to maintain the social consideration of traders, was their incorporation into wealthy and powerful guilds; and the civil freedom and political weight of the towns. The rather common-looking man, in a plain cloth gown and flat cap, jogging along the high road on a hack, with great saddle-bags, is not to be compared in appearance with the knight who prances past him on a spirited charger, with a couple of armed servants at his heels; and the trader pulls his horse to the side of the road, and touches his bonnet as the cavalcade passes him in a cloud of dust; but the knight glances at his fellow-traveller's hood as he passes, and recognises in him a member of the great Guild of Merchants of the Staple, and returns his courtesy. The nobleman, jostling at court against a portly citizen in a furred gown with a short dagger and inkhorn at his belt, sees in him an alderman of one of those great towns by whose help the king maintains the balance of power against the feudal aristocracy. Yet, after all, why should the merchant be "a rather common-looking man," and the alderman a "portly citizen"? We are all apt to let our sober sense be fooled by our imagination. Thus we are apt to have in our minds abstract types of classes of men: our ideal knight is gallant in bearing, gay in apparel, chivalrous in character; while our ideal merchant is prosaic and closefisted in character, plain and uncourtly in manner and speech. A moment's thought would be enough to remind us that Nature does not anticipate or adapt herself to class distinctions: the knight and the merchant, we have seen, might be brothers, reared up in the same old manor-house; and the elder son might be naturally a clown, though fortune made him Sir Hugh; while the cadet might be full of intelligence and spirit, dignified and courteous, though fortune had put a flat cap instead of a helmet on his head, and a pen instead of a lance into his hand.

Our plan limits us to mere glances at the picturesque outside aspect of things. Let us travel across England, and see what we can learn on our subject from the experiences of our journey. A right pleasant journey, too, in the genial spring-time or early summer. It must be taken on horseback; for, though sometimes we shall find ourselves on a highway between one great town and another, yet, for the most part, our road is along bridle-paths, across heath and moor; through miles of "greenwood;" across fords; over wide unenclosed wolds and downs dotted with sheep; through valleys where oxen feed in the deep meadowland; with comparatively little arable, covered with the green blades of rye and barley, oats, and a little wheat--

"Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky."

Now and then we ride through a village of cottages scattered about the village-green; and see, perhaps, the parish-priest, in cassock and biretta, coming out of the village-church from his mass. Further on we pass the moated manor-house of a country knight, or the substantial old timber-built house of a franklin, with the blue wood-smoke puffing in a volume out of the louvre of the hall, and curling away among the great oak-trees which overshadow it. We may stay there and ask for luncheon, and be sure of a hearty welcome: Chaucer tells us,

"His table dormant in the hall alway
Stands ready covered, all the longe day."

Then a strong castle comes in sight on a rising ground, with its picturesque group of walls and towers, and the donjon-tower rising high in the midst, surmounted by the banner of its lord. We seek out the monasteries for their hospitable shelter at nights: they are the inns of mediæval England; and we gaze in admiration as we approach them and enter their courts. From outside we see a great enclosure-wall, over which rise the clerestories and towers of a noble minster-church; and when we have entered through the gate-house we find the cloister court, with its convent buildings for the monks, and another court of offices, and the guest-house for the entertainment of travellers, and the abbot's-house--a separate establishment, with a great hall and chambers and chapel, like the manor-house of a noble; so that, surrounded by its wall, with strong entrance-towers, the monastery looks like a great castle or a little town; and we doff our hats to the dignified-looking monk who is ambling out of the great gate on his mule, as to the representative of the noble community which has erected so grand a house, and maintains there its hospitalities and charities, schools and hospitals, and offers up, seven times a day in the choir, a glorious service of praise to Almighty God, and of prayer for the welfare of His church and people. But from time to time, also, we approach and ride through the towns, which are studded as thickly over the land as castles or monasteries. Each surrounded by a fair margin of common meadowland, out of which rise the long line of strong walls with angle towers, with picturesque machicolations and overhanging pent-houses; and the great gate-towers with moat, drawbridge, and barbican. Over the wall numerous church-towers and spires are seen rising from a forest of gables, making a goodly show. We enter, and find wide streets of handsome picturesque houses, with abundance of garden and orchard ground behind them, and guildhalls and chapels, the head-quarters of the various guilds and companies. The traders are wealthy, and indulge in conveniences which are rare in the franklin's house, and even the lord's castle; and live a more refined mode of life than the old rude, if magnificent, feudal life. Look at the extent of the town, at its strong defences; estimate the wealth it contains; think of the clannish spirit of its guilds; see the sturdy burghers, who turn out at the sound of the town-bell, in half armour, with pike and bow, to man the walls; consider the chiefs of the community, men of better education, wider experience of the world, deeper knowledge of political affairs, than most of their countrymen, many of them of the "gentleman" class by birth and breeding, men of perfect self-respect, and of high public spirit. If our journey terminates at one of the seaports, as Hull, or Lynn, or Dover, or Hythe, or Bristol, we find--in addition to the usual well-walled town, with houses and noble churches and guildhalls--a harbour full of merchant-ships, and exchanges full of foreign merchants; and we soon learn that these are the links which join England to the rest of the world in a period of peace, and enable her in time of war to make her power felt beyond the seas. Many of these towns have inherited their walls and their civic freedom from Roman times: they stood like islands amid the flood of the Saxon invasion; they received their charters from Norman kings, and maintained them against Norman barons. Each of them is a little republic amidst the surrounding feudalism; each citizen is a freeman, when everybody else is the sworn liege-man of some feudal lord.

These experiences of our ride across England will have left their strong impressions on our minds. The castles will have impressed our minds with a sense of the feudal power and chivalric state of the territorial class; and the monasteries with admiration of the grandeur and learning and munificence and sanctity of the religious orders; and the towns with a feeling of solid respect for the wealth and power and freedom and civilisation of the trader class of the people.

Our first illustration forms part of a large picture in the great Harleian MS. of Froissart's Chronicle (Harl. 2,397, f. 3), and represents Isabel of Bavaria, Queen of Charles VII., making her entry into Paris attended by noble dames and lords of France, on Sunday, 20th of August, in the year of our Lord 1389. There was a great crowd of spectators, Froissart tells us, and the _bourgeois_ of Paris, twelve hundred, all on horseback, were ranged in pairs on each side of the road, and clothed in a livery of gowns of baudekyn green and red. The Queen, seated in her canopied litter, occupies the middle of the picture, in robe and mantle of blue powdered with _fleur-de-lis_, three noblemen walking on each side in their robes and coronets. The page and ladies, who follow on horseback, are not given in our woodcut. The Queen has just arrived at the gate of the city; through the open door may be seen a bishop (? the Archbishop of Paris) in a cope of blue powdered with gold _fleur-de-lis_, holding a gold and jewelled box, which perhaps contains the chrism for her coronation. On the wall overlooking the entrance is the king with ladies of the court, and perched on the angle of the wall is the court jester in his cap and bauble. On the left of the picture are the burgesses of Paris; their short gowns are of green and red as described; the hats, which hang over their shoulders, are black. On the opposite side of the road (not represented in the cut) is another party of burgesses, who wear their hats, the bands falling on each side of the face. In the background are the towers and spires of the city, and the west front of Notre-Dame, rising picturesquely above the city-wall.

Some of the merchant-princes of the Middle Ages have left a name which is still known in history, or popular in legend. First, there is the De la Pole family, whose name is connected with the history of Hull. Wyke-upon-Hull was a little town belonging to the convent of Selby, when Edward III. saw its capabilities and bought it of the monks, called it Kingston-upon-Hull, and, by granting trading and civil privileges to it, induced merchants to settle there. De la Pole, a merchant of the neighbouring port of Ravensern, was one of the earliest of these immigrants; and Hull owes much of its greatness to his commercial genius and public spirit. Under his inspiration bricks were introduced from the Low Countries to build its walls and the great church: much of the latter yet remains. He rose to be esteemed the greatest merchant in England. Edward III. honoured him by visiting him at his house in Hull, and in time made him Chief Baron of his Exchequer, and a Knight Banneret. In the following reign we find him engaged, together with the most distinguished men in the kingdom, in affairs of state and foreign embassies. His son, who also began life as a merchant at Hull, was made by Richard II. Earl of Suffolk and Lord Chancellor. In the end a royal alliance raised the merchant's children to the height of power; and designs of a still more daring ambition at length brought about their headlong fall and ruin.

William Cannynges, of Bristol, was another of these great merchants. On his monument in the magnificent church of St. Mary Redcliffe, of which he was the founder, it is recorded that on one occasion Edward IV. seized shipping of his to the amount of 2,470 tons, which included ships of 400, 500, and even 900 tons.

Richard Whittington, the hero of the popular legend, was a London merchant, thrice Lord Mayor. He was not, however, of the humble origin stated by the legend, but a cadet of the landed family of Whittington, in Gloucestershire. What is the explanation of the story of his cat has not been satisfactorily made out by antiquaries. Munificence was one of the characteristics of these great merchants. De la Pole, we have seen, built the church at Hull; Cannynges founded one of the grandest parish churches yet remaining in all England; Whittington founded the College of the Holy Spirit and St. Mary, a charitable foundation which has long ceased to exist. Sir John Crosby was an alderman of London in the reign of Edward IV., and allied his family with the highest nobility. His house still remains in Bishopsgate, the only one left of the great city merchants' houses: Stowe describes it as very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time in London. Richard III. took up his residence and received his adherents there, when preparing for his usurpation of the crown.

Monuments remaining to this day keep alive the memory of other great merchants, which would otherwise have perished. In the series of monumental brasses, several of the earliest and most sumptuous are memorials of merchants. There was an engraver of these monuments living in England in the middle of the fourteenth century, whose works in that style of art have not been subsequently surpassed: Gough calls him the "Cellini of the fourteenth century." He executed a grand effigy for Thomas Delamere, abbot of St. Alban's Abbey; and the same artist executed two designs, no less sumptuous and meritorious as works of art, for two merchants of the then flourishing town of Lynn, in Norfolk. One is to Adam de Walsokne, "formerly burgess of Lynn," who died in 1349 A.D., and Margaret his wife; it contains very artistically drawn effigies of the two persons commemorated, surmounted by an ornamental canopy on a diapered field. The other monumental brass represents Robert Braunche, A.D. 1364, and his two wives. A feature of peculiar interest in this design is a representation, running along the bottom, of an entertainment which Braunche, when mayor of Lynn, gave to King Edward III. There was still a third brass at Lynn, of similar character, of Robert Attelathe--now, alas! lost. Another monument, apparently by the same artist, exists at Newark, to the memory of Alan Fleming, a merchant, who died in 1361 A.D.

Hundreds of churches yet bear traces of the munificence of these mediæval traders. The noble churches which still exist in what are now comparatively small places, in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, are monuments of the merchants of the staple who lived in those eastern counties; and monuments, and merchants' marks, and sometimes inscriptions cut in stone or worked in flint-work in the fabrics themselves, afford data from which the local antiquary may glean something of their history. Many interesting traces of mediæval traders' houses remain too in out-of-the-way places, where they seem quite overlooked. The little town of Coggeshall, for example, is full of interesting bits of domestic architecture--the traces of the houses of the "Peacockes" and other families, merchants of the staple and clothmakers, who made it a flourishing town in the fifteenth century; the monumental brasses of some of them remain in the fine perpendicular church, which they probably rebuilt. Or, to go to the other side of the kingdom, at the little town of Northleach, among the Cotswold Hills, is a grand church, with evidences in the sculpture and monuments that the wool-merchants there contributed largely to its building. It contains an interesting series of small monumental brasses, which preserve their names and costumes, and those of their wives and children; and the merchants' marks which were painted on their woolpacks appear here as honourable badges on their monuments. There are traces of their old houses in the town.

A general survey of all these historical facts and all these antiquarian remains will confirm the assertion with which we began this chapter, that at least from the early part of the fourteenth century downwards, the mediæval traders earned great wealth and spent it munificently, possessed considerable political influence, and occupied an honourable social position beside the military and ecclesiastical orders.

We must not omit to notice the illustrations which our subject may derive from Chaucer's ever-famous gallery of characters. Here is the merchant of the Canterbury cavalcade of merry pilgrims:--

"A merchant was there with a forked beard,
In mottély, and high on horse he sat,
And on his head a Flaundrish beaver hat,
His bote's clapsed fayre and fetisly,[408]
His reasons spake he full solempnely,
Sounding alway the increase of his winning,
He would the sea were kept, for any thing,
Betwixen Middleburgh and Orewell.
Well could he in exchanges sheldes[409] sell,
This worthy man full well his wit beset;
There weste no wight that he was in debt,
So steadfastly didde he his governance
With his bargeines and with his chevisance,[410]
Forsooth he was a worthy man withal;
But, sooth to say, I n'ot how men him call."[411]

Of the trader class our great author gives us also some examples:--

"An haberdasher and a carpenter,
A webber, a dyer, and a tapiser,
Were all yclothed in one livery,
Of a solempne and great fraternitie,
Full fresh and new their gear y-piked was
Their knives were ychaped, not with brass.
But all with silver wrought full clene and well,
Their girdles and their pouches every deal.
Well seemed each of them a fair burgess
To sitten in a gild-hall on the dais.
Each one for the wisdom that he can,
Was likely for to be an alderman.
For chattles hadden they enough and rent,
And eke their wives would it well assent,
And elles certainly they were to blame,
It is full fair to be ycleped madame,
And for to go to vigils all before,
And have a mantle royally upbore."

The figures on the next page from a monument to John Field, Alderman of London, and his son, are interesting and characteristic. Mr. Waller, from whose work on monumental brasses the woodcut is taken, has been able to discover something of the history of Alderman Field. John Field, senior, was born about the beginning of the fifteenth century, but nothing is known of his early life. In 1449 he had clearly risen to commercial eminence in London, since he was in that year appointed one of fifteen commissioners to treat with those of the Duke of Burgundy concerning the commercial interests of the two countries in general, and specially to frame regulations for the traffic in wool and wool-fells brought to the staple at Calais. Of these commissioners five were of London, three of Boston, three of Hull, and one of Ipswich. These names, says Mr. Waller, probably comprise the chief mercantile wealth and intelligence in the eastern ports of the kingdom at this period. In 1454 he was made sheriff, and subsequently was elected alderman, but never served the office of mayor; which, says the writer, may be accounted for by the fact that in the latter part of his life he was afflicted with bodily sickness, and on that ground in 1463 obtained a grant from the then lord mayor, releasing him from all civic services. The alderman acquired large landed estates in Kent and Hertfordshire, in which he was succeeded by his eldest son John, the original of the second effigy, who only survived his father the short term of three years.

The brasses have been inlaid with colour; the alderman's gown of the father with red enamel, and its fur-lining indicated by white metal; the tabard of arms of the son is also coloured according to its proper heraldic blazoning--_gules_, between three eagles displayed _argent_, _guetté de sangue_, a fesse _or_. The unfinished inscription runs, "Here lyeth John Feld, sometyme alderman of London, a merchant of the stapull of Caleys, the which deceased the xvj day of August, in the yere of our Lord God mcccclxxiiij. Also her' lyeth John his son, squire, y{e} which deceased y{e} iiij day of May y{e} yere of".... The monumental slab is ornamented with four shields of arms: the first of the city of London, the second of the merchants of the staple, the third bears the alderman's merchant's-mark, and the fourth the arms which appear on the tabard of his son, the esquire, to whom, perhaps, they had been specially granted by the College of Arms. The father's costume is a long gown edged with fur, a leather girdle from which hang his gypcire (or purse) and rosary, over which is worn his alderman's gown. The son wears a full suit of armour of the time of Edward IV., with a tabard of his arms. The execution of the brass is unusually careful and excellent.

The third woodcut, from the Harleian MS. 4,379, f. 64, represents the execution, in Paris, of a famous captain of robbers, Aymerigol Macel. The scaffold is enclosed by a hoarding; at the nearer corners are two friars, one in brown and one in black, probably a Franciscan and a Dominican; the official, who stands with his hands resting on his staff superintending the executioner, has a gown of red with sleeves lined with white fur, his bonnet is black turned up also with white fur. In the background are the timber houses on one side of the place, with the people looking out of their windows; a signboard will be seen standing forth from one of the houses. The groups of people in the distance and those in the foreground give the costumes of the ordinary dwellers in a fourteenth-century city. The man on the left has a pink short gown, trimmed with white fur; his hat, the two ends of a liripipe hanging over his shoulders, and his purse and his hose, are black. The man on his right has a long blue gown and red hat and liripipe; the man between them and a little in front, a brown long gown and black hat. The man on horseback on the left wears a very short green gown, red hose, and black hat; the footman on his left, a short green gown and red hat and liripipe; and the man on his left, a black jacket and black hat fringed. The man on horseback, with a foot-boy behind holding on by the horse's tail, has a pink long gown, black hat and liripipe, purse, and girdle; the one on the right of the picture, a long blue gown with red hat, liripipe, and purse. Just behind him (unhappily not included in the woodcut) is a touch of humour on the part of the artist. His foot-boy is stealing an apple out of the basket of an apple-woman, who wears a blue gown and red hood, with the liripipe tucked under her girdle; she has a basket of apples on each arm, and another on her head. Still further to the right is a horse whose rider has dismounted, and the foot-boy is sitting on the crupper behind the saddle holding the reins.

The last cut is taken from the painted glass at Tournay of the fifteenth century, and represents _marchands en gros_. This illustration of a warehouse with the merchant and his clerk, and the men and the casks and bales, and the great scales, in full tide of business, is curious and interesting.

Chaucer once more, in the "Shipman's Tale," gives us an illustration of our subject. Speaking of a merchant of St. Denys, he says:--

"Up into his countour house goth he,
To reken with himselvin, wel may be,
Of thilke yere how that it with him stood,
And how that he dispended had his good,
And if that he encreased were or non.
His bookes and his bagges many one
He layeth before him on his counting bord.
Ful riche was his tresor and his hord;
For which ful fast his countour done he shet,
And eke he n'olde no man shuld him let
Of his accountes for the mene time;
And thus he sat till it was passed prime."

The counting-board was a board marked with squares, on which counters were placed in such a way as to facilitate arithmetical operations.

We have also a picture of him setting out on a business journey attended by his apprentice:--

"But so bifell this marchant on a day
Shope him to maken ready his array
Toward the town of Brugges for to fare
To byen there a portion of ware.

* * * * *

The morrow came, and forth this marchant rideth
To Flaundersward, his prentis wel him gideth.
Til he came into Brugges merily.
Now goth this marchant fast and bisily
About his nede, and bieth and creanceth;
He neither playeth at the dis ne danceth,
But as a marchant shortly for to tell
He ledeth his lif, and ther I let him dwell."