THE MERCHANT NAVY.
The history of the merchant navy in the Middle Ages is very much mixed up with that of the military navy.
In the time of the earlier Norman kings we seem not to have had any war-ships. The king had one or two ships for his own uses, and hired or impressed others when he needed them; but they were only ships of burden, transports by which soldiers and munitions of war were conveyed to the Continent and back, as occasion required. If hostile vessels encountered one another at sea, and a fight ensued, it seems to have been a very simple business: the sailors had nothing to do with the fighting, they only navigated the ships; the soldiers on board discharged their missiles at one another as the ships approached, and when the vessels were laid alongside, they fought hand to hand. The first ships of war were a revival of the classical war-galleys. We get the first clear description of them in the time of Richard I., from Vinesauf, the historian of the second Crusade. He compares them with the ancient galleys, and says the modern ones were long, low in the water, and slightly built, rarely had more than two banks of oars, and were armed with a “spear” at the prow for “ramming.” Gallernes were a smaller kind of galleys with only one bank of oars.
From this reign the sovereign seems to have always maintained something approaching to a regular naval establishment, and to have aimed at keeping the command of the narrow seas. In the reign of John we find the king had galleys and galliases, and another kind of vessels which wereprobably also a sort of galley, called “long ships,” used to guard the coasts, protect the ports, and maintain the police of the seas.
The accompanying drawing, from one of the illuminations in the famous MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle, in the British Museum (Harl. 4,379), is perhaps one of the clearest and best contemporary illustrations we have of these mediæval galleys. It will be seen that it consists of a long low open boat, with outrigger galleries for the rowers, while the hold is leftfree for merchandise, or, as in the present instance, for men-at-arms. It has a forecastle like an ordinary ship; the shields of the men-at-arms who occupy it are hung over the bulwarks; the commander stands at the stern under a pent-house covered with tapestry, bearing his shield, and holding his leader’s truncheon. A close examination of the drawing seems to show that there are two men to each oar; we know from other sources that several men were sometimes put to each oar. The difference in costume between the soldiers and the sailors is conspicuous. The former are men-at-arms in full armour—one on the forecastle is very distinctly shown; the sailors are entirely unarmed, except the man at the stroke-oar, probably an officer, who wears an ordinary hat of the period, the rest wear the hood drawn over the head. The ship in the same illustration is an ordinary ship of burden, filled with knights and men-at-arms; the trumpeters at the stern indicate that the commander of the fleet is on board this ship; he will be seen amidships, with his visor raised and his face towards the spectator, with shield on arm and truncheon in hand.
Ship and Galley.
If the reader is curious to see illustrations of the details of a naval combat, there are a considerable number to be found in the illuminated MSS.; as in MS. Nero, D. iv., at folio 214, of the latter part of the thirteenth century; in some tolerably clearly drawn in the “Chronique de S. Denis” (Royal, 20, cvii.), of the time of our Richard II., at folio 18, and again at folio 189 v. Other representations of ships occur at folios 25, 26 v., 83, 136 v. (a bridge of boats), 189 v., and 214 of the same MS.
These ships continued to a late period to be small compared with our notion of a ship, and most rude in their arrangements. They were great undecked boats, with a cabin only in the bows, beneath the raised platform which formed the forecastle; and the crew of the largest ships was usually from twenty-five to thirty men. An illumination in the MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle (Harl. 4,379), folio 104 v., shows a ship, in which a king and his suite are about to embark, from such a point of view that we see the interior of the ship in the perspective, and find that there is a cabin only in the prow. The earliest notice of cabins occurs in the yearA.D.1228, when a ship was sent to Gascony with some effects of theking’s, and 4s.6d.was paid for making a chamber in the same ship for the king’s wardrobe, &c. InA.D.1242 the king and queen went to Gascony; and convenient chambers were ordered to be built in the ship for their majesties’ use, which were to be wainscoted—like that probably in Earl Richard of Warwick’s ship in the present woodcut. This engraving,taken from Rouse’s MS. Life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (British Museum, Julius, E. IV.), of the latter part of the fourteenth century, gives a very clear representation of a ship and its boat. The earl is setting out on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the foreground we see him with his pilgrim’s staff in hand, stepping into the boat which is to carry him to his ship lying at anchor in the harbour. The costume of the sailors is illustrated by the men in the boat. The vessel is a ship of burden, but such a one as kings and great personages had equipped for their own uses; resembling an ordinary merchant-ship in all essentials, but fitted and furnished with more than usual convenience and sumptuousness. In Earl Richard’s ship the sail is emblazoned with his arms, and the pennon, besides the red cross of England, has his badges of the bear and ragged staff; the ragged staff also appears on the castle at the mast-head. The castle, which all ships of this age have at the stern, is in this case roofed in and handsomely ornamented, and no doubt formed the state apartment of the earl. There is also a castle at the head of the ship, though it is not very plainly shown in the drawing. It consists of a raised platform, the round-headed entrance to the cabin beneath it is seen in the picture; the two bulwarks also which protect it at the sides are visible, though their meaning is not at first sight obvious. A glance at the forecastle of the other ships in our illustrations will enable the reader to understand its construction and use. Besides the boat which is to convey the earl on board, another boat will be seen hanging at the ship’s quarter.
Ship of Richard Earl of Warwick.
The next woodcut is taken from the interesting MS. in the British Museum (Add. 24,189, f. 3 v.), from which we have borrowed other illustrations, containing pictures of subjects from the travels of Sir John Mandeville. We have introduced it to illustrate two peculiarities: the first is the way of steering by a paddle passed through a gummet of rope, still, we see, in use in the latter part of the fourteenth century, long after the rudder had been introduced; and the use of lee-boards to obviate the lee-way of the ship, and make it hold its course nearer to the wind. The high, small, raised castle in the stern is here empty, and the forecastle is curiously defended by a palisade, instead of the ordinary bulwarks.Another representation of the use of lee-boards occurs at folio 5 of the same MS.
Sir J. Mandeville on his Voyage to Palestine.
But though the royal navy was small, as we have said, in case of need there was a further naval force available. The ancient ports of Kent and Sussex, called the Cinque Ports, with their members (twelve neighbouring ports incorporated with them), were bound by their tenure, upon forty days’ notice, to supply the king with fifty-seven ships, containing twenty-one men and a boy in each ship, for fifteen days, once in the year, at their own expense, if their service was required. Thuse.g.a mandate of the 18th Rich. II., addressed to John de Beauchamp, Constable of Dover Castle, and Warden of the Cinque Ports, after reciting this obligation, requires fifty-seven ships, each having a master and twenty men well armed and arrayed to meet him at Bristol; stating further, that at theexpiration of the fifteen days the ships and men should be at the king’s own charges and pay, so long as he should have the use of them, viz., the master of each ship to have 6d., the constable 6d., and each of the other men 3d., per day.
In the yearA.D.1205 we have a list of royal galleys and vessels of war ready for service; and it is instructive to see where they were stationed: there were at London 5, Newhaven 2, Sandwich 3, Romney 4, Rye 2, Winchelsea 2, Shoreham 5, Southampton 2, Exeter 2, Bristol 3, Ipswich 2, Dunwich 5, Lyme 5, Yarmouth 3, in Ireland 5, at Gloucester 1—total 51; and the Cinque Ports furnished 52; so that there were ready for sea more than 100 galleys or “men-of-war.”
If the occasion required a greater force than that which the Cinque Ports were required to furnish, the king was at liberty to issue his royal mandate, and impress merchant ships. Thus, in May, 1206A.D., the Barons of the Cinque Ports were commanded to be at Portsmouth by a certain date with all the service they owed; and writs were also issued to all such merchants, masters, and seamen, as might meet the king’s messengers on the sea, to repair to Portsmouth, and enter the king’s service; and the royal galleys were sent to cruise at sea to arrest ships and send them in. Again, inA.D.1442, the Commons in Parliament stated the necessity of having an armed force upon the sea, and pointed out the number of ships and men that it would be proper to employ: viz., eight ships with fore-stages carrying 150 men each, and that there should be attendant upon each ship a barge carrying eighty men, and a balynfer carrying forty men; and that four spynes, or pinnaces, carrying twenty-five men each, would be necessary. The Commons also pointed out the individual ships which it recommended to be obtained to compose this force: viz., at Bristol theNicholas of the Tower, andKatherine of Burtons; at Dartmouth the Spanish ship that was the Lord Poyntz’s, and Sir Philip Courtenay’s great ship. In the port of London two great ships, one calledTrinity, and the otherThomas. At Hull a great ship called Taverner’s, the nameGrace-dieu. At Newcastle a great ship calledThe George. They also state where the barges, balynfers, and pinnaces may be obtained. Some of these may have been royal ships, but not all of them. Of theGrace-dieuof Hull, we know from Rymer (xi., 258) that John Taverner of Hull, mariner, having made a ship as large as a great carrack, or larger, had granted to him that the said ship, by reason of her unusual magnitude, should be named theGrace-dieucarrack, and enjoy certain privileges in trade.
On a great emergency, a still more sweeping impressment of the mercantile fleet was made:e.g., Henry V., in his third year, directed Nicholas Manslyt, his sergeant-at-arms, to arrest all ships and vessels in every port in the kingdom, of the burden of twenty tons and upwards, for the king’s service; and Edward IV., in his fourteenth year, made a similar seizure of all ships of over sixteen tons burden. On the other hand, the king hired out his ships to merchants when they were not in use. Thus, in 1232A.D., John Blancboilly had the custody of King Henry III.’s great ship called theQueen, for his life, to trade wherever he pleased, paying an annual rent of eighty marks; and all his lands in England were charged with the fulfilment of the contract. In 1242 directions were given to surrender the custody of the king’s galleys in Ireland to the sailors of Waterford, Drogheda, and Dungaroon, to trade with in what way they could, taking security for their rent and restoration.
The royal ships, however, maintained the police of the seas very inefficiently, and apetite guerreseems to have been carried on continually between the ships of different countries, and even between the ships of different seaports; while downright piracy was not at all uncommon. When these injuries were inflicted by the ships of another nation, the injured men often sought redress through their own government from the government of the people who had injured them, and the mediæval governments generally took up warmly any such complaints. But the merchants not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the twelfth century,e.g., it happened to a merchant of Berwick, Cnut by name, that one of his ships, having his wife on board, was seized by a piratical Earl of Orkney, and burnt. Cnut spent 100 marks in having fourteen stout vessels suitably equipped to go out and punish the offender. And so late as 1378 a sort of private naval war was carried on between John Mercer, a merchant of Perth, and John Philpott of London. Mercer’s father hadfor some time given assistance to the French by harassing the merchant ships of England; and in 1377, being driven by foul weather on the Yorkshire coast, he was caught, and imprisoned in Scarborough Castle. Thereupon the son carried on the strife. Collecting a little fleet of Scottish, French, and Spanish ships, he captured several English merchantmen off Scarborough, slaying their commanders, putting their crews in chains, and appropriating their cargoes. Philpott, the mayor of London, at his own cost, collected a number of vessels, put in them 1,000 armed men, and sailed for the north. Within a few weeks he had retaken the captured vessels, had effectually beaten their captors, and, in his turn, had seized fifteen Spanish ships laden with wine, which came in his way. On his return to London he was summoned before the council to answer for his conduct in taking an armed force to sea without the king’s leave. But he boldly told the council: “I did not expose myself, my money, and my men to the dangers of the sea that I might deprive you and your colleagues of your knightly fame, nor that I might win any for myself, but in pity for the misery of the people and the country, which from being a noble realm with dominion over other nations, has through your supineness become exposed to the ravages of the vilest race, and since you would not lift a hand in its defence, I exposed myself and my property for the safety and deliverance of our country.”
The ships of the Cinque Ports seem to have been at frequent feud with those of the other ports of the kingdom (see Matthew Paris underA.D.1242). For example, in 1321 Edward II. complained of the great dissension and discord which existed between the people of the privileged Cinque Ports and the men and mariners of the western towns of Poole, Weymouth, Melcombe, Lyme, Southampton, &c.; and of the homicide, depredation, ship-burning, and other evil acts resulting therefrom. But in place of taking vigorous measures to repress these disorders, the king did not apparently find himself able to do more than issue a proclamation against them.
When so loose a morality prevailed among seafaring men, and the police of the seas was so badly maintained, it follows almost as a matter of course that piracy should flourish. The people of Brittany, and especiallythe men of St. Malo, at one time were accustomed to roam the sea as the old sea-kings did, plundering merchant-ships, making descents on the coasts of England, exacting contributions and ransoms from the towns. In the time of Alfred it would seem by one of his laws as if English vessels sometimes pillaged their own coasts.[405]
About the year 1242 a Sir William de Marish, who was accused of murder and treason, took refuge in the Isle of Lundy, whence he robbed the merchantmen passing to and fro, and made descents on the coast. He was building a galley in which to carry on his piracies when he was taken and hanged.
The spirit that lingered to very recent times among the “wreckers” of remote spots on our coast seems to have prevailed largely in the days of which we are writing. A foreigner was regarded as a “natural enemy,” and his ships and goods as a legitimate prize, when they could be seized with impunity. So in 1227A.D.we find a mariner named Dennis committed to Newgate for being present when a Spanish ship was plundered and her crew slain at Sandwich. In the same year the inhabitants of some towns in Norfolk were accused of robbing a Norwegian ship. And, to give a later example, in 1470 some Spanish merchants applied to King Edward IV. for compensation for the loss of seven vessels, alleged to have been piratically taken from them by the people of Sandwich, Dartmouth, Plymouth, and Jersey. Yet there is a Saxon law as early as King Ethelred, which gives immunities to merchant ships, even in time of war, which the Council of Paris a few years ago hardly equalled:—“If a merchant ship, even if it belonged to an enemy, entered any port in England, she was to have ‘frith,’ that is peace, and freedom from molestation, provided it was not driven or chased into port; but even if it were chased, and it reached any frith burgh, and the crew escaped into the burgh, then the crew and whatever they brought with them were to have ‘frith.’”
The shipping of the time of Henry VIII. is admirably illustrated in Holbein’s famous painting at Hampton Court. The great vessel of his reign, theHenri Grace à Dieu, is also illustrated in theArchæologia. Boththese subjects are so well-known, or so easily accessible, that we do not think it necessary to reproduce them here. In the MS. Aug. 1, will be found a large size drawing of a galley intended to be built for King Henry VIII.
The discovery of the sea-passage to India, and of the new world, opened up to commerce a new career of heroic adventure and the prospect of fabulous wealth. England was not backward in entering upon this course. In truth, although Sebastian Cabot was not an Englishman by birth, we claim the honour of his discoveries for England, inasmuch as he was resident among us, and was fitted out from Bristol, at the cost of English merchants, on his voyages of discovery. It was in this career—which was part discover, part conquest, part commerce—that our Hawkinses, and Drakes, and Frobishers, and Raleighs were trained. And besides those historic names, there were scores of men who fitted out ships and entered upon the roads these pioneers had opened up, and completed their discoveries, and created the commerce whose possibility they had indicated.
The limitation of our subject to the mediæval period forbids us to enter further upon this tempting theme. But we may complete our brief series of illustrations of merchant shipping by giving a picture of one of the gallant little ships—little, indeed, compared with the ships which are now employed in our great lines of sea-traffic—in which those heroes accomplished their daring voyages. The woodcut is a reproduction from the frontispiece of one of Hulsius’ curious tracts on naval affairs, and represents the shipVictoria, in which Magellan sailed round the world, passing through the straits to which he gave his name. The epitaph that the author has subjoined to the engraving tells briefly the story of the famous ship:—
“Prima ego velivolvis ambivi cursibus orbemMagellane novo te duce ducta freto.Ambivi meritoque dicorVictoria: Sunt mihiVela, alæ, precium, gloria, pugna, mare.”
The ship, it will be seen, is not very different in general features from those of the Middle Ages which we have been considering. It has thehigh prow and stern with their castles, it has shields outside the bulwarks, in imitation of the way in which, as we have seen in former illustrations, the mediæval men-at-arms hung their shields over the bulwark of the ship in which they sailed. But it has decks (apparently two), and is armed with cannon at the bows and stern.
The Ship Victoria.
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 ownprofit. 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 freetowns 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 alwayStands 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 tothe 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 Normankings, 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.
Entry of Queen Isabel of Bavaria into Paris,A.D.1389.
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 ofBavaria, 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 thebourgeoisof 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 withfleur-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 goldfleur-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 intime 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 thatstyle 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 1349A.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 1361A.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 monumentalbrasses, 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 governanceWith 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 wasTheir 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 burgessTo 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 displayedargent,guetté de sangue, afesseor. 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, yewhich deceased yeiiij day of May yeyere 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 leathergirdle 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.
Monumental Brass of Alderman Field and his Son,A.D.1474.
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 thepeople 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.
An Execution in Paris.
The last cut is taken from the painted glass at Tournay of the fifteenth century, and representsmarchands 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 oneHe 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 letOf his accountes for the mene time;And thus he sat till it was passed prime.”
Marchands en Gros, Fifteenth Century.
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 dayShope him to maken ready his arrayToward the town of Brugges for to fareTo byen there a portion of ware.******The morrow came, and forth this marchant ridethTo Flaundersward, his prentis wel him gideth.Til he came into Brugges merily.Now goth this marchant fast and bisilyAbout his nede, and bieth and creanceth;He neither playeth at the dis ne danceth,But as a marchant shortly for to tellHe ledeth his lif, and ther I let him dwell.”
MEDIÆVAL TRADE.
It is difficult at first to believe it possible that the internal trade of mediæval England was carried on chiefly at great annual fairs for the wholesale business, at weekly markets for the chief towns, and by means of itinerant traders, of whom the modern pedlar is the degenerate representative, for the length and breadth of the country. In order to understand the possibility, we must recall to our minds how small comparatively was the population of the country. It was about two millions at the Norman Conquest, it had hardly increased to four millions by the end of the fifteenth century, it was only five millions in the time of William III. Nearly every one of our towns and villages then existed; but the London, and Bristol, and Norwich, and York of the fourteenth century, though they were relatively important places in the nation, were not one-tenth of the size of the towns into which they have grown. Manchester, and Leeds, and Liverpool, and a score of other towns, existed then, but they were mere villages; and the country population was thinly scattered over a half-reclaimed, unenclosed, pastoral country.
To begin with the fairs. The king exercised the sole power of granting the right to hold a fair. It was sought by corporations, monasteries, and manorial lords, in order that they might profit, first by the letting of ground to the traders who came to dispose of their wares, next by the tolls which were levied on all merchandise brought for sale, and on the sales themselves; and then indirectly by the convenience of getting a near market for the produce the neighbourhood had to sell, and for the goods it desired to buy.
The annexed woodcut, from the MS. Add. 24,189, represents passengers paying toll on landing at a foreign port, and perhaps belongs in strictness to an earlier part of our subject. The reader will notice the picturesque custom-house officers, the landing-places, and the indications of town architecture. The next illustration, from painted glass at Tournay (from La Croix and Seré’s “Moyen Age et la Renaissance”) shows a group of people crossing the bridge into a town, and the collector levying the toll. The oxen and pigs, the country-wife on horseback, with a lamb laid over the front of her saddle, represent the country-people and their farm-produce; the pack-horse and mule on the left, with their flat-capped attendant, are an interesting illustration of the itinerant trader bringing in his goods. The toll-collector seems to be, from his dress and bearing, a rather dignified official, and the countryman recognises it by touching his hat to him. The river and its wharves, and the boats moored alongside, and the indication of the town gates and houses, make up a very interesting sketch of mediæval life.
Passengers paying Toll.
Traders entering a Town.
There were certain great fairs to which traders resorted from all parts of the country. The great fair at Nijni Novgorod, and in a lesser degree the fair of Leipsic, remain to help us to realise such gatherings as Bartholomew Fair used to be. Even now the great horse-fair at Horncastle, and the stock-fair at Barnet, may help us to understand how it answered the purpose of buyers and sellers to meet annually at one general rendezvous. The gathering into one centre of the whole stock on sale and the whole demand for it, was not only in other ways a convenience to buyers and sellers, but especially it regulated the general prices current of all vendibles, and checked the capricious variations which a fluctuating local supply and demand would have created in the then condition of the country and of commerce. The king sometimes, by capricious exercises of his authority in the subject of fairs, seriously interfered with the interests of those who frequented them—e.g.by granting license to hold a new fair which interfered with one already established; by licensing a temporary fair, and forbidding trade to be carried on elsewhere during its continuance. Thus in 1245A.D.Henry II. proclaimed a fair at Westminster to be held for fifteen days, and required all the London traders to shut up their shops and bring their goods to the fair. It happened that the season was wet; few consequently came to the fair, and the traders’ goods were injured by the rain which penetrated into their temporary tents and stalls. He repeated the attempt to benefit Westminster four years afterwards, with a similar result.
Of course when great crowds were gathered together for days in succession, and money was circulating abundantly, there would be others who would seek a profitable market besides the great dealers in woolfels and foreign produce. The sellers of ribbands and cakes would be there, purveyors of food and drink for the hungry and thirsty multitude, caterers for the amusement of the people, minstrels and jugglers, exhibitors of morality-plays and morrice-dancers, and still less reputable people. And so, besides the men who came for serious business, there would be a mob ofpleasure-seekers also. The crowd of people of all ranks and classes from every part of the country, with the consequent variety of costume in material, fashion, and colour—the knight’s helm and coat of mail, or embroideredjuponand plumed bonnet, the lady’s furred gown and jewels, the merchant’s sober suit of cloth, the minstrel’s gay costume and the jester’s motley, the monk’s robe and cowl, and the peasant’s smockfrock, continually in motion up and down the streets of the temporary canvas town, the music of the minstrels, the cries of the traders, the loud talk and laughter of the crowd—must have made up a picturesque scene, full of animation.
When the real business of the country had found other channels, the fairs still continued—and in many places still continue—as mere “pleasure-fairs;” still the temporary stalls lining the streets, and the drinking-booths and shows, preserve something of the old usages and outward aspect, though, it must be confessed, they are dreary, desolate relics of what the mediæval fairs used to be. The fair was usually proclaimed by sound of trumpet, before which ceremony it was unlawful to begin traffic, or after the conclusion of the legal term for which the fair was granted. A court ofpie-poudreheld its sittings for the cognizance of offences committed in the fair. Many of our readers will remember the spirited description of such a fair in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of “The Betrothed.”
In the great towns were shops in which retail trade was daily carried on, but under very different conditions from those of modern times. The various trades seem to have been congregated together, and the trading parts of the town were more concentrated than is now the case; in both respects resembling the bazaars of Eastern towns. Thus in London the tradesmen had shops in the Cheap, which resembled sheds, and many of them were simply stalls. But they did not limit themselves to their dealings there; they travelled about the country also. The mercers dealt in toys, drugs, spices, and small wares generally; their stocks being of the same miscellaneous description as that of a village-shop of the present day. The station of the mercers of London was between Bow Church and Friday Street, and here round the old cross of Cheap they sold their goods at little standings or stalls, surrounded by those belonging to other trades. The trade of the modern grocer was preceded by that of the pepperer,which was often in the hands of Lombards and Italians, who dealt also in drugs and spices. The drapers were originally manufacturers of cloth; to drape meaning to make cloth. The trade of the fishmonger was divided into two branches, one of which dealt exclusively in dried fish, then a very common article of food. The goldsmiths had their shops in the street of Cheap; but fraudulent traders of their craft, and not members of their guild, set up shops in obscure lanes, where they sold goods of inferior metal. A list of the various trades and handicrafts will afford a general idea of the trade of the town. Before the 50th of Edward III. (1376A.D.) the “mysteries” or trades of London, who elected the Common Council of the city, were thirty-two in number; but they were increased by an ordinance of that year to forty-eight, which were as follows:—grocers, masons, ironmongers, mercers, brewers, leather-dressers, drapers, fletchers, armourers, fishmongers, bakers, butchers, goldsmiths, skinners, cutlers, vintners, girdlers, spurriers, tailors, stainers, plumbers, saddlers, cloth-measurers, wax-chandlers, webbers, haberdashers, barbers, tapestry-weavers, braziers, painters, leather-sellers, salters, tanners, joiners, cappers, pouch-makers, pewterers, chandlers, hatters, woodmongers, fullers, smiths, pinners, curriers, horners.
As a specimen of a provincial town we may take Colchester. A detailed description of this town in the reign of Edward III. shows that it contained only 359 houses, some built of mud, others of timber. None of the houses had any but latticed windows. The town-hall was of stone, with handsome Norman doorway. It had also a royal castle, three or more religious houses—one a great and wealthy abbey—several churches, and was surrounded by the old Roman wall. The number of inhabitants was about three thousand. Yet Colchester was the capital of a large district of country, and there were only about nine towns in England of greater importance. In the year 1301 all the movable property of the town, including the furniture and clothing of the inhabitants, was estimated, for the purpose of a taxation, to be worth £518, and the details give us a curious picture of the times. The tools of a carpenter consisted of a broad axe, value 5d., another 3d., an adze 2d., a square 1d., anoveyn(probably a spokeshave) 1d., making the total value of his tools 1s.Thetools and stock of a blacksmith were valued at only a few shillings, the highest being 12s.The stock-in-trade and household goods of a tanner were estimated at £9 17s.10d.A mercer’s stock was valued at £3, his household property at £2 9s.The trades carried on there were the twenty-nine following:—Baker, barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, glass-seller, glover, linen-draper, mercer and spice-seller, miller, mustard and vinegar seller, old clothes-seller, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver, wood-cutter, and wool-comber. Our woodcut, from the MS. Add. 27,695, which has already supplied us with several valuable illustrations, represents a mediæval shop of a high class, probably a goldsmith’s. The shopkeeper eagerly bargaining with his customer is easily recognised, the shopkeeper’s clerk is making an entry of the transaction, and the customer’s servant stands behind him, holding some of his purchases; flagons and cups and dishes seem to be the principal wares; heaps of money lie on the table, which is covered with a handsome tablecloth, and in the background are hung on a “perch,” for sale, girdles, a hand-mirror, a cup, a purse, and sword.
A Goldsmith’s Shop.
Here, from “Le Pélerinage de la Vie Humaine,” in the French National Library,[412]is another illustration of a mediæval shop. This is a mercer’s, and the merceress describes her wares in the following lines:—
“Quod sche, ‘Gene[413]I schal the telleMercerye I have to selleIn boystes,[414]soote oynementes,[415]Therewith to don allegementes[416]To ffolkes which be not gladde,But discorded and malade.I have kyves, phylletys, callys,At ffestes to hang upon walles;Kombes no mo than nyne or ten,Bothe for horse and eke ffor men;Mirrours also, large and brode,And ffor the syght wonder gode;Off hem I have ffull greet plenté,For ffolke that haven voluntéByholde himselffe therynne.’”
In some provincial towns, as Nottingham, the names of several of the streets bear witness to an aggregation of traders of the same calling. Bridlesmith Gate was clearly the street in which the knights and yeomen of the shire resorted for their horse-furniture and trappings, and in the open stalls of Fletcher Gate sheaves of arrows were hung up for sale to the green-coated foresters of neighbouring Sherwood. The only trace ofthe custom we have left is in the butcheries and shambles which exist in many of our towns, where the butchers’ stalls are still gathered together in one street or building.
French National Library.
But the greater part of the trade of the towns was transacted on market-days. Then the whole neighbourhood flocked in, the farmers to sell their farm produce, their wives and daughters with their poultry and butter and eggs for the week’s consumption of the citizens, and to carry back with them their town-purchases. In every market-town there was usually a wide open space—the market-place—for the accommodation of this weekly traffic; in the principal towns were several market-places, appropriated to different kinds of produce:e.g.at Nottingham, besides the principal market-place—a vast open space in the middle of the town, surrounded by overhanging houses supported on pillars, making open colonnades like those of an Italian town—there was a “poultry” adjoining the great market, and a “butter-cross” in the middle of a small square, in which it is assumed the women displayed their butter. In an old-fashioned provincial market-town, the market-day is still the one day in the week on which the streets are full of bustle and the shops of business, while on the other days of the week the town stagnates; it must have been still more the case in the old times of which we write. In some instances there seems reason to think a weekly market was held in places which had hardly any claim to be called towns—mere villages, on whose green the neighbourhood assembled for the weekly market. Round the green, perhaps, a few stalls and booths were erected for the day; pedlars probably supplied the shop element; and artificers from neighbouring towns came in for the day, as in some of our villages now the saddler and the shoemaker and the watchmaker attend once a week to do the makings and mendings which are required. There are still to be seen in a few old-fashioned towns and remote country places market-crosses in the market-place or on the village-green. They usually consist of a tall cross of stone, round the lower part of whose shaft a penthouse of stone or wood has been erected to shelter the market-folks from rain and sun. There is such a cross at Salisbury; a good example of a village market-cross at Castle Combe, in Gloucestershire, one of wood at Shelford, in Cambridgeshire,and many others up and down the country, well worthy of being collected and illustrated by the antiquary before they are swept away. Our illustration, from the painted glass at Tournay, represents a market scene, the women sitting on their low stools, with their baskets of goods displayed on the ground before them. The female on the left seems to be filling up her time by knitting; the woman on the right is paying her market dues to the collector, who, as in the cut on p. 505, is habited as a clerk. The background appears to represent a warehouse, where transactions of a larger kind are going on.
A Market Scene.
But the inhabitants of rural districts were not altogether dependent on a visit to the nearest market for their purchases. The pursuit of gain enlisted the services of numerous itinerant traders, who traversed the land in all directions, calling at castle and manor house, monastery, grange, and cottage; and by the tempting display of pretty objects, and the handy supply of little wants, brought into healthy circulation many a silver penny which would otherwise have jingled longer in the owner’sgypcire, or rested in the hoard in the homely stocking-foot. An entry in that mine of curious information, the York Fabric Rolls, reveals an incident in the pedlar’s mode of dealing. It is a presentation, that is, a complaint, made to the Archbishop by the churchwardens of the parish of Riccall, in Yorkshire, under the date 1519A.D.They represent, in the dog-Latin of the time: “Item, quod Calatharii(AnglicePedlars),veniunt diebus festis in porticum ecclesiæ et ibidem vendunt mercimonium suum.” ThatCalatharii—that is to say, Pedlars—come into the church-porch on feast-days, and there sell their merchandise. From another entry in the same records it seems that sometimes the chapmen congregated in such numbers that the gathering assumed the proportions of an irregular weekly market. Thus among the presentations in 1416, is one from St. Michael de Berefredo, St. Michael-le-Belfry, in the city of York, which states, “The parishioners say that a common market of vendibles is held in the churchyard on Sundays and holidays, and divers things and goods and rushes are exposed there for sale.” The complaint is as early as the fourth century; for we find St. Basil mentioning as one abuse of the great church-festivals, that men kept markets at these times and places under colour of making better provision for the feasts which were kept thereat.