Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2. Green Alice Stopford

he was to give three tenements in Oxford; he was to make provision for them in his own house for eight years, and when after that they were to be set up in a house of their own he was to provide them with a bed, blankets, sheets, and all other furniture needful for the same bed, a vessel for water, a wine vase, two tablecloths, two towels, twelve silver spoons, two cups, two brass pots, one chawfre, four plates, one dozen vessels for garnishing the supper, two salts, two candle-sticks. Hist. MSS. Com. xi. 3, 75-6.

133

See Nott. Rec. iii. 74-76, 342, 353, 358-60, 461, 463. The holding offices of all kinds by victuallers and brewers was forbidden (Stat. 12, Ed. II. cap. 6. 6 Ri. II. st. 1, cap. 9, H.M.C. ix. 174, xi. 3, 19), as a protection to the people from fraudulent administration of the laws concerning food; but these statutes were everywhere broken.

134

(See pp. 352-3.)

135

H.M.C. ix. 173-4.

136

According to Thorold Rogers (Agric. and Prices, iv. 502-5) about 20 per cent. in excess. Skilled workmen, such as architects, artists, trained clerks, &c., were paid at very modest rates, though sometimes they were given honour by being boarded as gentlemen.

137

Statutes, 12 Richard II. cap. 3.

138

Riley’s Liber Albus, 261-2.

139

For particulars of truck wages see Stat. 4 Edward IV. cap. 1. This payment on the truck system was spoken of as a new thing in the middle of the fifteenth century (Wright’s Political Songs, ii. 285), and is referred to in Libel of English Policy. It was forbidden by town ordinance in Winchester and Worcester. (English Guilds, 352, 383.)

140

Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 213-14.

141

Piers Ploughman. Passes vii. 215-249.

142

For a description of the various deceits practised in cloth-making see 3 Richard II. stat. cap. 2. Stat. of Westminster 7 Richard II. cap. 9; 15 Richard II. cap. 10. In 1221 the jurors of Worcester were already complaining that the assize of the breadth of cloth was not observed. Select Pleas of the Crown, Selden Soc. 97.

143

Piers Ploughman. Pass. i. 33-4.

144

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 259; xi. 3, 70-73, 111. Davies’ Southampton, 82. Hunt’s Bristol, 74, 97-8.

145

Survey of Birmingham, 50, 51, 52. See above, p. 63.

146

Journ. Archæol. Ass. xxvii. 110-148. This as one among many proofs tends to show how wealth was passing not so much to the mere land-owners as to the new tenants who were combining the cloth trade with big sheep farms – the enterprising speculators who were on the watch for the cheap lands of ruined lords to increase their own business.

147

Members of the Pepperers Company began to replace the Jews at the King’s exchange in the thirteenth century (Kingdon’s Grocers’ Company, i. x-xii.)

148

Von Ochenkowski, 112, 125. The upgrowth of the true class of merchants is shewn in the Hull Guild whose ordinances date from 1499 (Lambert’s Guild Life, 157-160) and the York Mistery of Mercers of 1430, (Ibid. 167).

149

For the forbidding of exportation of gold and silver and the consequent regulations about travellers by sea, see 5 Richard II. St. i. cap. 2.

150

The Chancellor of England was given power to enquire and judge on dealings of “dry exchange,” and also Justices of the Peace of the neighbouring counties. Stat. 3 Henry VII. cap. 6. Compare Luchaire, Communes Françaises, 242-4.

151

When in the parable of Piers Ploughman the wicked Lady Mede defends corrupt gain by the argument that merchandise cannot exist without meed or reward the answer of Conscience is that trade is nothing but pure barter.

“In merchandise is no meed I may it well avow

It is a permutation apertelich [evidently] one penny-worth for another.

” – Piers Ploughman. Pass. iv. 282, 315, 316.

See also the limits set even on barter —

“For it is simony to sell what sent is of grace

That is wit and water, wind, and fire the forth:

These four should be free to all folk that it needeth.”

Ibid. Pass. x. 55-7. Here, however, he has doubtless in his mind the lord’s mill on the hill or by the stream, the rights of turbary and of gathering wood in the forest, and the great need of the people – protection in the law-courts.

152

Von Ochenkowski, 165, 167, 245-9.

153

Piers Ploughman. Passus x. 26.

154

“And though they wend by the way the two together,

Though the messenger make his way amid the wheat

Will no wise man wroth be, nor his wed take;

Is not hayward yhote [ordered] his wed for to take;

But if the merchant make his way over men’s corn,

And the hayward happen with him for to meet,

Either his hat or his hood, or else his gloves

The merchant must forego, or the money of his purse.”

– Piers Ploughman. Pass. xiv. 42-50.

155

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

156

Plummer’s Fortescue, 235.

157

Piers Ploughman. Pass. vii. 278-285.

158

Ibid. Pass. xiv. 50-51.

159

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

160

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

161

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

162

Hunt’s Bristol, 75, 93-5; 126-8.

163

Hunt’s Bristol, 94-5, 108. A Bristol grocer left 350 ounces of silver plate to be divided among his children. Ibid. 108. The first fork we hear of in England in 1443 belonged to a citizen family in York. “Unum par cultellorum vocat’ ‘karving knyves’ et unum par forpicum argenteorum.” (Plumpton Correspondence, xxxiv.)

164

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

165

Boys’ Sandwich, 149, 185, 186.

166

The plate of S. Mary’s, Sandwich, amounted to about 724 ounces of silver, and there was a good deal of silver gilt; it had splendid brocade of gold of Venice and of Lucca, and a mass of vestments of white damask powdered with gold of Venice, and blue velvet powdered with fleurs de lis, or with moons and stars, and so on. (Boys’ Sandwich, 375.) A burgess of Wycombe, Redehode, fitted up the church with beautiful screens of carved wood, and added other gifts to its store of jewels and gilt crowns for Our Lady, and other ornaments of amber, silver, jet, turquoises, with rich garments and ermine fur, damasks, velvets, silks, a baldachino bearing green branches with birds of gold, magnificent robes of cloth of gold, &c., and splendid plate. (Hist. MSS. Com. v. 554-5.)

167

An ironmonger, Richard Fallande, set up a tablet in Hospital Hall to remind the townsfolk of the dangers and terrors of the old ford, of passengers drowned, of poor people pitilessly turned back, or wayfarers robbed of hood or girdle to satisfy the ferry-men’s greed. People were constantly drowned and

“Few folke there were coude that way wende

But they waged a wed or payed of her purse

And if it were a begger had breed in her bagge

He schulde be ryght soone i bid for to goo aboute

And of the poor penyles the hireward wold habbe

A hood or a girdel and let him goo withoute.”

(English Illustrated Magazine, May 1889, p. 951.) For Rochester Bridge, see Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 285.

168

Davies’ Southampton, 115.

169

Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 247. For similar bequests, Ibid. x. 4, p. 529-30. Ibid. ix. 208-10. The Common Weal (ed. E. Lamond), 18, 19.

170

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