Medieval Merchants

A Merchants Mark
This one is
Richard Wykes  of Bristol

Pomeroy Merchants - Research Notes

Merchant families such as the Roopes, the Teages, the Holdsworths and the Hunt created fortunes, and dynasties,
through this trade leaving a legacy within the  Dartmouth town.

Nicholas of Tewkesbury was Nicholas Pomeroy Lord of Dartmouth  3rd of 5 sons of

Sir Henry Pomeroy & his first wife Joan Moels

 Five Sons of Henry  link here

A Record found by  Alma LeFrance Moray  shows that

  Devon Record Office  3799M-0/ET/7/4b  1372    Declaration of the uses of a conveyance

1. Thomas of la Pomeray

2. William Cary, Renauld Hors[ ], Piers Silverloc and John of Baucomb

Premises: all 1.'s lands and tenements, rents and services in Welcomb, Lake, Herwardesheghes, Est Wode, Walles, Stockleigh Pomeroy, Cheriton Fitzpayne, Dynnescomb, Teyng Hervy and Sandrugg


&


Thomas of la Pomerai is going to a journey for the king. If he returns from the journey he is to hold the premises as before. If he dies on the journey before he can re-enter the premises, then 2. are to hold them for Johane his wife, William his son, and the heirs of the body of William. 

For default of such issue, the premises are to remain to the heirs of the body of 1., and for default, to Nicholas, brother of 1. and the heirs of his body.

If Nicholas has no heirs of the body, the premises remain to William, brother of Nicholas and the heirs of his body, and for default, with remainder to the right heirs of 1.

Date: Wednesday next before the feast of St Laurence, 46 Edward III 1373

Thomas's son William married and had at least 1 son,   Edward, the next heir to the Pomeroy barony.  He married Margaret Beville daughter of John Beville by his 1st wife Margaret  de Collaton  MP for CORNWALL  and Sheriff of Cornwall. A good match for on Beville's death he held the family property at Woolston (Cornwall), Barkington and Sparkwell (Staverton near Totnes in Devon), his de Collaton wife’s inheritance of the manor and hundred of North Petherton (Somerset) and Grindham, ‘Faryngton’ and ‘Iwode’ (formerly Bluet property) in the same county.  Elsewhere, in Devon and Cornwall, he owned 35 messuages and some 850 acres of land.

These estates alone gave him an income of about £60 a year.  Beville was able to lend 60 marks to the Crown in 1415, receiving as security (with other Devon men) ‘the duke of Burgundy’s great tabernacle’. He died on 13 Jan. 1426, leaving a son Humphrey, then aged 17 years, as his heir.

Visitations show that Edward  was married to Margaret  Beville  with a prenuptial agreement dated 1404 but the post nuptial settlement  was in 1435 suggesting to me that this an arrangement  & marriage made when Margaret was a child. She died in 1461 .

Their eldest son Henry was 30 when his father died in 1446 so EDB circa 1416 which might confirm the child marriage

Edward & Margaret had to wait until 1426 to inherit the Pomeroy barony to which was he was named heir after the 1416 death of Sir John Pomeroy without male heir.  

  Thomas Pomeroy Esq; of the cadet line in Bockerell & Upottery who had married the co-heir Johanna Chudleigh in 1388 & was knighted in 1400 had by chicanery taken the barony from its rightful path. He died in 1426 after which Edward & his wife Margaret had 20 years as Lord of Berry Pomeroy before he died in 1446



Nicholas of Tewkesbury research notes here

15th Century Guilds and Merchant Adventurers


The medieval gilds were generally one of two types: merchant gilds or craft gilds.

CRAFT GUILDS

Craft guilds, on the other hand, were occupational associations that usually comprised all the artisans and craftsmen in a particular branch of industry or commerce. There were, for instance, guilds of weavers, dyers, and fullers in the wool trade and of masons and architects in the building trade; and there were guilds of painters, metalsmiths,  blacksmiths, bakers, butchers, leatherworkers,  soapmakers & tallow merchants who made essential like soap & candles and so on.


MERCHANT GUILDS

These were associations of all or most of the merchants in a particular town or city; these men might be local or long-distance traders, wholesale or retail sellers, and might deal in various categories of goods.

Guilds performed a variety of important functions in the local economy. They established a monopoly of trade in their locality or within a particular branch of industry or commerce; they set and maintained standards for the quality of goods and the integrity of trading practices in that industry; they worked to maintain stable prices for their goods and commodities; and they sought to control town or city governments in order to further the interests of the guild members and achieve their economic objectives.

After the trade guilds gradually disappeared they were replaced by LIVERY COMPANIES which still exist today .The livery companies of the City of London, currently 110 in number, comprise London's ancient and modern trade associations and guilds, almost all of which are styled the "Worshipful Company of..." their respective craft, trade or professions.


Today  there still remains 39 out of 110 City livery companies  that own premises in London, as well as the Watermen and Lightermen which although not strictly a livery company, retains headquarters still in regular use.

Among the earliest companies known to have had halls are the Merchant Taylors and Goldsmiths in the 14th-century, and, uniquely, the kitchen and the crypt of Merchant Taylors' Hall survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz, the kitchen now having been in uninterrupted use for over 600 years.


Besides surviving parts of Merchant Taylors' Hall, the oldest hall now extant is that of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, dating from 1672. Several companies that do not have a hall of their own share office premises within the hall of another company on a semi-permanent basis, examples being the Spectacle Makers' Company, which uses part of Apothecaries' Hall, and the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, which co-habits with the Ironmongers 

 Many livery halls can be hired for business and social functions, and are popular for weddings, commercial and society meetings, luncheons and dinners.

WOOLMEN

This Company grew out of the ancient guild which regulated the wool trade. The first record of its existence was when it was fined by King Henry II for operating without his license. This was in 1180 so it is safe to say that we are well over eight hundred years old – somewhat older than the office of Lord Mayor itself!

Although Henry II is remembered for his deadly friendship with Thomas Beckett his Archbishop of Canterbury, nevertheless he was responsible for organising England (then still more an occupied country than a kingdom) and he established much that we take as part of our life today. It was natural that the king would wish to regulate the ancient guilds some of which pre-dated the conquest of England by his Norman great-grandfather, William, in 1066.

For hundreds of years when wool prospered so did England. Consider for a moment the great Wool Churches. The reverse was also true. When wool suffered so did the nation.

So concerned was Queen Elizabeth I about the wool trade that she had Parliament make everyone over the age of six (except the wealthiest) wear on Sundays “a cap of wool knit and dressed in England”.

Under Charles II Parliament passed a law requiring coffins to be lined in fleece and shrouds to be made of wool. Later, carriages had to be lined with it.

Perhaps much of the interest of successive kings lay in the substantial taxes they raised on the sale of wool. Wool was weighed on a Great Beam one of which stood close to where Mansion House now stands in the centre of the City. The measure – or staple – was a uniform weight which governed exports to Europe – an early example of European standardisation! Some of the taxes went to build Old London Bridge which was said to have been built on sacks of wool.

So the life of Woolmen's Company runs like a long woollen thread woven into the history of England.


The association of the Guild of Woolmen with taxes and with licensing the most important woolmongers brought an association of the Company with the Law and lawyers which continues to this day. The Lord Chancellor sits in the House of Lords on a Woolsack as everybody knows. A woolsack has long been a symbol of the wealth of England.


From the very start many distinguished people have been members of the Company, among the earliest was Martin Box, sheriff of London in 1283-4. They produced at least three Lord Mayors of London. Most have been active in the Wool Industry and that tradition continues to this day.

  From ancient times alum was used as a mordant for madder dye... centuries later it was imported to England where madder was the most commonly used dye. There was Alum Piracy after Henry Tudor refused to support the Papal alum project. This produced alum shortages in England. 

During the fifteenth century attempts were made in Ireland, Cornwall, the Isle of Wight and in Dorset to create industrial alum, but they all ending in failure. 

British privateers began to seize ships of Papal alum and divert them to England. In a letter (1529 CE) to Cardinal Wolsey, Sir John Daunce explained that he had seized a ship of alum, whose cargo was secured in a house in London

Then in 1607 a source was discovered in the cliffs around Whitby and for several hundred years the cliffs had the shale containg alum extracted. The making alum for industrial alum requires alum shale, wood, coal, seaweed and human urine. Poor poeple were paid for their urine which was collected as far away as London

Under Henry VII's charter of 1505, the company had a governor and 24 assistants. The members were trading investors, and most of them were probably mercers of the City of London. However, the company also had members from York, Norwich, Exeter, Ipswich, Newcastle, Hull, and other places. The merchant adventurers of these towns were separate but affiliated bodies. The Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol was a separate group of investors, chartered by Edward VI in 1552.


Under Henry VII, the merchants who were not of London complained about restraint of trade. They had once traded freely with Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, but the London company was imposing a fine of £20, which was driving them out of their markets. Henry VII required the fine to be reduced to 10 marks (£3, 6s and 8d).[6] Conflict arose with the Merchants of the Staple, who sought to diversify from exporting wool through Calais into exporting cloth to Flanders without having to become freemen of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. The Merchant Adventurers kept control of their trade and Flanders as their port. Foreign merchants of the Hanseatic League had considerable privileges in English trade and competed with the Merchant Adventurers, but these privileges were revoked by the English government in the mid-16th century.


The Merchant Adventurers decided to use other ports. Emden in East Friesland and Hamburg competed to serve the Merchant Adventurers of England, who chose Emden. They soon found, however, that the port failed to attract sufficient merchants to buy the English merchants' wares, so they left abruptly and returned to Antwerp. Operations there were interrupted by Queen Elizabeth's seizing Spanish treasure ships, which were conveying money to the Duke of Alva, governor of the Netherlands. 

Although trade was resumed at Antwerp from 1573 to 1582, its declining fortunes ceased with the fall of the city and the subsequent development of the Amsterdam Entrepôt, and the Dutch Golden Age.

Under the charter of 1564, the company's court consisted of a governor (elected annually by members beyond the seas), his deputies, and 24 Assistants. Admission was by patrimony (being the son of a merchant who was free of the company at the time of the son's birth), service (apprenticeship to a member), redemption (purchase) or 'free gift'. By the time of the accession of James I in 1603, there were at least 200 members. They gradually increased the fees for admission.

The WORSHIPFUL COMPANIES OF LONDON 

Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors* (tailors)

Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers (wooden-shoe makers) I found a Pomeroy apprentice

Worshipful Company of Mercers (general merchants)

Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors* (tailors)

Worshipful Company of Vintners (wine merchants)

The Shipwrights' Company, unlike other livery companies, has not received a Royal Charter because maritime trade by definition was never confined within the boundaries of the Square Mile; instead a corporate body of London shipwrights grew over time, their first recorded reference being in the twelfth century;

Worshipful Company of Mercers (general merchants)

Worshipful Company of Grocers (spice merchants)

Worshipful Company of Drapers (wool and cloth merchants)

Worshipful Company of Fishmongers

Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths (bullion dealers)

Worshipful Company of Skinners* (fur traders)

Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors* (tailors)

Worshipful Company of Haberdashers (clothiers in sewn and fine materials, eg. silk & velvet)

Worshipful Company of Salters (traders of salts and chemicals)

Worshipful Company of Ironmongers

Worshipful Company of Vintners (wine merchants)

Worshipful Company of Clothworkers

Worshipful Company of Dyers

Worshipful Company of Brewers

Worshipful Company of Leathersellers

Worshipful Company of Pewterers (pewter and metal manufacturers)

Worshipful Company of Barbers (incl. surgeons and dentists)

Worshipful Company of Cutlers (knife, sword and utensil makers)

Worshipful Company of Bakers

Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers (wax candle makers)

Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers (tallow candle makers)

Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers (armour makers and brass workers)

Worshipful Company of Girdlers (belt and girdle makers)

Worshipful Company of Butchers

Worshipful Company of Saddlers

Worshipful Company of Carpenters

Worshipful Company of Cordwainers (fine leather workers and shoemakers)

Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers

Worshipful Company of Curriers (leather dressers and tanners)

Worshipful Company of Masons (stonemasons)

Worshipful Company of Plumbers

Worshipful Company of Innholders (tavern keepers)

Worshipful Company of Founders (metal casters and melters)

Worshipful Company of Poulters (poulterers)

Worshipful Company of Cooks

Worshipful Company of Coopers (barrel and cask makers)

Worshipful Company of Tylers and Bricklayers (builders)

Worshipful Company of Bowyers (long-bow makers)

Worshipful Company of Fletchers (arrow makers)

Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths

Worshipful Company of Joiners and Ceilers (wood craftsmen)

Worshipful Company of Weavers

Worshipful Company of Woolmen

Worshipful Company of Scriveners (court scribes and notaries public)

Worshipful Company of Fruiterers

Worshipful Company of Plaisterers (plasterers)

Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (journalists and publishers)

Worshipful Company of Broderers (embroiderers)

Worshipful Company of Upholders (upholsterers)

Worshipful Company of Musicians

Worshipful Company of Turners (lathe operators)

Worshipful Company of Basketmakers

Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass

Worshipful Company of Horners (horn workers and plasticians)

Worshipful Company of Farriers (horseshoe makers and horse veterinarians)

Worshipful Company of Paviors (road and highway pavers)

Worshipful Company of Loriners (equestrian bit, bridle and spur suppliers)

Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (physicians and pharmacists)

Worshipful Company of Shipwrights (shipbuilders and maritime professionals)

Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers

Worshipful Company of Clockmakers

Worshipful Company of Glovers

Worshipful Company of Feltmakers (hat makers)

Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters

Worshipful Company of Needlemakers

Worshipful Company of Gardeners

Worshipful Company of Tin Plate Workers

Worshipful Company of Wheelwrights

Worshipful Company of Distillers

Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers

Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers

Worshipful Company of Gunmakers

Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers (threadmakers for military and society clothing)

Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards

Worshipful Company of Fanmakers

and others today

Merchants in Ports were sometimes also Privateers;  which differed from piracy, which preyed indiscriminately on the ships of any nation.
Ships of neutral countries were meant to be left alone, as were French ships during the various truces of the war.

But the Dartmouth shipmen had their eye on profit rather than diplomacy, and their dubious activities meant that the king’s authorities frequently had to wade in to settle complaints from abroad.

John Hawley was one of the richest and most successful of these ‘privateers’ in Dartmouth and was repeatedly commissioned by the king to ‘keep the seas’. Two of his ships even formed a part of Richard II’s escort to France for his marriage to Isabella of France in 1395.

Hawley was elected mayor of Dartmouth 14 times, and was twice the town’s MP. He was even made a collector of customs. Yet Chaucer’s fictional shipman from Dartmouth, apparently based on Hawley (whom he had met in 1373), suggests that he was no saint. Chaucer described a ruthless character who took no account of ‘nice conscience’, kept a dagger on a cord about his neck, and sent his enemies ‘home by water’ – that is, made them walk the plank, or simply sunk their ships.

The evidence certainly suggests that Hawley was more unscrupulous than most of his fellow privateers, often overstepping the boundary between legitimate privateering and out-and-out piracy. He was frequently summoned to account for himself, repeatedly warned, and even thrown into the Tower of London for six weeks in 1406. He was released only after pledging to compensate some merchants in Barcelona.

One trader from Piedmont spent many years trying to get compensation for Hawley’s lucrative seizure of his cargo of olive oil and wine.

But still the king mostly turned a blind eye, profiting alongside Hawley and his fellow privateers. Even in the last year of his life, when he was nearly 60, Hawley was one of a number of shipmen accused of illegally seizing 17 foreign ships.


He was buried in splendour in Dartmouth’s grandest church, St Saviour’s, alongside a huge brass portrait of himself, flanked by his two wives.



A Guild of Merchants was founded in Bristol by the 13th century, and swiftly became active in civic life; by the 15th century it had become synonymous with the town's government. It funded John Cabot's voyage of discovery to Newfoundland in 1497. The society in its current form was established by a 1552 Royal Charter from Edward VI granting the society a monopoly on Bristol's sea trade. They remained in effective control of Bristol Docks until 1848


Although there is no clear documentary evidence, the Society of Merchant Venturers is believed to have evolved from a Guild of Merchants which existed in the 13th century.

In 1467 the Corporation of Bristol drew up Ordinances for a Fellowship of Merchants providing that ‘the Mayor and Sheriff choose a worshipful man that hath been Mayor or Sheriff to be master of the fellowship of merchants’.

The Society of Merchant Venturers was been connected to Bristol’s sea-faring tradition since its inception, backing many epic voyages over the centuries including John Cabot’s ‘discovery’ of Newfoundland in 1497.

Henry VI in 1448 reinforced the prohibition of the Danish King Christian I on direct voyages to Iceland.

Proceedings in the Court of the Exchequer concerning the ship the 'Christopher alias the 'Busshe' of Bristol.     Freighted on April 1448 ostensibly sailing for Ireland with a cargo belonging to various merchants , of salt, iron, mead, malt, flour, honey and cloth which was sent illegally to Iceland. The ship returned to Bristol with a cargo of stockfish, and saltfish belonging to Robert Scales a Bristol tailor and John Foster a Bristol merchant. Forfitted to the King


page 136 CALENDAR OF PATENT ROLLS.1447.

18 Oct. 1447 at , Westminster, Appointment of Richard Forster, mayor of Bristol, Thomas Yonge and Richard Chok to deliver the gaol of Bristol of Thomas Lewes


26 Nov 1447 Westminster, Commission to Thomas Gylle the elder (Dartmouth) and Thomas Trefrye (Fowey) to survey all ships, barges and boats laden the ports and other waters and places along the coasts of Cornwall with wools, hides, wool-fells,(sheepskins) woollen cloths and other customable wares for foreign parts, whereon merchants have paid no custom, and to arrest the same and certify the king in the Exchequer of the names of the guilty and of the wares and their value.


The Widening Gate Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 David Harris Sacks

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London © 1992 The Regents of the University of California


First, by the 1340s Bristol’s boundaries no longer successfully contained its burgesses’ involvement in woolen manufacture. The combing of wool, spinning of yarn, and weaving, fulling, finishing, buying, and selling of cloth by Bristolians or their employees now took place in the countryside as well as the city. 

Second, a distinct group of entrepreneurs operating on a large scale had emerged to dominate the industry. To be sure, the industry still sustained a relatively large number of independent producers in Bristol. In 1346, for example, eighty-eight fullers resided in the city, most presumably still using the old walking technique to treat their cloth. But even among these men significant signs of change abounded. Although various ordinances stipulate wages to be paid workers at the stocks and the perch, instruments associated with the older techniques for shrinking and thickening woolens, much of the actual fulling appears to have occurred at mills located in the Mendip and Cotswold hills, with only the “rekkyng, pleyting and amending” of the cloth taking place in Bristol itself. Some of the fullers, then, seem to have become clothiers responsible for organizing the finishing stages of production. 

At the same time, weaving seems to have fallen under the control of a small group of entrepreneurs, who put out woolen yarn to weavers in both country and town. From other sources we know of the existence of individuals such as Thomas Blanket who maintained large workshops in their own houses, containing “divers instruments for weaving” operated by a number of “weavers and other workmen.” Many of these men participated actively as merchant drapers and as cloth exporters to the overseas markets. Some traded in a wide variety of goods, including dyestuffs, wine, and oil among imports; leather and wool as well as cloth among exports. Thus in place of the antique ideal upheld by the city’s ordinances, we have an industry organized along distinctly proto-capitalist lines.

According to E. M. Carus-Wilson, William Canynges the Younger, one of Bristol’s, and indeed England’s, richest men in the fifteenth century, held “fourteen shops, at least seventeen tenements, a close and two gardens in Bristol, and lands in Wells, the hundred of Wells and Westbury on Trym.”

He also owned at least ten ships, which William Worcester tells us directly employed about eight hundred men. Nevertheless, Canynges, once a merchant in his own right, had ceased to trade. Trade in this period, focused as it was narrowly on cloth and wine, exchanged among only a small network of traders in a handful of ports, did not readily lend itself to great concentrations of wealth.

For the Bristol entrepreneurs, the only avenues for long-term investment were property and ships, and many of the leading men in the fifteenth century put their hard-earned profits into these ventures as they drew back from the risks of everyday dealings. But for most of the others, trade remained centered on cloth, until the great changes of the second half of the fifteenth century altered this pattern forever


Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies By E.M Carus-Wilson.

In the early part of the 15th century English ships from Dartmouth were the most numerous 27 of them belonged to merchants there with 13 from London, and 9 from Bristol.

Th bulk of the import trade being in wine from Bordeaux. 200 ships a year arrived in Bordeaux in early spring sailing in large groups for safety with Royal protection granted . English ships that left bordeaux were bound for channel ports as well as Southampton, Bristol, Hull and London, the journey to London taking 10 days. 


Imported WOAD from Bayonne was used to produce wool cloth dye, blue and shades thereof depending on the other dyestuff used, as well as the mordents, alum and potash, which were used to fix the dyes.