LONDON TRADESMEN AND THEIR CREDITORS
Amongst the most valuable material for the economic
history of the middle ages are the recognisances of debt which
are frequently to be found in great numbers in the public
archives of states and municipalities As, however, the
obligations thus recorded obviously partake in many cases of
the nature of legal fictions, the interpretation of them is not a
task that can be lightly attempted, except in cases where they
constitute such a close sequence amongst themselves as to
cast light upon each other, or where they can be brought into
intelligible relations with the data of the same period Both
these conditions are fortunately fulfilled in the case of a
series of recognisances contained in the "Letter Books" of
the City of London, and in the following essay an attempt
will be made to use this material as a means of illustrating
the relations existing at the end of the thirteenth and the
beginning of the fourteenth centuries between the shopkeepers
of London in a variety of trades and their creditors
Let us begin with the trade in wine, which is the foreign
commodity that bulks largest in early commerce Wine was
the one article of daily consumption-for the middle and
upper classes a necessity rather than a luxury-that had to
be brought from abroad It came chiefly from Gascony and
the Rhineland The Liber Custumarum preserves a vivid
picture of the arrival of the Lorraine merchants with the wine
fleet They raise their ensign and sing Kyrie eleison as they
approach London Bridge There they may broach a tun of
wine and sell it at a penny a stoop retail After passing the
Bridge they must wait two ebb-tides and a flood so that the
Sheriff and the Chamberlain may come and have the first
pick of their wares on behalf of the King, for the ships
may be bringing not only wine from the district of Cologne
and Mainz, but also gold and silver cups and precious
stones, fine textiles and coats of mail that have come from
Constantinople by the Rhine route A London jury of
goldsmiths, drapers and mercers will set a price on such of
these wares as the King may fancy Then when the Sheriff
and Chamberlain have claimed two tuns of wine below the
mast and one before the masthead for the King's use at
reduced prices, the Lorrainers are free to sell by wholesale
first to the merchants of London, then to those of Oxford
and Winchester, and afterwards to other merchants and the
general public If they wish to seek customers on shore they
must first take registered lodgings and pay extra custom
In forty days they must depart, unless a storm or their debtor
detain them (fn. 1)
Acknowledgments of debt in the "Letter Books" show
us that not only noble and rich merchants but also well-to-do
craftsmen bought their wine direct at these times from the
foreign merchant Brokers were appointed by the city to
facilitate the bargains, and credit was given for three or six
months Wine could be readily stored it was as good as
money fines were generally levied in it in settling trade
disputes For this reason a class of native wholesale wine
merchants was slow to develop, especially as the Gascons,
with the King's connivance, frequently ignored the restrictions
set on their stay in the country The King, through his
officers, the Sheriff, the Chamberlain and Butler, dominated
the wine market, both as a buyer and as a seller He caused
much of the inferior wine levied as custom to be sold, and
bought large quantities of superior vintages Gregory
Rokesley and Henry le Waleys, who between them held the
mayoralty for ten years under Edward I, began their careers
as buyers of the King's wines But as this was only one
of their many mercantile interests they cannot be styled
vintners Matthew of Colombiers, who continued to be
King's Chamberlain of London for twenty-one years, at the
same period was a vintner of the official type He sold the
King's wines Through his connections we may get a glimpse
of the wine trade in general One of Matthew's clients was
a young citizen, Henry of Arras, who, despite his French
name, had inherited rents and tenements in London, a manor
in Buckingham, and a mill at Ware But his wine business
had not prospered, in 1287 he owed Matthew of Colombiers
75 marks To make matters worse, he had two younger
brothers and two sisters upon his hands While in these
difficulties he made proposals of marriage to the daughter of
a more successful wine merchant, William of Barage
William received him with words to the following effect
"Well, Henry, Philippa seems to have taken a fancy to you,
and I've nothing against you as a son-in-law, but you've
clearly no notion of business as yet I'll tell you what I'll do
If you'll let me manage all your property for the next eight
years, I'll pay your debts, I'll find jobs for your brothers, and
husbands for your sisters, I'll back you with my credit, and
I'll teach you the business" (fn. 1)
Now we know enough of William Barage's business to
satisfy us that it was worth learning It was evidently very
extensive In 1283 we hear of one of his young men, after
transacting successful business as a commercial traveller in
the North of England, being robbed of thirteen marks at
Lichfield In 1286 we find two of his agents setting out with
a cargo for Norway In 1287 and 1288 William himself was
summoned across the Channel to transact some business for
the King in Gascony (fn. 2) But it is with the London business
that we are especially concerned This was of a very varied
character William acted as the London agent for a Gascon
firm, and collected the instalments of their debts He also
lent his credit to back the bills of less substantial merchants
than himself He did the same for retailers of wine Here is
a case in point Allan of Suffolk is a neighbour of William's,
a taverner of Vintry Ward His moveables are assessed at
5/- (William's at 20/-), (fn. 3) and his credit with Gascon firms is
limited On one occasion he buys £8 worth of wine in
August, and arranges to pay £2 at Xmas and the rest by
quarterly instalments of 30/- When therefore we find Allan
and William Barage acknowledging a joint debt of £38 to a
Gascon firm we may be sure that William is lending Allan
his credit for a consideration (fn. 4)
William also bought extensively from the Gascon
merchants on his own account In November, 1282, for
instance he orders from a Gascon firm seventy tuns of wine,
worth £84, to be paid for next midsummer The wine is
apparently at Portsmouth A week later a skipper from that
port presents a bill for freight amounting to £24 William
has not so much cash in hand, and it will take him a fortnight
to collect it He goes with the skipper to the Guildhall,
acknowledges the debt, promises to pay it in fourteen days,
and agrees to give the skipper fourpence a day with which
he may have a good time in London whilst waiting (fn. 1)
In the meantime William must get his wine landed from
the Portsmouth vessel lying at Vintry Wharf There are
four gangs of winedrawers of twelve men each, for the union
rule is that there shall never be less than twelve men to a job
of this sort Wine, like meat, should be "led, not drove"
William, we will suppose, engages the "skip up" gang (their
name promises alacrity), and their registered tariff is 2½d for
every tun carried into any of the lanes near the wharf where
William has his cellar But some of the tuns will no doubt
have to pay the higher tariff of 8d that they may be carried
to William's customers, the taverners of the city These are
evidently sometimes indebted to the vintner, not only for
their wine, but also for other stock-in-trade-thus resembling
the "tied houses" of our own day Cristian the Taverner, for
instance, acknowledges "that he has received from William
Barage six casks of wine for sale, worth £13, which is stored
in the cellar of Walter of Berden Also four silver cups,
weighing 40/3, which he would account for when he sold
the wine" (fn. 2) It was unlawful for the wholesale merchant to
retail wine on his own account When the wine was delivered
at the taverner's, the official searcher would come round and
mark the end of the cask, after testing its quality, with the
price at which it was to be sold In 1311 the price of best
wine was fivepence a gallon, of seconds fourpence, of the
rest threepence The cellar door was to stand open so that
the customer might see that his wine was drawn from the
right cask In 1331, twenty-nine taverners closed their shops
as a protest against unfair prices fixed by the authorities (fn. 3)
In 1364 a taverner who had sold unsound wines was
condemned to "drink a draught of the same, and to have the
remainder poured upon his head and to forswear his calling
for ever unless the King will pardon him" (fn. 4)
A vivid picture of a tavern interior is presented by the
verdict of a coroner's jury in 1277 On December 6 the
keeper of a tavern in Ironmonger Lane was heard quarrelling
with his man, and as they slept in the same room alone in
the house, the man arose in the night, murdered his master,
and hid the body in the coalhole For two days afterwards
he sat at the bench and sold wine, then he departed, taking
with him all the portable property-a silver cup, a robe and
some bedclothes Three weeks later the vintner who had
supplied the wine called for the money, and, finding the debtor
gone, took all his stock-in-trade-a tun and a half of wine,
worth fifty shillings, some small tables, cloths, gallons and
wooden potels, worth two shillings Not till the following
Easter, when the landlord, Master Robert the Surgeon of
Friday Street, set the shop to a new tenant was the murder
discovered The murderer was never caught Chattels, adds
the jury, he had none (fn. 1)
Though the corn supplies of London did not arrive with
the same pomp and ceremony as the wine fleet, their coming
was not without a certain picturesqueness of its own Most of
it must have been brought from the ports on the East Coast
in barges not unlike those that still make the same voyage
and that lend the Thames so much of its charm to the eye of
the artist On its arrival at Queenhithe it must be measured
by the cornmeters. There were eight of these officers, each
of whom had three servants, and each servant one horse and
five sacks Bakers and brewers who came to buy their corn
were charged ¾d or 1d for measuring and carriage of every
quarter, according to the distance We know many bakers
acted as their own corn-merchants, since we find them forbidden to go out and forestall supplies But more often a
corn-monger intervened-"blader" was the term used-and
played the same part in relation to the baker that the vintner
bore to the taverner (fn. 2) In 1301, for example, Thomas Lef,
baker, acknowledges a debt of £35 to a blader, to be paid
in instalments of £4 or £5, lasting over several years (fn. 3) To
take another more interesting case We find a certain Henry
le Coupere, baker, has run up a debt in 1301 of forty-three marks
to a goldsmith-who seizes his body, lands and tenements in
satisfaction-but who, finding this satisfaction very imperfect,
makes over the whole bad debt to a blader, Roger the Palmer,
on condition of receiving twenty-five marks in two years'
time, and Henry le Coupere completes the arrangement by
leasing his bakehouse to the blader Obviously the cornmonger intends to run the bakehouse on capitalist lines (fn. 1)
Now, in the year 1310 Roger the Palmer, by virtue of his
office as Sheriff of London, is recorded as having arrested
a whole cavalcade of market-women who were bringing in
bread from Stratford and of condemning it as being of light
weight The jury found that the bread was weighed when
cold and had therefore been condemned unjustly, but, as a
warning to the offenders, it was ordered that three halfpenny
loaves should be sold for a penny, whilst as an act of mercy
the bakeresses aforesaid should this time have such penny (fn. 2)
A cynic might be tempted to infer that Roger's bakehouse
speculation had deflected his judicial mind from the strict
course of equity
Let us descend one step in the scale to the baker who was
a substantial tradesman, using his own capital He must
make his choice between brown bread and white He must
not sell bread in his own house, but might either have it
hawked about by "regratresses," or sell it from a hutch in
the market twice a week-Wednesdays and Saturdays He
was forbidden to deal with the breadwomen on any other
footing than thirteen to the dozen, and he must not give a
woman credit who owed debts to his neighbour He must
stamp all his bread with a seal, and he might fatten swine
on his husks so long as he reared them in his own house
or elsewhere, and not in the streets or lanes of the city. (fn. 3)
The business of the trading baker was moreover elaborately
regulated by the Assize of Bread According to the custom
of London this was made at Michaelmas by four sworn men,
who were to buy three quarters of corn-one in Cheapside,
one at Grasschurch or Billingsgate, and one at Queenhithe-
of which they were to make wastel bread, light bread and
brown bread, and to present the loaves while hot to the Mayor
and Aldermen, who weighed them and fixed the weight of the
halfpenny and farthing loaves for the year Eightpence a
quarter was allowed for expenses of baking The halfpenny
loaf of best bread-called demeine bread or simnels-only
weighed as much as the farthing loaf of wastel or seconds (fn. 1)
The nature of the penalties by which these regulations
were to be enforced was one of the most disputed points of
mediæval municipal policy An aldermanic chronicler lays
it to the charge of the Earl of Gloucester's unconstitutional
government of the city in 1258, that, instead of placing bakers
in the pillory he exalted them in the tumbril But he is still
more scandalised by the leniency of Walter Hervy, the
revolutionary Mayor of 1271, who let bakers off scot free,
though every loaf was a third short weight
Below the class of independent tradesmen who sell their
own bread, there was a lower rank of bakers who worked upon
the materials supplied by their customers It has been a
matter of lively dispute amongst those interested in mediæval
origins, which of these two classes developed out of the other,
but the evidence seems to point to their simultaneous existence
in the earliest times Sometimes both modes of business were
combined, but there were obvious reasons why the municipal
authorities should desire their separation There is a case
on record which not only serves as an admirable illustration
of this point, but also proves beyond a doubt that the "public
baker" was a widespread institution in mediæval London
In 1327 John Brid, baker, "was attached to make answer
as to certain falsehood, malice and deceit by him committed
to the nuisance of the common people in that he did skilfully
and artfully cause a certain hole to be made upon a table of his
called a moulding-board pertaining to his bakehouse after the
manner of a mouse-trap, there being a certain wicket warily
provided for closing and opening such hole And when his
neighbours and others who were wont to bake their bread at
his oven came with their dough-such dough having been
placed on the aforesaid table, the said John had one of his
household sitting in secret beneath the table who carefully
opened the hole and bit by bit craftily withdrew some of
the dough aforesaid, falsely, wickedly and maliciously"
The Serjeant-at-mace and the Sheriff's Clerk who discovered this atrocity, having made a raid on the public
bakehouses of the city, found no less than nine others provided
with fraudulent tables, beneath which in many cases lay an
accusing litter of dough The sentence passed by the civic
jury on these malefactors was a fine specimen of mediæval
justice All the bakers with dishonest moulding boards were
to stand till vespers in the pillory and those under whose
tables dough was found were to have a quantity of dough
suspended from their necks Two women bakers were
reprieved for a time because they declared that they had
husbands, and that the deed was not their deed (fn. 1)
As in the case of the vintner so in that of the goldsmith, we
have a profession whose free development was overshadowed
and retarded by the dominance of official privileges Many of
the early mayors and sheriffs of London had been at one time
or another goldsmiths as well as vintners They minted the
King's money, acted as his exchangers, undertook the repair
of the crown jewels or negotiated for a new supply, generally
with the technical and financial assistance of Italian experts
In this sense Gregory de Rokesley, Mayor of London
1275-81, was a goldsmith But he was also, as we have seen,
a vintner, and he dealt largely in wool We are concerned
here with the goldsmith's trade as a distinct profession It
had been organised as a powerful gild in the twelfth century,
and there are abundant evidences of its activities in the
Letter Books dating from the end of the thirteenth century
First and foremost, the goldsmith was a highly skilled
craftsman He did not necessarily own the precious materials
in which he worked We find him going to the Guildhall
to acknowledge the receipt of articles of plate entrusted to
him by royal or noble personages for his manipulation But
more often he was a dealer as well as a worker in the precious
metals The first charter of the craft (1327) authorises the
goldsmith to buy gold and silver plate, but only in the row
of shops called Goldsmiths' Row, in Cheapside, where their
work may be overlooked, and not in back streets where stolen
goods might be received Other sources show us that the
goldsmith's profession embraced men of every degree of
wealth-from the merchant of aldermanic status to the poor
craftsman, and the charter gave to the select body of dealers
who had shops in Cheapside the control of the trade It is,
however, with other aspects of the goldsmith's calling that we
are here more especially concerned Before their expulsion
in 1290 Jews had often followed the goldsmiths' profession,
and in their hands it embraced the functions of the banker,
the moneylender and the pawnbroker During the civic
revolutions that accompanied the Barons' Wars we see the
Jews, who were frequently harried by the London mob,
hastening to deposit their store of pledges with Gentiles who
were not always faithful to the trust reposed in them Did
this side of the goldsmiths' calling disappear along with the
Jews ? It is often assumed that it did, and that the banking
carried on by the seventeenth century goldsmiths was a "newfashioned mystery" I think there is good reason to doubt
this.
We shall see presently, from an examination of the
acknowledgments of debt, that the lending of money and of
credit was carried on in an occasional way by many of the
wealthier merchants of all trades, and the same evidence seems
to show that the goldsmiths, as was natural, specialised in this
direction, and acted as channels through which both ready
money and credit might flow We find that a certain wealthy
fishmonger named John Sterre was in the habit of advancing
£2 to £5 in money to butchers, who no doubt needed short
credit with which to buy stock and who came in little groups
of twos and threes for a loan in common Now John King,
who twice forms one of these groups of borrowers, comes a
third time accompanied by a goldsmith, Robert le Gloucester (fn. 1)
Why should a goldsmith be borrowing money along with a
butcher? Is it not more likely that he is merely guaranteeing
the butcher's solvency, "for a consideration"? But then we
find Robert de Gloucester and other goldsmiths several times
borrowing on their own account from the fishmongers And
moreover on looking further we find these same goldsmiths
borrowing, about the same time, considerable sums from a
variety of people-Gascon wine merchants, Spanish leather
merchants, London aldermen, corders, ironmongers, country
gentry and clergy (fn. 1) It seems difficult to account for these
loans otherwise than as deposits The sums vary from £3,
or £4 to £25, and are generally entrusted to a group of two
or more goldsmiths, who are jointly responsible for their
repayment It is not, I think, an extravagant inference to
suppose that foreign merchants or country gentlemen should
have left their surplus cash at the goldsmith's, who may
possibly have encouraged the practice by acknowledging a
debt of the deposit plus a small amount for interest They
might thus manage to borrow in spite of the usury laws, and
by reversing the process they could contrive to lend at a profit,
but as I find them borrowing oftener than lending, I imagine
that their loans may have taken the form of purchasing articles
of plate below cost price and holding them as pledges
This form of banking, if it existed at all, was rudimentary
Most of the advances of capital on which London commerce
and industry in the thirteenth or fourteenth century were
dependent were made by merchants in the ordinary course of
business, and as the way in which this was done has an
important bearing on the social and constitutional history of
London it will be worth while to follow it in some detail
The classification of London citizens made by Miss Curtis on
the basis of the subsidy roll of 1332, will be found of great
value in interpreting the data given by the acknowledgments
of debt, and will enable us to realise with some clearness the
economic relations of the several classes to the foreign
capitalist and to each other (fn. 2)
The foreign merchants who periodically visited England,
whether they were drapers from Louvain and Douai, dealers
in the light fabrics of St Omer and Cambrai, mercers of
Paris, Gascon wine merchants, or Spanish leather merchants,
were apparently prepared to give from three months' to twelve
months' credit (or even more) to all who could offer sufficient
security We may roughly distinguish-merely by their
size-two kinds of "transactions," the larger of which-£20
to £80-we may call a "shipping order," and the smaller-
£1 to £10-a wholesale order But there were half a dozen
kinds of transactions by which these two kinds of orders might
be fulfilled A foreign merchant might (1) supply a shipping
order to the value of £30 or more on the single security of
one of the larger merchants (classes A and B) Or (2) he
might give credit for that amount to a shopkeeper (class C)
if backed by the additional security of a merchant (class B),
or (3) for a lesser amount on his own security Or (4) he
might accept the joint shipping order and joint security of
half a dozen small traders (classes C and D) Or, finally, a
merchant who had obtained credit from a foreigner for a
shipping order might proceed to give a number of shopkeepers
credit for wholesale parcels ordered from himself
The two most significant records of the dealings of London
tradesmen with foreign merchants and with each other are that
of the cordwainers and that of the potters The term
"cordwamer" was applied in the thirteenth century to men
of widely different social status Early in the middle ages
Cordova acquired a wide reputation for the leather which
its craftsmen prepared from goats'-skins, and the manufacture,
which afterwards spread to Barcelona, Northern Spain and
Provençe, supplied one of the main articles of commerce at the
Champagne fairs The merchants who dealt in it were called
cordwainers Gervase the Cordwainer, who was King's
Chamberlain of London in 1227, and Sheriff ten years later,
derived his name from the cargoes of Spanish leather which
he brought to London At the end of the thirteenth century
the merchants of Northern Spain or their agents visited
London and the English fairs with great regularity, and the
leading cordwainers or skinners of London gave them
"shipping" orders and received credit for sums of from
£30 to £75 Besides these there were lesser merchants who
took smaller parcels worth from £5 to £10, and occasionally
as much as £15 But by far the commonest form of
transaction was from two or three, four or five, six or eight
of these lesser merchants and shopkeepers to combine for the
purpose of buying a cargo We have a record of nearly a
score of these bargains stretching over a period of three years.
The first is the most remarkable A merchant of Spain,
named John de la Founs, had brought, in August 1276, a
cargo of leather valued at £133, and sixteen of the cordwainers
of London arranged to buy it between them They divided
themselves into two groups-one of seven, the other of nine-
and each became jointly and severally responsible for half
the cargo, i e £66 This was equivalent to the purchase by
each member of the smaller group of over nine pounds worth
of leather, and by each member of the larger group of seven
pounds worth In the later transactions the groups were
generally smaller and the average share larger A fortnight
later five members of the larger group combined to buy a
second lot of £78 from a Gascon firm, whilst the leading
member of the smaller group bought on his own account a
large parcel of £30 (fn. 1) We do not know anything about the
internal arrangements of these groups of cordwainers, but we
may safely infer that they were mainly composed of traders
and manufacturers of classes C and D, who, by co-operation,
were enabled to put themselves on a bargaining level with
importing merchants of classes A and B
But most of the cordwainers of the fourteenth century
were small craftsmen and shopkeepers of class E, and we
get a glimpse of their economic status in the recorded transactions of Ralph Poyntel, a well-to-do leather merchant and
currier, who acted as a middleman between the foreign
merchants and the craftsmen He buys a lot of £20 and sells
it in parcels of from 25/- to £5 One of the largest of his
customers is a certain cordwainer John Tilli, who buys, in
1281, a parcel of leather worth £7 10s John Tilli's affairs
seem to have prospered (in 1290 he belonged to class C, being
assessed at 13/4 in Cordwainer Street Ward), and he wished
to extend his business The gild rules generally forbade a
member to have two shops, but this obstacle could be
surmounted by setting up a man of straw In 1286, therefore,
John Tilli joins with Ralph Poyntel in setting up a certain
Richard "the Sewer" with a stock worth £11 13s Richard
covenants to remain in their service three years, to render a
yearly account of all money and goods received and profits
made, whilst Ralph and John agree to provide Richard with
all necessaries and to pay him a yearly stipend of one mark
for his service (fn. 1)
Here we have a situation parallel, only with harder
conditions, to that of the taverner in the tied house, and such
arrangements were common in other trades
Let us now transfer our attention to the economic
conditions of a craft which possesses much æsthetic and
antiquarian interest-that of the potter The potters of the
fourteenth century London were not makers of earthenware,
but workers in copper and brass, and bell-founders The early
potters, like the early cordwainers, were importers of foreign
goods-mostly kitchen utensils known as dinanderie The
brasswork of Dinant, near Namur, had acquired a European
reputation, and a class of wealthy exporters had arisen in
that city, of whose mercantile operations M Pirenne, the
historian of Belgium, has recently made an interesting study
These marchands batteurs, as they were called, brought large
quantities of their wares to England and took back English
wool and tin Two wealthy London merchants, Walter the
Potter and Richard the Potter, who made their wills in 1280
and 1281, in all probability derived their names from their
extensive dealings in dinanderie Walter the Potter, senior,
was an alderman, and built the Chapter House of Grey Friars
Richard the Potter lived in Cheapside and had much property
in London besides a shop at Bury St Edmunds and land at
Boston and Winchester Richard's nephew, Walter the Potter,
junior, and Henry, Walter's brother, to whom he left the shop
and the land, were extensively engaged in the same business,
as was also Alan the Potter, another nephew The merchant
of Dinant, who appears to have done most of the English
trade at this time bore the rather invidious name of Aubrey
le Pecherous, and in 1287 we find Walter the Potter, junior,
and Henry, his brother, giving him a shipping order for £34
worth of dinanderie to be paid for in four instalments at the
fairs of St Ives, St Botolph's, and Winchester (fn. 3)
In this transaction Walter and Henry were only receiving
the ordinary mercantile credit The case of another of
Aubrey's clients is more interesting because it not only shows
us how a London merchant might become dependent upon
foreign capital, but also reveals the process by which the
possession of real property on which the power of the
aldermanic class was originally based, was gradually
dissipated in unsuccessful trading operations The Durhams
were one of the ruling families of London during the thirteenth
century They were connected by marriage with the Viels,
the Basings and the Buckerels (fn. 1) William of Durham,
Alderman of Bread Street Ward, who died in 1283, had
apparently lost much money in trade Two years before
his death he was obliged to hand over for eight years'
occupancy some valuable property near London Bridge to
Richard the Potter, to whom he owed eighty marks (fn. 2) The
assumption that William had been a potter-a dealer in
dinanderie-is strengthened when we find his widow, Sabine,
shortly afterwards marrying Adam le Potter at the sign of
the Rose Now Sabine (née Viel) had some real property in
her own right, and soon after this second marriage we find
her going with Adam the Potter to convey this property for a
term of years to Aubrey le Pecherous, in return for which
he supplied them with capital to the extent of forty-six marks
This was in 1284 (fn. 3) In 1287 and 1288 Aubrey supplied
Adam the Potter on credit with two lots of £20 each (fn. 4) On
the first of these occasions credit was given for a fortnight
only, but, on the second, payment had to be arranged for
by twelve instalments spread over four years, and two other
potters had to provide security for Adam's debt Adam is
evidently steadily going downhill Sabine Viel's second
marriage has been more unfortunate than her first We
should not be surprised to find the pair going, later on, to one
of the aldermanic moneylenders And we actually do find
that in 1311 their son Adam has become a desperate character,
has made a murderous attack on Alderman Richard of
Gloucester, and has had to be bailed out by several more
prosperous members of his father's calling
So far the potters we have met with have been dealers
in foreign goods But a home industry has been growing up,
and we can watch its beginnings In 1277 Walter the Potter,
senior, the alderman, helped to set up a working coppersmith
named Nicholas of Stortford by advancing him £5 in money
and copper Nicholas had no security to offer but his tools
and his workshop, and he undertook not to alienate either of
these till the debt was paid (fn. 1)
Another working craftsman of this trade, John the Potter,
was a man of more resources In October 1288 he undertook
a contract with the Abbot and Convent of Ramsey, in
Huntingdonshire to make a new lavatory for them "of good
and durable metal, thirty-three feet long and two and a half feet
high, with sixteen copper keys (clavifus) of subtle design
and richly gilt, and fillets through the centre" For this piece
of work he was to receive £30 and a gown A third of the
money was to be paid in advance to enable him to get
materials, a third in six months' time, and a third when the
work was completed John was to ride down to Huntingdonshire with his two journeymen The Abbey would find food
for horses and men whilst they stayed Master and men
were each to have two loaves of bread and two gallons of
beer, a dish of meat or a dish of fish every day, but one of
the master's loaves was to be "monks' bread," and both his
gallons were to be drawn from the Convent cask, whilst his
men were to be content with the bread and beer given out
in the hall to the servants of the Abbey (fn. 2)
Richard of Wymbush-a third working potter of our
acquaintance-was probably even better off than John the
Potter His credit was good with various aldermen for £9
or £10, and we find a tiler owing him twenty marks (fn. 3) He
had formerly cast a bell for Holy Trinity Priory, near Aldgate,
and in 1312 he contracted to supply another as nearly as
possible in tune with the first The second bell, though not
so large as the first, was to weigh over a ton Richard was to
have six months to complete the task, and the Priory was to
lend him the first bell to work by We are glad to hear that
the job was finished to the Prior's satisfaction (fn. 4)
Such great contracts as these do not of course represent
the everyday work of the potter, but they show that London
craftsmen were by this time capable of large undertakings.
We may get an idea of the nature and value of the more
ordinary productions of the potter from a list of household
utensils seized in 1303 for arrears of taxes The cooking pot
and other kitchen utensils were the readiest articles to the
hand of the tax collector, and three potters, including Richard
of Wymbush, were upon the jury specially appointed to value
the goods, which included -
One brass pot, weighing 14 lbs, value 21d
One brass pot weighing 18 lbs, value 2s 6d
One kettle, value 14d
One brass posnet, weighing 6 lbs, value 10½d (fn. 1)
This record may fitly conclude with a document that
shows us the London potters on the point of organising
themselves as a craft In 1316 a number of those engaged
in making and selling brass pots came before the mayor and
aldermen to complain of the abuses perpetrated in their trade
Many persons, they declared, who busied themselves in
buying and selling brass pots, and especially a certain Alan
the Shopper, were in the habit of buying pots of bad metal
and then putting them on the fire that they might sell them
as good second-hand pots on Sundays and other feast
days in Cheapside, and these pots when exposed to great
heat melted and came to nothing They received permission
to elect eight men to make an assay to determine how much
lead should go to the hundredweight of copper, and it is of
special interest to note that four of these men chosen are
described as "dealers in the said trade," and the other four
as workers and founders of pots (fn. 2)
G Unwin