1.
THERE was a man in Bristol in these days, a citizen of modest consequence, having no t.i.tle and no great wealth and no trace whatever of n.o.ble blood in his veins, who nevertheless was destined to have his name more widely remembered down the centuries than all the Plantagenets combined, with all their chancellors, statesmen, generals, and bishops thrown in for good measure. This was because his name had been applied to a most useful article that he manufactured. His name was Thomas Blanket.
This circ.u.mstance is recalled because it is part of the story of an emergence which was taking place in England and equally in all parts of what was called the civilized world. It was not long, a mere matter of a century or two, since men had shaken off the ignorance and lethargy of the dark ages and had begun to look into their inner selves, to paint, to compose, to sing, to inquire into the first elements of science and to demand political rights, above all else to build; to raise high into the sky the most magnificent of cathedrals with the tall spires which seemed a symbol of their desire to reach the truth. Now this emergence was taking a new form. The ways of living were changing and beginning to bear a traceable resemblance to modern conditions. This had started with an expansion of trade and the acquirement of wealth among those who had never known the meaning of ease, the men of business and their workers.
Some historians are disposed to give much of the credit to Edward III, calling him the father of English commerce. This is allowing him too much praise. Edward, if the truth must be told, took little interest in such menial matters. He was a soldier king, holding fast to feudal rights and feudal wealth, which came from ownership of the land. This new wealth he did not understand, and approved only so far as it provided him with new sources of crown revenue.
It is possible his marriage to Philippa had something to do with it. It had brought England into closer contact with the lands from which she came, where the stout burghers taught the world a lesson, defending themselves and their walled cities and their weaving machines from the armies, first of France and later of Spain. Edward began to see the need for England to share more fully in the profits of trade; but of real concern for the prosperity of the common people, he had little or none.
Consider first where commerce stood in the first stages of Edward"s reign. England"s exports were almost exclusively of raw materials and her imports entirely of manufactured goods, which put her in the inferior position of an agricultural nation. Statistics of 1354 place the exports at 212,338s 5d and imports at 38,383 16s 10d. Wool represented thirteen fourteenths of the export total, and the share collected by the crown was 81,846s 12d, or nearly 40 per cent. It was no wonder that the term "woolsack" was applied in course of time to the seat occupied by the chancellor in the House of Lords.
It was fortunate for England that she produced so much wool and of such superior quality. Only Spain had anything to offer of a corresponding excellence, and it may have been because of the merino sheep brought to England by Eleanor, the Castilian queen of Edward I, that English sheep now carried such fine wool on their broad backs; that, and the rich grazing lands that the island kingdom had for them. Another reason undoubtedly was the existence of one hundred Cistercian monasteries throughout the country. The Cistercians had broken away from the Benedictines when they saw that the members of the older order were getting lax in their devotions and too hearty at their meals. The Cistercian monk divided his time between his devotions and working in the fields. They were great sheep raisers, and it seems certain that they studied breeding and grading and gradually raised the standards in England. They probably were the first to cross the English breeds with the Spanish merinos. Although they were against the acc.u.mulation of property and refused to accept rents or t.i.thes, wealth nevertheless began to reward their industry, as witness the beautiful monasteries they built at Fountains, Rievaulx, Tintern, and Furness. In the larger English monasteries the monks used lay brothers to help in the field work, sometimes as many as three hundred. The lay member was never ordained but lived beside the choir monks, without taking part in the canonical offices.
The earnest and hard-working Cistercians were called the Gray Monks, and wherever they established themselves the hillsides soon became dotted with the backs of cropping sheep. They were allowed few opportunities to speak among themselves, but there must have been evenings after their one meal of the day (a pound of bread apiece, a dish of beans, and sometimes a piece of cheese) when they gathered in the chapter houses and earnestly debated the proper care of the flocks. The records show that in 1280 the Abbey of Meaux alone had 11,000 sheep. The figures fluctuated, of course. A low year was 1310 when Meaux had no more than 5,406.
That so much of the wool thus raised could be sold was due to the needs of the cities of Flanders. The Flemish people manufactured the finest textiles in Europe and they had little wool of their own. They depended almost exclusively on England. At certain periods when English kings experimented with costly changes in trade relations, the Flemish looms would be silent. What would have happened to England if the weavers of Ghent and Bruges had found a subst.i.tute for wool? A dire speculation, indeed.
Credit is due Edward III on two counts. He encouraged the bringing over of weavers from Flanders (one detects here the hand of the fair Philippa) to teach the English how to make cloth. Some of them settled around Norwich and some went to points in the west. Master Thomas Blanket started his business in Bristol with a staff of foreign workers. Edward remained rather consistently on the side of the Policy of Plenty, as free trade was called, as against the Policy of Power, or protection.
But this had to do with the purely national side of the subject. The emergence, referred to above, was a matter of world-wide change. It was the result in large part of vast developments in international trade and commerce.
On the exact spot in London where the Cannon Street station stands, there was a very large building with an extensive courtyard and a most handsome hall which was known as the Steelyard. It was a busy spot, tenanted by heavy, sober-eyed men of North German extraction who were acting as representatives of the Hanseatic League. The name of the establishment came from the fact that a steel bar was kept for the weighing of goods. The Hanseatic League was a spectacular development of the theory of union in trade which had begun with the guilds. It was made up of the trading ports on the Baltic Sea and affiliated cities, including Lbeck, Hamburg, Rostock, Riga, and Danzig, as well as Thorn and Krakow in the east, Wisby and Reval in the north, and Gttingen in the south. Despite the fact that each member city was within the domain of one of the northern nations, the league did not recognize national considerations. It had been organized to control the trade of the Baltic, and this it succeeded in doing for centuries, in spite of attempts at interference by kings, princes, and grand dukes. The wealth of the league was enormous, its power absolute.
2.
The feudal system would die hard. Forced upon England by the Normans, it was so profitable and gratifying to the n.o.bility that they fought against any change. Although some of the kings strove to reduce the strength of the baronage, it was not in the interests of the commonality, but to gather more power into their own hands. To king and n.o.ble alike the feudal system was the bulwark, the unscalable wall about the citadel of privilege.
A few of the kings who would follow this constellation of the Edwards were brilliant rulers. Many, however, were unable to lead and too stubborn to follow. Some would be cruel, some sly, some dull. Even the best of them, with perhaps one exception, were unwilling to relinquish a jot of what they considered their privileges. A few would even proclaim the divinity of these rights.
But to return to Edward. He was a king of contradictions, consistent only in the grandiose scale of his ambitions. He was more than extravagant, he was lavish: lavish in his personal life, in his court; lavish to his friends and his mistresses. Above all else, he was lavish in the diplomacy with which he sought to gain his ends. He would go to Flanders and Germany with a bounty granted by a complaisant Parliament and would spend it all in reckless subsidies to the rulers of the Low Country states to join him against France. The diversity of Flemish interests broke up his first attempts to unite them in a firm alliance. After each rebuff he would come back to Parliament with empty pockets and no constructive gains to report. Apparently he was a good advocate, for Parliament would always advance him what he wanted, generally a tenth of all revenue. Once he asked for a ninth and got it. This meant a ninth of church revenues, of baronial income, of the stock of merchants; and one horse in nine, one cow, one sheep, and a green bough stuck in one sheaf in nine in every harvest field, which the king"s tax collector would come and take away.
Like all strong-willed kings with unenlightened ministers, he often did arbitrary and ill-considered things about the trade of the country. He laid restrictions on the Cistercians which led to a curtailment of their valuable activities. He put restrictions also on trade which had no purpose but to increase the state revenue and which had to be repealed when the disastrous results became apparent. He confiscated to the crown all cloth that his aulnagers found to be deficient in measurements. He interfered with the system of fairs, even granting them to towns, which compelled the merchants of London to close their shops and use temporary booths at the seat of activities. If Edward was the father of English commerce, he was an inconsiderate and careless parent.
The subsidies that Parliament granted the lavish king, the untying of the national moneybags, the planting of green boughs in so many sheaves of grain did not suffice for his ambitious schemes. He borrowed money in many quarters and in huge amounts.
If he had paused to reflect, Edward would have been resentful of the thoroughness with which his French grandfather, Philip the Unfair of France, had demolished the order of the Knights Templar. The knights had been sound bankers, and it had been customary for the kings of England to visit the huge headquarters of the order on the banks of the Thames when they needed loans. But now, thanks to Philip, the bearded knights had dropped from sight, the buildings had pa.s.sed into other hands, the beauseant no longer waved in the breeze. So Edward, who never knew the day when he did not need money, had to look elsewhere. He went, of course, to the Italian bankers, the Society of the Bardi of Florence, and the Peruzzi family of the same city, which had opened branches in England to take the place of the Templars. Even with the vast sums they loaned him, he was not content. He borrowed also from the leading figures in trade in England, most of all from a remarkable man of whom much will be told later, one William de la Pole.
The Peruzzi family loaned the king in 1337 the sum of 11,732 for the war with Scotland. This was just the beginning, for in the following year Edward acknowledged an indebtedness to them of 28,000. Later this total was advanced to 35,000, some of which had been advanced "for urgent matters and for the king"s secret business beyond the seas."
The Society of the Bardi were perhaps a little more careful and astute. Beginning in 1328 they promised to find him 20 daily for the expenses of the king"s household and to give him 16,140 for a period of 807 days, the loan to be protected by a lien on customs receipts. The king continued to go to them when the flatness of the royal purse threatened to thwart him in his magnificent designs. He was loaned 100 for the funeral of his brother, John of Eltham, 300 as a gift for his still dearly beloved Philippa, 97 and some shillings and pence (arrears for nearly three years) for the upkeep of the royal menagerie of lions and leopards in the Tower of London.
But the Italian sources of financial aid were not more helpful to the king than the colossus of the north, this bold, far-seeing, shrewd Yorkshireman, the aforesaid William de la Pole. If there had been a tendency in those days to give extravagant t.i.tles in trade as is done in these modern times when we have Napoleons of this and Caesars of that, William de la Pole would undoubtedly have been called the Midas of the Midlands or the Wizard of Wool. This remarkable merchant produced in 1339 the funds which Edward needed for his campaign in France of that year, the colossal sum of 76,180.
These figures are so far above the financial horizons of previous reigns that they serve to demonstrate more vividly than anything else the sudden upsurge in the world. The winds of trade were blowing high and strong and men were beginning to dream wondrous dreams. If Edward had seen fit to employ this strange deep prosperity (deep because it went right down to the roots of society) in strengthening the polity of the state instead of tossing it away on the b.l.o.o.d.y battlefields of France, his fame would have been everlasting and his place in history higher even than the reputation he was to win at Crecy and Poictiers.
It may have been due to the beginning of this new wealth and the resultant improvement in living conditions that sumptuary laws were introduced at this time. The holders of feudal power and wealth could not tolerate, it seemed, the growth of what might become an aristocracy of trade without an effort to maintain social barriers. Sumptuary laws were intended to check extravagances and the moral decline which grew out of them, also to prevent the sinful adornment of the body in foolish fashions, such as the toes of shoes which curled so high that they had to be tied to the ankles. This type of law had originated far back in history, in the days when paternalism was rampant in Greece. Houses were not permitted then which required more than the ax and saw in building, and women were not allowed to adorn their bodies in expensive clothes, although an exemption was granted to prost.i.tutes.
In the laws which were pa.s.sed at the stage of history with which we are dealing there was a tendency to depart from the original purpose and to impose restrictions solely for the maintenance of cla.s.s distinctions. In Scotland it was declared by law that no man under the rank of baron was permitted to have baked meat and pies. Tasteless stews were deemed good enough for commoners. In England servants of the lower rank were forbidden to spend more for clothing in the course of a year than three shillings fourpence. No servant was allowed more than one dish of meat or fish a day. The wives of prosperous citizens were not permitted to wear dresses made of silk.
Fortunately the people of England were not slavish in their obedience to these irritating laws. The merchant"s wife clothed her plumpness in silk and laughed at the lawmakers. If a maidservant had spent her yearly allowance on clothes and craved a new ribbon for her hair, she bought it. In Scotland many bellies belonging to Scots of low degree were filled with good baked mutton in spite of King Jamie I, who had pa.s.sed the law against it. But the purpose back of these sn.o.b decrees stuck in the craws of the good burghers and their wives. Writing centuries later, Adam Smith summed it up with the words, "the highest impertinence and presumption in kings and ministers."
3.
The semi-renaissance in England was reflected in a more general desire for education. There had been grammar and chorister schools long before the Conquest, but these were conducted by the chancellors of the great churches. The spread of knowledge among the lower cla.s.ses was limited largely to portions of the country within the sound of cathedral bells. It was in the matter of university training that the fourteenth century demonstrated a sudden surge of interest.
A degree of antiquity has sometimes been claimed for Oxford which the facts do not bear out. The town at the junction of the Thames and the Cherwell, nevertheless, had for two centuries been collecting colleges around the administrative center growing out of the activities of one Robert Pullen and was in a position to respond to the sudden desire of the n.o.bility and the wealthy cla.s.ses to aid in further progress.
Balliol College had been established in 1263 by the one-time King of Scotland. His widow had carried on the design, the original statutes being issued in 1282.
The first practical response to the public desire was given in 1314 when Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, who has been encountered already in these pages and most creditably, founded Exeter College, providing a foundation for twelve scholars, eight to be drawn from Devonshire and four from Cornwall. The scholars sent up under this arrangement were accommodated at first in Hert Hall, which had been erected around the turn of the century by Elias of Hertford.
Merton College began a little earlier, the estates of Walter de Merton having been turned over in 1264 for its maintenance. The scope of this inst.i.tution would be enlarged in 1380 by the foundation provided by John Wyllyot, who had served as chancellor of Merton from 1349. Still later, in the last quarter of the century, the Merton library would be built on the gift of William Rede, Bishop of Chichester.
Even Edward II, whose interest in education had never been remarked, founded Oriel College in 1326. The idea originated, it seems, with Adam de Brome, his almoner. The college was dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin and did not receive its final name until twenty years later. A tenement called La Oriela had occupied some of the land which the college finally pre-empted for its own use.
Queen"s College, started in 1340 by Queen Philippa"s chaplain, Robert de Eglesfield, was always to be a.s.sociated with royalty. The Black Prince was entered as a student, but there is nothing to indicate that he ever attended a lecture. However, Henry V was at Queen"s and it has been the rule for the consorts of English kings to serve as patronesses. Most of the students came from the north of England, and the Eglesfield scholarships were limited to natives of c.u.mberland and Westmorland.
The same tendency to create colleges where ambitious young men could acquire learning was apparent at Oxford"s great compet.i.tor, Cambridge on the Cam. Here Peterhouse College was founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham. Pembroke College (from which emerged a stream of great graduates) was begun in 1347 by Mary de St. Paul, the widow of Aymer de Valence, who had figured prominently in the Scottish wars. Trinity Hall was founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.
The students who allied themselves with these halls and colleges were undoubtedly outnumbered at this time by those who did not receive nominations to scholarships but went to Oxford or Cambridge with little in their pockets. Generally these poor students found places with one of the many groups who rented small houses under the management of semi-learned officials known as principilators. They slept and had their meals in these halls, most of which were given wildly facetious names, at a cost which sometimes did not exceed a penny a week. They enrolled for lectures under men of some recognized worth. The lectures were held generally in the vestibules of churches or in rooms at inns, the students sitting on the reed-strewn floors. For warmth in winter, there being no fires, they would squat close together, knees hunched up to provide a resting place for ink and quill and parchment. Most of them were content with the Trivium, which consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, as well as Latin. Some of the more ambitious of them attempted to scale the heights of the Quadrivium, where arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were also taught.
Cla.s.ses would begin as early as the hour of prime (six o"clock!), which meant that the students would be up at dawn and indulging in hasty toilets in front of the community skeel, a wide wooden bucket. The scholastic labors would continue throughout the day, but the students would have plenty of energy left for frolics in the town after dark, carried on in taverns and on the streets at the expense of the somewhat more sober citizens. There was always an open state of war between Town and Gown.
It will be seen from this that the national conscience was awakening to the need for education, a steady flame which would burn undiminished through all the centuries ahead in which dynastic wars and religious persecution would nearly succeed in plunging the world back into the darkness.
In writing of Oxford, the memory is revived of a very great man who was at the university around the middle of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon. He occupied a room in a small stone tower at Folly Bridge, and it was there, perhaps, that he had discovered the explosive possibilities in a combination of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, which later was called gunpowder. He did not realize that he had thus uncovered the secret of a weapon which would revolutionize warfare, but others had stumbled on the fact in time to have gunpowder play some part in the wars of Edward III. A writer named John Barbour is responsible for the statement that cannon (called at the time cracys) were used by the English king in his 1327 invasion of Scotland. There are records of the existence of small cannon in the Tower of London in 1338, together with a barrel of gunpowder, and that in the same year in Rouen there was an iron funnel called a pot de feu which would spray forth metal bolts. That the government of England had been awakened to the potentialities of this new weapon was evidenced in an order issued by Edward in 1346 to buy up all the saltpeter and sulphur in the kingdom. There is nothing in the records, however, to prove that cannon were planted around Edward"s windmill at Crecy or concealed in the hedges at Poictiers.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Merchant Prince
1.
SIR William de la Pole, the great Yorkshire magnate, was a man of parts. History deals only with his exploits and has little to say about the man himself. Clearly he was of good address and suavity of manner, for he conducted many missions requiring tact and polish, and he was for a number of years head of the Staple in Antwerp. He came up, however, in the wool trade, where fortunes could be most easily made, and there must have been something bluff and genial about him to stand on good terms with the hard-bitten raisers of sheep. The greatest breeders were the Cistercians, whose lands extended far and wide around their splendid monasteries in the north country, Fountains, Furness and Rievaulx, and it would be necessary for him to stand well with the heads of the order.
Pole"s father, also Sir William, and a man of prominence and wealth, is given as of Ravenser Odd and Hull. It was at Ravenser Odd that the son learned the wool business, but all his life he was counted a citizen of Hull.
Hull was called originally Wyke-upon-Hull, standing at the junction of the Hull and Humber rivers. Its importance as a seaport had been augmented mightily since Berwick had become the center of continuous warring and thus was cut off from peacetime activities. It was Edward I who obtained the town from the monks of Meaux and changed the name to Kingston-upon-Hull, although it was never called anything but Hull. It stood on a low plain and needed high dikes all about it. There was a saltiness and an independence about its people, as characteristic as the north country burr on their tongues.
There were two brothers, Richard and William, and they were gaugers of wine for the royal household as well as dealers in wool. When Queen Isabella had successfully invaded the country and removed her husband from the throne, the brothers advanced her the sum of two thousand pounds to pay off the Flemish mercenaries and at the same time loosened their purse strings to the extent of four thousand pounds to a.s.sist in the financing of young Edward"s first and unsuccessful campaign against the Scots. This was held against them after Mortimer was executed and Isabella was packed off to Castle Rising. They were deprived of their offices as gaugers of wine and remained under a cloud for several years. Richard moved to London at this point, but William, deciding no doubt to devote himself to what he knew best, remained in Hull and waxed still more prosperous in buying wool and selling it for export.
He built himself a great house on Hull Street, now called the High Street. It may not have been as large and impressive as the one his son raised later, which was called Suffolk Palace, but William had, at any rate, a gatehouse three stories high, with a shield above it with his coat of arms, three leopard faces on an azure fess. To the left of the gatehouse was the great hall, capable of entertaining a king. The inner court was surrounded by many connected buildings, and around it all stood a high wall.
In 1332, when Edward was being drawn into another Scottish adventure by the ineffectual Edward de Baliol, he stopped at Hull on his way north. For a matter of twenty years or more the wealthy citizens had been building themselves fine homes in Hull Street. Among the dozen or more who had elected to congregate together were Sir Robert de Drypol and Sir Gilbert de Alton, and many others who had grown rich in wool. The roof of William de la Pole"s home stood high above all the others, and the honor of entertaining the king fell to him. He did it so magnificently that Edward, who enjoyed ostentation as well as any man alive, was both pleased and impressed. By way of return, he knighted his host and changed the chief magistracy of the town to a mayoralty, making Pole the first to hold that office.
The talk over the wine (an official gauger would be certain to have the choicest) must have been stimulating. By the time he took horse for the north, the king had reached a decision. He had seen much of William de la Pole before, of course, but this had been his first opportunity to talk with him man to man, free of ministers of state and the magnates who watched every royal move and gesture with distrustful eyes. Here was a man who knew how to make the money which was always needed so badly at Westminster. The king said to himself: "This is the one I have been looking for. Not another of these tiresome bishops who mumble in Latin and don"t know, I suspect, what a bill of lading is. I shall have now an instrument to my hand, a means of making all the money I am going to require before I am through with my cousin of France."
It is not mere speculation to say that these thoughts were in Edward"s mind as he sipped the rich wines and listened intently to the straightaway talk of the practical Yorkshireman. Shortly afterward he put a new policy into effect. When he returned to England after winning a great naval victory, he inveighed, according to John Lord Campbell in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, "against the whole order of the priesthood as unfit for any secular employment and he astonished the kingdom by the bold innovation of appointing a layman as chancellor."
It was not Pole who was selected for this experiment but a soldier named Sir Robert Bourchier. The reason almost certainly was that Edward had reached the conclusion that Pole would be more useful in producing wealth than in handling it after it had been made. He, Edward, could always find a chancellor, but where would he find another servant with the authentic Midas touch? Certainly, however, the long and close connection between monarch and merchant, which was to last for many years, dates back to this meeting under William de la Pole"s own roof.
Pole served as mayor of Hull four years. During this time he represented the city in Parliament and he went to Flanders several times to conduct negotiations with the free states as the king"s representative; with success, quite clearly, for the king continued to employ him in amba.s.sadorial roles. In 1335 he was appointed to the post of custos to prevent the export of gold and silver and was made receiver of customs at Hull, in return for which he agreed to pay the expense of the royal household at a rate of ten pounds a day. The next year found Edward in desperate straits. His plans were maturing for the great war and his money was flying right and left. In 1338 Pole made two loans, huge ones for a private citizen, the first for eleven thousand pounds and the second for seventy-five hundred pounds. In return for these and still other advances not specified, he received twelve royal manors in the north country, including the lordship of Holderness, and certain houses in Lombard Street, London. Edward promised as well to find husbands among the n.o.bility for Pole"s two daughters. Whether it was due to royal matchmaking or because the daughters were fine catches, it is on record that Blanche, the elder of the two, became Lady de Scrope of Bolton and Margaret became Madame Neville of Hornby, Lancashire.
It was soon after this that the ambitious king found himself so involved in debt that he p.a.w.ned his crown to raise a sum of fifty-four thousand florins from three rich citizens of Mechlin. Needless to state, it was the period of Pole"s greatest usefulness to the king, who was turning more and more to the Yorkshireman for a.s.sistance. By midsummer 1339 the loans made by Pole had reached the total of 76,180, as already stated.
And this brings us to the time when the wool magnate would learn something about the ways of kings who get themselves involved in financial difficulties.
2.
Kings did not make satisfactory debtors in these days. They had too much power. Consider what would happen a hundred years later when Charles VII of France, who as dauphin had failed to go to the a.s.sistance of Jeanne d"Arc, found himself deeply in the debt of Jacques Coeur, the fabulous merchant prince of that day. Coeur had financed the final campaign of the Hundred Years" War which resulted in the expulsion of the English. King Charles did not have the money to pay him back and so it occurred to him (or it was whispered in his ear by advisers) that he could get out of the difficulty by having Coeur arrested and charged with various criminal and treasonable offenses. This was done and the fabulous Jacques, owner of departmental stores all over France as well as a fleet of merchant ships, was convicted on the most trumpery and absurd list of indictments ever concocted in that or any other country. Whether this possibility had occurred to Edward is a matter of pure speculation, but tracing the course of the two cases leaves a conviction of the closeness of the pattern. There was this difference: Edward did not pursue Pole with the savagery which Charles of France and the vindictive n.o.bles around him showed to the merchant who had climbed too high. Coeur was sentenced to death, escaped from his prison, and reached Rome, where the Pope of the day appointed him to the command of a fleet against the Turks. He died on the island of Chios before having the chance to offer battle.
None of this is to be found in the sudden breaking off of relations between King Edward and his creditor. This is what happened. Edward returned to London toward the end of 1340 in a mood of sullen resentment. Everything was going wrong. The Flemish allies were still shilly-shallying, the crown officers at Westminster were lax in raising and dispatching the troops and supplies needed on the continent. The money he had been borrowing here, there, and everywhere had melted away as soon as he got his hands on it. He was dissatisfied with everyone.
His first step was to have the constable of the Tower of London arrested on the charge that the place was not guarded with sufficient vigilance. That same night orders were issued "privily" for the arrest of William de la Pole, his brother Richard, Sir John de Pulteney, and a number of others. The blow fell without warning. Pole had gone to bed, believing himself secure in the king"s favor, although he had undoubtedly been wondering about the security for the enormous loans he had made the king. He was rudely awakened from his slumbers and told that he was under arrest. On what grounds? The king"s pleasure, declared the officers of the law. He was taken to the Fleet prison and consigned to a cell.
In 1337 Pole had been commissioned, together with one Reginald de Conduit, to buy wool and sell it abroad for the king. There had been no indication at the time that Edward had been dissatisfied with the results. Perhaps someone in his train had whispered to him that his two agents had kept too large a share of the profits for themselves. This was made the basis of the charges brought against the Yorkshireman and on which he was convicted in the Exchequer and sent to Devizes Castle in the west. The next year the case was aired in Parliament and the conviction of Pole was annulled. Nevertheless, he was kept in confinement and the year following he was back in the Fleet. Finally on May 16 he was released after being mainperned (a form of medieval parole), to be available to the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer from day to day for a close study of his accounts.
In the meantime King Edward had been riding the high horse of his displeasure with all his official servants. He was using two brothers at the time in the most important offices under the crown. John de Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, had also acted at one time as chancellor, but now his brother, Robert, Bishop of Chichester, held the secular office. It was the conduct of the two brothers which evoked the king"s angry invective against having priests in secular office. Perhaps they had been lax and easygoing and they had made it clear that they did not favor the king"s "secret business," in other words the pending war with France. Robert de Stratford was dismissed from office in favor of Sir John Bourchier, a rough and relatively untutored soldier, and thrown into prison. Stratford decided to get himself out of trouble as soon as possible. Making his submission, he was released and returned to his clerical office.
But the archbishop, John de Stratford, was made of sterner stuff. He was, it became apparent, a strong admirer of one of his predecessors, the sainted Thomas Becket; so much so that during the closing years of his life he built a chantry in the parish church of his native town to the memory of Becket. When Edward issued a proclamation charging him with malfeasance in office, the archbishop wrote a resounding denial which he sent out to be read in all the churches of the land. When Parliament met at Westminster to act on his conduct in office, he put in an appearance in his pontifical robes, with the cross of Canterbury carried before him and a train of clerical attendants trailing in his wake; a second Becket and just as determined to a.s.sert himself. When he was refused admittance, he took up his stand in Palace Yard and refused to leave. Officers of the crown came out and declared him a traitor to the king.
"The curse of Almighty G.o.d," cried the archbishop, "and of His blessed Mother and of St. Thomas, and mine also, be on the heads of them that inform the king so. Amen, amen!"
This was a dangerous situation, for St. Thomas was venerated throughout the whole Christian world, and the parallel between the two archbishops was too close for comfort. The case was postponed a year and the charge was then annulled.
But Pole had no clerical immunity to stand behind. Although the charges against him had been annulled by Parliament, it was not until 1344 that his own lands were restored to him; but not those he had received from the king "by gift or purchase." In other words, the king received back the properties he had turned over to the merchant against the loans.
Pole"s moments of glory as one of the chief advisers of the king had come to an end. It had been an expensive lesson, but he was not being pursued, at any rate, with the ferocity shown Jacques Coeur when the latter was thrown from office. And up in the hills of England the sheep runs were still thickly tenanted and so there was always the valuable wool which had been the basis of the Pole fortunes. Quietly the Yorkshireman, like the good cobbler, returned to his last.
Later he was taken back, partially at least, into the king"s favor; although it is not on record that he advanced any more loans. In July 1345 he was summoned to London to treat with certain "lieges" on "arduous affairs of the realm" and the following year to attend a council "to speak of secret things." His advice, obviously, was still worth having. In 1355, in return for "his great services in lending money to the king," he was made a knight and banneret. In March of that year he surrendered certain manors to the king and in August he executed a release to Edward from all debts up to the preceding November 20. In 1360 Pole and his wife were granted some escheated lands in Yorkshire "in consideration of his great services to the king." Escheated land came from someone who had been found guilty of a state offense; this grant to the Yorkshire merchant, therefore, cost Edward nothing.
3.
Sir William de la Pole died in 1366, but in the intervening years he had been quietly and profitably at work. He left four sons and much property to divide among them. His eldest son, Michael, had already begun to carve the great career which would make him richer and more prominent than the father. Michael served through the whole of the French wars, first under the Black Prince and then under the king"s second son, who was known as John of Gaunt. He became in time chancellor of England and was made Earl of Suffolk.
This was accounted the main accomplishment of stout Sir William. He was the first merchant prince of England to found one of the great n.o.ble families, the earls and later the dukes of Suffolk. He lived long enough to have a glimpse of the honors his descendants would win.
CHAPTER IX.
The Inevitable War
1.
THE Hundred Years" War was fought, supposedly, over Edward of England"s claim to the throne of France. Actually it was the inevitable outcome of the conditions which existed. It had to be fought sooner or later. Ever since Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II and took with her that huge stretch of territory in France, which included nearly all of the western and southern provinces, the French had lived for the day when they could drive the English back over the Channel. They created continuous trouble along the frontiers of the fiefs still held by the kings of England.