Written by Diana Wallis, research associate at the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies, this is the first of two guest blogs focused on the archive of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York. You can also listen to the companion podcast.
In early 1478 ‘the mercers of the city of York along with those of Hull, Beverley, Scarborough and all other northern parties’ presented a petition to the then king, Edward IV.1 They were complaining about the erosion of their rights by John Pickering, who had been governor of the English merchant ‘nation’ in the Low Countries since 1470. Letters patent issued by Henry IV in 1406/07 had granted the right for English merchants trading in Brabant, Holland, Zealand and Flanders to assemble and choose governors to their liking – one governor for the London merchants, and one for the merchants north of the Trent. However, since the election of John Pickering to the role of governor representing the London merchants, no separate northern governor had been elected, and Pickering was generally making life very difficult for the northern merchants. They alleged that he was keeping northern goods out of the best places in the markets, imposing higher costs and charges upon them and generally behaving in an unpleasant manner such that when they complained they were greeted with ‘rebukeful and unfitting language’.
Two versions of this petition are kept in the York Merchant Adventurers archive at the Borthwick Institute. The best known version of the petition is also transcribed in the work by the early 20th century archivist Maud Sellers on the York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers.2 However, examination of this original document leads to the conclusion that it was probably prepared by the merchants in the manner of a draft, perhaps thinking aloud at a meeting about their concerns. The document is on paper (as opposed to vellum) and contains various crossings out. As a full record of the grievances harboured by the York merchants it is an invaluable historical resource and has tended therefore to receive more attention and to be one referred to as ‘the petition’.
Alongside this draft petition, the Borthwick’s Merchant Adventurers’ archive also contains their Merchant’s cartulary; this is a bound volume of vellum pages mainly in a 15th century hand.3 A cartulary was generally seen as a way of preserving important documents like land deeds or other such which had evidentiary weight or might chronicle the history of an organisation.4 Thus, another version of the petition appears towards the end of the cartulary following on from pages dealing with membership and other internal matters concluding with a 15th century section including the petition, the answer to it, and a variety of other documents relating to a pension or land, which have a legal or evidential nature. This second version of the petition is very much shorter and more to the point. One would suggest that the merchants had received some legal or similar advice on how to proceed. By this period the normal contents of a petition had become relatively standardised and this second, more targeted document seems to be more in line with the anticipated formula, containing an opening address, identifying the petitioners and with a clear statement of the grievance or difficulty, then finally the request for redress and appeal for remedy.5 This last is set out much more clearly in the cartulary document, allowing those who might approve the petition to merely copy the request.
As the legal instrument through which the Northern merchants sought to defend their rights and privileges in trade abroad, it is an important document in the history of the Company. Its inclusion in the York merchants’ Cartulary alongside the King’s response has preserved both pieces for posterity, allowing us to examine the role of regional and national tensions within international trade at this time. Indeed, these Borthwick documents are of even more fundamental importance as sadly almost no petitions have survived in our national records for the second half of the fifteenth century.6 This York episode therefore gives us an insight, otherwise lacking into the petition process during the second part of Edward IV’s reign.
The Expenses Roll of William Tod Master of the York Mercers 1477-78
Looking at the York mercers petition of 1478 raises the question who wrote the petition or perhaps more appropriately who instigated the petition. In order to answer this question another document in the Borthwick collection is of assistance, being the Expenses Roll of the Masters of the York Mercers. Normally a master was appointed for a term of one year and the roll entries give details of the expenses incurred during that year.
The pertinent year for these purposes is 1477-78 whilst one William Tod was master, it is perhaps no surprise that he had a reputation as ‘a disputatious man’.7 Interestingly his expenses, which are also transcribed by Sellers, reveal that he specifically spent money on counsel or advice concerning the York mercers’ privileges in Brabant, Zeeland and Flanders, and the London mercer John Pickering.8 This gives us some valuable insights into the preparation of the petition. Most importantly, the expenses reveal that at least one of York’s MPs, one Robert Amyas, also a merchant, was involved. He was specifically paid to write and deliver a document (‘carta’), almost certainly the petition to the King’s chancellery in London. We know that in November 1477 Edward IV called a parliament, the first in some years, for the February of 1478, which would seem to indicate the York mercers were preparing to petition parliament, or at least those who might be gathered together in London at the time of parliament, when it might be equally appropriate to petition king and council. In addition, money was spent on alerting the two most prominent local nobles, Richard Duke of Gloucester and Henry Duke of Northumberland, alongside messengers being sent to their fellow merchants in the neighbouring towns of Beverley and Hull presumably to keep them informed. Master Tod’s expenses thus provide evidence of the background activity to the preparation of the petition, which supports the likelihood of his being one of, if not the main instigator.
However, what becomes even more striking on further investigation of the personalities involved, is that Tod had actually been involved in an earlier merchant petition which involved merchants from other cities around the country concerned about the activities of the Hanse merchants and their seemingly preferential treatment. This separate petition, ten years earlier, in 1468 had been led by the previous Duke of Northumberland, a number of named northern merchants, including William Tod and some of his close associates on the Mayor’s Council in York and among the mercers. In fact, three of them, Thomas Wrangwish, John Tong and John Ferriby form a tight trio succeeding one another both as mayor of the City of York and as Master of the Mercers, in addition the 1468 York MP Robert Amyas was also a petitioner. We are fortunate in that the Hanse documents and archive present a very complete picture of these events and the petition which went to Edward IV asking for his intervention.9 It is a complicated history which involves both witness statements from those involved and lobbying from heads of state and civic and mercantile interests all around Europe. The point being that the petition or complaint submitted on this earlier occasion was asking the king to take very strong action against the Hanse merchants trading in England. Indeed, as requested there was initially a royal judgement which led to the confiscation of Hanse goods and the detention of Hanse merchants in England. Given this result when faced with the problem with John Pickering, the experience of the 1468 petition doubtless indicated to many of the same characters still involved in the York mercers a fast and productive route to royal attention and justice.
- CMAY/1/5/3/1/1 ↩︎
- Maud Sellers, The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers 1356 -1917. (Andrews & Co for the Surtees Society, 1918). ↩︎
- CMAY/3/1 Cartulary 1420-1523 ↩︎
- M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013),103. ↩︎
- Dodd, Gwilym. Justice and Grace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 281. ↩︎
- Gwilym Dodd, ‘Parliamentary Petitions? The Origins and Provenance of the ‘Ancient Petitions’ (SC 8) in the National Archives,’ in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. W. M. Ormrod, G. Dodd & A. Musson (York Press, 2009) this whole chapter traces the rather tortuous history of how the petition documentation suffered various nineteenth century rearrangements, not all positive, at one stage there is mention of ‘a great number of petitions for Edward 1V’s reign’ ( p.21), but sadly these do not seem to have surfaced in the current SC8 or elsewhere. ↩︎
- Jenny Kermode, Medieval Merchants, 344-5. ↩︎
- Sellers, Maud. The York Mercers,74-80. The transcriptions of the petition documents are accessible on- line, 74-80, at https://archive.org/details/yorkmercersmerch00mercrich/page/74/mode/2up ↩︎
- Walter Stein, ‘Hansisches Urkundenbuch Neunter Band 1463-1470 (Vol 9).’ In Hansisches Urkundendbuch, by various, 1-795. (Verlag von Duncker & Humblot,1903).
Accessed at https://www.hansischergeschichtsverein.de/file/hub9_hq.pdf ↩︎