Medieval People Part 15

8, for this last sarpler is fair wool enough, and therefore I must understand how many be of that sort and the number of the[m], for they must be packed again' (12 Sept., 1487).--_Ibid_., p. 160. Item, sir, your wool is awarded by the sarpler that I cast out last, etc. Item, sir, this same day your masters.h.i.+p is elected and appointed here by the Court one of the 28, the which shall a.s.sist the Master of the Staple now at this parliament time.'-_Ibid_., p. 162.

56. Gower, _op. cit_., p. 281.

57. _Cely Papers_, pp. xii, xxiv-v.

58. _Stonor Letters_, II, pp. 62-3; see also _Cely Papers_, pp. 1, 10, 13.

59. _Stonor Letters_, II, p. 4.

60. Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales (s.h.i.+pman's Tale_) LL, 1243-6.

61. _Stonor Letters_, II, p. 48.

62. _Cely Papers_, p. xxiii.

63. _Lybelle of Englysshe Polycye_ in _loc. cit_., pp. 179-81.

64. With deference, I think that Mr Malden in his introduction to the _Cely Papers_, App. II, pp. lii-iii, is mistaken in seeking to identify Synchon Mart with a particular fair at Antwerp on St John's Day, Bammes mart with the fair at St Remy (a Flemish name for whom is Bamis) on August 8, and Cold Mart with Cortemarck near Thourout. The names simply refer to the seasons in which there were fairs in most of the important centres, though doubtless in one place the winter and in another the spring, summer, or autumn fair was the more important. That the names refer to seasons and not to places appears quite clearly in various letters and regulations relating to the Merchant Adventurers of York.

See _The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers_, 1356-1917, ed. M.

Sellers (Surtees Soc., 1918), pp. 117, 121-5, 160, 170-1; see Miss Sellers' note, _ibid_., p. 122, quoting W. Cunningham: 'The ancient Celtic fairs ... were a widespread primitive inst.i.tution and appear to have been fixed for dates marked by the change of seasons.'--_Scottish Hist. Review_, xiii, p. 168. For instance, a doc.u.ment of 1509 ('For now att this cold marte last past, holdyn at Barow in Brabond,' _loc. cit_.

p. 121) disposes of the idea that the Cold mart was the mart at Cortemarck, while another doc.u.ment refers to merchants intending to s.h.i.+p 'to the cold martes' and 'to the synxon martes' in the plural. _Ibid_., p. 123. The identification of Balms mart with the fair at St Remy on August 8 is, moreover, belied by the same doc.u.ment (1510-11), which runs, 'Whereas this present marte ... we have lycensed and set you at libertie to s.h.i.+pp your commodities to the balmes marte next coming.

Nevertheless ... we thinke it good ... that upon the recepte of these our letters ye ... a.s.semble and consult together, and if ye shall thinke good amongest yourselffs ... discretly to withdraw and with holde your hands from s.h.i.+ppyng to the said balmes marte.... Wryten at Andwarp the xvij day of August.' _Ibid_., p. 124. The Balms mart was obviously the autumn fairtide, and Mr Malden is no doubt right in identifying Balms (Bammys, Bammes) with Bamis, the local Flemish name of St Remy; St Remy's Day was October 28, and the Balms mart was not the mart held on August 8 at St Remy, but the mart held on and round about St Remy's Day. Another doc.u.ment of 1552 gives interesting information about the s.h.i.+ppings for three of the marts: 'The last daye of s.h.i.+ppinge unto the fyrst s.h.i.+ppinge beinge for the pasche marte is ordeyned to be the laste of Marche nexte ensuyinge; and the seconde s.h.i.+ppinge which is appointed for the sinxon marte the laste day to the same, is appoynted the laste of June then nexte followinge; and unto the colde marte the laste day of s.h.i.+ppinge is appoynted to be the laste of November then nexte insuyinge.'--_Ibid_., p. 147. The Merchant Adventurers tried sometimes to restrict merchants to the Cold and the Synxon marts, which were the most important.

65. _Cely Papers_, p. xl, and _pa.s.sim_.

66. _Ibid_., p. 74. Richard Cely the younger to George: 'I understand that ye have a fair hawk. I am right glad of her, for I trust to G.o.d she shall make you and me right great sport. If I were sure at what pa.s.sage ye would send her I would fetch her at Dover and keep her till ye come.

A great infortune is fallen on your b.i.t.c.h, for she had 14 fair whelps, and after that she had whelped she would never eat meat, and so she is dead and all her whelps; but I trust to purvey against your coming as fair and as good to please that gentleman.'--_Ibid_., p. 74.

67. _Ibid_., p. xlix.

68. _Ibid_., App. I., pp. xlix-lii, a very interesting note on contemporary coinage, identifying all the coins mentioned in the letters.

69. _Ibid_., p. 159.

70. _Ibid_., p. 161.

71. _Stonor Letters_, II, p. 43. So Dame Elizabeth Stonor ends a letter to her husband: 'Written at Stonor, when I would fain have slept, the morrow after our Lady day in the morning,'--_Ibid_., p. 77.

72. Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales (s.h.i.+pman's Tale_), LL, 1265-78, in _Works_ (Globe Ed., 1903), p. 80.

73. The will is P.C.C. 24 Logge at Somerset House. For this a.n.a.lysis of its contents and information about the life of Thomas Betson after his breach with the Stonors see _Stonor Letters_, I, pp. xxviii-ix.

74. They are (1) John Bacon, citizen and woolman, and Joan, his wife (_d_. 1437); (2) Thomas Gilbert, citizen and draper of London and merchant of the Staple of Calais (_d_. 1483), and Agnes, his wife (_d_.

1489); (3) Christopher Rawson, mercer of London and merchant of the Staple of Calais, Junior Warden of the Mercers' Company in 1516 (_d_.

1518), and his two wives. Thomas Betson was doubtless acquainted with Gilbert and Rawson.

CHAPTER VII

THOMAS PAYc.o.c.kE OF COGGESHALL

_A. Raw Material_

1. The raw material for this chapter consists of Payc.o.c.ke's House, presented to the Nation in 1924 by the Right Hon. Noel Buxton, M.P., which stands in West Street, Coggeshall, Ess.e.x (station, Kelvedon); the Payc.o.c.ke bra.s.ses, which lie in the North aisle of the parish church of St Peter ad Vincula at Coggeshall; and the wills of John Payc.o.c.ke (_d_.

1505), Thomas Payc.o.c.ke (_d_. 1518), and Thomas Payc.o.c.ke (_d_. 1580), which are now preserved at Somerset House (P.C.C. Adeane 5, Ayloffe 14, and Arundell 50, respectively), and of which that of the first Thomas has been printed in Mr Beaumont's paper, cited below, while I have a.n.a.lysed fully the other two in my book, _The Payc.o.c.kes of Coggeshall_ (1920), which deals at length with the history of the Payc.o.c.kes and their house. See also G.F. Beaumont, _Payc.o.c.ke's House, Coggeshall, with some Notes on the Families of Payc.o.c.ke and Buxton_ (reprinted from Trans. Ess.e.x Archaeol. Soc., IX, pt. V) and the same author's _History of Coggeshall_ (1890). There is a beautifully ill.u.s.trated article on the house in _Country Life_ (June 30, 1923), vol. LIII, pp. 920-6.

2. For an apotheosis of the clothiers, see _The Pleasant History of John Winchcomb, in his younger days called Jack of Newbery, the famous and worthy Clothier of England_ and _Thomas of Reading, or the Six Worthy Yeomen of the West_, in _The Works of Thomas Deloney_, ed. F.O. Mann (1912), nos. II and V. The first of these was published in 1597 and the other soon afterwards and both went through several editions by 1600.

3. On the cloth industry in general see G. Morris and L. Wood, _The Golden Fleece_ (1922); E. Lipson, _The Woollen Industry_ (1921); and W.J. Ashley, _Introd. to English Economic History_ (1909 edit.). For the East Anglian woollen industry see especially the _Victoria County Histories_ of Ess.e.x and Suffolk. For a charming account of another famous family of clothiers see B. McClenaghan, _The Springs of Lavenham_ (Harrison, Ipswich, 1924).

_B. Notes to the Text_

1. _Deloney's Works_, ed. F.O. Mann, p. 213.

2. Thomas Fuller, _The Worthies of England_ (1622), p. 318.

3. A convenient introduction to the study of monumental bra.s.ses, with ill.u.s.trations and a list of all the surviving bra.s.ses in England, arranged according to counties, is W. Macklin, _Monumental Bra.s.ses_ (1913). See also H. Druitt, _Costume on Bra.s.ses_ (1906). These books also give details as to the famous early writers on the subject, such as Weaver, Holman, and A.J. Dunkin.

4. _Testamenta Eboracensia, a selection of wills from the Registry at York_, ed. James Raine, 6 vols. (Surtees Soc., 1836-1902). The Surtees Society has also published several other collections of wills from Durham and elsewhere, relating to the northern counties. A large number of wills have been printed or abstracted. See, for instance, _Wills and Inventories from the Registers of Bury St Edmunds_, ed. S. Tymms (Camden Soc., 1850); _Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Hastings_, _London_, ed. R.R. Sharpe, 2 vols. (1889); _The Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London_, ed. F.J.

Furnivall (E.E.T.S., 1882); _Lincoln Wills_, ed. C.W. Foster (Lincoln Record Soc., 1914); and _Somerset Medieval Wills_, 1383-1558, ed. F.W.

Weaver, 3 vols. (Somerset Record Soc., 1901-5).

5. The will of the other Thomas Payc.o.c.ke 'cloathemaker', who died in 1580, also refers to the family business. He leaves twenty s.h.i.+llings 'to William Gyon my weaver'; also 'Item, I doe give seaven poundes tenne s.h.i.+llinges of Lawful money of Englande to and amongest thirtie of the poorest Journeymen of the Fullers occupacion in Coggeshall aforesaide, that is to every one of them fyve s.h.i.+llinges.' William Gyon or Guyon was related to a very rich clothier, Thomas Guyon, baptized in 1592 and buried in 1664, who is said to have ama.s.sed 100,000 by the trade.

Thomas Payc.o.c.ke's son-in-law Thomas Tyll also came of a family of clothiers, for in a certificate under date 1577 of wool bought by clothiers of Coggeshall during the past year there occur the names of Thomas Tyll, William Gyon, John Gooddaye (to whose family the first Thomas Payc.o.c.ke left legacies), Robert Lytherland (who receives a considerable legacy under the will of the second Thomas), and Robert Jegon (who is mentioned incidentally in the will as having a house near the church and was father of the Bishop of Norwich of that name). See Power, _The Payc.o.c.kes of Coggeshall_, pp. 33-4.

6. Quoted in Lipson, _Introd. to the Econ. Hist, of England_ (1905), I, p. 421.

7. Quoted _ibid_., p. 417.

8. On John Winchcomb see Power, _op. cit_., pp. 17-18; and Lipson, _op.

cit_., p. 419.

9. Deloney's Works, ed. F.C. Mann, pp. 20-1.

10. _Ibid_., p. 22.

11. Quoted in C.L. Powell, _Eng. Domestic Relations_, 1487-1563 (1917), p. 27.

12. The house subsequently pa.s.sed, it is not quite clear at what date, into the hands of another family of clothiers, the Buxtons, who had intermarried with the Payc.o.c.kes some time before 1537. William Buxton (_d_. 1625) describes himself as 'clothyer of Coggeshall' and leaves 'all my Baey Lombs [Looms]' to his son Thomas. Thomas was seventeen when his father died and lived until 1647, also carrying on business as a clothier, and the house was certainly in his possession. He or his father may have bought it from John Payc.o.c.ke's executors. By him it was handed down to his son Thomas, also a clothier (_d_. 1713), who pa.s.sed it on to his son Isaac, clothier (_d_. 1732). Isaac's two eldest sons were clothiers likewise, but soon after their father's death they retired from business. He apparently allowed his third son, John, to occupy the house as his tenant, and John was still living there in 1740.

But Isaac had left the house by will in 1732 to his youngest son, Samuel, and Samuel, dying in 1737, left it to his brother Charles, the fourth son of Isaac. Charles never lived in it, because he spent most of his life in the pursuit of his business as an oil merchant in London, though he is buried among his ancestors in Coggeshall Church. In 1746 he sold the house to Robert Ludgater and it pa.s.sed completely out of the Payc.o.c.ke-Buxton connexion, and in the course of time fell upon evil days and was turned into two cottages, the beautiful ceilings being plastered over. It was on the verge of being destroyed some years ago when it was bought and restored to its present fine condition by Mr Noel Buxton, a direct lineal descendant of the Charles Buxton who sold it. See Power, _op. cit_., pp. 38-40.

13. _Deloney's Works_, ed. F.O. Mann, p. 213.

14. Defoe, _Tour through Great Britain_, 1724 (1769 edit.), pp. 144-6.

15. 'This s.h.i.+re is the most fatt, frutefull and full of profitable thinges, exceeding (as far as I can finde) anie other s.h.i.+re for the general commodities and the plentie, thowgh Suffolk be more highlie comended by some (wherewith I am not yet acquainted). But this s.h.i.+re seemeth to me to deserve the t.i.tle of the Englishe Goshen, the fattest of the lande, comparable to Palestina, that flowed with milk and hunnye.'--Norden, _Description of Ess.e.x_ (1594), (Camden Soc.), p. 7.

16. According to Leake, writing about 1577, 'About 1528 began the first spinning on the distaffe and making of c.o.xall clothes.... These c.o.xall clothes weare first taught by one Bonvise, an Italian.'--Quoted _V.C.H.