More important transactions than these frequently took place, and not at fair time only but throughout the year, as the records of the mayor's court of Statute Merchant clearly show. The amount of the various purchases was, when viewed from a mediæval standpoint, very large; a "gentilman" of Attleborough, for instance, in 1415, acknowledges that he is bound to certain Hinckley folk and others "in ducentis libris" (£200 sterling), while a Dublin merchant, Dodenhall, without doubt a connection and kinsman of the Coventry mayors of that name, owed in 1394 a fellow-merchant of the latter place £210, money which he did pay before distress was levied upon him. The following, however, would be a more usual example of recognition of debt: "On the eighteenth day of the month of February, in the third year of King Henry the Fifth after the Conquest, at Coventry, William Lyberd, hosier, of Coventry, acknowledges that he is bound ("recognoscit se teneri") to Thomas Dawe of Coventry, passenger, in sixteen pounds sterling, payable at Coventry at the feast of S. Michael the Archangel next ensuing."[564]
When all the bargaining was over, when the debt had been duly paid, or the amount enrolled at the mayor's court, men thought of other things. The "commons" of Coventry could discuss the everlasting "Lammas" question with the Nottingham men, while those who took more interest in national politics whispered to one another complaints against abuses in Church and State. They hinted darkly at the cause of the death of the "good" Duke Humphrey, condemned the malice of the Yorkists, the scandals of the archdeacon's court, or lifting their eyes to the defaced monastery and cathedral, spoke of the high-handed character of the "King's Proceedings."[565]
The nightly sojourn at inns was a great feature of the wayfaring merchant's life, for it was only in sparsely-peopled districts that monasteries afforded hospitality to the travelling trader.[566] "Strangers and baggers of corn between Yorkshire, Lancashire, Kendal, and Westmoreland and the bishopric," the people of the north declared at the dissolution, "were greatly helped both horse and man by the said abbeys; for never was in these parts denied either horse-meat or man's meat, so that the people were greatly refreshed by the said abbeys, where now they have no such succour."[567] But the majority of wayfarers sought shelter either at inns or at herbergeors' houses, for the private citizens, even the richer merchants, frequently increased their gains by the entertainment of travellers. The public inns were often the scene of gambling and intrigue, and unwary guests, who had not the wherewithal to discharge the heavy bills they had been induced to contract, frequently found their baggage seized to several times the amount of the debt. "The greater barons and knights were in the custom of taking up their lodgings with herbergeors, rather than going to the public hostels; and thus a sort of relationship was formed between particular nobles or kings and particular burghers, on the strength of which the latter adopted the arms of their habitual lodgers as their signs."[568] It might still be possible to learn the story of the connection between certain noble houses and the inhabitants of a given district by means of inn-sign heraldry; while from the same source we could gather a hint of popular political feeling at a later date. The jubilant cavalier would swing his sign of the Royal Oak at the Restoration, and the staunch adherent of the "Great Commoner" flaunt his Old King of Prussia in the next century, just as surely as the mediæval inn-keeper decorated his sign with the White Hart, White Boar, or Bear and Baculus, in honour of his patrons Richard II., Richard III., or the Earl of Warwick. Famous old inns in Coventry were the Crown, in "platea vocata Brodeyatys" hard by the Langley's inn, the Cardinal's Hat, in Earl Street.[569] The Peacock, still existing in the last century, was in the Broad Gate, but the locality of the Angel, where Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, lodged, is unknown. One authority speaks also of the White Rose, of late years the Roebuck, still standing in Little Park Street, where the Yorkists held rendezvous, and the Red Rose in Much Park Street, a meeting-place for Lancastrians.[570] The herbergeors frequently received distinguished guests. Henry VII., after a triumphal entry into Leicester on his way from Bosworth field, came to Coventry, and took up his lodging in the house of Robert Onley, the mayor, at the Bull, in Smithfield Street, a visit he repeated in two years' time, when he conferred on his host the honour of knighthood.[571]
The Coventry merchants, like their fellows in other towns, had plentiful dealings with the outside world. The Botoners, whom tradition credits with the building of S. Michael's spire and chancel, held intercourse, it seems, with the men of Bristol, for they married a daughter of their house to a native of those parts, and she became the mother of the chronicler, William Worcester.[572] As the traders of a later generation, the Botoners, most likely, conveyed their wine and wax in vessels towed up the River Severn, a journey beset with difficulties, as the towing-path was overgrown with brushwood, and private landowners and corporate towns on the river bank demanded tolls from the passers-by.[573] The Bristol men, too, were not averse from straining a point in the matter of tolls, and in spite of the grants of freedom the Coventry men possessed, demanded "cayage" from them,[574] when their goods were upon the landing stage. Many times did Adam and William Botoner serve in the mayor's office, and their donations to the church, to town guilds, murage funds, and the like are numberless. As for the great tower of S. Michael's steeple that the brothers built, tradition credits them with spending £100 every year for twenty-one years upon the work.[575] In the early part of the fifteenth century the family entered the ranks of the country landowners by the purchase of an estate at Withybrook. Not only at Bristol, but at Southampton, the chief port of the south, where French dyes were sold, did Coventry men carry on a great part of their trade. And William Horseley, mayor in 1483 and member of the dyers' craft, brought about an agreement between the men of this port and his fellow-citizens in 1456, whereby mutual freedom of tolls was secured.[576]
But the trading enterprise of these inland-dwelling townsfolk was not confined to their native country merely. Another family, the Onleys, whereof one John Onley, the founder, was mayor of the Calais Staple,[577] had dealings with merchants beyond the sea. This foreign intercourse was often beset with danger to life and limb. John Onley, son of the above, was apprenticed to one Thomas Aleyn, a London mercer. When travelling to Bruges in 1413, where the chief staple for cloth then was, on his master's errand, this apprentice fell into the hands of a goldsmith of that place, who, because he could not obtain redress for the treatment he and his goods had received from an English "roberdesman" in the neighbourhood of Dover, kidnapped and kept John Onley as hostage. At last the good folk of Bruges, fearing the anger of the English, forced him to let the apprentice go.[578] Our sympathies are divided between the innocent lad and the outraged goldsmith, for in the wilder parts of England "roberdesmen" were a veritable scourge to the foreign trader. Did not Henry III. hang more than sixty of the brigands of Alton, who had plundered certain merchants of Brabant, though the whole county of Hants conspired to ensure the acquittal of the accused?[579] Occasionally the highwaymen also attacked English folk. In the days of the third Edward, there was a pretty gang, composed chiefly of "gentlemen born," who beneath the shelter of Cannock Chase did much harm to the merchants of Lichfield, and apportioned what spoil they took "to each according to his rank."[580]
But foreigners were quick at reprisal when debts were owing to them, or any injury had been done by English merchants. And the proud traders of Lübeck and Bergen, members of the Hanseatic League, who warred with and dictated to kings, were especially sensitive in this respect. This may be seen by the fate which befell Laurence Cook, afterwards twice mayor of Coventry, in the days of his apprenticeship to William Bedforth, and Thomas Walton, servant to John Cross, another local merchant, who aided in the erection of S. Mary's Hall. For in 1398, as they lay in the ship of one Thomas Herman, of Boston, in the port of Stralsund, certain allies of the League, who had some grudge against the English traders, fell upon the apprentices, beat and wounded them minus juste, taking moreover from the ship 240 dozen pieces of cloth of divers colours, Bedforth's property, valued at £200; "much merchandise" belonging to Cross, worth half the sum, and other pieces of cloth, exported by a third Coventry merchant, valued at £50.[581] Such incidents as these were not uncommon in the lives of mediæval merchants, and for the making of a successful trader it was necessary that a man should have a dash of the warrior and a great deal of the adventurer in his composition. Trained by exposure to such perils by land and sea as nowadays only explorers undergo, it is little wonder that they proved themselves keen, energetic, and resourceful in their civic life.
The servant of one Mr Wheatley had a happier adventure than Laurence Cook when in the sixteenth century he undertook a journey to Spain. For, wishing to purchase steel gads, he bought a chest at a fair, and lo! when it was opened it was found to contain ingots of silver, treasure brought perhaps from over the Spanish main. The servant, not knowing of whom he bought them, Mr Wheatley—honest man—kept them for a time, but as no inquiry was ever made, he gave the profits, amounting with contributions from the city to £96 a year, to the maintenance of twenty-one boys at a school at Bablake, an institution which exists and thrives even to this day. This benefactor, the "Dick Whittington" of Coventry, is a person of whom we would gladly learn more. The real Sir Richard, "thrice Lord Mayor of London," was, as historians tells us, not the poor friendless wanderer of legend, but the hopeful son of a well-to-do family of the country gentry, and was apprenticed to a wealthy London merchant by his kinsfolk after the orthodox fashion.[582] But as yet no historian has deemed it necessary to investigate Mr Wheatley's early career, and we still believe that he came to Coventry as a nameless adventurer, "a poor boy in a white coat," as Dugdale says. He died a bachelor, and bequeathed his fortune to charity.[583]
OLD BABLAKE SCHOOL