CHAPTER VII

WEALTH AND STATE OF NOBLES AND CITIZENS

The wealth of the great nobles and the cost of keeping up the households which enriched the City when they were in residence is set forth in some detail by Stow. Thus he says that Hugh Spencer the elder, when he was banished from the realm, was found to possess 59 manors, 28,000 sheep, 1000 oxen and steers, 1200 kine with their calves, 40 mares with their colts, 100 drawing horses, 2000 hogs, 300 bullocks, 40 tuns of wine, 600 bacons, 80 carcases of Martimas beef, 600 muttons in larder, 10 tuns of cider, £10,000 in ready money, armour, plate, jewels, 36 sacks of wool, and a library of books.

In the reign of Henry VI., the Earl of Salisbury was lodged in the Erber with 500 men on horseback; the Duke of York resided at Baynard’s Castle with 400 men; the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset had 800 men; the Earl of Northumberland with the Lord Egremont and Lord Clifford had 1500 men; Richard Nevill, Earl of Warwick, had 600 men, and so on. We may take it that in every great house when it was occupied there would be 500 knights and men, and their horses and their grooms, and the cooks, bakers, brewers, valets, footmen, stable boys, blacksmiths, armourers, makers and menders of all kinds, who made up a little colony by themselves, among the London craftsmen who lived around them. The victualling of these huge barracks was a source of very great profit to the City. We remember that curious little episode when Thomas of Woodstock quarrelled with Nicholas Brembre the Mayor, and punished the citizens by withdrawing—he and his men and as many of his friends as would go with him—out of the City. To lose at one blow the maintenance of many thousand men was ruin. Imagine the consternation at Fishmongers’ Hall, Bakers’ Hall, Butchers’ Hall, among the Vintners, the Brewers, the Cooks, the Poulterers! This unexpected act threw into confusion the whole machinery of supply! Nor was it only the loss of the profit on food and drink, but on the things always wanted for the service of such a host, on the making and the mending, the repairs and the replacements! There was weeping and consternation even among the Mercers, the Grocers, and the Goldsmiths. The whole trade of London suffered. On this occasion a subscription was raised among the leading merchants for the purpose of bribing the nobles to come back. It is the only instance on record of a strike among consumers against providers. Had it been long continued there would have been an end of London trade. But when members of a body fall out among themselves, they very quickly perceive the advantage of reconciliation before it comes to starvation.

The Knights and men in each all wore his livery and badge. Sometimes the livery and badge meant nothing more than the chief’s coat of arms in silver sewn on the sleeve of the left arm. Sometimes it meant also jackets of the same colour, as in the case of Warwick’s men, who all wore red jackets. Later, the badge was discontinued, and the followers wore the same coloured coat or jacket, a custom which survives in the cap and jacket of the jockey.

Every noble carried about with him his Treasury Chest; one of the king’s chests is still preserved in the Chapel of the Pyx. The expenditure was profuse, and, from a modern point of view, certainly pauperising. In the Earl of Warwick’s town house, any one who had an acquaintance in the house was allowed to enter freely, and to carry away as much meat as he could stick on a dagger.

Richard Redman, Bishop of Ely (1500), gave food to the poor wherever he went, and on his departure from a town gave every poor man sixpence at least. Nicholas, Lord Bishop of Ely, gave every day bread and drink and warm meat to 200 persons. The Earl of Derby fed 60 aged persons twice a day, all comers thrice a week, and on Good Friday 2700. Robert Winchesley, in the thirteenth century, fed thousands every day in time of dearth. Henry in 1236 ordered 6000 poor persons to be fed at Westminster on Circumcision Day; and so on, other instances being recorded by the careful Stow.

There is a very simple explanation of this profuseness, which seems to us so wasteful and so mischievous. There were no bank investments, no companies, no stocks or shares; a nobleman’s estates brought him in every year so much money; it belonged to his rank to maintain as great a state as his means would allow; to accumulate money was not considered either noble or princely; to accumulate manors—yes—and to spend the rents as they came in every year with a lavish hand, was considered the part of a courteous and noble lord. Henry III., Edward II., and Richard II. are instances where the association of lavish expenditure with true princeliness was carried to a disease. This, however, is a characteristic trait of the mediæval noble. The bourgeois, the merchant, the trader, might save and spare and accumulate. It was his _métier_. The noble must exhibit his wealth by a splendid dress, a splendid following, a splendid table, and a splendid generosity. No doubt had Hugh Spencer the elder been longer spared to an admiring country he would have added many more manors to his long list; but he would not have added much, if anything, to the ready money in the long narrow chest which was carried between two horses as he went with his riding from town to castle.

Stories of the banquets and gifts of the great citizens show a command of ready money which the most princely of the nobles never possessed, though probably few of the citizens could compare, as far as wealth went, with the first among the nobles.

The magnificence of the banquet at which Whittington made a gift to the King, astonished both the King and his bride; probably there was not, in all England and France together, another man who could have provided such a banquet. Among the great nobles, with a vast territory and many thousands of vassals, there was not certainly, outside the City of London, any one who could command the rich and splendid things which were ready to the hand of a great merchant. Even the fires were fed with cedar and perfumed wood. When Katherine spoke of it, the Mayor proposed to feed the flames with something still more costly and valuable, and, in fact, he threw into the fire the King’s own bonds, to the amount of £60,000. Among the bonds were some, to the amount of 10,000 marks, due to the Mercers’ Company; one of 1500 marks, due to the Chamber of London; one of 2000 marks, belonging to the Grocers; and all Whittington’s private loans and advances. It is probable that in burning these bonds the Mayor acted by previous agreement of the City; but if not—if he took on himself the loans due to the Companies—he made a most splendid and princely gift. The sum of £60,000 advanced by one man would, even in these days, be considered enormous; in those days it can hardly be reckoned as less than a million and a quarter of our present money.

Or again, we may take Whittington’s will. He gave a library, and a house for it, to the Grey Friars; he founded a College of Priests and an almshouse; he rebuilt his Parish Church; he rebuilt Newgate Prison, because most of the prisoners there died “by reason of the fœtid and corrupt atmosphere.”

And we may illustrate the wealth of London by the rich benefactions made by the Mayors about the same time. Sevenoke, who founded the grammar school in his native place of that name; Chichele, Mayor, and his brother the Sheriff, who rebuilt, with their greater brother, the Archbishop, the Church of their native place at Higham Ferrers and endowed it with a school, an almshouse, and a College of Priests; the Sheriff also left a large sum of money to feast every year 2400 householders of the City on his “mind” day. There was Sir John Rainwell, who gave lands and houses to discharge the tax called the Fifteenth for three parishes—with what gratitude should we regard the memory of a man who would pay our rates for us! There was Wells, who brought water from Tyburn, and Estfield, who made a conduit of water from Highbury to Cripplegate.

And we may remember the ridings, the pageants, the processions in which the City showed its wealth to Kings and Princes; the loans which it granted to the King; and the taxes which it paid without a murmur, until one King, at least, deemed its treasures inexhaustible. All these things show that there was a vast amount of money and lavish generosity in the mediæval City.