Calais: An English Town in France, 1347-1558

Calais an English Town in France 1347–1558 Calais was of huge strategic and financial significance to England in the middle ages and beyond, yet it has not received the attention it deserves. Here, in the first fulllength examination of Calais under English governance, both the political and military importance of the town, and its role as the centre of the prime export trade of medieval England, that in raw wool, are examined. Chronicle sources are carefully exploited to provide narratives of the major events in the town’s history, its capture by Edward III, the Burgundian siege of 1436 and its loss to the French in 1558, while thematic chapters survey the finances and organisation of the garrison and its role in English politics in the fifteenth century. There is also full consideration of the economic function of the wool Staple and the lives of English wool merchants, using both the Cely and the Johnson collections of contemporary letters and papers.

Calais an English Town in France 1347–1558

Susan Rose

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T HE B OY DE L L PR E S S

© Susan Rose 2008 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Susan Rose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2008 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 84383 401 4

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

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Contents



List of illustrations

vii



Abbreviations

viii



Preface

ix

Introduction: England and France in the mid fourteenth century

1

1 The siege and capture of the town: Edward III and the burghers of Calais

7

2 A new ruler and a new regime: the town and the garrison in the early years of English rule

23

3 Setting up the Staple: a new role for Calais

39

4 Triumph and disaster: Henry V, the collapse of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance and the resurgence of France

54

5 Calais as a base for political intrigue: Yorkists, Lancastrians and the earl of Warwick

73

6 The heyday of the Company of the Staple: merchants and their lives

95

7 Religious and political change: Henry VII, Henry VIII and the Reformation

112

8 The town and trade: the later fortunes of the Company of the Staple and of the Johnson partnership

134

9 The end of the story: the loss of Calais to the French

153



Conclusion

172



Bibliography

175



Index

183

For Rona, Hannah, Katherine and Sadie

L i s t o f i l lu s t r at i o n s



Map of Calais and the Pale in the mid sixteenth century

Figure 1 Fort Nieulay on the site of Newenham Bridge

x 67

Figure 2 The day watch-tower

117

Figure 3 Guisnes and the Castle

123

Figure 4 Sixteenth-century view of Calais from the sea

136

Figure 5 View of modern Calais from the sea

137

Figure 6 Drawing of Calais harbour and the buildings outside the walls

138

Figure 7 Exports of raw wool through the port of London, Michaelmas 1529 – Michaelmas 1543

145

Figure 8 The siege of Calais, 1558

165

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

Abbrev i at i o n s

BL CCR CPR EHR LL ODNB TNA

British Library Calendar of Close Rolls Calendar of Patent Rolls The English Historical Review Lisle Letters, ed. M. St Clare Byrne (Chicago, 1981) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The National Archives, Kew

P refa ce

T

his idea for this book was first conceived some time ago, but in the interim I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to discuss and mull over some of the interpretations put forward at the Fifteenth Century conferences, both in formal sessions and during the enjoyable dinners and outings which have always been a feature of these gatherings. It will also be clear to any reader how much I have benefited from the work of others who have been interested in the fortunes of Calais while it was in English hands. This applies particularly to Dr David Grummitt and Professor Morgan, whose doctoral theses have helped me greatly. I am of course responsible for any errors in this work, but it would not have even got started without their invaluable work on the mass of material relating to Calais in the National Archives. I am deeply in their debt. I am also very grateful to Clifford Rogers for allowing me to use his unpublished transcription and translation of the Saint-Omer Chronicle (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, MS fr. 693). Thanks are also due to the staff and librarians at the National Archives and the British Library who do so much to smooth the path of any historian and writer. Finally my thanks are due to my family, who have nobly put up with my interest in Calais, and in the case of my husband accompanied me on a visit to the town and the Pale. This book is dedicated to four of my granddaughters; I hope they will enjoy it. Highgate, 2007

Map of Calais and the Pale showing the boundary as drawn in the survey of 1536.

Introduction: E n g l a n d a n d F r a n ce i n t he m i d f o u rt ee n t h ce n t u ry

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A

fter Edward III of England had taken the town of Calais, following a siege lasting just under a year, Froissart describes how the king called his marshals to him and puts these words into his mouth :

Sirs, take these keys of the town and castle of Calais and go and assume possession of them. Take the knights who are there and make them prisoners or else put them on parole : they are gentlemen and I will trust them on their word. All other soldiers, who have been serving there for pay, are to leave the place just as they are and so is everyone else in the town, men, women and children, for I wish to repopulate Calais with pure-blooded English.1

Why did a state of war exist between England and France at this time, and why was so much time and effort expended on the siege of this town ? Why did Edward intend to hold it as an English possession, the clear motive behind the banishment of all its original inhabitants ? The first of these questions can be answered fairly easily. This was the final important episode in the 1346 campaign of the Hundred Years’ War, the campaign that included the crushing French defeat at Crécy and also English successes in Brittany and Gascony. Hostility between these two kingdoms in north-west Europe was no new thing. Some historians have been inclined to see it as a consequence of the Norman Conquest of England. The fact that a vassal of the king of France (the duke of Normandy) was a king in his own right across the Channel could not but lead to friction. If the king of France attempted to enforce his feudal superiority in respect of English royal-held lands within his own realm, this would be barely acceptable to someone who in his kingly role saw himself as the equal of any 1 Froissart, Chronicles, ed. G. Brereton (Harmondsworth, 1968), 109–10.



· 1 ·

· 2 ·

Introduction

monarch and particularly of any king of France. The degree of friction and its propensity to lead to open warfare varied with the relative strengths and also the personalities of the rulers of France and England. After the accession of Henry II and his marriage to Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, most of western France was in English hands as well as the ancestral Norman lands. The persistence of Philip II Augustus of France and the incompetence of John of England led to the loss of the greater portion of these territories, although Gascony, Bordeaux and its immediate hinterland never fell to the French at this time. This ensured that as dukes of Aquitaine, English kings continued to be nominal vassals of the French monarch. Low-level warfare on the borders of the duchy and disputes over the jurisdiction of both French royal law courts and English ducal courts could lead to more serious conflict. The terms of the treaty between Henry III of England and Louis IX in 1259 (the treaty of Paris) had established a new framework for relations between the two rivals, but the problem of Aquitaine (from the French point of view) remained. Edward I’s acquisition of the county of Ponthieu in northern France in right of his wife Eleanor of Castile served to aggravate the possibilities of conflict. Twice, in 1294 and 1324, the French king confiscated the English counties, accusing both Edward I and Edward II of failing to observe their oaths to their feudal superior. The wars that resulted did little to settle the underlying problems, and no-one at the time would have been surprised at the renewal of hostilities in the future. When this did come about after 1337, however, the nature of the war and relations between the two monarchs changed. The quarrel became not an arcane dispute over legal rights or even a personal vendetta or power struggle, but a long-running and at times bitterly fought war, which profoundly altered both the states involved, their self-images and the nature of their governance. In the hands of contemporary chroniclers from both sides, the wars took on a heroic chivalric aspect. Writers in the seventeenth century and later tended to see events from a more nationalistic stance. More recently attention has to some extent turned away from great men and great events to the effects of the wars on the lesser people of both town and countryside, whether as taxpayers, soldiers or those miserably faced with the destruction of their homes and livelihood.2 Here we are concerned with the political and military situation in the immediate prologue to the campaign of 1346 and its culmination, the siege of Calais. The death of Charles IV of France in 1328 leaving no legitimate male heirs of his body placed Edward III of England in a potentially interesting position. Charles had left one living daughter, and to the dismay of his wife the posthumous child she bore shortly after his death was also a daughter. As the nephew of the late king, the child of his sister Isabella, Edward was the closest living male relation. He was, however, only sixteen years old, and his position as king in England was compromised by the activities of his mother and her lover Roger 2 A. Curry, The Hundred Years War (Basingstoke, 2003), has a full discussion of the historiography of the Hundred Years War on pp. 5–27.



Introduction

· 3 ·

Mortimer ; this pair had deposed Edward’s father and still largely controlled the young king. Few in France wished to see this ‘wicked and shameless woman’ in a position of power, and the accession of Philip of Valois, a first cousin of Charles IV, was accepted happily by his future subjects.3 By 1337 the situation was different. Edward III had forcefully asserted himself against the malign influence of his mother and had been king in fact as well as name since 1330. He wished both to establish his own reputation as a powerful monarch and warrior and also to undo the effects of the treaties concluded by Isabella and Mortimer with both Scotland and France, which seemed unfavourable to English interests. The treaty with France, concluded in 1327, had not led to the restoration of lands lost by the English in 1324–5 but did ensure that Edward III was required to perform homage for the remaining territories. On the ground, the local agents of the French crown also did all they could to infringe on or ignore English rights and similarly to advance French claims to lands, dues and other sources of income. The so-called ‘shameful’ peace of Northampton in 1328 not only recognised Robert Bruce as rightful ruler of Scotland but did nothing to hinder the continuance of the alliance between Scotland and France. Edward was able to restore some of the military prestige of the English Crown when Scotland once more sank into political turmoil after the death of Bruce. The English victory at Halidon Hill in 1333 wiped out the memory of their defeat at Bannockburn and also demonstrated the effectiveness of English archers against a charging army. The French, however, saw their alliance with Scotland as a useful way of putting pressure on Edward. He was less likely to fight in France, if French support was threatened for Scots incursions on his northern frontier. By 1337 the tensions between Philip VI and Edward III had worsened. In May, Philip took the decisive step of once more announcing the confiscation of the duchy of Aquitaine for a breach of feudal law, while Edward was spending large sums of money trying to buy support against France from the princes of the Empire holding land on her northern frontiers. He had also acted to secure the friendship of Flemish towns, which depended on English wool for their vital textile industry. In October Edward made an even more important and aggressive move, ostensibly in reaction to Philip’s confiscation of his duchy. A document giving authority to ambassadors to negotiate on his behalf included the statement that he, Edward, not Philip, was the rightful king of France. At first not a great deal was made of this claim, but, at a ceremony held in Ghent in early 1340, Edward openly assumed the title of king of France, while the major towns of Flanders pledged loyalty to him in this role. A crushing naval victory at Sluys in June of the same year over the French and their allies the Genoese seemed to herald real advances for the English cause. The land campaign, however, soon

3 E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War (London, 1962), 75. The Salic law of succession in France was usually held to forbid the succession of a female ruler. It was not so clear that a female could not transmit the right to the throne to a male descendant.

· 4 ·

Introduction

became bogged down, with lack of funds leading to discontent among his Flemish allies and desertions from his own forces.4 His acute financial difficulties did not force Edward to abandon all thought of war with France. Although truces interrupted the fighting, and strenuous diplomatic initiatives were also undertaken by the papacy in an endeavour to bring peace, neither side was prepared to back down. The situation was further complicated by a succession dispute in Brittany that became entangled in the major conflict. In 1345 armies under the command of English noblemen and with a mixture of English and local troops were at large in Brittany, Flanders and Gascony. It is against this background that we must place the decision of Edward himself to lead an expedition to France in the summer of 1346, an expedition that reached the Norman coast on 12 July at the small port of SaintVaast-la-Hogue on the Cotentin peninsula. The two states that had already been in a state of war for nearly ten years were not, on the face of it, equally matched. The French kingdom was much more populous, much wealthier and of much greater significance in European affairs than England. It contained many large and wealthy towns as well as Paris, the capital and by far the most populous city in the west. The papacy had been based at Avignon in Provence since 1305, and while the papal lands were not part of France itself, many felt that the popes were unduly influenced by the French crown. Until the failure of the Capet male line, France had also enjoyed long years of peace with few foreign adventures or serious internal disputes. Joan Evans, writing of France before the Hundred Years’ War, described the country as enjoying ‘a state of material prosperity that had not been appreciated until it was lost’. There was ‘modest comfort among the poor’ and ‘magnificence among the rich’.5 England, in contrast, had a population that, according to the highest estimate, may have reached about four million, one-third of that estimated for France. The Crown had been involved in warfare either overseas or against Wales and Scotland for much of the preceding fifty years or so. Disputes between the Crown and its most powerful subjects had also been relatively frequent, while the memory of the deposition of Edward II by his wife and her lover was still fresh in the 1340s. On the other hand, the king had at his disposal trained and experienced military men and commanders. Despite the need to consult his subjects by means of Parliament, he also had a potentially much more flexible and effective system for tapping the wealth of the community than that available to the ostensibly richer king of France. For both realms, quantities of administrative and financial sources survive. There are of course gaps in the records caused by the passage of time, the lack of suitable storage, or deliberate destruction, particularly in France at the time of the Revolution. Records that reveal the states of mind of rulers or the basis 4 A full account of these events can be found in M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1983), 122–35. 5 J. Evans, Life in Medieval France (London, 1925), 135.



Introduction

· 5 ·

on which they took decisions are much harder to come by than accounts, writs, muster lists and the like. Chroniclers may refer confidently to the reasons behind an action, but it is hard to know if this is anything other than inspired speculation or wisdom gained after the event. There is for example little agreement on Edward III’s intentions as he sailed from Portsmouth in company with some six hundred other vessels that July morning in 1346. Was his destination intended to be Gascony, where an English and Gascon force under the command of the earl of Derby was being besieged by the French, under the command of the duke of Normandy, the son of Philip VI, at Aiguillon ? Did a sudden shift in the wind make this impractical, forcing the king to land in Normandy instead ? Or had he always planned to make this his landfall ? Once ashore, what was the overall aim of the whole expedition ? What aims motivated his strategy ? Clifford Rogers has looked closely at these issues, pointing out that some historians believe that the king had no real strategy at all, that he ‘could not plan a campaign’. Others suggest that Edward wanted to demonstrate Philip VI’s inability to protect his own subjects from the devastation caused by the English army, and that being faced with a pitched battle formed no part of Edward’s original plan. Rogers himself believes that Edward, on the contrary, wished avidly to manoeuvre Philip into offering battle, provided that this could take place in a location of Edward’s choosing, and that this aim makes sense of the whole campaign.6 Even the restrained language of a letter of Michael of Northburgh, one of the king’s clerks, included in Avesbury’s chronicle makes clear that there was an element of a gamble in this plan if it existed. The march through Normandy, even if it caused much destruction, was punctuated by encounters that could easily have gone heavily against Edward’s men. Northburgh notes that at Poissy ‘at the re-making of the bridge there came men of arms in great numbers with the commons of the country and of Amiens well armed’. Here the English prevailed with few casualties. Similarly, when a ford across the Somme was located at Blanquetache, the French had a force of ‘five hundred men-at-arms and three thousand of the commons armed, to hold the passage’, and the safe crossing of the bulk of the English army was not a foregone conclusion. Avesbury himself then continues with an account of the crushing victory for Edward and his army against the feudal host of France at Crécy. This concludes with the significant sentence, ‘from what I have heard his [the king’s] purpose is to besiege Calais’, and the remark, ‘And therefore my lord the king hath sent to you [that is the government in England itself ] for victuals and that too as quickly as you can send’.7 Froissart provides a much fuller description of the battle, enriched by stories of notable acts of chivalry, like the way the blind king of Bohemia insisted on 6 The question of the various interpretations of Edward’s strategic goals is discussed at length in C. J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp : English Strategy under Edward iii, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge, 2000), chap. 10, ‘The invasion of 1346 : strategic options and historiography’, pp. 217–37. 7 R. Avesbury, De Gestis Mirabilibus Regis Edwardi Tertii, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, 1889), 370–71.

· 6 ·

Introduction

being led by his knights into the thick of the fighting and was then found by the English, mortally wounded, after it was all over. Concerning the decision to lay siege to Calais, however, Froissart only details the route taken by the English army, north along the coast until, having spent a day at Wissant, ‘they came before the fortified town of Calais.’8 The implication almost is that the town was an obstacle in their path and they had no choice but to attack it. Rogers rejects both this idea and the notion that the decision to head for Calais was taken only after the victory at Crécy. In his view, Edward had always intended to conclude the 1346 campaign with an attack on Calais ; this would provide the final opportunity to bring the war to an end, as Parliament had been promised when Edward was appealing for financial aid, by luring Philip once more into battle and defeating him even more comprehensively than at Crécy.9 This view does, perhaps, imply that Edward had an enormous amount of confidence not only in himself but in the prowess of his army. It also requires the belief that the promise to Parliament was more than a piece of necessary rhetoric. Nevertheless there is no argument about the time, money and resources that were poured into the siege of Calais by the English, and for that reason alone the prize of the town must have been seen as highly desirable. We will now turn to a description of the town itself and the siege by which it fell into English hands. 8 Froissart, Chronicles, 89–96. 9 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 274–6.

1 The s i ege a n d c a p t u re o f t he town : E dwa rd III a n d t he b u rgher s o f C a l a i s

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he town of Calais might appear at first sight to be an odd choice for the expenditure of so much time, effort and money and so many men on its capture. It was less than two hundred years old, having been founded around 1165 by Matthew of Alsace, count of Boulogne, at much the same time as his brother Philip, count of Flanders, had set up Gravelines some miles to the north east along the coast. Both towns lay sheltered behind the sand dunes that fronted the sea on the flat coastal plain of Flanders. Around Calais the terrain was very marshy, and travel overland was difficult in wet weather or during the winter, while there was also a danger that a storm surge in the North Sea could damage the protecting dunes and undermine the town and its defences. Gravelines, at the mouth of the river Aa, had the advantage of reasonable communications by water with its hinterland, especially the busy town of Saint-Omer, and enough current in the river to prevent the port silting up. Calais had no such river, only two small streams draining into the harbour, which was largely man-made, depending for shelter from gales in the Channel on a sandbank reinforced with faggots and marsh grass known as the Risban (the Flemish word ris means both rushes or faggots). Silting up, caused largely by sand blown off the dunes, was something of a problem, leading to the need to scour the ditches and dredge the harbour at regular intervals.1 The town itself, like many ‘new towns’ in the twelfth century, was laid out on a rectangular plan, with a castle in the north-west corner. It had an ordered 1 Alain Derville has written on the early history of Calais in ‘Calais avant 1347 : la vie d’un port’, in A. Lottin and J.-C. Hoquet (eds.), Les Hommes et la mer dans l’Europe du nord-ouest : de l’antiquité à nos jours (Villeneuve d’ Ascq, 1986), and in A. Derville and A. Vion, Histoire de Calais (Westhoek, 1985). He sets out the origins of the town in both places and supplies both possible meanings of ris, ‘Calais avant 1347’, 191 ; Histoire de Calais, 21. The need to keep the port clear of silt and drifted sand is mentioned in the town records.



· 7 ·

· 8 ·

Chapter 1

street pattern that seems to have changed little between the time it was laid out and the early sixteenth century, when a plan was made of the town for Henry VIII.2 Its history before its capture by the English is relatively well documented, and the town was evidently modestly prosperous. By the beginning of the fourteenth century it had passed to the control of the rulers of Artois from that of the counts of Boulogne, and it produced a reasonable income for its overlord, mainly from dues on the herring fishery and the shipping using the harbour. A circuit of walls had been built as early as 1228, and the town also had a double ditch into which the waters of the local streams and the sea at high tide were diverted. There were two quays lying outside the walls, with entry to the town via the Lantern gate, probably so called because of a light kept burning in its upper levels. This gate was certainly placed so that its light would guide vessels safely along the channel from the sea into the harbour. The area within the walls has been calculated as between 40 and 50 hectares, about half the size of Saint-Omer or Lille. An estimate of the population at any one time is hard to make. According to one estimate, around 1300 it may have been as high as 14,000 all told, including those living in the fishermen’s shacks outside the walls and in the parish of St Peter’s. This number, which has been calculated from those paying the taille in 1298, adding on an estimate for those who were too poor to pay, seems very high given the usual population estimates for the fifteenth century of around 4,500.3 The total probably declined markedly following the years of famine and dearth around 1315–18, which affected the Flanders region particularly badly.4 The plagues after the initial visitation of the Black Death in 1348 also reduced the population, but even allowing for this the difference between the two figures is large. The chief occupation of the townspeople was fishing for herring and the associated salting and packing of the catch, for trade both with other French towns and further afield. This was mostly by water, since there were no good roads, suitable for carts, leading inland towards Saint-Omer or Ardres or along the coast to Boulogne. A careful analysis of the surviving town accounts from the period before 1347 seems to indicate that Calais was not closely linked to any one inland town but transhipped and distributed goods all along the coast. Quite large quantities of wine, for example, came into the port, not directly 2 This plan is BL Cotton MS Augustus I ii 71. It is reproduced in J. G. Nichols (ed.), The Chronicle of Calais in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (London, Camden Society, 1846), between pp. xxviii and xxix. 3 This estimate comes from Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 43. The authors suggest that the non-payers constituted 50% of the population, which may be too high ; or alternatively the calculation from the number of households to the total population may also have produced too large a figure by using too great a multiplier. 4 D. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992), 206–8, suggests that 5–10% of the populations of Bruges and Ypres died of want at this time. P. T. J. Morgan devotes chap. 3 (pp. 48–68) of his thesis, ‘The Government of Calais, 1485–1558’ (DPhil thesis, Oxford, 1966), to the population of Calais in Tudor times. At this date the population of Calais was around 4,000, with perhaps another 4,000 people living in the Pale and the villages, including Guisnes.



The siege and capture of the town

· 9 ·

from wine-producing areas but often via England, the usual destination of the Bordeaux wine fleets. These cargoes were then split up and sent on to final destinations in the surrounding region. Raw wool also came from England, some of it intended for the small textile industry in the town or the English wool staple based at Saint-Omer in 1313–14 and 1320–24. There is some evidence that the herring fishing and salting industry had begun to decline from the 1320s, perhaps because of the changing pattern of the migration of the herring shoals in the North Sea. This has led to the suggestion that Calais fishermen no longer able to make a good living from herring took to piracy in the North Sea and Channel with enthusiasm, attacking both English and Flemish ships more or less at random. There is, however, little evidence in English records that piracy was more prevalent among Calais mariners than those based at other ports along the coasts of Normandy or Picardy. Apart from a certain Pedrogue, who was active in Edward I’s reign, there are about as many mentions in English royal records of trading privileges and safe-conducts granted to Calais men as of suspected cases of robbery at sea.5 Thus far therefore there might seem to be very little to distinguish Calais from other ports along the northern French coast. Was it on this showing really so different from Boulogne or from Dieppe ? Its major advantage from the English point of view, however, lay not in any aspect of its economy but in its situation. It was the nearest port to England with a better harbour than Wissant, its early rival as the port of entry for English passengers. It was also the nearest port to Flanders, a county dubiously loyal to its technical overlord the king of France and adjacent to imperial lands. By 1346, Edward III had already devoted a great deal of effort and money to attempting to build alliances with the ruling bourgeoisie of the leading Flemish towns, Ypres, Ghent and Bruges, and the rulers of neighbouring imperial counties, particularly Hainault and Brabant. Calais, on the other hand, had tended always to support the French king against his rebellious Flemish subjects. Calais ships had been present at the battle of Zierikzee in 1305 when French forces had defeated the rebellious Guy de Namur, and there had also been a Calais contribution to the French fleet at Sluys in 1340. Many Flemings harboured hostile feelings for the men of Calais, tartly expressed by Jan van Artevelde of Ghent in 1339 when he was recorded as swearing that he would attack Calais, since it was a nest of robbers, and put them all to death.6 Edward would face no objections from Flanders if he took the town ; indeed he might well be able to count on active support from this area. We can therefore reasonably speculate that Edward III, whether he always intended to make for Calais after the successful completion of his 1346 chevauchée or whether he decided that this was the best destination to head for only in the aftermath of his crushing victory at Crécy, might have weighed up the situation somewhat in this manner. To return to the ports of Normandy and the Cotentin would give the impression of a retreat, however unjustifiably, and was 5 Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 39–40. 6 Derville, ‘Calais avant 1347’, 207.

· 10 ·

Chapter 1

therefore out of the question. His forces had also burnt and sacked the ports from Cherbourg and Barfleur and their surrounding countryside to Ouistrehan, the out-port of Caen, earlier in the campaign ; there would be now little in the way of victuals to feed his forces in these districts. He had ordered supply ships to make for Le Crotoy when writing to the Council after the fall of Caen in July. This town, although in Ponthieu, notionally an English possession, was not as defensible as Calais. The king could probably embark his army there for the return voyage, but it might be more difficult to hold permanently. SaintValéry across the Somme would pose a threat, and it was deep within French territory compared with Calais. The town had in fact been sacked by a detachment of English troops under Hugh Despenser on 24 August before any supply ships could arrive from England and before the victory at Crécy on the 26th.7 Calais had a reasonably good port, it was near both his allies and his own realm, and, surrounded by marshy ground, it was defensible from a landward attack. The king could well argue that its capture and colonisation made good strategic sense. Some historians, with Perroy as the most prominent, have maintained on the contrary that the siege of Calais was undertaken almost casually, without any real consideration of the benefits of taking the town or of the effort that would be needed to subdue it.8 There is little if any real evidence for these views. Edward in 1346 was a thoroughly experienced military commander. He had ample experience of the conduct of sieges, most notably the one that had failed at Tournai in 1340, and would also have been well aware of events at Aiguillon on the borders of Gascony, where troops of the earl of Derby were besieged by a large French force for months in 1345–6. There would have been no doubt in his mind about the need for all kind of supplies in large quantities if a projected siege of Calais was to be brought to a successful conclusion. On the other hand, Clifford Rogers has seen the siege as intended to be the final provocation that would stir Philip VI to confront Edward in a battle that would bring the war to an end, with an English victory triumphantly endorsing the result of Crécy.9 Once Edward had made up his mind, he acted decisively and quickly. He left Crécy on 28 August, allowing only one day for the burial of the dead and the collection of booty. The army marched for the coast, reaching it at Étaples, and then went north, burning and sacking the towns and villages on their route. Étaples itself, Montreuil, Wissant and Boulogne all suffered in this way, until on 3 September 1346 Edward and his forces arrived outside the walls of Calais. Some credence is given to the idea that this destination had been decided on long in advance by the fact that the bailli of Calais and his colleagues had been very nervous about the intentions of the English and the state of their defences for some time. Efforts had been made to increase the food stores in the castle and 7 J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, i : Trial by Battle (London and Philadelphia, 1990), 525. 8 Perroy, The Hundred Years War, 119–20. 9 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 274–5.



The siege and capture of the town

· 11 ·

the available munitions. The town had been using spies sent north into Flanders and to England to try to find out the intentions of their neighbours and the strength of the alliance with Edward from the outbreak of the war. In 1344 a certain Jehan Ragout was ordered to go to Rochester and then up the Thames estuary and to all nearby ports to try and find out how many ships might be available to an English invasion fleet.10 Another man even took his horse with him when he was similarly sent to try and find out English intentions or ‘l’estat du paix’ in the wording of the town’s accountant Pierre de Ham. The bailli also sent messages begging for reinforcements to the town garrison to Philip VI and the marshals of France in July 1346, the first a matter of days after the landing of Edward III at Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue. Others followed in August as news of the movements of Edward’s army reached him. The response from the French king and the marshals was muted, but even so Pierre de Ham could reflect as he saw the English army come into view along the road from Boulogne that the town was relatively amply provisioned, the walls were in good repair with the ditches scoured of the drifting sand, and weapons for the garrison and townspeople were to hand.11 The garrison also had two experienced commanders, Jean de Vienne and Enguerrand de Beaulo. Their hope would have been that the town could easily hold out until Philip VI could mount an expedition to raise the siege and expel the English from France. The English were faced with the organisation of a military endeavour on what became an extraordinary scale. It has been called with justification ‘the largest single military operation undertaken by England till the modern period’.12 Taking the town by storm was not really an option ; apart from the strength of the walls and other fortifications, the marshy ground of its environs could not support the weight of large war machines. The contemporary chronicler Geoffrey le Baker specifically mentions the lack of firm ground for catapaults and the like when explaining why the king was unwilling to make a direct assault.13 The town and its people would have to be reduced to starvation and thus forced to surrender. The town must, therefore, be properly invested to prevent its resupply, while the English forces needed to do this would themselves have to be fed and supplied in what was a bleak and inhospitable environment, especially in winter. Determination and persistence were called for, but also administrative and logistical skills of a high order. How was this achieved by the ruler of a relatively small and impecunious kingdom operating overseas with few ‘professional civil servants’ to assist him, relying mainly on the good will of the gentry and leading townspeople in England for government at home ? In this instance the siege aroused great interest not only in England and France but also in other European states, so there are many chronicle accounts of major incidents. There 10 F. Lennel, Histoire de Calais, i (Calais, 1908), 85. 11 J.-M. Richard (ed.), ‘Compte de Pierre de Ham, dernier bailli de Calais (1346–7)’, Mémoires de la Commission départementale des monuments historiques du Pas-de-Calais, 1 (1893), 241–58. 12 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 273. 13 A. R. Myers, (ed.), English Historical Documents, iv (London, 1969), 87.

· 12 ·

Chapter 1

are also English royal records and accounts that allow an appreciation of many aspects of the administration. The surviving evidence does not provide all the answers, but there is enough to get some idea of how things were done. One problem that has not been much discussed is the location of the haven used by the besieging forces, particularly before the spring of 1347. Access to a good port was essential to the supply and reinforcement of Edward’s forces. Edward rapidly set up a base for his army, described in some detail by Froissart using material from the chronicle of Jean le Bel. On an area of firmer ground on the landward side of Calais, in the area called Saint-Pierre near the bridge and fort at Nieulay (later called Newenham Bridge by the English), a virtual new town was built. It had ‘properly ordered streets’, wooden houses roofed with thatch, a market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and in fact, in Froissart’s words, ‘haberdashers and butchers’ shops, stalls selling cloth and bread and all other necessities, so that almost anything could be bought there’. Its name, Villeneuve-le-Hardi, roughly translatable as ‘Cheeky New Town’, reflects the spirit of confidence and boldness prevalent among Edward and his army.14 It was, however, over a mile from the coast, and Calais harbour was dominated by the castle and the small fort, still in French hands, on the Risban. The harbour could not be blockaded while this was the case and was, therefore, open to receive supply vessels for the defenders, if they could evade the English ships cruising in the Channel. Equally ships from England could clearly not tie up at the town quays in these circumstances, and trying to unload supplies on the open beaches away from the town itself would not have been easy. One of the first actions of the king on reaching Calais was to send orders to the mayors and other officials of port towns from Newcastle on Tyne in the north to Bristol in the west. Merchants were promised fair prices and rapid payment for all victuals and supplies sent to Calais, including bread, corn, wine, beer, meat, fish, bows, arrows and bowstrings.15 Although the town itself is always described as the destination for all these goods, it may very well have been the case that the vessels in fact went to Gravelines in friendly Flemish territory and the goods were then sent on by cart and pack-horse to the English camp. Even after the English captured the Risban and enlarged and strengthened the fort in late April 1347, English ships would still have been vulnerable to attacks by the defenders’ artillery and would have been unable to approach the quays right under the town walls. There would have been little sympathy for Calais at Gravelines, which had twice been sacked by forces from the other town in the recent past.16 As the siege progressed, royal agents scoured the English countryside for food and other supplies for Calais, with the export of corn forbidden unless it was destined for the royal army. An indication of the widespread effects of the siege can be gauged from items like the accounts of the making of hurdles and ladders for use at Calais at Thakeham in the Sussex Weald, which 14 Froissart, Chronicles, 97. 15 T. Rymer, Foedera, ed. G. Holmes (repr. Farnborough, 1967), ii : 205. 16 Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 40.



The siege and capture of the town

· 13 ·

were taken to Shoreham for onward shipment in no fewer than 30 wagonloads in early December 1346.17 Much of the foodstuff collected was stored in warehouses in Orwell and Sandwich, and even far to the west in Plymouth, before being dispatched overseas. The amount that came to the camp overland from Gravelines has been noted, but it seems likely that much of this was sent from England rather than being Flemish in origin.18 The king’s need for money was as urgent as that for supplies. The English parliament called in September 1346 had granted the king more taxation to cover the expenses of the siege, but only after a detailed account of all their contributions to date and the difficulties caused by demands for such large sums had been recorded on the Parliament Roll. The Commons’ petitions, significantly in view of the terms of the proclamation above, included one complaining that payments for victuals provided over the summer, which should have been due on John the Baptist’s day (24 June), were still outstanding.19 There was support for the king and his war, but it was not unconditional ; the weight of the burden placed on the whole community of the realm was well appreciated. The fact that the harbour was still open to the French until the spring of 1347 was undoubtedly one reason for the length of the siege. Philip VI was beset by severe financial difficulties. His confidence and that of his most important nobles with regard to renewing warfare on land had collapsed following the disaster at Crécy, but a greater degree of determination was shown in organising relief supplies for the beleaguered town by sea. At first, in September, the galley fleet hired from the Genoese in late 1345 was used. This fleet had arrived too late to be involved in the campaigns in the summer of 1346 or to interrupt the invasion fleet : the nineteenth-century historian of the French navy bewailed this tardiness almost as a form of treason and a cause of the disasters suffered by France.20 In September, however, these galleys captured and destroyed an English supply fleet in the waters off Calais. One French chronicle gleefully describes how twenty-five English ships were captured within sight of the English army and all the crews slaughtered.21 Despite this success, the Genoese vessels were laid up at Abbeville in October and their crews sent home. Philip VI bought the ships, 30 galleys and 2 lings, for over 18,000 florins but made no further use of them.22 Much more successful was the use of French ships, both little vessels smaller 17 R. A. Pelham, ‘Sussex Provisions for the Siege of Calais in 1346’, Sussex Notes and Queries, 5 (1934), 33–4. 18 Sumption, Trial by Battle, 537–8. 19 Parliament of 1346, The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, gen. ed. C. Given-Wilson (CD-ROM, Leicester, 2005). 20 C. de la Roncière, ‘La Marine au siège de Calais’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 58 (1897), 563. 21 H. Lemaître, (ed.), The Chronicle of Gilles li Muisit (Paris, 1906), 167. 22 A. Merlin-Chazelas (ed.), Documents relatifs au clos des galées de Rouen et aux armées de la mer des rois de France de 1293 à 1418 (Paris, 1977–8), 129–32. Although this was a large sum, it was much less than that necessary to keep the crews and ships on the royal payroll as contracted with Genoa. The crews of just 3 galleys and 2 lings had accumulated wages

· 14 ·

Chapter 1

than a modern fishing boat and larger ones used as escorts. The masters of these ships knew the coasts near Calais intimately and could keep inshore avoiding the English vessels attempting to block access to the port. The accounts of Jean de l’Hôpital, charged with paying these mariners, include payments to a total of over fifty vessels with substantial crews made up of armed men as well as sailors. Payments are also recorded to a similar number of victuallers, most with crews of six or seven men. These ships came from all along the north coast of France from Honfleur to Boulogne, with some from Calais itself that had managed to escape the siege.23 The most successful ship master was probably Colin Hardi, a veteran of the battle of Sluys, who, lured by the promise of great rewards for anyone who would resupply Calais, led a convoy of ships into the port in November and at least two more in the spring. The main relief effort by sea was made in February and March 1347. The victuals were collected mainly at Dieppe and Abbeville, including wheat, beans, peas, garlic and onions, and salt herring, and loaded on to the victuallers. At Dieppe the vessels were so heavily laden that they grounded and were dragged into deep water by over three hundred women pulling on hawsers. At least two squadrons got past any English ships patrolling off the port (the precaution was taken of sending out at least one ship in advance to try and discover their whereabouts) and into Calais in late March and early April. A French historian has extolled the bravery of these seamen, seeing them as motivated by a desire more for glory than financial gain. Their efforts were brought to an end, however, by May 1347, when the English took the Risban, placed canons on the fortifications and sank at least one ship to block the channel into the port.24 The siege also had, of course, other aspects than the grave logistical problems facing both sides. Although Edward III himself was present in the camp for most of the tedious months of the investment of the town, this was far from the only matter of concern to the king. The need to raise both money and reinforcements from England itself, already mentioned, was a constant worry. Other English armies were engaged in France, not only in Gascony and its borders (long disputed between the French and the English monarch as duke of Aquitaine) but also in Brittany (where the English had intervened in a succession dispute). A setback to English arms in either area would have weakened Edward’s position and encouraged his enemy. Fortunately French resistance in the south-west seemed to have virtually collapsed once they abandoned their siege of Aiguillon. The earl of Lancaster led an Anglo-Gascon force north to Poitiers, which was pillaged and burnt in early October. Other towns in the region were so thoroughly demoralised by this event and the lack of any protection by French forces that they were prepared voluntarily to accept English rule. In Britof over 19,000 florins during the period from their departure from Marseille or Nice to the end of October when they were paid off. 23 Merlin-Chazelas (ed.), Documents relatifs au clos des galées de Rouen, ships : 115–17, 133–9 ; victuallers : 139–42. 24 Ibid., 118–19, 121, 123 ; La Roncière, ‘La Marine au siège de Calais’, 567–9.



The siege and capture of the town

· 15 ·

tany things remained quiet until the late spring of 1347. The English ‘man on the spot’, Sir Thomas Dagworthy, was capable both as an administrator and as a military commander and seemed to have the situation well under control. Charles of Blois, Philip VI’s chosen candidate as duke of Brittany, however, besieged the fortress of La Roche-Derrien, an English enclave near the north coast, in May 1347. After some delay, Dagworthy set forth to relieve the garrison, and following a confused and bloody assault on 20 June he not only defeated the French but captured Charles as well. The news of this defeat reached Philip as he finally decided to move his army towards Calais. In Brittany as well as Gascony, French arms had suffered not only defeat but also humiliation.25 From the point of view of those both within and without the walls of Calais, the importance of these events was both psychological and practical. The apparent superiority of English arms seemed to be confirmed, while these military diversions in other parts of France made tax collection and the raising of troops more and more difficult for Philip. It is possible to portray his state of mind in the immediate aftermath of the defeat at Crécy as something approaching a kind of breakdown. When it became clear that Edward had decided on a lengthy siege of Calais, Philip seemed to have no idea of what his next move should be. He disbanded the remnants of his defeated army in September, only to order it to reassemble at Compiègne on 1 October. He was finally able to convince his ally David II of Scotland to invade the north of England at much the same time. The hope was that this would force Edward to abandon his positions at Calais to defend his own kingdom. The Scots crossed the border on 7 October but found the northern lords including William de la Zouche, archbishop of York, ready for their enemy. The two armies met at Neville’s Cross just south of Durham on a site criss-crossed with walls and ditches. This impeded the movements of the Scots men-at-arms, who began to fall to the arrows of the English archers. The largest Scots battalion turned and fled, leaving David on the field with only a small number of men. As the evening came on he was abandoned even by these remnants of his army and, quite badly wounded, was captured by the English. He was to remain a captive in London for the next eleven years. There would be no help for Philip from this quarter. It was perhaps in a mood of desperation that on 27 October he ordered the dispersal of the few troops who had gathered at Compiègne. The garrisons of French towns in Artois and the Boulonnais remained, but that was all. To a modern strategist it is clear that the attitudes and the actions of the Flemings were overwhelmingly important at this stage of the siege. Edward could not supply his troops without their co-operation. If he could secure their active help in attacks on French garrisons, this would be even more to his advantage. Philip was well aware that many of the Flemish townspeople, in particular those from Bruges, Ypres and Ghent, who had been in a state of more or less open rebellion for some time, were supporters of the English. Their 25 Both the Gascon and the Breton campaigns are treated in detail in Sumption, Trial by Battle, esp. chaps. 11 and 13 and pp. 495–7, 541–50, 571–6.

· 16 ·

Chapter 1

expected hostility and ability to harry his rear, if he moved north to approach Calais from the direction of Gravelines when he had finally collected a force to relieve the town, was a major constraint. He also could not reduce the garrisons of towns like Saint-Omer to increase the numbers in his field army, since this would leave them open to Flemish attack. A chronicle probably written very shortly after the events of 1346–7 by a townsman of Saint-Omer gives a very vivid picture not only of the intermittent warfare between the French and the Flemings but also of the feeling within the town.26 The writer at one point talks of the ‘evil Flemings who hate nothing so much as the king and the Crown of France’. They are castigated for ignoring the fact that the king ‘has spared them from death—which they richly deserve given that they have abandoned their rightful and natural king’.27 Another indication of the acute nervousness affecting many of the French towns in the neighbourhood of Calais is a collection of letters that passed between them in February 1347. A rumour was going about that the siege was about to be abandoned by Edward. The authorities in Aire had no news of this for those in Arras but wrote feelingly about the way both English and Flemish troops were laying waste the countryside round the town. Saint-Omer had much the same news to relay but had also heard the alarming information that the earl of Derby was about to land near Calais with 50,000 men. A week later Arras was still trying to find out the truth, begging all those towns that received their letter to tell its bearer everything they knew.28 The true situation in northern France in the first half of 1347 was in fact complex and full of twists and turns. Edward and his forces were firmly ‘dug in’ around Calais. He had good relations with the Flemish towns and some of the nobility ; a Flemish army with an English contingent led by Sir Hugh Hastings in fact had been active in Artois during most of the Crécy campaign. At the very beginning of the siege he had thought it necessary to divert his allies to attacks on neighbouring towns rather than letting them come to assist with the siege, as according to Gilles li Muisit he believed it was not a good idea to have English and Flemings in the same camp.29 Flemish activity around Saint-Omer and Béthune was very useful in unsettling the French and tying down quite large numbers of men. The young count of Flanders, Louis de Male, whose father had been killed at Crécy, was still loyal to the French king. This set him at odds with many of his subjects, and, while he was on a visit to Flanders to attempt some kind of reconciliation, the Flemish, with active English encouragement, more or less forced on him an engagement to Edward’s daughter Isabel. Louis managed to evade his minders while out hawking in March 1347 and, before 26 This chronicle was used by Clifford Rogers in War Cruel and Sharp. An edition of the text is promised under his editorship. In the mean time I am very grateful for his kindness in allowing me to use a draft of his transcription and translation. 27 Saint-Omer Chronicle, fol. 216r. 28 A. Guesnon (ed.), ‘Documents inédits sur l’invasion anglaise et les états au temps de Philippe VI et Jean le bon’, Bulletin philologique et historique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1897), 236–40. 29 Lemâitre (ed.), Chronique de Gilles li Muisit, 166.



The siege and capture of the town

· 17 ·

the marriage could take place, fled to the French court ; for once it was Edward whose schemes had failed rather than Philip. In the spring of 1347, Philip finally began to make strenuous efforts to move to the relief of Calais. He received the sacred standard of French kings, the Oriflamme, at the monastery and royal mausoleum of St Denis on 18 March. His intention was to summon his army to meet him at Amiens by the end of April. By May only a few troops had assembled, but Philip moved forward to Arras. It seemed likely that not until July would his forces be large enough to raise the siege. During this time, intermittent fighting continued in the border region between the French and the rebellious Flemings with English help. A combined English and Flemish assault on Saint-Omer failed in April, but a later attempt by the French garrison to pursue their enemy across the frontier into Flanders and take the hilltop town of Cassel was equally unsuccessful in June. Meanwhile the situation in Calais itself was becoming desperate. Chronicle accounts from French, Flemish and English sources dwell on the lack of food, with the wretched inhabitants forced to eat horses, dogs, cats and eventually rats and mice, with some frying the skins of these animals in oil.30 This kind of description can be seen as almost conventional when discussing a town in the last stages of a prolonged siege, but there is little doubt that conditions inside the town became very bad. One English chronicler, Henry Knighton, adds the detail that at about this time, when no further relief ships could get past the English artillery in the Tower on the Risban, about five hundred ‘men of the lower class’ left the town to ask succour from Edward. This was denied them, as was re-entrance to the town, so ‘they lingered between the army and the town, and suffering much from hunger and the cold they died day after day’.31 The truth of this incident is less easy to verify ; Jean le Bel, the very well-informed chronicler from Liége, recounts a story of a similar incident in the early stages of the siege before the winter of 1346–7 ; in his version five hundred ‘useless mouths’ were expelled from the town. When they came to Edward’s camp, they were brought into his great chamber and there they were given food and drink and three shillings sterling each and allowed to go on their way. Le Bel stated that he recorded this because of the ‘grande gentillesse’ of the king.32 The former incident could be interpreted as part of the conventional siege narratives of the time. For example, in 1418–19 Rouen was besieged for nearly six months by the English, and a contemporary poem makes great play of the besieged eating cats, dogs, rats and mice : ‘for 30 pennies went a rat / for two nobles went a cat / for sixpence went a mouse / they left but few in any house.’ It then goes on to describe in harrowing terms the fate of the poor expelled from the town to die in the ditch, finishing, ‘And the dead 30 The detail is from the chronicle of Gilles li Muisit, quoted in K. DeVries, ‘Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI : Contemporary Accounts of the Siege of Calais, 1346–7,’ Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, n.s. 12 (1991), 143. 31 Knighton’s Chronicle, quoted ibid., 142. 32 J. Viard and E. Déprez (eds.), Chronique of Jean le Bel (Paris, 1904–5), ii : 112–13.

· 18 ·

Chapter 1

knew nought of death / so secretly they gave up their breath / without a noise or any cry / as if they slept, so did they die.’33 Jean le Bel’s more optimistic story reflects the behaviour expected of a true exemplar of chivalry, a reputation that Edward III was keen to cultivate and that was enhanced shortly after the conclusion of the siege by the foundation of the Order of the Garter in early 1349. Whether some were expelled from the town or earlier had voluntarily tried to throw themselves on the mercy of the besiegers or not, there is no doubt that by the summer of 1347 the town was in dire straits. Two final attempts to send in supplies by sea had failed. The first expedition in May turned back at Boulogne when the ship masters saw the number of English ships off the town.34 A second, which set off on 25 June, was totally defeated by an English force at the mouth of the Somme. Jean de Vienne probably got news of this disaster quickly ; he may also have known that Philip VI had finally left Arras and was now encamped at Hesdin fifty miles south of Calais with a substantial army. Vienne set out in a letter to Philip in the plainest possible terms the urgent need to attack the English as soon as possible. He wrote : right dear and dread lord, know that although the people be all well and of good cheer, yet the town is in sore need of corn, wine and meat. For know that there is nothing which has not been eaten, both dogs, cats and horses, so that victuals we can no more find in the town except we eat men’s flesh. He went on to state that ‘we have resolved amongst us that, if we have not succour quickly we shall sally forth from the town into the open field to fight for life or death’. His plea for help was entrusted to the Genoese master of a small craft, which attempted to slip past the Risban fort and out of the harbour with one other at dawn. Both were seen ; one retreated safely to Calais ; but the Genoese vessel was driven ashore near the English lines. The messenger attached the letter to an axe and threw it overboard before he was captured but this was retrieved at low tide and taken to Edward. He no doubt read it with much interest and then kindly forwarded it to Philip. Its complete text was eventually included in Robert of Avesbury’s chronicle.35 Philip did respond to this plea, eventually leaving Hesdin on 15 July. The route of his march lay by way of Fauquembergues, where he delayed for three days, to Lumbres near Saint-Omer. Here he proclaimed that it was the duty of all able-bodied men to join him on pain of the loss of all their possessions. By 26 July he was outside Guisnes and finally appeared on the high ground at Sangatte on the 27th.36 This may seem like a dilatory rate of advance, given the relatively short distances involved, but in his defence it can be said that the army by this 33 Myers (ed.), English Historical Documents, iv : 220–2. 34 Saint-Omer Chronicle, fol. 226r–v. 35 E. M. Thompson (ed.), De Gestis Mirabilibus Regis Edwardi Tertii (London, 1889), 386–7. 36 Saint-Omer Chronicle, chapter entitled ‘How the king of France departed from Hesdin and went to encamp on the Mount of Sangatte’.



The siege and capture of the town

· 19 ·

time was very large and would have been impeded by quantities of slow-moving wagons with baggage, victuals and all the other things needed by so large a body of men.37 Once he reached Sangatte, the French army could be seen by those in the town and also of course by the English. Those in the town desperately signalled to the king, trying to make him understand their dire situation. The English chronicler Geoffrey le Baker describes how they greeted their hoped-for deliverers at first with a display of banners and a ‘great clamour of trumpets, drums and clarions on the highest tower towards the French army for the space of half an hour’. Every day that followed the noise and the size of a fire lighted on the battlements grew less, until on the third night ‘they signified that their power to protect the town was ended’.38 There was, however, no immediate French assault on the English camp, which was well defended both by earthworks and the marshes and waterways around the town. The French did manage to take a tower defending the southern approach to the bridge at Nieulay, but after this the reports of scouts seem to have convinced Philip that the chances of relieving the town by an assault on its besiegers were remote. The Saint-Omer chronicle reports that the king was told that ‘he was wasting his time by staying there since he could only obtain supplies with great danger’. Negotiations with the English with two cardinals acting as intermediaries had got nowhere, as had suggestions that the matter could be ended by some form of chivalric challenge to battle at a chosen time and place. On the night of 1–2 August orders were given to the French to break camp. ‘Then was seen great disorder ; some were abandoning their baggage-carts, others smashing in their wine-casks, and a large portion of the artillery was burned.’ By dawn the smoke rising from the French encampment as their tents and other supplies were set on fire would have been clearly visible from the walls of Calais. It would have been clear that there was no alternative but to surrender the town to the English king and his forces.39 This surrender has since become one of the best known ‘set pieces’ of medieval history. It was very widely reported by contemporaries. The best-known story is that of Froissart, which draws heavily on the chronicle of Jean le Bel. This explains how negotiations began between the governor of the town Jean de Vienne and King Edward as soon as it was realised that Philip VI had withdrawn with his army. The negotiators on the English side were Sir Walter Manny,40 a very well-known soldier who had many contacts at the French court as well as being one of Edward III’s most trusted subordinates, and Lord Basset. Vienne set out the position in Calais clearly ; the town was starving. Manny took the line that Edward was in no mood to offer clemency to the town. He pointed out that ‘the people of Calais have caused him so much trouble and 37 Sumption, Trial by Battle, 578, calculates that Philip had between 15,000 and 20,000 men at his disposal. 38 Myers (ed.), English Historical Documents, iv : 88. 39 Rogers discusses the negotiations with the cardinals in some detail in War Cruel and Sharp, 278–82. 40 His name is also spelt ‘Mauny’ : J. Sumption, ‘Mauny [Manny], Sir Walter’, ODNB.

· 20 ·

Chapter 1

vexation, have cost him so much money and so many lives, that you cannot wonder that he should be enraged against them’. Nevertheless he agreed to plead for mercy for the townspeople with the king. When he returned to Edward, Manny found that the king was adamant that no mercy should be offered to the town. He was only induced to change his mind when Manny suggested that one day it might be the English who were faced with losing their lives in these circumstances. Englishmen would go to a siege ‘less cheerfully if you have these people put to death, for then they [the French] would do the same to us if they had the chance’. The king gave way and told Manny to return to Vienne and tell him ‘this is the limit of my clemency : six of the principal citizens are to come out with their heads and their feet bare. Halters round their necks and the keys of the town and castle in their hands. With these six I shall do as I please and the rest I will spare.’ This news was received in Calais with much distress, but the richest man in the town, Eustache de Saint-Pierre, stood up and offered himself as one of the six. Gradually others came forward until all six were assembled. Dressed as Edward required, only in their shirts, they were led out of the town by Vienne, riding on a little pony because he was too weak to walk ; behind came all the people of the town, ‘men, women and children of Calais . . . weeping and wringing their hands’. Manny then took the six to Edward’s chamber, where he was surrounded by the whole court. The six knelt before him and put their lives in his hands. All the court were much distressed by seeing ‘men so humiliated and in such mortal danger’. The king alone was unmoved and demanded their instant execution. This time Manny’s fervent pleas on their behalf had no effect. However,the queen, Philippa of Hainault, although she was heavily pregnant, ‘humbly threw herself on her knees before the king’ and in turn pleaded for mercy for the six. This time the king’s heart was softened ; he could not refuse her plea. The six were handed to her ‘to do with what you like’. They were then taken to her apartments, clothed and fed, and finally, according to Froissart, were ‘presented with six nobles each, led through the English army, and went to live in various towns in Picardy’.41 The best-known modern representation of the story is probably the monumental sculpture by Rodin to be seen in the Albert Embankment gardens in London and the town square of Calais.42 This shows the burghers in all their misery, a poignant appeal for pity and compassion. A history of Calais from the 1980s includes a preface that refers to the Rodin statue as recalling for all times ‘la resolution et l’abnegation’ of these heroic citizens.43 What, however are we to make of this story ? Is it to be taken at face value : a stirring story of self-sacrifice and of the value of mercy ? Is it a brilliant piece of what we might call ‘public relations’ or even ‘spin’ ? Is it a kind of morality tale with lessons to impart ? Or 41 Froissart, Chronicle, 103–9. 42 There are also casts in sculpture galleries in America and the Musée Rodin in Paris. 43 J.-M. Moeglin, ‘Édouard III et les six bourgeois de Calais’, Revue historique, 291–2 (1994), 229.



The siege and capture of the town

· 21 ·

part of a ‘national mythology’ ? Does the form of the story gradually alter with more and more details being added until it becomes almost a theatrical scene ? It is impossible to reach final conclusions on many of these questions at this distance from the events. We cannot know what exactly Edward had in mind on that August day when setting out the terms for the surrender of Calais. There are strong arguments that this was a symbolic event designed from the first to resound through the courts of Europe emphasising Edward’s victory but also his chivalry and willingness to be merciful. Edward was evidently well aware of the value of a powerful image to enhance his prestige and his authority. The gold noble struck after the victory at Sluys in 1340 has a representation of the king himself on board his ship on the obverse, a unique use of the coinage at the time for the commemoration of a notable event. The dramatic story, told by Le Bel originally and given much wider currency by Froissart, is not found in all chronicles of the time. Geoffrey le Baker has a much simpler narrative in which Jean de Vienne surrenders the town to the king, accompanied by other knights and burgesses, all of them with ropes around their necks. After being offered the keys of the town, Edward ‘received what was offered to him and with royal clemency sent the captain, fifteen knights and as many burgesses to England, granting them generous gifts and liberty to go where they liked’. The remainder of the townspeople were fed and then expelled, most of them taking the road south to Guisnes.44 On the other hand the Saint-Omer Chronicle, written shortly after the event and by someone living nearby, mentions the king’s heart being softened by the pleas of ‘the queen and her ladies and a great many knights’ on their knees. The group given clemency was, however, composed of Vienne with two knights and two burgesses ; it is also stated that the knights were taken to England to be ransomed in the usual way.45 There does seem, therefore, to be justification for the view that the surrender of Calais was deliberately made into an event designed to add to the reputation of the victorious king and to send a message to future adversaries. This is despite the view that contemporaries record it at face value and do not see it as a mise en scène. Later writers put forward different interpretations. Voltaire raised some doubts about Edward’s real intentions, but most nineteenth-century French historians saw the actions of the six burghers as the peak of patriotic devotion and willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of one’s country.46 By the Second World War, when Perroy was writing his history of the Hundred Years’ War, he dismissed the incident as ‘a page in a picture book’.47 The most recent account of the siege in English ignores the incident, stating merely that ‘On 4 August 44 Myers, English Historical Documents, iv : 89. 45 Saint-Omer Chronicle, chapter ‘How the town of Calais surrendered to the king of England after the departure of the king of France’. 46 Moeglin discusses interpretations of accounts of the siege in detail in ‘Édouard III et les six bourgeois de Calais’, 237–41. 47 Perroy, The Hundred Years War, 120.

· 22 ·

Chapter 1

he [Edward] received the keys to the city.’48 In France a detailed study of the incident and contemporary accounts of it places it within a ritual of humiliation that was sometimes used on the surrender of besieged cities.49 Whatever our view of the surrender ‘ceremony’, Edward was victorious and could at least briefly bask in the fame that this brought him. Problems remained to be faced. How could this new possession of the English Crown in France be defended ? How should it be governed ? Would the amount of time and money expended on its capture prove justifiable ? These questions would require the attention of the governments of all English monarchs during the succeeding centuries while the town remained in English hands. 48 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 282. 49 Moeglin, ‘Édouard III et les six bourgeois de Calais’, 291–2 ; idem, Les Bourgeois de Calais : essai sur un mythe historique (Paris, 2002).

2 A n ew ru l er a n d a n ew reg i me : t he town a n d t he g a rr i s o n i n t he e a r ly ye a r s o f E n g l i s h ru l e



T

he prestige that touched those associated with the siege of Calais is well illustrated by the elaborate tomb of Sir Hugh Hastings in the church at Elsing in Norfolk. Hastings, who had been present at Sluys and in 1346 had fought alongside the Flemish in the border region, died at Calais, probably of disease, four days before the town surrendered. His memorial brass lauds his career and, by its elaboration and evident considerable expense, reveals the gains to be made by an individual from the French wars. He had been raised from ‘well-born obscurity to great renown’.1 His effigy is surrounded by images of the most important military men in these campaigns, among them not only the king, Edward III himself, but also the earl of Warwick, the earl of Lancaster and Lord Despenser. He did not survive to witness the triumphant entry of the king into his new domain, but the fame of the victory followed him home to Norfolk and was recorded for all to see in his parish church. What was Edward’s attitude to the town and its inhabitants now that they were securely within his hands ? The town was stripped of everything of value by the English ; with a certain amount of glee, Thomas Walsingham recorded that ‘there was not a woman in England of any account who did not enjoy the pickings of Caen, Calais and other places’. This booty was not confined to valuables but also ordinary household goods ; ‘coats, furs, quilts . . . table cloths, necklaces, wooden bowls and silver goblets, linen and cloth’.2 The French inhabitants of the town were apparently expelled with only a few given leave to remain. As early as 12 August, proclamations were issued throughout eastern England promising grants of property and other benefits to those who would settle in Calais. New immigrants were promised that they would have, ‘liberties, privileges and 1 Sumption, Trial by Battle, 585. 2 Quoted ibid., 582.



· 23 ·

· 24 ·

Chapter 2

immunities so that with their families and goods they may be able to remain and live there safely’.3 The impression created by this and other evidence is that Calais in fact rapidly became an English town, what distinguished French historians have called ‘a little piece of England in France’.4 It is certainly true that the policy of repopulating Calais with English settlers was pursued with some vigour. The campaign was led by important English merchants, already well known to the king because of their involvement in the raising of loans to finance the war. These included William de la Pole in Hull, John de Pulteney in London and Roger Norman in Southampton. The relative success of their activities can be judged by a surviving roll of grants made in the autumn of 1347. 189 separate grants are recorded, with the property usually described as an ‘inn’ (that is, in modern terms, a house), but also occasionally as a cottage or shop or an empty site.5 The grants were made to men from all over England, to judge by those whose names include their place of origin. Wiltshire, Shrewsbury, Watford, Ipswich, London, Ely, Sandwich and Lancaster are all mentioned. Some of the new settlers may have been from the lands allied to England ; their names are given as ‘Dalmaigne’ (d’Allemagne), a term that was used for the Empire in general. One or two were certainly Italians, including one whose name was anglicised as ‘Almeric Skafeny of Pavye’ (Pavia), probably identical with the Aymery of Pavia who was later involved in a conspiracy in the town (described below). Apart from Walter Chiriton, another of the leading financiers of the wars, who was himself granted property in the town, there are others who can be also identified as London merchants, including Thomas Gisors, a member of a family that had long been established in the City as pepperers or vintners.6 The most prominent person to receive a grant of property was Queen Philippa ; she received a large block of property near the Maison Dieu on 24 August. This may well have been in anticipation of the birth of the princess Margaret, which occurred about this time.7 There is no way of knowing how many of these grantees actually moved to Calais, but clearly they saw holding property there as potentially of benefit to themselves and their families. These grants also sometimes give details of the occupations of the new owners ; there are, for example, a cordwainer, a goldsmith and a butcher. It is hard to be sure that only a very few of the original inhabitants were allowed to stay in the town. The chronicles all suggest that only twenty3 Translated from Rymer, Foedera, iii/1 : 130, in D. Greaves, ‘Calais under Edward III’, in G. Unwin (ed.), Finance and Trade under Edward III (Manchester, 1918), 314. 4 Calmette and Déprez, quoted in J. Le Patourel, ‘L’Occupation anglaise de Calais au XIVe siècle’, Revue du Nord, 34 (1952), 228. 5 The details of the grants can be found in CPR 1345–8 : 561–8. They were originally enrolled on a separate Calais Roll. 6 S. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Ann Arbor, 1962), 345 ; C. M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages : Government and People, 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2005), 249. 7 CPR 1345–8 : 566. The Complete Peerage, x : 393, gives her date of birth as 29 August. She married John de Hastings, earl of Pembroke, in 1359 and died soon after 1 October 1361, leaving no descendants.



A new ruler and a new regime

· 25 ·

two or so individuals at the very most were granted royal licences to stay put. The most notable of these is Eustace de Saint-Pierre, the hero of the story of the self-sacrificing burghers of Calais.8 The number of those expelled, however, is unknown ; some of the poor may have been thrown out during the siege, as we have seen ; others may have slipped out of the town on those victuallers that did get through the English blockade or may have crept out under cover of darkness or by bribing the besiegers. Philip VI, perhaps because of the effect on his reputation of his withdrawal from Calais without any attempt to relieve the town, treated at least some of those expelled with a degree of generosity, despite Froissart’s claim that they received nothing.9 In early September from his camp at Amiens he issued a decree that all those expelled should have the right to follow their trade in France without paying extra dues and that when offices or other benefits were forfeit to the king, they would be granted to Calaisiens. Furthermore a commission including men from Calais would be set up to resolve any disputes arising from this decree. At least twenty grants of this kind can be traced in the French royal records in the years 1348–52. Some of the property given to the expelled townspeople had been confiscated from individuals who had aided the English or committed crimes, but the majority had formerly belonged to Lombards who had disregarded the laws against usury. Many seem to have stayed in the region of Calais, particularly in Saint-Omer, where the wealthy d’Aire (Dayre in English documents) family re-established themselves. Baude d’Aire was granted a house called la Couppe at Saint-Omer and other property at Montreuil in August 1348. Some of the d’Aire property in Calais itself had been among that granted to Queen Philippa immediately after the siege, and some was granted to the Carmelites for their new house in September 1347. One Pierre de Bouvelingham from Calais was granted the house and furniture in Bourges confiscated from a butcher who had been banished from the town. The former procurators of Calais, Fouques le Chien and Jehan Hervuaz, converted their grant into cash when they sold the property of one of the Lombards for 200 écus d’or in November 1348.10 Another group of the refugees travelled far from their home town, being sent to Carcassone by Philip ; there had been suspicions of disloyalty in the town, and the group from Calais were credited with being particularly loyal to the French Crown.11 There remains a suspicion, however, that many of the ordinary townsfolk either did remain in the town at least for the first years of the English occupation or melted into the general body of anonymous poor folk in northern France, leaving no trace in the records. 8 CPR 1345–8 : 561. 9 Froissart, Chronicles, 110. Froissart enlarges on the ‘great burghers and their noble wives and their handsome children’ who were forced to leave everything behind. He continues, ‘they managed as well as they could and the majority went to the town of Saint-Omer’. 10 M. E. Molinier, ‘Documents relatifs aux Calaisiens expulsés par Edouard III’, Le Cabinet historique, 24 (1878), 251–80. 11 L. S. Thorn, ‘The Colonisation of Calais’ (B.Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1953), 77–9.

· 26 ·

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The fact that Eustace de Saint-Pierre was granted both money and property by Edward III after the siege tarnished his heroic reputation in France when these benefits came to light in the archives in the early nineteenth century. Perhaps he can be excused by pointing out that he was not a member of the garrison or a knight, and as a leading townsman he had much to lose if he was expelled along with the others. He is probably the source of the details of the town administration, which Edward soon obtained and which were largely put into effect under the new regime.12 Saint-Pierre may also have been put under considerable pressure to remain and may in truth have had little choice in the matter. His heirs certainly did not inherit any of his Calais property as they were said to be loyal to France,13 a fact that hints that he may have remained under some duress. Similar pressure may have been put on one John Uphowe. He appears in English records as the master of the engines and carpentry at Calais.14 His task would in fact have been to maintain and operate the system of sluices that controlled the water in the moats and other waterways around Calais. His expertise would have been vital to the safety of the town and its defences and not easily found among the victorious English. By the end of September 1347, Edward was in a position to have some understanding of what the taking of Calais meant in terms of its need for good governance and defence. The truce concluded with Philip VI at this time defined the area now under English control as the ‘town of Calais and the lordships of Marck and Oye and their lands’. This constituted a block of territory not greatly different from the extent of the Pale in the later fifteenth century ; broadly speaking it was the town itself and the coastal marshes stretching inland towards the higher country round Ardres. The treaty of Brétigny and the additional articles of Calais in 1360, the high point of Edward III’s conquests in France, extended this area a little to include, as well as Calais itself, ‘the castle town and lordship of Marck, the towns, castles and lordships of Sangatte, Coulogne, Ham, Le Wal and Oye ; with lands, woods, marshes, rivers, rents, lordships, advowsons of churches and all other appurtenances and places lying within the following limits and bounds’ (which were then specified).15 To this was also added the whole county of Guisnes in full sovereignty. Despite the extent of these lands it was immediately obvious that they could not be self-sufficient. So much of the land surrounding Calais was marshy that the growing of enough food to feed the town and its inhabitants as well as those living in outlying settlements was not possible. If Calais was to be held it must be provisioned either from England or with the co-operation of Flanders. There is insufficient evidence to calculate the total number of souls who would rely on these supplies. The approximate 12 CPR 1345–8, 561. 13 The grants to Saint-Pierre can be found in Rymer, Foedera, iii/1 : 138, grant of 40 marks on 8 Oct. 1347 said to be ‘for keeping and good order of Calais’ ; CPR 1345–8 : 561, grant of property. Reversion of property to the English Crown on his death can be found in Thorn, ‘Colonisation of Calais’, 98–9. 14 TNA, E101/167/8, m. 2. 15 Myers, English Historical Documents, iv : 104–5.



A new ruler and a new regime

· 27 ·

numbers of the garrison are known, but there are no figures that can be used to estimate the size of the general civilian population, whether French or English, at this date. The most recent French historian of the town sees the town as severely depopulated, at least in the immediate aftermath of the siege ; as he points out, Edward’s grants concern around 190 properties, while there were probably about 2,000 houses within the walls before 1347. His melancholy conclusion is that for the town there were now no means of earning a living, no trade, no industry, no fishing.16 There is, however, plenty of evidence of the attention devoted by the king and his officers to the question of the victualing of Calais and the strain this imposed on local officials and communities in many parts of England. While the siege was still underway, orders were being sent to ship masters to abandon their expected voyages in order to take food to Calais. In April 1347 the Plenty of Hook was diverted to Calais instead of Bordeaux with her cargo of 500 quarters of wheat. In August 1347, the need to supply the camp had led to a serious shortage of bread-corn in London ; two vessels loading corn for Bordeaux in the Pool of London were discharged by royal command, despite the wishes of the owners of the cargo, in order for this foodstuff to be sold in the City.17 In the months after the successful ending of the siege not only were royal purveyors very active in seeking foodstuffs for the garrison but also individual merchants were granted licenses to ship corn to the town. The supplies for the garrison included large quantities of fodder for the king’s horses ; the need to ship hay from England as well as bread, oats, peas and beans for this purpose gives some ides of the difficulty of getting provisions locally.18 All told over 14,000 quarters of wheat, 4,000 quarters of malt, 8,000 quarters of oats, nearly 2,500 quarters of beans and peas and over 3,000 carcasses of beef were shipped to the garrison of Calais between 1347 and 1361. This was to feed a garrison that numbered just over a thousand men during these years.19 This number included knights and squires, hobelars, horse and foot archers and the masons and other workmen needed to maintain the fortifications.20 Most of this large quantity of food was supplied by the system of purveyance. This was a system whereby, exercising powers that were part of the royal prerogative, officials, usually authorised by the sheriff of the county concerned, took what was requested from local suppliers with the promise that those whose goods were taken would be paid at some future date. It is not hard to imagine how unpopular this system was when payments by the Crown were often extremely tardy. The advent of the Black Death in 1348 caused problems here as it did for so 16 Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 57 : ‘De vivres point — ni de commerce, ni d’indus­ trie, ni de pêche.’ 17 CPR 1345–8 : 372, dated August 1347. The two ships concerned were the Katerine of La Hope and the Jonette of La Hope. 18 CPR 1345–8 : 333, 409. 19 These figures come from the table in S. J. Burley, ‘The Victualling of Calais, 1347–65’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 31 (1948), 53. 20 S. J. Burley, ‘The Victualling of Calais 1347–65’, 51.

· 28 ·

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many other aspects of contemporary life. In 1351, in the first parliament held since the arrival of the pestilence, the Commons petitioned the king that because of the shortage of corn in England and the fact that much land was now lying fallow and uncultivated that no commissions for purveyance should be issued. The king’s answer was to emphasize the desperate need for victuals in Calais and to promise that payment would be made by the purveyors on the day stated in their commission while the amount requested would be reduced by half.21 There may well have been some hollow laughter from the Commons at this response ; complaints about purveyance to feed armies or merely to supply the royal household can be found in the records of most meetings of Parliament from 1298 onwards and continue throughout Edward III’s reign. The system was open to abuse despite the best intentions of the king and his financial officials. Purveyors could use their position for their own advantage, like the two Leicester men who were accused of operating a ‘racket’ in the county in 1351. They either took payments from suppliers not to take their goods or, having taken them, sold them on their own account and to their personal profit. The result in this particular case was that over forty pigs and a large number of beef carcasses did not reach Calais.22 Two years later money collected for victuals for Calais in Holt in Norfolk was embezzled by the local constable.23 These cases are known because they were investigated by the authority of commissions, with their findings enrolled in Chancery, but it is reasonable to suppose that many more similar incidents occurred. Licences to merchants to take foodstuffs to Calais for sale can be found on the same rolls. Looking at them in a group allows some deductions to be made about what became a regular trading route. Although the Crown was concerned that the corn should not end up in the hands of the enemy,24 the licences are often phrased in fairly general terms ; the corn or other victuals may go to Calais or Gascony or even Flanders. A licence like the one issued to two Ipswich men in 1350 to ship 300 quarters of wheat to Calais alone, which also required them to provide sureties that this would happen, is fairly unusual.25 It does seem likely that the food situation was particularly difficult in Calais in 1350–51. A collection of documents sent to the Exchequer by John de Wesenham from Lynn, one of the most important merchants supplying Calais, relates to one series of supply voyages from Lynn at this time. He was assisted by Thomas de Fery, a royal sergeant-at-arms, and sent 750 quarters of wheat, 500 quarters of beans, 1,002 quarters of malt and 500 quarters of oats in no fewer than fifteen vessels at intervals between January and March 1350. The provisions cost £795 21 Parliament of February 1351, The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. 22 CPR 1350–54 : 161. 23 CPR 1350–54 : 461. 24 In 1349 searches were authorized of ships laden with grain in the Thames as it was alleged that the cargoes were being shipped to enemy ports rather than a long list of authorised destinations. CPR 1348–50 : 311. 25 CPR 1348–50 : 556.



A new ruler and a new regime

· 29 ·

16s. 8d. and their transport a further £171 17s. 6d.26 In 1352, however, John de Wesenham was allowed to ship 400 quarters of rye to Gascony because it could not be sold at a profit in Calais.27 By 1355 the licences also tend to include ale as well as bread-corn in the cargo, perhaps an indication that the town was becoming more populous and its townspeople more secure. It is also noticeable that the issue of these licences falls off almost completely during the period of relative peace in France after the signing of the Treaty of Brétigny, only to reappear with the outbreak of war again at the end of the 1360s. When the surrounding areas, whether in direct English control or not, were relatively peaceful, large quantities of foodstuffs for the townspeople were perhaps brought into Calais in the normal course of trade without a great need for additional supplies from England.28 Governing his new acquisition also faced Edward with the need to make relatively rapid decisions. Since Calais was first of all a military base (Geoffrey of Harcourt told Edward that with its possession he would wear ‘the keys to the realm of France’ at his belt),29 a military hierarchy was necessary to control the forces of the garrison. At least the bones of this structure would need to be in place before the king returned to England. On the other hand, the despatch with which Edward issued the proclamation about property grants in the town made clear that Calais would also continue to be a trading centre with (it was hoped) a considerable body of townspeople. John de Montgomery was in fact appointed captain of the town of Calais immediately before Edward left for England, landing at Sandwich on 12 October 1347. A separate captain was appointed for Calais castle and also officials known as the marshal and the seneschal. By the following year a treasurer and a victualler were also appointed, to control the considerable sums of money needed to pay and supply the garrisons in the town, the castle and the other strong places in English control outside the town walls. The details of this administration changed a little in the remainder of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century (for example, the captain was styled ‘governor’ between 1361 and 1370) but remained much the same in essence. There seems to have been considerable difficulty, however, in finding a suitable and acceptable method of governing the civil population of the town and the areas outside the walls. At first, despite his apparent policy of forcing the evacuation of all the French inhabitants, Edward seems to have decided to keep in being the laws and customs of the town, as granted by Countess Mahaut of Artois in 1317. The French Rolls include not only two copies of her charter to the town, one followed by a formal confirmation by Edward, but also a document called ‘Certain articles to be kept in the town of Calais’ and another that sets out in considerable detail the way in which Calais had been governed by the 26 TNA, E101/173/11. Writ and indenture still enclosed in the original small leather bag. 27 CPR 1350–54 : 318. Wesenham’s activities as a purveyor are also discussed in Burley, ‘The Victualling of Calais’, 53. 28 These licences can be found in CPR 1354–8 : 307, 314, 406, 457, 468, 472, 477, 483 ; CPR 1358–61 : 6, 12, 312 ; CPR 1364–7 : 35, 36, 259, 291, 292, 310, 317 ; CPR 1370–74 : 90–91. 29 Froissart is the source of the remark. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 249.

· 30 ·

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duke of Burgundy as count of Artois. It seems at least probable that this information was supplied by Eustace de Saint-Pierre, whether willingly or not : his annuity of 40 marks ‘for services rendered in safekeeping of the town’ is dated at this time. The articles to some extent summarise the actions taken by Edward to this point but are significantly headed, ‘it is the will of the king that the ancient customs and rights that existed in the town of Calais before its capture should be kept and upheld there in the future in all their points’.30 The charter was formally confirmed on December 3. To at least one French historian this was no more than an exercise in public relations ; in reality Calais from then on had English institutions run by Englishmen.31 The more commonly held view is that, until 1363, the old ways were implemented as far as possible. The day-to-day government of the town was in the hands of thirteen échevins, a term usually translated as ‘aldermen’. The role of the bailli or bailiff, formerly the official appointed by the rulers of Artois to protect their interests and collect the revenues due to them, was, after the fall of the town, amalgamated with that of the seneschal appointed by Edward. Within a short period of time, his usual title was in fact that of bailiff, and his powers and duties were hardly different from those exercised previously. The échevins were elected for a year by their predecessors (the first group under the English regime were appointed by the king) and were probably all Englishmen. This body had the duty first of all to maintain the town watch, a duty placed on all those living in Calais, and one that was quite onerous. Apart from this responsibility, the échevins collected the dues and customs in the port and the rents of property due the king, and served in the town courts dealing with disputes between citizens. If a member of the garrison was also involved, then the captain would play a part in the pro­ceedings. It is in fact in the area of justice and the law that Edward’s promise to maintain all the former customs was least effective. The charter of 1317 included in the town government a group of so-called cormans, who seem to have had some legal expertise and purpose, but there is no trace of them after 1347.32 This may indicate that, while the structure of the town court was little changed, its procedures became similar to those used in England. There was thus in the town itself and the suburb outside the walls a dual civil/military administration. The civil institutions soon became closely linked to the establishment of the Wool Staple in Calais in the 1360s and will be further discussed in the next chapter. Outside these limits in the area later known as the Pale, formerly the lordships of Marck and Oye, the system of the former overlord, the duke of Burgundy (the count of Artois), seems to have continued to operate with power now in the hands of royal rather than ducal officials. Behind the rather dry administrative and legal documents that provide most 30 The first three of these documents are printed in Rymer, Foedera, iii/1 : 139, 142–4, and are discussed along with the last in Le Patourel, ‘L’Occupation anglaise de Calais,’ 232–3. 31 Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 57. 32 Le Patourel, ‘L’Occupation anglaise de Calais’, 232, 235 ; D. Greaves, ‘Calais under Edward III’, 318–22.



A new ruler and a new regime

· 31 ·

of the evidence of how the town was governed, there are some indications, as might well be expected, of tensions and nervousness among the inhabitants, whether members of the garrison or ordinary townsfolk. First of all, although Philip VI had left the town to its fate in a somewhat ignominious fashion, this did not mean that there were no attempts by the French to retake it and wipe out the shame of its loss. The English captured the outlying castles at Oye and Marck and those at Sangatte and Coulognes in 1348–9 in order to increase the security of their possession and curtail the irritation of skirmishing on the borders. The most notable occurrence, however, was an attempt by the French captain of Saint-Omer to suborn some of the Calais garrison and thus get within the walls. The story reads like an episode of a chivalric romance but is apparently grounded in fact. Some time in the autumn of 1349, Geoffrey de Charny, in command at SaintOmer, got in touch with Aymery de Pavia, an Italian resident in the Calais garrison. One English chronicler says that he had in fact earlier been in the service of the French Crown with their force of Genoese galleys. He had also been appointed captain of the galleys by Edward III in April 1348.33 Charny offered him a large sum of money ; perhaps as much as 20,000 ecus d’or to open a gate for himself and his men. Aymery seems to have been greatly attracted by the money offered, but also disturbed by the nature of the betrayal suggested. He may have sent letters to Edward telling him of the conspiracy, or the king got wind of it in some other way and summoned Aymery to London. The result, in either case, was that the king, now fully informed of the plot, planned to ambush Charny and his men. Both he and the prince of Wales slipped into Calais as unobtrusively as possible with a small force of archers and men-at-arms. On the night of 31 December 1349 /1 January 1350, a small group of Frenchmen approached the walls ; a gate was opened and all crept into the town. Once they were inside the wall, however, the drawbridge was raised and the Frenchmen found themselves trapped, facing the king and his men. All the Frenchmen were captured. Edward then led a sortie out of the town by one gate and the Black Prince by another to engage with the main body of the French forces outside the walls on marshy ground. A furious hand-to-hand battle ensued ; the king and his companions were outnumbered and in some danger, but his cries of ‘A Edward, Seint George’ brought aid, and eventually most of the French were killed or captured. The king himself fought with Eustache de Ribemont, like Charny a notable French knight, and overcame him. Froissart then describes a scene, redolent of the chivalry that was the real inspiration of his chronicle. The king presented Ribemont with his own ‘chapelet richement garni de perles’34 in recognition of the bravery with which he had fought, and then set him free, while the other knights were imprisoned to await their ransom. Aymery himself later fell into the hands of the French and was executed after being horribly tortured.35 33 Rymer, Foedera, iii/1 : 159. 34 A circlet richly decorated with pearls. 35 G. Daumet, Calais sous la domination anglaise (Arras, 1902), 14–18 ; Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869–99), iv : 71

· 32 ·

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An incident like this, coming shortly after the trauma of the Black Death, would have increased the nervousness of the population and hardly encouraged the immigration of more settlers. This division of interests between the merchants and townspeople, whom Edward was clearly keen to encourage to move to Calais, and the garrison and military needs in general seems to have caused problems in the first years of the conquest. Edward had encouraged traffic to the port by requiring vessels from Dover and other ports to put into Calais first before any other Channel port. He had exempted Calais merchants from all dues and taxes, except royal customs, on merchandise exported to England for three years. He had also declared that Calais should be the staple port for a wide range of goods including cloth, feathers, tin and lead. It is hard to judge how successful these measures might have been in normal times ; in the disturbed and dismal aftermath of the Black Death they seem to have had little effect. By August 1348, English merchants were petitioning vigorously to be exempt from the staple regulations and for licences to take their goods, particularly cloth, to Gascony and other destinations. Some other faint impressions of life in the town can be gathered from some of the commissions, pardons and other documents recorded on the patent rolls in Chancery. What exactly had Richard atte Wode been up to in early 1350 ? He was of high social rank, a royal sergeant-at-arms and an échevin of the town, but he was sent back from Calais and incarcerated in the Tower of London for ‘forming unlawful assemblies with men in the town and confederacies with them’.36 It is suggested that these were the cause of disturbances and even the possible loss of the town, but in the end he was pardoned and only expected to find sureties to ensure ‘that he would behave faithfully henceforward in that town, and if he should hold meetings or commit other like delict there he should incur forfeiture of life and members and of his lands, goods and chattels’.37 We can only speculate that some concerted action of both townsmen and soldiers against the situation in the town, perhaps a lack of food, was contemplated, but no precise details of his offence are recorded. A garrison of the size of that at Calais was, of course, very unusual at this time. It was also unusual in that it was intended to be there for the foreseeable future. By this time normally being formed out of the indentured retinues of the captains, field armies were usually put together for the campaigning season, and once the campaign was over, the men would be paid off. Frequent warfare could create quasi-professional men-at-arms or archers, but garrison duties were different. In this case, military life would become dominated by routine duties and a regular way of life. There would be little chance of booty or stirring acts of bravery, but there would, perhaps, be a chance to build a new life away from the constraints of village life, or to escape from past problems. That this was the case is a possible interpretation of some of the mentions of individual members 36 CPR 1348–50 : 590. 37 CCR 1349–54 : 196. He seems to have been received back into royal favour, as he was granted 12d. per day for life as a member of the Calais watch in 1353. CPR 1350–54 : 491.



A new ruler and a new regime

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of the Calais garrison in royal records. John Walker of Stanlake, for example was pardoned in 1351 for robbing the parson of his home village because of his good service in Calais.38 Pardons were also granted to at least three members of the garrison in the same year for causing deaths in England.39 Another group of pardons in 1360–61 for members of the Calais garrison related to six deaths and one rape, most also occurring in England some time before the pardons were granted.40 The cost of maintaining Calais and ensuring its safety was, of course, considerable. This included the wages of the garrison, the cost of their victuals and the necessary maintenance of the fortifications not only of the town and its castle but also of the outlying defences, like the castles at Guisnes, Oye and Marcke. There are a number of the detailed accounts or particulars of the Treasurer of Calais, still surviving among the records of the Exchequer, which give a reasonably complete picture of the way in which the available funds were spent and the totals involved. It is less easy to relate this material to the overall financial position of the English Crown during the reign of Edward III, especially when the war with France resumed in earnest in 1355–60 and 1369–77. The financial records of this period, although at times they can seem to be obsessed with the smallest details, were not designed to make it easy to draw up a balance sheet, as it were, of the king’s finances. The king’s ordinary revenue, made up of various dues and customary payments, the income from Crown lands, the profits of justice and the like, seems to have amounted to something in the region of £30,000–£35,000 per year. To this must be added the income from the various imposts on trade, principally the (variable) export duty on wool and wool fells, and the income from taxes that might be granted by the clergy, or agreed to by parliament for the laity, when called upon to do so by the king in time of war. The amount that should be raised by the usual tax, in the form of a fifteenth of the value of moveables in the countryside and a tenth of their value in the towns, could be calculated in advance but was invariably reduced by collection difficulties and other problems. In this situation, the king frequently needed to raise loans, usually secured either against the customs revenue or against the value of jewels and the like in his possession. The need of the English Crown for loan finance in times of war had, in fact, led to the bankruptcy of their principal creditors in the earlier part of the century. The collapse of the Italian banking houses of the Bardi and Peruzzi in 1340 was only the most spectacular incident of this kind. Later, in 1347, Walter Chiriton, one of the London merchants who took up property in Calais, was the head of a syndicate that lent the enormous sum of £66,666 to the king for the expenses of the siege itself, secured on the customs payable on a forced loan of wool.41 This turned out to be a disastrous speculation : by July 1348 Chiriton was forced to seek aid from his rival John de Wesenham, who lent him £4,000 secured this time against the king’s great 38 CPR 1350–54 : 36 39 CPR 1350–54 : 37, 71, 215. 40 CPR 1358–61 : 476, 504, 505, 507, 510, 513, 529. 41 Sumption, Trial by Battle, 568.

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crown, which was in Chiriton’s possession.42 This did not avert disaster, and he was bankrupt by the following year, owing at least in part to the interruption to trade caused by the Black Death.43 The total income of the English Crown from all these sources has been variously estimated at between £100,000 and £200,000 per annum. The higher sum was perhaps the result of various accounting manoeuvres, with the ‘real’ income being nearer £120,000.44 Of this total the expenses of Calais, that is to say the whole area in English hands, in the wages of the garrison and the necessary supplies, not only of victuals but also war materials, and those needed for the maintenance of the fortifications, came to around £20,000, about a fifth of the total resources of the Crown in time of war. There is no doubt that this was a considerable burden. In the reign of Richard II, when the French wars were going badly for the English, John of Gaunt is recorded as saying bitterly, ‘Calais greved more England and dede more hurt therto than profit, for the grete expensis aboute the keeping therof.’45 The accounts of the Treasurer of the town allow us to gain a detailed breakdown of these expenses. Those for 1351/2 and 1352/3, years that saw little active fighting, reveal that money received from the Exchequer reached a total of £7,529 10s. 5d. in the first year and only £4,746 13s. 4d. in the second.46 The Treasurer also received small sums from the dues and rents payable in Calais and some profits on exchange transactions. His accounts were also improved by credits from the victualler. At this date the garrison’s food was not supplied free but paid for by each individual by a deduction from his wages. These wages are recorded in detail, as also are the various payments made by the Treasurer. The general necessaria section of these payments can be revealing. It is evident, for example, that the captain of Calais himself, accompanied by a small retinue, travelled frequently to London to consult with the council, to collect money or to attend Parliament. The crossing to Dover was relatively expensive at a cost of around £5 for the whole party and their horses. The unrest in Calais in 1350–51, hinted at above, is confirmed by the entry of a payment of 51s. 4d. for expenses incurred on the execution of men from Kent for murder and sedition. Thirtytwo archers also received extra pay for watching outside the walls of Calais on fourteen dark nights.47 Friars minor were paid for celebrating masses in the castle chapel at a rate of 6d. per day. Among the military specialists and artisans employed, including artillerymen, a plumber, a tiler, and carpenters, there is also one spy or scout (explorator). His name, Hankine van Schise, suggests that he was Flemish, if not one of the original inhabitants of the town.48 Turning to the maintenance of the town and its defences, both accounts record the costs 42 T. H. Lloyd, ‘John de Wesenham’, ODNB. 43 G. Holmes, ‘Walter Chiriton (fl. 1340–1358)’, ODNB. 44 E. Perroy, ‘L’Administration de Calais en 1371–1372’, Revue du Nord, 34 (1952), 220–21. 45 Quoted in Derville and Villon, Histoire de Calais, 64. 46 TNA, E 101/170/16 and E 101/171/1. 47 TNA, E 101/170/16, fol. 22v. 48 TNA, E 101/171/1, fol. 13r.



A new ruler and a new regime

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of paving the town ; this cost 3s. 8d. per rood and probably relates to the roads over the marshes.49 This was still going on in 1354–5 when stoonpikkers were employed for this purpose.50 The accounts for 1371/2 give the precise composition of the garrison in detail. It consisted of a total of around 1,132 men. 481 were based in the town and castle ; Ardres, (temporarily in English hands at this date) was held by 320, Audruicq by 50 and Guisnes by 80, while the strongholds of Marck, Oye, Hammes and Sangatte held between 35 and 14 men. The men’s wages, as recorded by William Gunthorp, the Treasurer for these years, are in some cases at higher rates than those normally used.51 The garrison of Calais Castle was paid as follows : knights received 2s. per day, scutiferi (men-at-arms) 12d., hobelars (mounted men armed with swords and with basic armour) 8d., archers (no distinction is made between mounted and foot archers) 6d. A sum called a regardum, a kind of bonus payment, which may have been included because of the lack of opportunities for booty while part of a garrison force, was also paid. At Ardres the pay rates were slightly different again, with knights receiving 3s., men-at-arms 12–18d., mounted archers 9d. and foot archers 6d. The total cost in wages and fees, including those of officials, various specialists like gunners, plumbers and a tiler, collectors of customs and officials of the mint came to just under £20,000. Various special items were also included in this, like the costs of transporting £1,000 in gold from London to Calais by way of Dover (50s.) and payments for goods lost in the war to one Marie, a domicella de Hone (66s. 8d.).52 Work on the fortifications, most importantly on the Risban Tower, which commanded the harbour entrance, came to £645 9s. 6¾d. Offset against this sum was the income accruing to the Crown from various rentals and dues. These varied from the income from fisheries like that under the bridge at Melleques, to the value of a small amount of bread-corn grown near Ardres, and the rents of properties in Calais town, including that in the ffrerlane that was leased to John de Wesenham for 13s. 4d. per year. All told the income from the region itself came to £1,585 15s. 2¾d. in this account. The final conclusion was that royal expenditure on Calais of all kinds came to £20,264 2s. 9d. and exceeded the money received from the Exchequer and that arising locally by £1,418 6s.53 Despite John of Gaunt’s view expressed above, there is no doubt, however, that Edward III thought that the expenditure on Calais was fully justified. In the period from the early 1350s to 1360 the town played an important role in Edward’s strategy with regard to the war with France. In 1351 raids had been led 49 TNA, E 101/171/1, fol. 15v. 50 TNA, E101/171/3. 51 The usual rate was a knight 2s., a man-at-arms 12d., a mounted archer 6d., a foot archer 3d. H. J. Hewitt, The Organisation of War under Edward III (Manchester, 1966), 36. The accounts for the 1350s contain no payments for a regardum, while the pay of the captain himself varied from 3s. 6d. to 4s. per day. 52 The term can apparently mean either young lady or harlot. 53 The details of the Treasurer’s account for 1371–2 come from E. Perroy (ed.), The Accounts of William Gunthorp, Treasurer of Calais, 1371–72, Mémoires de la Commission départementale des monuments historiques du Pas de Calais, 10 (Arras, 1959).

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from Calais towards Saint-Omer and Ardres by two of the leading English commanders : Henry of Lancaster, who probably had more experience at this date of fighting the French than any other English captain, and Sir Walter Mauny or Manny, another experienced soldier and diplomat, whose association with Calais went back to the siege, when he had been involved in the negotiations for the surrender of the town. In 1355, the town served as the starting point for a major expedition into northern France led by the king himself. This had been planned as the northern arm of a two-pronged attack on France, with the prince of Wales leading a chevauchée from Gascony while his father launched an attack from Cherbourg, in conjunction with their ally, Charles of Navarre. Both forces were held in port for most of the summer by contrary winds, and by September, Edward was forced to change his plans. The alliance with Navarre had collapsed ; a landing on the Cotentin peninsula was out of the question. The substitute strategy was to mount a quick destructive raid from Calais into Picardy moving south, perhaps to provoke John of France into giving battle.54 The earlier raids probably did not increase the number of military men in Calais, being undertaken by the garrison as a welcome opportunity for action. The expedition of 1355, involving the presence of the king and other men of note in the town, as well as around 10,000 soldiers, would have almost overwhelmed the burgesses and their resources. Included in the total were around a thousand men-at-arms from Flanders, Brabant and the German states, drawn to fight alongside Edward not only by his reputation for chivalry and success but also by the prospect of booty and lucrative ransoms.55 The force left Calais at the end of October and was back, camped outside the walls, in around two weeks. No battle had ensued, although much destruction was caused to French-held territory. The following year, that of the Black Prince’s crushing victory at Poitiers, Calais was not a centre of activity. Most interest centred on the Prince and his intentions, although a relatively small-scale raid into France was also conducted by Henry of Lancaster, moving into Normandy in late June from his landing place at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue. If Edward III himself had originally intended to lead a third raid from Calais, as has been suggested, this did not place.56After the Black Prince’s triumph and the capture of King John II of France, strenuous efforts were made to conclude a treaty between the warring parties and bring the fighting to an end. In all the draft treaties, along with the mention of many other territorial gains, it was laid down that the English would hold Calais and the Pale and the county of Guisnes in full sovereignty. It was the failure of any of these drafts to be ratified by the French, despite the desperate desire of John II to return to his devastated kingdom from his imprisonment in England, which decided Edward in 1359 to lead another chevauchée deep into French territory from Calais. When news of his intention got abroad, once again crowds of 54 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 287–8, 295–304. 55 Ibid., 297. 56 Ibid., 341–7, 349.



A new ruler and a new regime

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unemployed men-at-arms from all over western Europe poured into the town, eager to fight under Edward’s banner and, as before, to share in the expected booty. Henry of Lancaster had to be sent ahead of the main English army to disperse the crowds of armed men without adequate provisions or shelter, before the situation became unmanageable. Lancaster led them on a foray to Saint-Omer and then in the direction of the Somme. They joined up with the main English royal army outside Calais on the end of October. Edward then informed the foreign men-at-arms that he could not take them into his army as paid troops, but they were welcome to join his forces for a share of any booty that might be gained. Some took up this offer but others left for home The king’s army from England then set out on a foray that would take them to Reims and the outskirts of Paris.57 The townspeople of Calais may well have watched the army’s banners fading in the distance with a deep sense of relief. In this instance, the devastating march of the English through the French countryside was followed by the negotiations that produced the Treaty of Brétigny. This was intended to end the wars, setting out clearly what territory and what rights each of the contending monarchs possessed. The position, as far as Calais was concerned, was no different from that agreed in the earlier truces. The town and its environs were to be part of the lands of the king of England in full sovereignty. The only major change to the borders of English territory, as set out in the treaty, would be the retaking of Ardres and Audruicq by Philip of Burgundy in 1377. The conclusion of this treaty, however, provides an opportunity for considering the condition of Calais as it had developed in the thirteen years since the siege. The English hold on the town had proved to be secure ; the garrison, the fortifications and the natural defences of the marshes had kept it secure from attempts to retake it. Yet was it really the key to the kingdom of France ? The duchy of Aquitaine in the south-west, the dowry of Eleanor, the queen of Henry II, was far more extensive (even given that its borders were porous and fluctuated frequently). It was in this part of France that all the most spectacular efforts of the English had taken place in the 1350s. Northern France had been comprehensively laid waste, as Jean de Venette poignantly recorded in his Chronicle,58 but deeds of extraordinary military prowess had all taken place far from Calais. In many circumstances it was strategically wiser for an English king to land in northern France, not in the extreme north-east corner, but centrally in Normandy or the Cotentin. This was the case with the expedition of Henry of Lancaster in 1356. Calais’s convenience as the nearest port to England was of course immense. This could ease diplomatic negotiations and even at times allow the town to be a convenient ‘listening post’ to gauge the importance of events or development of opinions on the far side of the Channel. A casual observer in 1360 would, however, it is suggested, see the town’s importance as residing essentially in its military and official roles at this early date. Commercial life or the 57 Ibid., 386–90, 400–402. 58 J. de Venette, The Chronicles of Jean de Venette, ed. J. Birdsall (New York, 1953) 93–4.

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development of a civic society, whether heavily influenced by English models and customs or not, was not so evident. The events of 1359–60 epitomised this. Edward III’s expedition of 1359, with the flocking to the town of foreign men-atarms, the elaborate ceremonies surrounding the return of John II from England and the ratification of the Treaty of Brétigny in St Nicholas’s Church, crowded the town with soldiers and courtiers. The presence of merchants, except as supplying the needs of these customers, would have passed almost unremarked. We have already, however, pointed to Edward’s desire for a wider commercial role for this new acquisition of the English Crown, and it is to this we will turn in the next chapter.

3 Set t i n g u p t he s ta p l e : a n ew r o l e f o r C a l a i s



I

f Calais was to be more than a garrison town, it needed a sound commercial base. Edward III’s action in encouraging new immigrants to settle in the town immediately after the siege, luring them by the grant of property, showed a sound understanding of this fact. We can interpret the establishment of a staple for lead, feathers, cloth and tin in Calais in early 1348, and the exemption of Calais burgesses from all dues except royal customs on trade with England, as further attempts to make it a desirable place for traders to base themselves. Without, however, going as far as the French historians who deny that Calais ever had any economic value for England and claim that its possession was only a matter of prestige,1 it can be argued that, at least until the last decade of the fourteenth century, there were considerable difficulties in developing a vibrant urban society in Calais outside its role as a military and diplomatic base. The solution to the problem was, perhaps, found in the establishment of Calais as the staple town for the sale of English wool and wool-fells to continental, mainly Flemish, merchants. There was nothing new in the idea of setting up a staple system. It involved the designation of one or more places as the only locations in which wool (or any other commodity) could be legally bought or sold. The system was beneficial for the Crown, since the trade could be regulated and dues collected more easily if it was concentrated in one place, or perhaps a small group of towns. It also had advantages for merchants, who could be reasonably sure that they would find both buyers and sellers in the staple town, and that the trade and traders would enjoy a measure of official protection. There was also a perception that a staple was particularly advantageous to the merchants in the largest way of business, since it offered opportunities for them to establish quasi-monopolies and squeeze out the ‘little men’. Wool was the commodity most often subject to

1 Perroy, ‘L’Administration de Calais’, 223 ; Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 66.



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· 40 ·

Chapter 3

staple legislation, since it was by far the most valuable article of trade for English merchants. The taxation of wool, usually in the form of export dues (both customs duties and additional subsidies) on wool going overseas, provided a vital stream of ready money for English kings. This ‘cash flow’ was also employed as the collateral for loans made by both foreign and English merchants, and in this form it was the basis of English war finance for most of the late medieval period. The earliest staple for the sale of English wool had been established at St Omer in 1313, largely at the instigation of merchants who faced the danger of arrest and the confiscation of their wares in Flanders, their normal market, because of the bad relations between England and Flanders at this date.2 The location of the staple, however, and the particular regulations under which it would operate were not simple matters ; decisions on this brought together many interest groups with conflicting demands. The king had his own priorities, dictated by the fluctuating political situation in France and Flanders, the state of any military campaign in progress or contemplated, and the condition of royal finances. Merchants were not united on all aspects of staple policy ; it might depend whether they were in a small or large way of business, whether they were London-based or came from other trading or wool-producing areas like Yorkshire or East Anglia. Those who sold to Italians tended to have a different point of view from those who sold to the cloth makers in Bruges, Ghent and Ypres or other towns in Flanders. In London itself there could be intense rivalry between the members of the different livery companies involved in the wool trade in the later fourteenth century. Provincial woolmen and growers had yet other interests. Some of these differing groups might favour home staples (staple towns nominated in England) over one abroad. They might wish to see the export trade solely in the hands of foreign merchants or might find the prohibition of export by denizen merchants destructive of their whole business. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that royal policy on the location and regulation of a wool staple changed frequently throughout the fourteenth century, responding to the different financial and political pressures on the Crown at any one time. As far as Calais was concerned, these changes of royal policy were of great concern, particularly before 1399 when the wool staple was finally firmly located in the town. The Company of the Staple of England, as it became known, maintained its base in Calais from that date until the end of the years of English rule. There are, however some problems in trying to establish how this company was organised and how it acted to control the trade in wool and wool-fells. Not surprisingly, its records were kept at Calais, and when the town fell to the French in 1558 all were apparently lost and presumably destroyed. As the Staplers themselves mournfully recorded in the Ordinance Book that they compiled after the loss of Calais, ‘our former books, lawes, orders and muniments made by longe 2 R. L. Baker, ‘The Establishment of the English Wool Staple in 1313’, Speculum, 31 (1956), 444–53.



Setting up the staple

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cours of tyme by the wisdome aand prudenties of our grave auncestours made, collected and registered were from us with the seide towne of Callais surpriused and witholden’.3 The Ordinance Book almost certainly mirrors at least some of these ‘lawes and orders’, but there are no early minute books or other papers that would enable us to have a clear idea of the internal organisation and activities of the Company, as can be obtained for some of the London livery companies, for example the Grocers or the Mercers.4 The Staplers’ mournful comment on the total loss of their records in 1558 was not completely accurate. One earlier document does survive. This is the Register of the Company, which was presumably either in London at the time of the fall of Calais or in the personal possession of one of the officers of the Company and carried away from the town when he left as a refugee. This book is now in the Borthwick Collection at the University of York.5 It is a large leather-bound ledger into which, beginning in the reign of Edward IV, were copied the most important royal grants and similar documents of the Company. Its date is not in dispute, since the earliest documents in the book have elaborate decorated initial letters, while for those dating from the later years of Edward IV the beginning of each document is ruled and laid out for the insertion of the decoration, but this has not taken place. All the entries are also in the same hand until the end of Edward IV’s reign, after which a variety of hands can be found. The last documents in the book date from the reign of James I. The importance of this collection is that it makes clear that the Company was, in its own opinion, founded in Bruges in 1341. This is the date of the first entry in the Register. This may be no more than a reflection of the common medieval desire to demonstrate a respectably lengthy ancestry. The succeeding entries, however, set out the powers of the Company in Calais and make clear that by 1359 it was a corporate entity with elected officials, powers of jurisdiction in disputes between merchants, and even a gaol in which to incarcerate the recalcitrant. The collections of some of the private papers of two Stapler families, the Celys and the Johnsons, can throw some further light on the Company in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but for the earlier period the records of the Crown are also very important.6 3 The Ordinance Book of the Merchants of the Staple, ed. E. E. Rich (Cambridge, 1937), 104. 4 For the history of the Grocers’ Company, see P. Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile Community : The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (New Haven and London, 1995), and for the Mercers, A. F. Sutton, The Mercery of London : Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, 2005). 5 York, Borthwick Institute, MS Staple 2. The Staple collection of MSS was transferred from the BL to York in the 1990s. 6 The Cely letters have been published by the Early English Text Society, The Cely Letters 1472–1488, ed. A. Hanham (Oxford, 1975). An earlier edition by H. E. Malden, The Cely Papers (London, 1900), includes some accounts and other material not in the Hanham edition. The Johnson letters and papers have not been published but are commented on extensively in B. Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait (London, 1955). The letters have been transcribed in B. Winchester, ‘The Johnson Letters, 1542–1552’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1953).

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Before the fall of Calais to the English, the wool staple had been located both overseas, most commonly at Bruges, and also in England itself at ‘home staples’. In 1343 a petition presented by merchants to parliament argued forcefully for the move of the staple from Bruges back to England itself. Their reasons for requesting this are of some interest, revealing both contemporary attitudes to trade and the way the wool trade in particular was entangled in royal policy making. The idea of free trade as advanced by nineteenth century liberals was completely foreign to medieval thinking. The need for controls was axiomatic, to protect the various interests involved against the machinations of their rivals or other authorities, for example, in this case, those in Bruges, Ghent and Ypres, who were accused of manipulating the market in English wool to the benefit of their own merchants and clothiers. Specifically they were accused of destroying the cloth industry of ‘the lesser towns of Flanders’ by forbidding these towns to ‘work any cloth and have burned their looms to the great detriment and abasement of English wool’. A return to home staples would, it was claimed, conversely raise the price of English wool. Another issue was that of bullion ; all governments at this date were very anxious to control the supply of bullion within their realms and regarded its export as draining away the wealth of the state. The gold coins used in Bruges were generally considered to be overvalued compared with the English noble (the English gold coin), leading to losses on exchange for English merchants. The petition also refers extensively to the losses incurred by merchants who were ‘impoverished and ruined because their wool was taken from them at Dordrecht’ (a notorious example of the king manipulating the wool market to raise war finance), or who had suffered losses from other royal forced loans in wool.7 On this occasion, the king responded by promising them recompense from the customs revenue, but this clause illustrates the intimate connection between the taxes on wool and royal finances especially in time of war.8 In Bruges itself at this time there was a mayor of the staple elected by the English merchants trading there, but in the view of later commentators this does not imply that a company in the formal legal sense existed, but rather that this was a company in the informal sense of a group with a common purpose. The grant from 1341 in the Staple Company register described above, perhaps, suggests that this view was not held by contemporaries. A similar group, including in fact many of the same individuals, also existed to collect the wool customs at this date. The issue of home staples was not resolved to the petitioners’ satisfaction in the parliament of 1343, and the staple remained abroad, moving from Bruges to Middelburg and back again, until in 1352 the export of wool was banned altogether.9 The cause was no mystery ; following a spate of tit-for-tat 7 This relates to wool sent to Dordrecht in 1337/8 to back a loan to the king. 8 Commons Petition to King Edward III, Parliament of April 1343 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. 9 T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977). The chapter ‘Quest for a staple policy’, pp. 193–224, gives details of all the twists and turns in the royal policy on wool staples at this period.



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robberies at sea, ‘the king has learned that the mariners of Flanders, by order of their superiors, are preparing to set out to sea to inflict what damage they can on the king and his subjects until they recover the damages which they pretend they have received from the king’s subjects’.10 Exports were only resumed after the passage of the ordinance of the Staple in the parliament of 1353, and this was recast as a statute a year later. This statute set up a list of towns where staples would be established. These included Westminster, York and Lincoln, as well as Carmarthen in Wales and four towns in Ireland. More controversially in the eyes of modern commentators, it prohibited denizen merchants from the export of wool. This would be left entirely in the hands of aliens (Flemings or Italians in the main), who would buy their supplies in England and bear all the costs and difficulties of transport overseas, exchange problems and the like themselves. They would also of course pay the custom and subsidy on export at the higher alien rate, to the benefit of the king’s finances. As well as these provisions, the statute included clauses regarding general mercantile practice, including the settlement of debts. This part of the statute remained in force for many years, ensuring that the home staples had some relevance and continued in existence long after the clauses relating specifically to the export trade in wool had ceased to operate.11 By 1357 denizen merchants were permitted to resume exporting wool, provided they paid taxes at the alien rate, and by 1359 a staple had been re-established in Bruges. Entries in the Staple Company Register, mentioned above, that refer to the Company being at Calais at this date are confusing but again clearly reflect what the Company saw, in the later fifteenth century, to be the ‘preferred version’ of its origins. The image created by the Register is that the Company was firmly based at Calais as a legally constituted body from 1359, despite all the contradictory evidence that also exists. How did these continual changes, which must have made commercial life difficult for both buyers and sellers, relate to Calais ? Its great advantage was that it was under English control ; abrupt changes of policy by a foreign ruler could not suddenly throw the market into confusion. On the other hand, while the town was well situated for merchants coming from the cloth-making centres in Flanders, it was out of the way for those wishing to export to Italy. For them, direct export by sea from England from a port such as Southampton was the best solution. The king was also in a much better position to deal with problems concerned with bullion and the coinage in his own territories rather than in those of a rival ruler. These arguments were appreciated by the king, who had summoned an assembly of merchants in May 1361, including six from Calais itself, to discuss the whole question of staple towns for the sale of wool. At the opening of the Parliament of October 1362, it was claimed in the opening speech that Calais would be a ‘good and convenient place and location for the 10 CCR 1349–54 : 506, quoted in Lloyd, The Wool Trade, 205. 11 Ordinance of the Staple : Edward III, Parliament of September 1353 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.

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wool and residence of merchants’, avoiding the problems caused by the king’s lack of jurisdiction in foreign places and at least some of the currency difficulties. The Commons’ reaction to this was somewhat muted ; the knights of the shire felt unable to comment but noted that some merchants agreed with this and others did not. The matter should be held over until a better idea could be got of merchant opinion.12 We do not know if any such consultation took place, but on 9 February 1363 Calais was declared to be the staple town for the sale of wool and wool-fells. The matter of the location of the Staple was, however, only one aspect of a change of policy towards Calais that the king had in mind. In the following month, March 1363, a charter was issued to a group of twenty-six English merchants granting them the right to govern Calais. The system set up by the old charters of Countess Mahaut was revoked. Two of this group, John Wroth and John de Wesenham, would hold the position of mayors, and the remaining twenty-four would be aldermen.13 This can be interpreted as the moment of the formal foundation of the Company of the Staple, but in effect it seems more concerned with the handing over of the government of the town to a group of merchant oligarchs. Certainly many of those named in the charter were heavily involved in the wool trade. Wesenham we have already mentioned as a Lynn merchant with a major interest in the victualing of Calais, who also owned property in the town. He had been one of the partners in the syndicate to farm the customs in 1346 and had helped clear up the consequences of Walter Chiriton’s bankruptcy in 1349. More recently, in 1360, he had been commissioned to put a fleet to sea for the protection of trade in the North Sea. There is no doubt that he was well known to the king and would probably have been privy to the thinking behind this turn of events. Wroth had been an alderman of the city of London since 1358, was Lord Mayor in 1360/61 and was mayor of the Westminster staple in 1353/4, a position only held by a leading wool merchant. He was a member of the Fishmongers’ Company, who despite their name were deeply involved in the wool trade. We can speculate here that it may have been intended to bring together leading merchants and contributors to royal loans in a scheme to link trading advantages with the internal control of Calais. If there was such a scheme, it seems to have been a spectacular failure, serving only to infuriate wool merchants outside the magic circle of the twenty-six aldermen and to provide poor governance for Calais. In parliament in October 1363, the Commons petitioned vigorously that the ‘new company of merchants now residing at Calais’ should desist from placing an extra 40d. per wool sack duty on cargoes entering the town, ‘which money [the Commons complained] is received to their own use’. The ‘trickery’ of this company had resulted in large quantities of wool remaining unsold, to the ‘very great damage of the people’. 12 Edward III, Parliament of October 1362 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. 13 Lloyd, The Wool Trade, 210–11. For Wesenham’s career, see T. H. Lloyd, ‘John Wesenham, (fl.1333–1382)’, ODNB. For John Wroth, see S. L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1976), 375.



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The king accepted the petition with as good a grace as possible, agreeing that this extra payment should be removed.14 In December a commission was also set up to investigate the whole matter. The report of the evidence given by wool merchants who were not part of the privileged group repeats one accusation over and over again. All the changes brought in by this group were not for the benefit of the ‘communes Marchantz sibien as estranges come as autres’,15 but for the profit only of the mayors and aldermen. They had moved the location of the weigh house to a place near their own premises, but very inconvenient for everyone else. Instead of supplying the ordinary merchants with good warehouses at a reasonable rent, as had normally been done in other staple towns, the mayors and aldermen had bought up or rented much property in the town, causing ‘outrageous damage’ to all other merchants. The governing group had refused to listen to complaints or grant merchants their usual rights.16 In the face of all this, in June 1364 the king withdrew the charter granted in 1363 and set up a new system of governing the town, clearly separated from that of the staple. The mayor of Calais would administer the town with twelve aldermen including burgesses of Calais. The staple would have its own organisation of a mayor and constables to deal with the regulation of trade in the usual way. The most important office holders in the town would be appointed by the Crown, with the link between staple and town being maintained by the provision that the mayor of the staple would also be an alderman of Calais.17 Blame for the failure was attached to Wesenham, who found himself imprisoned in the Tower with Henry Brisele, the master of the Calais mint. They were both released a year later, and little more is known of Wesenham’s career. The belief that the group of twenty-six involved in this episode in fact constituted the first members of a regulated company in charge of the Calais staple rather than an ad hoc grouping of very wealthy wool merchants trading to the town is hard to substantiate. It is not possible to show any continuous existence of the group after the collapse of their venture in 1364. On the other hand, since there is no charter in existence for the Staplers before the reign of Elizabeth I, it is very difficult to say when the Company came into being as a formal corporate entity. The majority of the evidence seems to point to some time early in the reign of Henry IV. It is clear that for most of the fifteenth century the members of the Calais Staple acted as an organised group and were bound by rules regarding their trading operations and the internal organisation of the Company. In the fourteenth century the prospects of wool merchants exporting via Calais varied widely and were often subject to sudden and unpredictable change. The basis for a formal regulated company has seemed almost non-existent to 14 Edward III, Parliament of October 1363 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. 15 ‘The ordinary merchants, whether aliens or denizens’. 16 R. L. Baker, ‘The Government of Calais in 1363’, in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages : Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, ed. W. C. Jordan et al. (Princeton, 1976), 213–14. 17 Ibid., 210–11.

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modern historians, but, as the Register reveals, this was not the view taken by the Staplers themselves in the 1470s. From 1369 to the 1390s the location of the wool staple continued to be frequently changed, along with the regulations governing its operations. The staple was abruptly removed from Calais in 1369, when the resumption of war with France was imminent. The Channel was full of French privateers, and Flemish merchants were thought to be reluctant to venture over the border into English territory for fear of the loss of their goods or their lives. English merchants were also banned from the export trade, only to see both ordinances rescinded in August 1370. The staple was once again in theory located in the town, but, to the dismay of the burgesses and to the benefit of the king’s finances, licences (for which high fees were charged) began to be issued in considerable numbers, allowing the export of wools from English ports to other places. The Commons’ petition presented in the parliament of November 1373 complained that this was to ‘the great loss damage and decrease of profit’ not only of the king but ‘the said town of Calais and to the great scarcity of money’.18 This petition was probably inspired by the London wool merchants, most of them members of the Fishmongers’ or Grocers’ Companies, who were closely linked to the Calais Staple. One-third of the members of the Grocers’ Company were wool merchants, including those with the largest share of the trade at this period.19 The royal reply to the petition was not favourable to their interests, leaving matters to deteriorate from their point of view until 1376 with the meeting of the so-called Good Parliament. The Commons’ petition for the restoration of the staple at Calais on this occasion was phrased in much more direct terms, forcefully condemning the issuing of licences to export wool otherwise than to the staple. ‘The same staple’, they claimed, ‘and bullion since have been and still are in great part withdrawn and almost completely ruined, at the procurement and counsel of the king’s said intimates and of others of their faction for their singular profit, to the great prejudice and damage of the king and his realm and in destruction of the aforesaid town of Calais.’20 Richard Lyons, a London merchant who had farmed the petty customs and tonnage and poundage since 1373, was impeached in this parliament on grounds that included his purchase of licences to avoid the Calais staple. The town, with its close association with the wool trade in the hands of prominent London merchants, had been drawn into the maelstrom of court politics at the time and equally into the factions and quarrels in the city of London. It is hard to know how genuine are the claims that Calais was being ruined by the royal policy regarding the staple. The requests made in a long series of 18 Commons Petition : Edward III, Parliament of November 1373 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. The reference to a shortage of money relates to the operation of the Calais Mint, discussed below. 19 Nightingale, A Medieval Merchant Community, 239. Eleven members of the Grocers’ company conducted 20% of the total trade in wool by quantity in 1365–6. 20 Commons Petition : Edward III, Parliament of April 1376 (the Good Parliament) ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.



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petitions from the town in the same parliament do, however, convey a strong desire for stability. At one time, according to the petitioners, the mayor could himself provide a considerable body of armed men to defend the town if the garrison had to mount a sortie elsewhere. This was no longer the case. There is a nostalgic demand for the reissue of Countess Mahaut’s charter except in so far as it related to real property. In response the king set out, in effect, a new constitution for the town, with a mayor and twelve aldermen with powers to maintain the town and raise money in the usual ways. Because of the changes in land law since the conquest of the town, the burgesses also petitioned for each alienation of property to be governed by the law in existence at the time it was made. Requests were also made for the right to import supplies from England without paying dues and taxes, something the townspeople asserted they had been able to do from the time of Richard I of England, even when Calais was in French hands. They also wanted the right to pasture their cattle on the dunes along the coast and drew attention to the number of empty and ruinous properties in the town, which made it hard to man an adequate watch on the walls and gates. The governor and treasurer of the town should have had the right to rent these empty properties at a small sum to English people to repopulate the town. These and other clauses regarding inheritance rights and the like seem to have received careful royal consideration, with the majority getting at least a cautiously favourable response. The overall impression created was that the town was suffering from real difficulties ; some could perhaps be put down to the fortunes of the war with France, which was no longer a series of English victories. Others, however, were probably the consequence of the constant manipulation of the staple regulations by a king in financial difficulties. No-one at this date seemed to question the policy of trying to control trade by a mixture of financial and legal restrictions, but it could have unfortunate consequences for some of those involved. Stability in the wool trade and in the operation of the staple were, however, unlikely to be fully restored until warfare in northern France and unrest in Flanders were either much diminished or at an end. Civil war in Flanders from 1379 to 1385 undoubtedly much reduced the demand for English wool from the clothiers of the region, the best customers for the commodity. Fears of a French invasion of England in the summer of 1381 did not greatly disrupt trade to Calais, but by 1383 the amount of wool shipped directly to the town fell drastically. In ‘good’ years about 15,000–16,000 sacks of wool were shipped to Calais ; this was the case in both 1380/81 and 1381/2. In 1382/3 this declined to 2,191 sacks, and in 1384 only eighty-three sacks were unloaded on the quays. This must have been little short of a disaster for the town, throwing porters, labourers and other ancillary workers out of work. The merchants themselves had, in this instance, themselves taken the initiative to move to Middelburg in Zeeland, beyond the reach of the French, who had taken control of the western part of Flanders and thus could prevent Flemings from reaching Calais. There are mentions of ‘the staple at Middelburg’ in letters patent and elsewhere, but this seems to have been no more than the kind of informal grouping that had earlier been sited at

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Bruges.21 It was not a formally constituted body. It is not quite clear how the success of Middelburg as a wool market relates to a memorandum addressed to Parliament in 1382, which complained bitterly of the disadvantage suffered by grosse leins, that is poor-quality wool, if merchants were forced to go to the Calais staple and had to pay tax and duties at the same rate as on the best, more valuable wools. The memorandum does, however, make clear the diverse interests among the wool growers and merchants and the fact that the Calais Staple did not receive universal support.22 Despite the success of the Middelburg staple, however, the powerful group of London merchant capitalists who, together with the burgesses of Calais, wished the staple to return to what they now evidently considered should be its normal home eventually achieved their aim. The wishes of this group carried the day when the staple returned to Calais once a truce had been concluded with France in 1389. Within a matter of months, however, in the parliament of November 1390, a petition to restore the home staples set up in the legislation of 1353 was accepted. Moreover, denizen merchants were not only prevented from buying wool from growers except at the staple but were also once more formally excluded from the export trade in wool. The shire knights representing wool growers and landlords had successfully put pressure on parliament to agree to a policy that, it was hoped, would raise the price of wool at the staples. Although there is no mention of wools of different qualities in this petition, it probably had the support of the same lords and wool growers who had tried to make their case in 1382. Within a year these provisions had been reversed. English merchants returned to the export market, but while Calais retained the title of staple, licences to send goods elsewhere were plentiful and a source of ready money for the Crown.23 The long-desired stability and permanent establishment of the staple at Calais did not come until after the deposition of Richard II. One of the earliest acts of Henry IV’s first parliament restored the liberties of the staple at Calais on the terms that remained in force for many years. All wool exported from England must pass through the staple at Calais, except for low-quality wool exported from Berwick, and the wools taken by Italian or Spanish merchants directly by sea to their home ports. Petitions were presented later in the reign complaining of the issue of licences to avoid the staple, but their wording is much more restrained compared with that of petitions in earlier years. That in 1401 speaks mainly of ‘the deflation of the price’ of staple commodities at Calais caused by licences.24 In 1411 the petition was primarily concerned to point out, not the damage suffered directly by the town or its trade, but the loss to the customs, and finished with the request that anyone who spied on those who were avoid21 F. Miller, ‘The Middleburgh Staple, 1383–88, Cambridge Historical Journal, 2 (1926), 63–5. 22 G. Dodd, ‘The Calais Staple and the Parliament of May 1382,’ EHR 117 (2002), 95–103. 23 Richard II, Parliament of January 1390 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. This petition is also discussed in Lloyd, The Wool Trade, 243. 24 Henry IV, Parliament of January 1401 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.



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ing the customs by exporting outside the staple should have the ‘third part’ of the profit of the prosecution ‘for their trouble and labour’.25 Over half a century elapsed between the siege of Calais by Edward III and the final establishment of the staple for the sale of wool, wool-fells and the lesser commodities of hides, tin and lead in the town. During this period the staple system was usually in operation but its location and the regulations under which it operated varied widely and often quite rapidly. Given the slowness in communications at the time and the many other difficulties that often faced merchants—the effects of war, the insecurity of transport by sea and by land, the labyrinthine exchange system—it is perhaps a matter of some surprise that the wool trade flourished to the extent it did. By the time it was firmly established in Calais and one can begin to talk of the Company of the Staple as a corporate body with its own officers and internal regulations, the export trade in wool was past its peak, and cloth exports were taking over its leading position. Nevertheless it does seem that the final settlement of the wool staple at Calais and the emergence of the Company of the Staple were crucial in allowing the town of Calais to develop in a different direction from its role as a military base. It was thus able to become a viable economic entity and a lively urban centre during its period under English rule. The pessimistic view of the French historians mentioned at the beginning of this chapter paints far too gloomy a picture of the town and its economy. By this time, the beginning of the fifteenth century, the population of the town had probably increased considerably from its low point in the 1350s. An important element saw themselves as English but also viewed the town as their permanent home. This group was large enough by 1368 to petition parliament asking that children born in Calais or Guisnes as well as Gascony should be able to inherit property in England on the same basis as those born in England itself. This petition states specifically that ‘the aforesaid lands . . . are for the most part inhabited by the people of our lord the king from England’, and hints at a significant expansion of the resident population.26 A petition from 1397 also testifies to the commercial development of the port. This is aimed at the repair and maintenance of the beacons marking the entrance to the port and the area called Paradise. This was outside the walls of the town and had no military significance. It was probably the base of the fishermen and their families who had made the export of herrings an important part of the town’s economy in the days before the siege. Even if the herring shoals had migrated north, as some suspect, there would still have been a big market for other fish in the town, the garrison and the Pale. The petition graphically described how ‘the terrible onslaught and rages of the sea’ had undermined the coastal defences and the walls at this point so that their collapse was threatened. The petitioners demanded that all vessels coming into Calais except fishing boats should ensure that they 25 Henry IV, Parliament of November 1411 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. 26 Edward III, Parliament of May 1368 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.

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were ballasted with ‘good stones’ to use in the repairs or else pay dues of two pence per ton.27 Apart from the activity generated by the wool trade itself—the bustle round the harbour when the wool ships docked, the moving of the wool sacks to the wool houses, the needs of the resident merchants and factors, and the influx of buyers from Flanders—the Company itself had a large body of officers and other employees in Calais. The governance of the Company was in the hands of ‘the maior and his lieutenant constables’ and the court of the Company, to whom officials swore oaths.28 A good idea of the number and nature of the officers employed can be gathered from the Ordinance Book compiled after the loss of Calais by the English in 1558. The Company was re-established in Bruges, but there is every sign that the organisation set out mirrored as far as possible that of the Company at its former base. Incidental mentions of the Company and its operations in the Cely correspondence and Johnson papers reinforce this impression. The Company owned and ran a weigh house where wools from England were checked. When a wool ship came into port, the ‘clerke of the collectrie’ and his deputies were ready on the quayside to record the cargo in precise detail. Each merchant’s shipment was listed in a book along with the details of the customs paid. The clerk would also keep a careful count of old and new wools, material of such commercial sensitivity that he was forbidden to reveal to any save ‘the head for the tyme beinge’—‘the nombre sort or quantite of olde woulles or olde felles’ that remained ‘in the bookes or toune unsolde’.29 The Company also employed, among others, wool brokers and fell brokers, a solicitor, an attorney ‘in lawe’, wool packers, viewers and searchers of wools and fells, and valuers. The ordinances set out how a merchant might be admitted to the Company, (by patrimony, ‘redemption by fre gifte commonly called gratis, and by apprentishode’).30 It also sets out the general rules governing the shipping of wool to Calais ; two fleets per year, one sailing around 20 March and one about 15 July, were prescribed. Careful inspection was to be made of wool ships to ensure they did not leak. The wool sacks had to be of the correct weight, and so on.31 In charge of much of the record-keeping, accounts and administration of all these regulations was an official called the husbande, whose skills were a mixture of those of an accountant or bookkeeper and something rather like a modern company secretary. It was clearly an onerous and important position, 27 Richard II, Parliament of September 1397 ; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. 28 The Ordinance Book of the Merchants of the Staple, 118, gives the text of the oath of the upper clerk. He swore to be obedient to the mayor, his lieutenant constables and the company of the merchants of the Staple, and to be ‘ready and attandaunt at alle tymes requisitie’ in his office to fulfil his duty of keeping the Company’s records. 29 Ibid., 121. 30 Ibid., 132–42. This section covers everything expected of apprentices, including the facts that they should be born in wedlock, with both parents English born, and not ‘the sonne of any bounde man’. This requirement indicates a much earlier origin than the reign of Elizabeth I for these rules. 31 Ibid., 142–64, the ‘Ordinaunce for generalle shippinges’.



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demanding a measure of tact (he had power to oversee the Mayor’s expenses) as well as administrative ability.32 Although many of the more senior officials of the Company spent considerable periods in London, having very frequent business with the king and his Council, the bulk of the business of the Company was conducted in Calais. It was this, of course, that led to the loss of their records after 1558. The Staple Hall (usually called the Place by the later fifteenth century) was in the Market Place immediately adjoining the town hall.33 It is not known when this property was acquired by the Company or when the Place was built. The Company also owned other property in the vicinity, used for storing wool before sale and the like. It was, therefore, from both the commercial and the social points of view a very important element in the prosperity of Calais. As far as the Crown was concerned, it was perhaps seen primarily as a source of ready money ; the link between the customs paid by wool merchants, royal credit and loans to the Crown has already been discussed. The link became even stronger in the context of the Crown’s need to finance the defence of Calais and pay the garrison. The Company, both as an informal group and as a regulated company, was also given a vital role to play in the bullionist policy followed by the English Crown, along with virtually all other European governments at the time. As has been said, this held that the prosperity of a nation and its people was directly linked to the amount of gold and silver coinage circulating in that country. The balance of trade, instead of being an abstract concept calculated and often manipulated by the financial arm of the government, was a concrete entity easily measured at least in theory. Was specie being exported from or imported into the realm ? The former would drain wealth from the nation ; the latter would lead to its increase.34 English wool merchants, by and large, during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, did not import goods in any quantity in return for their exports of wool ; their business was, therefore, a significant source of bullion in the form of the coins brought into the country in payment for their wool. The Crown was anxious to control and to tap for its own advantage this source of both gold and silver coins. This apparently simple situation was complicated by merchants’ use of various credit instruments in their trading activities (though this was largely ignored by the authorities) and by a notable shortage of both gold and silver in Europe in the later middle ages, a shortage that at times became severe. There was, therefore, acute competition for bullion among all European states. Nevertheless, the Calais Staple and the Staplers were used as instruments to maintain the flow of bullion into England. The cash element in the payment for wool sold in Calais was often made in coins struck by Burgundian and other foreign mints. Once the Staple was 32 Ibid., 123–4. 33 Its position is clearly indicated on the plans and drawings to be found in the Cotton collection in the BL, especially the plan in MSS Cotton Augustus I. ii. 70 and 71. A numbered and identified plan of the location of buildings in medieval Calais can be found in H. A. Dillon, ‘Calais and the Pale’, Archaeologia, 53/2 (1893), facing p. 303. 34 J. L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (London, 1980), 297.

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located in Calais, the Staple merchants were expected to deposit two marks in bullion for every sack of wool sold at the Mint, which was established in Calais in 1363, at the same time as the Staple. This bullion would then be reminted as English nobles, and these coins would usually be returned to England. If the balance of trade was in English favour, this procedure caused few problems for the English, but it could lead to their equally bullionist trading partners (usually Burgundy for much of the relevant period) placing obstacles in the way of Burgundian merchants taking specie to Calais. The Mint, however, seems to have operated successfully from about 1363 to 1403. In its most productive year, 1364, more gold coins were struck in the town than at the Mint at the Tower in London. Its closure in 1403 seems to have been caused by a great shortage of gold or silver in any form, something that seems to have affected most European mints at the time. Its reopening in 1422 can be linked to an easing of this problem, but it soon became more contentious politically. By the 1430s the alliance between the English and the Burgundians was breaking down for a mixture of political and economic reasons. One powerful cause of the breakdown in good relations was the belief that English regulation of the wool Staple at Calais, and the bullion ordinances in operation there, were undermining the prosperity of the Burgundian lands, including the cloth-making towns of Flanders. This hostility eventually led to the Burgundian siege of the town in 1436, but in this context the most important consequence was the ending of the minting of coins at Calais in 1439/40, although the Mint itself was not formally abolished.35 In effect, this left the Staple Company as the only instrument available to the English Crown for the control of trade across the Channel. The Company was bound yet more closely to the Crown, with royal financial imperatives a major concern for its leaders. On a more personal level, one aim of the establishment of the Mint, that only English coins should circulate in Calais, was clearly impossible to enforce once the Mint had ceased operation. By this date it was essential for a merchant to be aware of the differing values and declared specie content of a wide range of coins from many different mints. He also had of course to check them for their condition and weight since many could have lost value from wear and tear or by deliberate clipping. Only after this process was completed could he begin the process of calculating the value in a common currency of the coins in his possession. Many other European mints that had suffered like that at Calais from the general shortage of bullion, both from about 1402 to the 1420s and from about 1440 to the 1460s, reopened in the second half of the fifteenth century when new silver mines in central Europe came into production. Calais did not. This was probably not for commercial reasons but because it was no longer in the interests of the Crown for it to do so. The Staplers, like other merchants, may have increased their use of bills and other credit instruments, but they had also became adept at the handling of money in many different forms and from many 35 P. Spufford, ‘Calais and its Mint : Part One’, in Coinage in the Low Countries (880–1500), ed. N. J. Mayhew (Oxford, 1979), 171–83.



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different origins. The astute may have found in this situation a chance for profit by manipulating exchange rates. The range of coinage with which William Cely, for example, was faced in 1482, and of which he had to know the exchange rates, demonstrated how by this time Calais and the Company of the Staple was at the centre of a Europe-wide web of trade.36 It is true that no detailed calculation is possible of the success or otherwise of Calais as a centre for the wool trade. The figures do not exist. It is clear, however, that even if the export trade in raw wool was declining compared with that in finished or semi-finished cloth, there were many merchants and traders throughout the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth who found that they could make a reasonable living in this line of business. For this membership of the Company of the Staple was essential and unquestioned. It can also be argued that it was this Company that gave Calais its economic stability and established its character as a commercial as well as a military centre during the period of English rule. 36 The Cely Letters, letter 187, p. 172.

4 Tr i u mph a n d d i s a s t er : H e n ry V, t he c o l l a p s e o f t he A n g l o B u rg u n d i a n a l l i a n ce a n d t he re s u rge n ce o f F r a n ce



A

t the end of 1396, Calais and its immediate surroundings were the scene of a major diplomatic encounter, following the signing of a truce between Charles VI of France and Richard II of England. The elaborate ceremonies surrounding the marriage of Richard to Isabella, the seven-year-old daughter of the French king, were conducted at the same time. These events were the culmination of prolonged negotiations and preparations, but they finally took place after the expenditure of much time and a great deal of money. The meeting between the kings was held at a specially prepared encampment outside Ardres. Full details of the ceremonial used on this occasion survive, recorded by an eye-witness. Richard arrived clad in a long scarlet gown emblazoned with his personal badge of the white hart. Charles wore a shorter one decorated with the device of a bend sable engrailed argent, apparently in memory of Richard’s first wife Anne of Bohemia. With scrupulous care, to avoid giving either precedence over the other, the two kings advanced to greet each other at a central point ; at the moment of meeting, all the members of their large entourages knelt. The monarchs then threw back the hoods on their robes, shook hands and kissed. The most prominent nobility present offered wine and sweetmeats, and suitable gifts were exchanged. Considerable thought had clearly gone into the choice of these, with neither wishing to be outshone by the other. Gilt cups and ewers, buckles and nefs, the model ships used as table decoration, all in the most costly materials, were exchanged, together with jewellery, including a collar of pearls and other precious stones worth over 5,000 marks.1 Over the four days of the meeting, Richard appeared in more and more

1 Examples of the kind of objects involved are listed on Richard II’s Treasure Roll, now the subject of an illustrated website (www.history.ac.uk/richardII).



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costly garments, made of velvet and other silks, while Charles seems to have worn the same robe all the time. Finally on the last day of the encounter, the little princess was handed over to her new lord, and on 4 November the pair was married in St Nicholas’s Church in Calais itself.2 All this sounds like elaborate play-acting, culminating in the distasteful (in our eyes) ‘marriage’ between a man of nearly thirty and a small child, but it undoubtedly had a serious diplomatic purpose, not only in the negotiations that were concluded during the ceremonies, but also in the successful projection of Richard’s image as a magnificent and powerful ruler to the most important court in Europe, that of France. How did all this, however, affect Calais, its garrison and its townspeople ? First of all, it is clear that this event was only exceptional in its scale and in the presence of two crowned heads at the same time in the immediate vicinity of the town. One of the motives for the capture of the town had been its usefulness as a crossing point and base immediately across the Channel. Groups of important travellers came and went at most seasons of the year, sometimes at the head of an armed force, sometimes almost surreptitiously, depending on their mission and the relations between England and her neighbours at the time. It was part of the business of the town to accommodate travellers, provide for their entertainment and send them on their way, whether to war or to some more peaceful pursuit. The great occasions which touched the town, like the marriage of Richard and Isabella and all the attendant ceremonial at Ardres, would have been welcomed with pleasure, as much for the business they created as for the excitement of the townspeople. All were apparently welcome at the wedding feast in Calais itself, for ‘grete halys and tentis [were] sette up on the grene without the castell for to resceyve alle maner of peple’.3 A wider section of the populace than the court and the nobility were able to enjoy the festivities. Events like this kept the town in the mind of those who were involved in public affairs or who had a need to travel, quite apart from those who were soldiers or merchants. By the mid fifteenth century, at least to those living in the south and east of England, Calais may well have been better known than York or a midland town like Derby. The wedding of Richard and Isabella was only one among the public events in which the town played at least a supporting role. The murder of Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, in September 1397 ‘in the back room of a Calais hostel’ cast a more sinister light on the town.4 It was far enough from London and the court for the precise circumstances and timing of this deed to be obscure. The Brut contains a circumstantial account of how Gloucester was tied to his bed and then strangled with towels and smothered under his feather bed, details that were also recorded on the parliament roll, but 2 N. Saul, Richard II (New Haven and London, 1997), 228–30, 353–4. The eye-witness description is in P. Meyer, ‘L’Entrevue d’Ardres’, Annuaire bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France, 18 (1881), 209–24. The church of St Nicholas was demolished when the Castle at Calais was enlarged after the recapture of the town by the French. 3 F. W. Brie (ed.), The Brut, or The Chronicles of England (London, 1906–8), 350. 4 Saul, Richard II, 379.

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the lack of any real protest in England at these events demonstrates how Calais could at the same time be part of and remote from English public affairs. After Agincourt in October 1415, Henry V’s army, elated by victory but exhausted and hungry after the battle and their march across northern France, made their way home from Calais. The elite French prisoners, including Charles of Orleans, made their journey into captivity by the same route. Charles would not return until 1435, when he accompanied Cardinal Beaufort to Calais in the weeks immediately before the Congress of Arras. The long, sad funeral procession of Henry V himself finally reached Calais after his death at Vincennes on 31 August 1422, some time after 5 October. Some twenty-two carts all draped in black brought the body of the king, his possessions and his widow into the port, surrounded by mourners bearing candles. By the end of the month, a fleet of specially commissioned vessels brought the cortege to Dover, where a further series of elaborate ceremonies began.5 Later, in 1431, Henry VI crossed from Dover to Calais for his coronation as king of France. On this occasion the royal party left England at the end of April and did not leave the town for Rouen, the chief city of ‘English’ Normandy until the end of July. Since he brought with him not only his own household but five surgeons and his teacher and large quantities of stores of all kinds, this royal visit must have allowed many townspeople to conduct a satisfyingly large amount of business.6 These and similar occasions focused attention on the town and did perhaps create the enormous floating population that has led at least one recent writer to see the town and its society as being hollow and empty with little real purpose.7 This is, however, to ignore the place that Calais undoubtedly held in the consciousness of the English Crown. One important manifestation of this was the way in which the burden of financing the town garrison was accepted, even if at times it seemed as if financial disaster was imminent. The survival of many accounts and related documents allows this aspect of the governance of the town to be looked at in some detail in this period as well as in the fourteenth century. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the establishment of the garrison in the town and the surrounding castles and its annual cost had become more or less standardised. The total needed to finance the garrison amounted to about £18,000 in time of war and about £10,000 in time of peace. The separate establishments of Calais and its castle, and the outlying protective ring of strong points, Oye, Marck, Balinghem (from its capture in 1412), Guisnes, Hammes and Sangatte, varied in time of war (that is, when no truce was in operation between the English and the French) from over 500 men in the captain’s retinue at Calais itself to forty at Sangatte. In peacetime the captain’s retinue numbered 460 men, while that at Sangatte was halved to twenty men. The total for the 5 C. Allmand, Henry V (London, 1992), 174–6. 6 R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (Stroud, 1998), 190–91. 7 Derville and Villon, Histoire de Calais, 70.



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whole Pale came to about 1,200 men in wartime and 780 in time of peace.8 The usual source of the money for the soldiers’ pay was the subsidy payable on the export from England of wool and wool-fells, or the loans raised against the security of the proceeds of this tax. These loans were normally provided at least in part by wool merchants. The intimate link between the profitability of the export trade in wool and the support of Calais was no secret to contemporaries. The soldiers of the garrison certainly appreciated it and took direct action to ensure that traders, from the point of view of the soldiers, realised their responsibilities. In the winter of 1406/7, the garrison mutinied because its pay was months in arrears. The soldiers seized the wool stored in the Staplers’ wool houses and threatened to sell it at whatever price they could get, so that their wages might be paid. One chronicle then describes the scene when Henry IV, presumably after getting the news of the situation in the town, summoned merchants from the City of London to a meeting. He screamed at them, ‘You have gold ; and I want gold ; where is it ?’ Despite this inauspicious start to negotiations, a loan was raised and the men paid off.9 There is some evidence revealed by a careful and detailed study, not only of Exchequer rolls but also of the subsidiary indentures and other documents, that this incident does not reveal the whole story of the financing of Calais in the early fifteenth century. It has been suggested that a workable system had evolved in the later fourteenth century, which ensured that money was available to pay the garrison and that the cost was bearable by the Crown. Trouble erupted in 1406/7 because the system temporarily broke down. One issue was the lack of sufficient coins to pay the garrison. While the mint at Calais was operating, bullion deposited by the merchants as part of their liability to customs duties could, when recoined, be used to pay the soldiers. The mint was closed in 1403, a victim of the bullion crisis affecting most of Western Europe at this date. The bullion shortage and the consequent closure of the mint focused attention on the second issue. This related to the methods in place for keeping royal accounts and transferring credits from the receivers of taxes and other dues to those who had incurred expenses on behalf of the Crown. The prime source of money for Calais, as we have said, was the wool subsidy, an addition to the customs duties properly understood, which was voted in parliament from 1355 and intended for the defence of the realm. There were, however, other royal officials or royal debtors who were well aware that this stream of royal income was relatively reliable and held out reasonable prospects of the early repayment of a loan or the covering of legitimate expenses. If a reservation was placed on the proceeds of the wool subsidy for the needs of the defence of Calais, it was possible for the garrison to enjoy a measure of financial stability ; if no such reservation was made and Calais had to compete with all the other claimants clamouring for payment, 8 J. L. Kirby, ‘The Financing of Calais under Henry V,’ Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 23 (1950), 166. 9 The material in this and the following paragraph is derived from D. Grummitt, ‘The Financial Administration of Calais during the reign of Henry IV, 1399–1413’, EHR 113 (1998), 277–99.

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then there was a chance to say the least that it might face hardships of the kind that resulted in the mutiny of 1406/7. Another important factor that worked strongly in the favour of Calais was allowing Staple merchants to pay a proportion of their dues in Calais itself, rather than at the port in England where the customs officials had sealed the sacks of wool with the royal seal or coket. As had happened with the deposit of bullion at the mint, if this was allowed, the funds were in fact in the town itself and available to the Treasurer. The accounting systems of the Exchequer, which has been characterised as an over-cautious, ‘cumbersome and parchment-bound office’, were not designed to show clearly what steps were being taken to allow a government with strictly limited resources to achieve at least some of its goals.10 These steps emerge from a consideration of patents, indentures and particulars of account, as well as the formal receipt and issue rolls and foreign accounts. As an example, we can look in detail at the system used by Nicholas Usk, Treasurer of Calais in 1400. In February of this year, a reservation in favour of Calais was placed on the proceeds of the wool subsidy payable in Southampton, London, Lynn, Boston and Hull, the main wool-exporting ports. This amounted to 13s. 4d. per wool sack, which was in fact paid by the exporting merchants in Calais ; Usk or his deputy would then certify by indentures to the collectors in the ports concerned that they had received the money. The collectors would take the indentures to the Exchequer, where the sums of money listed would appear in the Receipt roll as assignments. Usk’s accounts reveal that he received £29,007 in this way and £18,177 in other assignments and cash from the Exchequer. In the two and a half years from August 1399 to March 1403, his expenses amounted to just over £62,000 ; old debts reached £10,000, so there was still a shortfall, but given the standards of the time it was manageable.11 The mutiny of 1406/7 followed a period when the reservation system was suspended and the subsidy money was almost completely diverted to other uses, and the Treasurer of Calais’s arrears soared to over £30,000. Calm for both soldiers and wool merchants was only restored when the Staplers as a body, led by Richard Whittington, provided loans to restore the finances of the garrison on the clear understanding that the system of reservations would be reintroduced. This promise was honoured, even though other royal creditors with claims to assignments on the wool subsidy went unpaid. Duke Humphrey, for example, was unable to collect £866 13s. 4d. of the moneys needed to buy lands from Sir Matthew Gournay. Nevertheless, the value and practicality of the system of reservations on the wool subsidy, combined with the ability of wool merchants to pay this reserved portion in Calais, were demonstrated in the later years of the reign of Henry IV. It can well be argued that the ‘high priority given to the efficient financing of Calais’ makes clear ‘that successive English governments con-

10 A. L. Brown, The Governance of Late Medieval England 1272–1461 (London, 1989), 53. 11 Grummitt, ‘The Financial Administration of Calais’, 283–5. Grummitt gives further detailed examples, including that of the indentures made with the Hull collectors in 1403.



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sidered the town and marches a worthy investment’.12 The strength of Henry IV’s initial reaction to the mutiny at Calais and the relative speed with which order was restored may also reflect the fact that a serious attempt to mount an attack on Calais was feared to be under preparation at Saint-Omer at much the same time. Large quantities of weapons, particularly artillery, and other munitions were collected, but the attack never materialised, probably because of the tensions between Burgundians and Orleanists at the French court.13 There is no sign that Henry V or his successor were less inclined to devote funds to the defence of the town. The Treasurer who took office in July 1413 was Roger Salvayn. His accounts reveal assignments on the customs of Hull in the same manner as before, and also, more unusually, an assignment on the receivergeneral of the duchy of Cornwall. A case before the barons of the Exchequer in early 1414 shows that he was using a similar system of indentures, agreed with individual merchants who had paid their customs dues in Calais itself, to that used in the previous reign. On this particular occasion, money paid by three Lincolnshire woolmen was intended to pay some of the expenses of the garrison of Marck, but the indenture was lost by William Swynbourne, the captain of that castle. Swynbourne then asked for the seizure of the Lincoln men’s wools so that he could sell them and keep the proceeds to the value of the missing assignment. The furious merchants brought a case in the Exchequer court for the restitution of their property. This kind of problem ensured that Salvayn was more frequently in England to attend council meetings and the like than he was in Calais. The day-to-day business of his office seems to have been handled by his clerk or occasionally by his wife.14 After the success of Henry V’s campaign in Normandy, which began in 1417, to some extent Calais was less prominent in military matters. The major campaigns were centred on Normandy to the west. Calais’s position was reasonably secure, since the surrounding lands were among the possessions of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, England’s ally. By 1420, when the Treaty of Troyes, which recognised Henry V as the heir of Charles VI, was signed, the hostile France that recognised the Dauphin as King Charles VII was many miles away on the far side of the Loire. An optimist might have envisaged Calais’s future role as not only the most convenient gateway to the English lands across the Channel but the potential diplomatic centre and contact point between the lands of the allies, the duke of Burgundy and the king of France and England. The prestige of the town was reflected not only in the amount of money willingly spent on its garrison but in the status of those who were appointed its captain. Edward III had treated this as an honourable office for men of knightly 12 Ibid., 298–9. 13 Bertrand Schnerb, ‘Un Projet d’expédition contre Calais’, in S. Curveiller and D. Clauzel (eds.), Les Champs relationnels en Europe du Nord et du Nord-Ouest des origines à la fin du premier Empire (Calais, 1994), 179–88. 14 Kirby, The Financing of Calais’, 172–5 ; Salvayn’s widow Matilda presented his accounts for audit after his death in 1419 and was apparently involved in his affairs during his lifetime.

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rank who would each hold it for a short period. Thus between 1370 and 1375 the position was held by Nicholas de Tamworth, Roger de Beauchamp, John de Beurle and Hugh de Calvyle.15 In the fifteenth century the office was reserved for the highest in the land ; successively between 1401 and 1435 John Beaufort, earl of Somerset (the half-brother of Henry IV), Henry, Prince of Wales (the future Henry V), Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (one of the richest men in England and a notable military leader) and John, duke of Bedford (the brother of Henry V, in charge of affairs in France after the latter’s death), were the captains of Calais.16 It is hard to think of a stronger demonstration of the hold the possession of Calais had on the minds of England’s rulers. In the early years of the reign of Henry VI the support of Calais and its garrison remained a priority for the government of the young king, but there was room for disagreement about the strategic importance of the town. If Normandy and areas further south were the main centres of English military intervention in France, then Calais was to some extent sidelined, merely a strong point on the edge of English territory, with its immediate neighbours to the north being Burgundian lands. There is some evidence that at least until the failure of the English siege of Orléans in 1429, this is how the duke of Bedford regarded the town. His brother Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, conversely, was much more concerned with the town itself and the trade of the Staplers. His marriage to Jacqueline of Hainault in 1423, and his attempt to gain control of her duchy in 1425, had directed his attention to the Low Countries and increased the importance of Calais to him as the vital English base in this region. There was no question, however, that the Crown continued to be willing to finance the town, although at times the arrears of pay due to the garrison built up alarmingly. In 1423 the Staplers once more were more or less held to ransom by the soldiers, who seized wool awaiting sale in the town until a loan of £4,000 was forthcoming from the infuriated merchants. The system of assignments continued, although some were made on sources of income like the ransom payments due from the Scots in respect of their king James I, which were much less secure than the customs payments. In 1427 it was feared that another mutiny by the garrison was threatened unless more funds were made available to the Treasurer Richard Buckland.17 This was averted, but by 1433 the situation of the town was clearly becoming more precarious. The financial position of Henry VI was made unusually clear in October of this year in a memorandum ‘showed to the lord our king in the present parliament’ by Ralph, Lord Cromwell, the Treasurer of England. This stated baldly that the ‘ordinary yearly charges’ of government exceeded the revenue from all sources by £35,000 per year. Calais was treated as a separate entry in the listing of royal revenue and expenditure, producing from its own resources £2,866 1s. 15 D. Greaves, ‘Calais under Edward III,’ in G. Unwin (ed.), Finance and Trade under Edward III (London, 1962), 349. 16 Kirby, ‘The Financing of Calais,’ 165. 17 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 180–82.



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5½d., but incurring expenses of £11,930 6s. 8d., not including the cost of the repairs needed to Newenham Bridge.18 The accumulated burden of ancient debt relating to the garrison was rolled up with that for the Marches of Scotland, Aquitaine, Fronsac and Ireland and came to the enormous total of £110,584 2s. 6d., more than two-thirds of the total royal debts of £164,814 11s. 1½d.19 The figures for the expenses of Calais are comparable with those for the peacetime support of the town already noted, but in the context of the overall parlous financial position of the Crown, the burden of the defence of the town is clear. The different views of the strategic importance of the town held by the duke of Bedford and the duke of Gloucester also began to resonate forcefully in discussions between the brothers and in the royal Council. The situation had become one of some urgency, since a serious mutiny involving at least half of the garrison of the town itself had occurred in January 1433. Sir William Oldfall, Bedford’s deputy in the town, rode straight for the duke’s base at Rouen, when forced out of the town by the mutineers. The duke himself reached Balinghem castle, a few miles outside Calais, at the beginning of April and at first seemed prepared to negotiate with the soldiers. He entered the town and even held a long meeting there with Gloucester and other royal councillors from England to discuss the whole situation. When, however, Gloucester and his party had returned to England, Bedford turned the full force of his rage at their insubordination on the mutineers. Four leaders were executed, and over 200 men of the garrison were banished from the town, thus losing any prospect of recovering their arrears of pay. Bedford then left for Rouen, leaving the town somewhat aghast at his severity. It has been pointed out that the Chronicle of London, probably reflecting opinion in the City (always closely connected with Calais), gleefully recorded that the duke of Bedford suffered bad health from this time until his death in 1435.20 The reality was that the division between Bedford and Gloucester on the strategy to be followed in France in the face of the resurgent forces of Charles VII posed a serious threat to the safety of Calais. While Bedford was in England from July 1433 to July 1434, money for the garrison almost dried up ; the payment of only £590 was authorised by the Exchequer in this period, in contrast to the more normal level of around £8,000–£11,000 per annum while Gloucester was in charge in England. It was Bedford’s aim that what money there was should be used in the defence of Normandy.21 The push for a truce between England and Charles VII, however, grew stronger with intervention by the papacy in the same year, resulting in the congress at Arras that met from August to September 1435. At this congress, the English delegates led by Cardinal Beaufort became gradually more and more suspicious of the intentions of Philip the Good of Burgundy. English attempts to conclude a truce, perhaps always somewhat half18 Newenham Brudge was the English name for Nieulay on the outskirts of Calais, a fort protecting the sluices that controlled the watercourses around the town. 19 Myers (ed.), English Historical Documents, iv : 516–22. 20 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 194–6. 21 Ibid., 198.

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hearted, got no further than some bad-tempered exchanges with the French and the hurling of petty insults. The English ambassadors left on 31 August. The Burgundians had, however, devoted much thought to the issue of whether the duke could in honour renounce his oath of loyalty to the English Crown (taken when the Treaty of Troyes was accepted by Burgundy)22 in order to be reconciled with Charles VII. There had undoubtedly been contact between the two sides before the formal meetings at Arras. There were also nightly informal meetings in secret between the Burgundians and the representatives of Charles VII, as well as the sessions with the mediating cardinals. On the question of the duke’s honour, a definitive statement was issued by the cardinals. His oath to the English had been invalid ; these promises were (as an eye-witness later remembered) ‘contre bonnes meurs, incivilz, ou prejudice de la chose publique et contre la couronne et magesté royal et de droit n’estoyent nulz’.23 The Chronicle of London commented bitterly of the same event, ‘undir tretys is treson’, pointing out that the duke was swearing allegiance to one ‘that had mordred his owne fadyr before tyme’. The treaty itself, however, was finally promulgated at an elaborate ceremony in the abbey church of St Vaast at Arras, including, somewhat ironically, the taking of oaths by both sides and a public admission by the French king of complicity in the murder of Philip’s father, Duke John. Finally all present raised their hands as a sign of acceptance of the peace, and the congregation left the church to be greeted by signs of general rejoicing ; once more it was claimed, ‘le noble sang de France estoit ralliez ensamble’.24 For Calais the consequences were much more immediate and alarming. Instead of being to some extent protected from attack by the French by Burgundian territory, Calais and the Pale were now a small English enclave surrounded by hostile lands. The only direction from which reinforcements or supplies could come was by sea from England. The English position was worsened even more by the death of the duke of Bedford, the most efficient of Henry V’s brothers both as a military commander and as a civil administrator, a matter of days before the reconciliation of France and Burgundy. Humphrey of Gloucester, now the only remaining uncle of the young king, was, as we have seen, always interested in the welfare of Calais and committed to its defence, but he was not the equal of his brother in military matters and could not command the royal Council in the same way. The general situation in France as far as the English were concerned was very bad in the weeks after the blow of the Burgundian defection to Charles VII. Both Dieppe and Harfleur, Henry V’s first conquest, fell into French hands, and one chronicler sadly wrote, ‘thus Englishmen began to lose a litell and a litell 22 This treaty established the dual monarchy of England and France, with Henry V and the heirs of his body recognised as the legitimate rulers of France on the death of Charles VI, thus disinheriting the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. 23 Testimony of Raoul le Bouvier as to events at Arras given 6 Nov. 1451, in J. G. Dickenson, The Congress of Arras, 1435 (Oxford, 1955), 231. 24 Ibid., 185, quoting Antoine de la Taverne, Journal de la paix d’Arras.



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in Normandie’.25 Philip the Good seems to have been persuaded by the end of the year that an attack should be mounted on Calais. Fortunately the English were well informed as to the situation at Philip’s court, particularly a meeting that took place at Ghent on 8 March 1436. The English court had received ‘certayn tydynges’ from ‘specyall frendes and espiall’, detailing the steps Philip was taking to put together a force to attack the town. He had drawn up a series of agreements with Ghent and the other important towns of Flanders that, in return for various privileges including the provision that no English cloth could in future be sold by Englishmen in any market within the lands of the duke of Burgundy, they would provide him with 30,000 men and ships said to be ready at Sluys, Barflete26 and Rotterdam, ‘to besiege this towne the whiche is right feble arrayed’.27 This news must have reached England within a few days of the meeting, since it was copied and rapidly distributed widely throughout the kingdom with a covering letter from the Council. The copy received by William Curteys, abbot of Bury St Edmunds, is dated 26 March. This letter rehearsed the contents of the spy’s report and went on to elaborate on the absolute need to defend Calais. The town was a great jewel to the kingdom, and its loss would bring ‘manyfold and importable hurtes and harmes’ to this land. If it fell, England would lose its reputation, being accused of ‘perpetuelle reproche, vilonye and shame thorgh the world yf so fell,’ and this could be put down to ‘lak of covenable defense in tyme’. Moreover the writer drew attention to ‘the grete ordinaunce that the seid calling hym duc of Burgoigne . . . as well of grete gunnes and that in grete nombre as of engynes and al ymaginacions of were’, was preparing to send against Calais. The abbot was then requested to send as many men as he could within eight days to form part of a relief force.28 Similar letters went to all towns and other corporations throughout England ; there is, for example, another copy in the Salisbury town archives. Certainly, by medieval standards, Gloucester and the Council had moved swiftly to do something about the evident threat to Calais. Gloucester himself was formally appointed as captain of the town, the castle and all the outlying fortifications, for a period of nine years. Sir Richard Woodville had in fact been appointed his deputy, at a Council meeting attended by the king himself, immediately before the opening of parliament in October 1435. The merchants of the Staple, whose support for the Crown was essential to the financing of the garrison, used the opportunity to petition the king concerning the ‘poor town of Calais, which stands in great jeopardy and uncertainty’, requesting the strict implementation of the partition ordinance requiring at least one-third of the purchase price of wool sold in Calais to be paid in bullion and then delivered to the town mint. They also further petitioned that strong action should be taken 25 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 201. 26 Now Biervliet. 27 J. A. Doig, ‘A New Source for the Siege of Calais in 1436’, EHR 110 (1995), 412. 28 Ibid., 410–11.

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against those who tried to avoid the staple and its regulations (and sometimes customs dues as well) by exporting wool from out-of-the way creeks and other devious means. These petitions were accepted by the Crown, saving the usual exemptions of Italians exporting wool via the straits of Morocco and poor quality wool from Berwick on Tweed.29 In February Robert Whittingham of the Drapers’ Company became Treasurer in place of his father-in-law Richard Buckland, who died around this time.30 In March the very experienced seneschal of Gascony, Sir John Radcliffe, became deputy instead of Woodville ; this was to prove a key appointment in the defence of the town, since Radcliffe was not only energetic but also had recent experience of siege warfare. The warning in the letter sent to English towns about the artillery being prepared by the Burgundians for the siege was only too accurate. Some of the enormous amounts of artillery requested from the duke’s territories, including that from as far away as Cravant on the Yonne, south of Troyes, nearly 600 km from Calais, were not expected to be at Saint-Omer, the rallying point for the duke’s forces, before June. The amount and nature of the artillery demanded by the duke, both cannons and mortars and the older-style siege engines not using gunpowder, posed an obvious threat to Calais itself and the outlying fortifications in the Pale. Local preparations in Artois echoed those made in 1406/7 for an abortive attack on Calais. A large group of workmen had been assembled at the abbey of St Bertin outside Saint-Omer, engaged in chipping out stone cannon-balls, mixing gunpowder and making other preparations. There were even facilities at the abbey to forge gun barrels. Payments included in the duke’s accounts also relate to the manufacture at Saint-Omer of ‘engins volants’ and ‘couillarts’, examples of the large catapults used at sieges since ancient times. Other similar engines were sent for from Sluys and Rotterdam.31 The first batch of gunpowder artillery arrived from Abbeville around 12 June. Included among the ‘deux grosses bombardes, canons, veuglaires et autres artilleries’ was one siege gun so large that it was a drawn on a cart pulled by twelve horses, with a further six added when the road became more difficult beyond Hesdin. More guns then came in from Bruges with quantities of other munitions including lances and crossbow bolts. The most important guns were those that had the furthest to come from Burgundy itself. The bombardes or siege guns were even larger than those from Abbeville and included three named guns, Bourgogne, Prusse and Bergère, which had been used against the French in 1433. These weapons required from eighteen to thirty-six horses to draw their carts. It is hard to imagine how so many animals were controlled and harnessed to pull such enormously heavy loads. River crossings, including those at Bar (the Seine) 29 The straits of Gibraltar were usually called ‘of Morocco’ at this date. The petitions can be found on the Roll for the parliament of October 1435, The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, items 19 and 22. 30 Susan Rose, ‘Buckland, Richard’, ODNB. 31 M. Sommé, ‘L’Armée bourguignonne au siège de Calais’, in P. Contamine, C. GiryDeloison and M. H. Keen (eds.), Guerre et société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne, xiv–xv siècle (Lille, 1990) 203, 205.



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and at Châlons (the Marne), posed further problems. The bridge at Bar was specially reinforced, while at Châlons the guns had to be transferred to boats for the crossing. In the event, even though this train of guns made relatively good progress on its long trek north, it arrived after the end of the siege, though they may have been employed at the assault on the castle at Guisnes.32 All those munitions that did arrive in time may have amounted to as many as 12 siege guns (bombardes), 60 veuglaires, 55 mortars (crapaudeaux) and 450 small arms (culverines). This mass of matériel had to be moved from SaintOmer down the river Aa in barges to Gravelines, and then across the marshes to Calais itself. The total cost of all these preparations, let alone the expenses of the army itself, cannot be precisely calculated because of the loss of some accounts, but it was clearly enormous.33 For those waiting in some trepidation in Calais itself for the coming onslaught, the presence of so much heavy artillery can only have been extremely worrying. The fortifications of Calais itself, the castle and the outlying fortifications at Oye, Marck, Balinghem, Guisnes and Sangatte had not been extensively ‘modernised’ to cope with the threat posed to town and castle walls by heavy guns.34 Edward III had starved the town into submission, and in fact its best defence was usually considered to be the marshy ground and twisting waterways and drainage channels with which it was surrounded. The unstable nature of the ground and the vulnerability of the port area to sudden storm surges from the Channel, which undermined the foundations of the walls, had made it hard and expensive to keep the walls, such as they were, in good repair. There were also no sources of building stone or good-quality timber within the territory ; all materials for repairs except chalk rubble from near Sangatte had to be brought from England. In the immediate period after the taking of the town by the English, a regular workforce of masons and carpenters had been part of the establishment of the garrison. By the 1430s, the pay of these workmen was in arrears like that of the soldiers, but, more seriously, there is evidence that the works were neglected, supervision was lax, and supplies were being diverted to private purposes. Buckland, the Treasurer from 1421 to 1436, seems to have used timber meant for repairs at Calais for work on his own country house in Northamptonshire.35 The sluices that controlled the waterways that were the main defence of the town were mostly at Newenham Bridge (known to the French as Nieulay) outside the fortifications on the road to Boulogne. The sluices and the tower built on the bridge to protect them were very vulnerable to flooding caused by breaches in the wall of sand dunes that protected this low lying area from the 32 Ibid., 203–4. 33 Ibid., 205–6, 198–200. 34 This usually involved the erection of extensive earthworks, sometimes in front of the walls, sometimes to reinforce them from behind, to absorb the force of cannon fire. The complete redesign of fortifications to protect them from cannon fire was largely a 16thcentury development. 35 Rose, ‘Buckland, Richard’, ODNB.

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fury of storms in the Channel. Looking at Nieulay nowadays (Figure 1), when there are no signs of any waterways and the site is occupied by the ruins of a large French fort dating from the seventeenth century, separated by some distance and a considerable amount of modern building from the sea, it is hard to understand how much the earlier buildings suffered from the encroachment of the sea. If a storm broke through the dunes, the whole complex of waterworks and fortifications was in danger of being washed away. The rush of water would then pour down the Hammes River into Calais harbour, where the quays and walls would be in similar danger. What money there was to spend on repairs at Calais in the early years of the fifteenth century was in fact largely spent on often fruitless efforts to stop up breaches in the sea defences near Newenham Bridge and to repair the waterworks. This was the case in 1421 and 1428 ; in 1430, when Henry VI was in the town before his French coronation, workmen came over from England to help with the works ; as the Council were informed, unless the breach in the dunes was stopped up, ‘the Town of Caleys is like in right short tyme to be utterly distruyed with oute recovery thorowe grete concourse and outrage of waters’.36 Radcliffe, the newly appointed deputy to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as captain of Calais, not only had plenty of warning of Burgundian intentions to attack the town and the Pale but was energetic and imaginative in his preparations for the coming hostilities. The Brut, which in this instance may be based on eye-witness testimony, recorded how Radcliffe, the garrison and the townspeople set about opening up a faire brode dike on the south side of the toune and made three strong bulwerkes of erthe and clay, one at the corner of the castell without the toun, another at Bulleyn gat and another at the postern be the Princes Inne. And att Mylke gate was a fair bulwark made of breke. . . . And they fortifiet the walles toures and dikes on ich side of the toune with-in and with-out. And dresset thie lopes and theire gunnes to shote both hye and lawe. The brick bulwark dated from the time of Richard Woodville, but the others must have been the result of a great deal of hurried and backbreaking labour. Some attempt was also made to improve the defences of the outlying forts. Radcliffe advised all those living out in the Pale to come into the town ‘and bring al thaire goodes and breke doun theire houses’. Many did come, but others ‘stale away’ to Picardy or Flanders. In Calais itself all were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the king or, if unwilling, to leave and ‘take thire goodes and go theire way where they wold’.37 In April, in fact on St George’s day, Radcliffe, as it were, tested the preparations. He had the alarum bell rung by the day watch without informing the garrison. The soldiers’ immediate concern was apparently to bring to safety all the 36 H. M. Colvin (gen. ed.), The History of the King’s Works (6 vols. in 7; London, 1963–82), i : 431, 436–7. 37 Brie (ed.), The Brut, 573–4.



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Figure 1.  Fort Nieulay was built on the site of the English fortifications at Newenham Bridge by Vauban in 1677. This view shows the path of the watercourse (now a grassy area) and the position of the sluices that allowed the Pale to be flooded as a means of defence.

‘bestys that were pasterung about the toun’, but even so they armed themselves, as did the townspeople. The author of the Brut remarks that Radcliffe ‘did it for a sport because it was St George’s day’, but it also served as a useful rehearsal of the actions to take when the Burgundian army in fact began at last to move on the town.38 In England itself, the burgesses of Sandwich became alarmed as well at the thought of the possibility of a Burgundian invasion of the Kent coast and set about repairing their own walls. They laid planks across the gates to make it easier to get from one house to another in the event of an attack.39 The Council had in the meantime exerted all its powers to put together a large army to reinforce the parlous state of English forces not only in Calais but in Normandy as well. Probably to Radcliffe’s great relief, one section of this army, some 2,000 men under the command of the count of Mortain, sailed into Calais harbour in early May.40 There was little more that could be done in the town except to wait for the appearance of Philip and his army, composed of forces from all his 38 Ibid., 574. 39 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 208. 40 Ibid., 201.

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dominions, with particularly large contingents from the town militias of Ghent and Bruges. The Brut includes narratives of two raids apparently made by the forces under Mortain and under Lord Camoys, who had came to Calais with the same reinforcements. Both these raids seem to have had the purpose of stealing cattle either in the countryside south of Gravelines or in the neighbourhood of Ardres, something that would add usefully to the victuals in the town if the siege was prolonged. Those who raided towards Gravelines managed to bring their booty back across the sands in the harbour at low tide despite a spirited sortie from Gravelines itself. The chronicler recorded that so many cows were taken that the price in Calais fell to 12d. per head for a good milch cow. The raid towards Ardres also seemed to have gone well, but on the way back the soldiers put up three hares, and while they were hunting them they were ambushed by a party of Picard soldiers. Some of Camoys’s men were killed, others fled towards the castle at Guisnes, but Camoys rallied the remainder and beat off their adversaries and got back safely to Calais with his booty.41 Finally Philip and his army began to move in the second week of June. The English account of the siege asserts that he had 150,000 men and 12,000 carts ; the figures mean little except as an illustration that it was an enormous force that began to move out of Gravelines.42 Their first objective was the castle of Oye, under the command of Nicholas Horton with a normal garrison of under sixty men. The chances of his successfully resisting Philip were remote, especially when the lay of the land is considered. Oye and the other forts were situated in the completely flat, marshy and largely treeless plain surrounding Calais ; there was little shelter except the walls of the castle itself, and these would have succumbed very quickly to Philip’s guns. The Brut has a story of the castle’s being taken by the Burgundians by trickery. The garrison were all in the hall listening to the Burgundian herald offering them terms when soldiers entered through an iron grill that had been left open in the buttery ; 56 men of the garrison were captured and hung ‘under the castell without eny pite’. The captain and two companions were taken prisoner ; one, William Bullion, later turned up in Calais and was executed on suspicion of spying for Burgundy. The castle itself was completely destroyed. The same fate then overtook Marck (2 July), which fell to an assault, Balinghem, which was handed over to the Burgundians with all its stores without a blow being struck, and Sangatte again yielded ‘shamefully and cowardly’. Only at Guisnes was there determined resistance despite the use of a ‘gret brazen gun’ and two iron bombardes by the attackers. The Picards positioned the bronze gun in a cellar in the town and demolished one tower of the castle, but the defenders ‘it fortifiet ageyn with tymber and dong’.43 This castle had a good defensive position with a high motte dominating

41 Brie (ed.), The Brut, 575–6. 42 The account of the siege that follows is based on ibid., 576–80. 43 Brie (ed.), The Brut, 579.



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the surrounding countryside and managed to hold out against the attacks of the men of Picardy. By 9 July Philip was outside the walls of Calais and the town was invested by land. The harbour, however, was still open to English vessels, and as long as this was the case Philip’s chances of taking the town were slim. He was well aware that Humphrey of Gloucester was energetically collecting a relief force in England, and that there was probably only a relatively short space of time before this sailed. The need for a fleet to blockade the town by sea had not been neglected. From as early as March 1436 the duke and his officers had been making strenuous efforts to put together a fleet at Sluys.44 By June small groups of ships had been arrested for the duke at Boulogne and Dunkirk. These included three large ships and also a Portuguese galley, which had brought a group of shipbuilders from Portugal to help with repairs and even the building of a new galley for Philip. The plan to block Calais harbour by sinking old ships loaded with bricks in the channel leading to the town was also put forward early in the preparations, and the vessels needed were collected at Dunkirk and Sluys ; these were small fishing vessels described as crayers or busses, which were loaded with nearly 90,000 bricks, hopefully creating an immoveable obstacle when sunk in the freeway.45 The maritime communities on the coasts of Flanders and Zealand were not entirely supportive of all this activity. They seem to have been very nervous of possible reprisals or raids from the English, and these ports were clearly full of rumours about possible attacks. One rumour picked up by fishermen from Ostend from some Hanse traders was that an English fleet with over 20,000 men was about to invade Flanders.46 By the end of June Philip had only twenty-four ships ready at Sluys and the other ports. Further orders were sent out to arrest more merchant shipping. These produced a motley collection of vessels from Venice, Genoa, Iberia and most of the ports of northern France. The intention was to transport men-atarms to Calais, but this fleet was not ready until 2 July, by which time Philip’s land army was on the march and had already taken Oye and Marck. The impression of confusion and near panic among those charged with organising this fleet gradually became more and more noticeable from the tone of the messages flying between Philip, his wife Isabel of Portugal, and various officials. The major impediment to the sailing of the fleet was that the men-at-arms refused to embark because they had not been paid. This was not resolved until around 20 July, more than ten days after the beginning of the siege of Calais ; the morale of the land army was not improved when from their encampments they could easily see English ships coming into the port unimpeded and loaded with supplies.47 Philip had attempted to calm his land forces by saying that the fleet could not put to sea because of contrary winds ; on 20 July the fleet was in fact battered by 44 J. Paviot, La Politique navale des ducs de Bourgogne, 1384–1482 (Lille, 1995), 73. 45 Ibid., 75. 46 Ibid., 76. 47 Ibid., 77–8.

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a storm on coming out of the estuary of the Zwyn. At last on 25 or 26 July the fleet reached Calais to face a bombardment from the English artillery on the Risban fort and the town walls. Six of the fishing boats loaded with bricks were successfully sunk in the channel at high tide. The Burgundians cannot have had accurate knowledge of the port, its tides and the channel, because at low tide the Calaisiens braved the fire from the Burgundian vessels off the port and broke up and burnt these ships, removing the obstruction. The Burgundian chronicler Monstrelet then recorded the ignoble end of this episode ; ‘car bonnement ne povoient demourer sur les marches d’entre Calais et d’Angleterre pour ce que la mer y est très périlleuse come dient les marronniers . . . et parce qu’ils ne désiraient pas rencontrer la flotte anglais qui étaient annoncée les vaisseaux bourguignonnes se retirent’.48 The Brut gleefully reported on the same incident, adding the details that the sinking of the block-ships was botched because of the fire coming from the walls of the town and that after the townspeople had cleared the ships, those working on this task were ‘refresshid wele’, and the stones and bricks were used for work on St Mary’s Church. On the dunes the Flemings saw what had happened and ‘were full sory in theire hertes and were full gretely therewith abasshit’. The siege in fact only lasted three days longer. A skirmishing party of the Bruges militia outside the Boulogne gate was caught unawares by some horsemen hidden in the bulwark at the same place, and thirty-six Bruges men were taken prisoner while the rest fled. On their return to their camp the Ghent militia ‘loughe hem to scorn’, leading to bad feelings and even fighting between the two militias. The Ghentaners themselves were attacked by a sortie from the town the next day with heavy casualties, losing a siege work they had built on the dunes. The night after this event, a small party of English reinforcements led by Lord Wells landed behind the Risban, making ‘so gret noice’ that the duke and the Ghentaners were sure that this was the feared arrival of Gloucester with a large force. All those encamped on the east of the town then crept away under cover of darkness, leaving most of their supplies behind, including the guns, some of which were found buried in the earth. The Bruges contingent, which was on the south side of the town, awoke as usual to the sound of the English trumpeters blowing on the Milkgate tower. They then discovered that most of the rest of the army and the duke himself were gone ; they at once ‘brake doune theire tentes and sette thiere loggynges on fyre and fled theire way in all that ever they myght’. The news of the collapse of the siege of Calais soon spread to Guisnes, where the defenders on the towers could see the smoke of the burning camp. The Picards then also withdrew, but in better order, taking the ordnance with them. The garrison of the castle, however, knowing that by this time Gloucester had arrived with large new forces, overtook the fleeing men and captured the ‘gret brazen gunne . . . and two other gret bombardes of yron’ and took them into Calais for display. On the English, side this sudden victory and the utter discomfiture of Philip 48 Paviot, La Politique navale, 80.



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the Good were greeted with an outburst of joy and relief. Poems and songs were written to laud the raising of the siege, and the gleeful emotions expressed are, perhaps, an indication of the real fear that the town would be lost. In one poem, each success of the English is mentioned. One of the verses begins ‘Remember ye of Brugges : how ye ferst wan youre shone’, going on to describe the skirmish at the Boulogne gate. Another heaps shame on the Picards ; ‘Remember ye Picardes, at seege eke as ye lay / Of Guynes that strong castel how ye fled away’. The final verse uses a play on the word ‘fleme’, meaning ‘put to flight’ or ‘drive away’, to pour scorn on all the Flemings : Thus prove I that Flemmynges is but a flemed man And Flaunders, of Flemmynges, the same name began. And therefore ye Flemmynges that Flemmynges ben named, To compare with Englisshmen ye aught to be ashamed.49 Another poured its bile over the head of the duke of Burgundy. He was called O thou Phelippe, fonder of new falshede Distourber of pees, Capiteine of cowardice Sower of discorde, repref of al knyghthode.50 All this abuse looked back to the English accusation that he had broken his oath and lost all honour when he had sworn fealty to Charles VII at Arras. Some at least of this literary outburst may have been officially inspired, or written by Lydgate the court poet. The fact that some was included in the text of the Brut, however, indicates that it touched a real nerve with the English and did reflect much contemporary opinion.51 Philip himself took refuge in making the best of things. He wrote to Charles, duke of Bourbon, shortly after the ignominious end of the siege, claiming that in fact no siege had ever taken place. Outside Calais he had established ‘an encampment only and not designed for a siege’. He claimed that the problem was that he had doubts about ‘the determination and loyalty of our Flemish people, and especially the men of Ghent’. He mentioned that no artillery was fired into the town and that no appeal was made to the townsfolk to surrender as was customary at the start of a siege.52 Contemporary Flemish chroniclers tended to blame the disaster for Burgundy on the failure of the fleet. The author of the Livre des trahisons de France said that the all the army’s efforts had been in vain because ‘ils n’estoient pas enclos du costé de la mer’.53 Jean de Waurin, who was present, thought that the whole enterprise was unwise and doomed to failure because Calais could not be adequately

49 Brie (ed.), The Brut, 582–4. 50 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 223–4. 51 J. A. Doig, ‘Propaganda, Public Opinion and the Siege of Calais in 1436,’ in R. E. Archer (ed.), Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 1995), 77–106. 52 R. Vaughan, Philip the Good : The Apogee of Burgundy (Woodbridge, 2002), 81–2. 53 Sommé, ‘L’Armée bourguignonne’, 213.

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blockaded by sea. Ships could not safely anchor off the harbour because of the currents in the channel.54 Modern commentators have tended to see a wider range of factors as responsible. The Burgundian administration was overstretched organising so large an endeavour, involving all the duke’s widespread dominions. There was a chronic shortage of money, and also long delays in ensuring that the money needed reached the right people. Delays also hindered the collection of artillery and the mustering of the fleet.55 On the other hand, it has been suggested that the socalled English victory was in fact provided for them by the Burgundians, whose forces were anything but united and who had mismanaged the blockade of Calais.56 Some blame is also attached to the admiral of Flanders, who left all responsibility for the command of the fleet in the hands of deputies. Preparations for the siege also took so long that there was no element of surprise whatsoever, and little or no co-operation between the land army and the navy. Finally, according to some sources, the weather in July 1436 was atrocious.57 On the English side, once the euphoria had subsided, a thoughtful observer might have pondered the fact that if the ruler of the surrounding lands was hostile then Calais might well be extremely difficult to defend. It was after all true that Philip’s formidable heavy artillery, for whatever reason, had not been deployed against Calais ; this could easily have brought the walls down, as his guns had at Guisnes. The observer might also have realised that, with so much national prestige and emotional capital invested in holding Calais, evidenced by the outpouring of excitement when the siege was raised, relinquishing the town would hardly be an option for any English monarch in the foreseeable future. 54 Vaughan, Philip the Good, 81. 55 Paviot, La Politique navale, 82–3. 56 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 205. 57 Sommé, ‘L’Armée bourguignonne,’ 212–13.

5 C a l a i s a s a ba s e f o r p o l i t i c a l i n t r i g u e : Yo rk i s t s , L a n c a s t r i a n s a n d t he e a r l o f Wa rwi ck



I

t might be thought that the humiliation of Burgundian arms following the ignominious end of the siege in 1436 would have led to a notable increase in the security of Calais. The alarm at the prospect of the Burgundian attack and the palpable relief at its complete failure might have also provided an opportunity for the English to take stock of this possession of the Crown in which so much money and effort was invested. That neither of these things happened is an indication of the competing interests centred on the town. On the one hand, the fact that the Flemish towns were very reluctant to get involved in their duke’s adventures testified to their respect for English arms and their reluctance to conduct open warfare against a major trading partner. On the other hand, the duke himself continued to make warlike plans, including one that involved flooding the Pale by attacking the sluices at Newenham Bridge, though to what purpose was not clear. On the English side, the drift, lack of leadership and lethargy becoming increasingly visible in English government, largely because of the character of the young king Henry VI, was affecting policy in the overseas territories as well as matters in England itself. As the situation for English arms in both Normandy and south-west France became more and more unsettled and losses mounted, some argued that all the available men and money should be dispatched to these regions. Others, especially the duke of Gloucester, as we have seen, wanted to concentrate forces in the Calais area, where equal dangers seemed to threaten. The precariousness of the town’s physical condition, a quite separate problem for the government, could not, however, be ignored or pushed aside. The early fifteenth century seems to have been a period of particularly stormy weather in the Channel and North Sea. The great flood on St Elizabeth’s day in November 1421 was credited with the drowning of a hundred thousand people in the area around Dordrecht in the Netherlands and, in effect, redrew the map of that

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region. Another unusually strong storm in the Channel in June 1439 broke through the dunes near Newenham Bridge, and at high tide over 2,000 acres were flooded with sea water.1 On the ebb tide the flood water poured into the Hammes River and began to wash away the bridge itself, and then the northwest corner of the Calais town walls and the castle, since the river flowed into the moat at that point. Despite strenuous efforts all summer to repair the dikes and close the breach, it only grew wider until, after an equinoctial storm in September, the jetties in the harbour were threatening to collapse, and even the Risban tower, the major defence of both town and harbour, was being undermined. Three old ships were finally sunk in the breach, but even this did not stop the onrush of the sea, and ‘this stopping was borne away like as was all the others aforesaid’.2 In this situation urgent help came from England, supervised by the Clerk of the king’s works. The need was for large baulks of good timber, all of which had to be shipped from England. In March 1440, 1,400 oaks were contributed by religious houses in Essex and 1,760 more from royal forests in Kent. However, by 1442 the breach had still not been properly stopped, and, as a deposition to a commission of inquiry remarked, attempts to devise new sluices had ‘turned the king to great cost and to no avail and to great mischief and hurt to the said bridge and to all the works thereabout’.3 Complaints of serious damage to the harbour and the associated waterways were in fact a common feature of all the surviving accounts of the surveyor of Calais. Money to pay the workmen and buy materials was never easily forthcoming ; in times of real emergency, all the available able-bodied people in the town, whatever their status, might find themselves recruited to pour clay and stones into the breaches in the sea defences. This happened in the aftermath of the storms of 1439 and also between 1453 and 1456, when the Risban was again in imminent danger of being washed away. The accounts of work on the jetties in the harbour reveal that they were constructed with an outer framework of beams held together by metal clamps and bolts, with a ‘stuffing’ of chalk rubble and material brought into Calais as ballast in ships. The framework was prefabricated in southeast England and then put into place at low tide, something that at times made it necessary for the carpenters to work all night. In fact, in the next twenty years over £25,000 was spent on works to the waterways and sea walls, including those at the harbour and Newenham Bridge, with only limited effectiveness in controlling the destructive power of storm tides and flooding.4 The constant need for money, not only for the maintenance of the fortifications but also for the garrison’s pay, continued to be a major problem for the Crown. Prolonged periods without pay often resulted, in this period as it had in 1 The coastline of the Calais region today is considerably changed from that in the fifteenth century ; nowadays there is a large area of reclaimed land between the site of Newenham Bridge (now Fort Nieulay) and the sea. 2 Quoted in Colvin, History of the King’s Works, i : 439. 3 TNA E101/193/5, quoted ibid., 440. 4 Ibid., 436–44.



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the past, in the disaffected soldiery’s seizing wool from the Staplers’ warehouses to sell on their own account. This occurred on at least four occasions in the first half of the fifteenth century, in 1423, 1433, 1442 and 1454. The alternative to this kind of forced sale was agreed loans, also from Staple merchants, repayable out of the customs, usually by allowing the creditor merchants exemption from paying dues until the loan was cleared. The garrison and the Staplers were bound together, since the merchants needed the security provided by the soldiers to pursue their trade in peace, and the soldiers were well aware that, in the last resort, money for their pay would come, by some means or other, from the Staplers. In the years from about 1439 to about 1454, the security of Calais was at the mercy of events elsewhere. At the outset of this period, with Burgundy still hostile to England, its position looked precarious. Both states attempted to manipulate the regulation of trade between them to gain financial or commercial advantage, a matter which will be considered in the next chapter. In the political sphere, the location of diplomatic negotiations for a possible truce between England and France at Oye in 1439–40 helped ensure that no direct attack would be attempted by either Burgundy or France at this time. Once the negotiations were over, much greater attention was focused on the major areas of France still in English occupation, Normandy and Gascony, than on the small enclave of Calais. Great magnates continued to be appointed as captains of the town and the Pale, (Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was succeeded by Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, in 1441) but these appointments have been called ‘a cosmetic operation designed to inspire confidence in the Staplers and the garrisons’.5 Actual authority in Calais was exercised by lieutenants, like the effective Sir Thomas Kyriell or William Pirton, the deputy of the earl of Suffolk at Guisnes. In many ways their task must have been difficult ; the money needed to pay the garrison or buy necessary supplies was hard to extract from the Treasury in London, faced with the competing demands of forces in other parts of France. Pirton was supposed to receive his own pay from the revenues of Guisnes itself but, in fact, by 1444 had debts of at least £2,378 covered by a loan from Suffolk. The garrisons, as was well understood, would mutiny if not paid. Even if their pay was not too gravely in arrears, there may well have been a problem in keeping the soldiery occupied when no military action was in prospect beyond minor skirmishing on the borders of the Pale. The continual training and exercises of modern armies were not employed in any organised way at this date. The ill-defined borders of English territory, especially in the ‘high country’ to the east of Guisnes, were the scene of minor raiding and the theft of cattle by opportunist French forces, or retaliations by the English. This activity could easily get out of hand, with serious consequences for the continuance of the fragile truce concluded in 1441. It could not be entirely ignored by the commanders of the garrisons. There is, however, little information about these activities, 5 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 471.

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and unfortunately virtually no information about the ‘domestic’ aspects of the lives of those charged with the defence of Calais. We do not know if they were normally accommodated in the castle at Calais or the other fortifications or whether they had families in the town itself or the village at Guisnes. The garrison and indeed Calais itself began to play a rather different role in the affairs of England from the mid 1450s. The importance of Calais up to this point had been twofold. On the one hand, the export trade in raw wool conducted by the company of the Staple was vital as a source of income to the Crown, derived from the duties payable as the goods left the country. On the other hand, the capture of Calais had been a triumph ; its continued possession was a symbol of English power in continental Europe. On a more pragmatic level, it also provided an invaluable entry point for Englishmen to France, the Netherlands and the Empire, whether bent on military, diplomatic, commercial or even personal affairs. As English armies faced defeat and eviction from both Gascony and Normandy, Calais looked both vulnerable and isolated. This was the case after 1450, when Normandy was lost, and perhaps even more so after the French victory at Castillon in 1453, which for the first time brought Gascony under the direct rule of the French Crown. Nevertheless, at this date, the town became an important element, not in continued war with France, but in the convoluted power struggles between factions at the English court. Control of the town was an element in the gradual slide into civil war, the so-called Wars of the Roses. Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, as we have seen, was appointed captain of Calais in 1441. Although his later career was as a Lancastrian and supporter of Margaret of Anjou, eventually being killed at the battle of Northampton in 1460, he did not act as other than a figurehead at Calais and gave up the position at the end of 1449, when the debts he had incurred on behalf of the Crown in this position had reached £19,395, an enormous sum even granted his income in this period of some £4,000 per annum. He was promised repayment from the proceeds of the Sandwich customs and an extra 6s. 8d. from the subsidy on wool exported from other ports. His successor Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, was soon owed an even larger sum by the Crown, £21,649 by June 1453, but it was not these debts but the bitter enmity that developed between Somerset and Richard, duke of York, that led to Calais’s becoming a factor in the intrigues at the English court.6 Somerset was very close to his cousin Henry VI, but, according to his most recent biographer, the cause of the breach between York and Somerset was not the latter’s appointment as lieutenant and governor-general of France and the duchies of Normandy and Guyenne in December 1447, offices to which York had a plausible claim, but the supine way in which Somerset allowed the Eng6 Both York and Somerset were closely related to Henry VI. Somerset was descended from John of Gaunt (Edward III’s third son) by his third marriage, which legitimated the Beaufort family. Richard, duke of York, was a descendant of Edward III through both Lionel of Clarence (his second son) and Edmund of York (his fourth son).



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lish to be unceremoniously kicked out of their northern French territories in 1449–50.7 The real cause of this disaster may have been the ‘asinity’ of Henry VI, but for the duke of York all the blame lay at the door of Somerset.8 To him, the way in which Somerset retreated from Rouen in October 1449 with his family, after paying a large ransom, and then nine months later also withdrew in much the same way from Caen, was dishonourable and inexcusable. From the summer of 1450 relations between the two became worse and worse. Somerset’s appointment to the captaincy of Calais in 1451, a clear mark of royal support, can only have increased York’s fury at Somerset’s apparent continuation in the king’s favour. The writer of the Brut, usually seen as Yorkist in sympathy, somewhat caustically remarked that Somerset ‘rewled the king and his reame as he would’.9 After his appointment, Somerset set about building up the garrison of Calais to something near its normal wartime establishment, but this could easily be justified by the situation in France, where French armies were in the ascendant. In early 1452 there was real fear that Charles VII of France might direct his next attack at the Pale.10 York had alluded to this in a letter written in February, which set out his political agenda, his hostility to Somerset and his desire to see him removed from any position of influence in favour of himself. These points were stated even more strongly in the petition he presented to Henry VI at Blackheath in March of the same year. The situation in London, which seemed to threaten armed conflict, was successfully defused on this occasion. York was compelled to enter into an agreement to desist from any acts that could be interpreted as rebellion against the king.11 Nevertheless, the underlying tensions within the nobility and court, increasingly polarised between the partisans of Somerset and the king on the one hand and those of York on the other, remained. At Calais, Somerset brought in men loyal to the Beaufort family as his own lieutenant (Lord Stourton), as captain of Calais castle (Lord Wells) and as lieutenant of Guisnes (Sir Thomas Findern), but it would have been very surprising, given the way in which noble affinities dominated the political scene at this time, if he had done anything else. He also made great efforts to ensure that the garrison was paid ; again, this does not necessarily imply that he was attempting to secure the loyalty of the soldiers to himself personally rather than to the king. It was well understood by this time that if the garrison’s wages were in arrears for too long a period, a mutiny was likely, with the Staplers’ wool at risk of seizure by the soldiers. The dire financial state of the Crown ensured that the customs revenue was, as before, the only source of funds likely to produce the amounts 7 C. Richmond, ‘Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset (c.1406–1455)’, ODNB. 8 Ibid. 9 Brie (ed.), Brut, 521. 10 A letter sent to Lord Clifford by the king in March 1452 not only spoke of fears about a new siege of Calais but also the possibility of an invasion of England. Sir N. H. Nicolas (ed.), Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, vi (London, 1837), 119. 11 Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 693–7.

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needed. There would have been a natural reluctance to endanger this one source of ready money for the Crown. Certainly Somerset had much support on the Council. A council warrant stated that any delay in paying the garrison would ‘cause the nombre of the newe crewe to avoid and depart oute of the said towne of Calais’.12 The parliament of 1453, which contained few if any partisans of York, also supported the garrison by granting higher customs duties, including the usual 20s. per wool sack of the Calais supplement. It is arguable whether this awareness of the situation in Calais in both Council and parliament demonstrates Somerset’ s personal influence or more general alarm at the situation in France as Gascony was finally lost to the English Crown. Whatever the motivation, it was clearly necessary to provide for the defence of Calais. By August 1453, York’s conviction that royal government, if not as yet the Crown, was in the wrong hands, was open and generally acknowledged. Almost immediately after news of the battle of Castillon reached him, Henry VI went into a catatonic state. Richard, as heir apparent (until the birth of Prince Edward in October) and the senior male member of the royal family, took control of the Council. In November, Somerset was charged with treason over the conduct of the war in France and put in the Tower. In April 1454, after a delegation of peers had found no sign of understanding or response in the king, York was formally appointed protector of the realm. His position in the country at large had already been greatly strengthened by the Nevilles, the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, joining his party at court and in the council. At this point, in addition to his other offices, York appointed himself captain of Calais. He held this position until Somerset was released from the Tower when Henry apparently recovered his faculties around Christmas 1454. Somerset quickly became once more the king’s intimate friend and his favoured councillor. His former offices, including the captaincy of Calais, were all restored to him. Neither York nor the Nevilles responded well to their renewed exclusion from power by one a chronicler favourable to their party called ‘this evil duke’.13 By late May 1455, the duke of York and his party had gathered together an armed force. They confronted the king and his supporters at St Albans. Apparently while coming to the rescue of Lord Clifford, Somerset was killed in a bloody and confused battle in the narrow streets of the town around the market place. The king, who had emerged bravely enough with his banners and noble supporters from the Abbey at the start of the fighting and had been slightly wounded by an arrow, was now completely in the power of York. At a ceremony shortly after the fighting had ceased, Henry VI once more appointed York protector of the realm, and Warwick captain of Calais.14 York’s renewed hold on power did not last long ; over the winter of 1455/6 12 G. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais : An Aspect of the Rivalry between Lancaster and York’, EHR 75 (1960), 33–4. 13 Benet’s Chronicle, in K. Dockray, Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou and the Wars of the Roses : A Source Book ( Stroud, 2000), 66. 14 The battle is described in many contemporary chronicles including W. Marx (ed.), An English Chronicle, 1377–1461 (Woodbridge, 2003), 73.



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the king’s mental health again improved, and his supporters regained power in the Council despite their defeat at St Albans. At this juncture, what has been called the ‘one enduring achievement of decisive importance for the Yorkist cause was Warwick’s appointment to the captaincy of Calais’.15 At no previous period since the siege in 1347 had the town figured so prominently in English government affairs, nor had positions in its governance been previously seen as especially desirable or the subject of conflict between noble factions. What had changed to make the town so important in the jockeying for power at the court of Henry VI ? One factor may have been that, as the struggle between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists became more and more bitter, it was recognised and valued by those contesting for power that the town contained the largest group of armed and experienced soldiers anywhere in the English realm. The garrison had never previously fought at any great distance from the boundaries of the Pale, and certainly not in England itself, but if its loyalty to its captain could be assured it might be a potent weapon in his hands. We have already said something about the evidence of the energy Somerset devoted to ensuring the support of the garrison once he had become captain in 1451. It is also the case that when York became protector in April 1454, having taken steps to claim the captaincy for himself, he took rather similar steps and cancelled the patents of those officers appointed by Somerset. Since York’s charges against Somerset included his too easy surrender of Normandy to the French in 1449–50, this might merely show a lack of trust in the military capabilities of Somerset’s men. York also negotiated a loan from the Staplers, but before any money could in fact be paid to the garrison the soldiery took matters into their own hands and seized not only the wool stored in the port but also all the victuals on hand. At this point in the summer of 1454 various competing interests centred on the town and the Pale. The garrison clearly wanted its pay but may have had some residual loyalty to the commanders appointed by Somerset. These commanders had no desire to acquiesce in their own removal in favour of York’s men and were in all probability being drawn into the divisions visible in the court and the Council. The Staplers undoubtedly wanted to recover the value of the goods seized and to restore stability to the town so that trade might continue. York himself wanted to ensure that he might enter the town as captain and enforce his authority over it. This was unlikely to occur unless the garrison received their arrears of pay. In these circumstances, he needed the support of the Staplers, who were prepared to provide loans in the hope of either recovering or being compensated for their lost wool. The garrison held out for the full immediate payment of their arrears before allowing York himself or his representatives into the town. Negotiations dragged on into the autumn, but before any settlement could be reached the king, as we have seen, emerged at least partially from his catatonic state. By February 1455, Somerset was once more out of prison and in favour at court, and York’s power had evaporated. The captaincy 15 Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, 30.

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of Calais was no longer in his hands. By the end of May, fortune’s wheel had turned again. Somerset had been killed at the first battle of St Albans, and Warwick had been granted the captaincy of Calais immediately after the apparent triumph of the Yorkists.16 This series of events might seem to imply that control of the town was seen as particularly important by York, who had, perhaps, understood that this might be a decisive factor in the success of his opposition to his enemies at court. The court and the Council were, however, the main arenas in which the two factions among the nobility played out their struggle, even if York’s failure to impose his will on Calais in the summer of 1454 tended to undermine his claim to exercise full royal authority. It is at least arguable that Warwick himself, rather than York, had grasped the potential strategic importance of Calais and personally demanded the captaincy from York (the king being entirely in York’s power) in the immediate euphoria of the victory at St Albans. Subsequent events give some credence to this view. The immediate problem was, of course, that the garrison had still not been paid ; the arrears were in fact mounting rapidly, and the question of the Staplers’ seized wool had not been resolved. The Staplers would only loan further funds if they had adequate guarantees of repayment, while the garrison were in no mood to allow Warwick to enter the town and take up his appointment as captain until they were paid most of what was owed. During further negotiations to secure loans from the Staplers, the garrison sold the stolen wool for 26,050 marks. The soldiers’ need for money was desperate by this time, which may explain this action ; their demands from the Crown also increased to include a pardon for this illegal sale as well as their back pay. The Staplers now also required compensation for this loss as well as secure arrangements for the repayment of loans. By December 1455, agreement had been reached with the Staplers ; the garrison, which was in a strong position since it could control access to the town and the harbour, was now earnestly urged by the Yorkist council to accept the terms offered to them. The letter from the Privy Council has been described as hovering ‘between reproach and cajolery’. The soldiery were offered 20,000 marks in cash within twenty days of the admission of Warwick or his deputy, with payments in the future secured on the customs. All past offences would be pardoned. Finally, the garrison was begged not to ‘entende to any governaunce the whiche should hurte us’ and to refrain from anything ‘the whiche might be to the rejoyssing of oure enemies’.17 Agreement was finally reached in February 1456. The king’s recovery, which was now evident, put pressure on the Staplers’ Company to accept it, since they may have feared that an end to Yorkist influence would give the queen and the Lancastrians the opportunity to disallow the Staplers’ right to the repayment of their loans from the customs. The formal agreement itself was presented to Parliament. It recorded that that the Staple Company was prepared to lend 16 This series of events is based on the accounts in Griffiths, Henry VI, 754, 756 ; Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, 30–53. 17 Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, 40–44.



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a total of £29,964 2s. 4d. to the Crown plus the remainder of the arrears due to the garrison. A sum of £66 13s. 4d. was included in the loan for the wages of the commissioners who would go to Calais to work out the final amount. This very large sum of money (Lord Cromwell’s estimate of royal revenue in 1433 had listed the king’s net annual income as only £26,966 2s. 10½d.)18 would be repaid out of the obligations already received and a long-term charge on the customs of Sandwich19 and Southampton. Warwick may well have uttered a sigh of relief when he eventually entered Calais as its captain on 20 April 1456, nearly a year after his initial appointment. The complex negotiations and the compliance of the Staplers Company had in fact ensured that the arrears of the garrison’s pay had been cleared.20 Once pardons had been secured for the misdeeds of the garrison, Warwick was able to appoint his own men to official positions, as Somerset had done, while keeping a firm grip on the captaincy itself. Had this been his aim from the first ? Had Warwick’s ambition lain behind the vigour with which York apparently pursued the Calais question after the first battle of St Albans ? No clear evidence bears directly on this point, but there are some suggestive hints. First of all, although York resigned as protector (probably under compulsion from the queen’s supporters) as the Calais agreement was being finalised, no attempt was made to deprive Warwick of the captaincy at this point. Was only Warwick himself fully aware of the potential power base he had acquired ? The fact that he took up residence in the town as soon as possible and did not conduct its affairs through a lieutenant, unlike all previous captains, might seem to confirm this. He also pursued a very different military strategy from earlier captains. Previously attention had been focused on the land borders of the Pale and on the ability of the garrison to resist a siege like that in 1436 or a possible direct assault by France. Warwick looked seaward and to the use that could be made of Calais as a base for a squadron of ships operating in the Channel to ‘keep the seas’. Shipmen from Calais had had the reputation of being involved in piracy before the days of Edward III, but there is little evidence of ships other than merchantmen and fishing boats being based there in the period of English rule, until the mid fifteenth century. In 1454 a group of Calais ships had been accused of plundering a Dordrecht ship, the Seynt Barbara, of her cargo of wheat and wine to the value of £120.21 Warwick may have initially had no wider aims than to indulge in a little judicious piracy in the Channel to enhance his resources with booty. He has, however, been credited with rapidly and deliberately deciding to use Calais as a base for the ‘keeping of the seas’, in effect taking over the royal duty of defending the realm and protecting its merchants, which Henry VI was demonstrably unable 18 Myers, English Historical Documents, iv : 516–19. 19 Payment from the Sandwich customs would only begin when the money due to the duke of Buckingham from before 1450 had been paid. 20 The commissioners concluded that, including compensation for the value of the wool sold by the mutinous soldiers, the final statement of account came to a total of £65,444 14s. 9¾d. 21 CPR Henry VI, 1452–61 : 173. The case rumbled on till at least 1458 ; ibid., 437–8.

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to do. The destructive French raid on Sandwich in late August 1457 had greatly angered and alarmed traders and townspeople in ports all along the south coast. The king himself had no ships of his own. Warwick, therefore, indented with the Crown to keep the seas for three years from November 1457, with payment promised from the customs receipts. The chances of his receiving any money for this purpose were probably slim, since the customs revenue was already heavily committed for other purposes, but it did give him official sanction for collecting armed ships in Calais harbour, many in his own possession. Other terms of his indentures allowed him to keep any prizes and in effect to have full authority over matters like safe-conducts or the disposal of prisoners. Without in any way acting illegally, he was in the position of being able to establish an independent power base in Calais, whether for himself or for the benefit of the Yorkist cause. It has been rightly said that ‘the Earl of Warwick at Calais and on the high seas was a free agent’.22 His fleet‘s first major encounter, in May 1458, was with a Spanish fleet of twenty-eight vessels, including sixteen ‘gret schippis of forecastell’, off Calais itself. Warwick sent to sea a squadron consisting of five similar ships, three ‘carvells’ and four small pinnaces. The encounter lasted from three in the morning till ten o’clock and resulted in Warwick’s men taking six Spanish ships but incurring heavy casualties of their own. Altogether, on both sides, according to a participant, over 200 men were killed and 700 injured. It was the greatest battle ‘upon the se this xl wyntyr’.23 It could not be seen as a clear victory for Warwick’s forces, and thus, according to our informant, the earl was sending for more ships with the intention of seeking further engagements. The second battle that summer involved the seizure of around seventeen vessels from the Hanseatic fleet, returning from the bay of Biscay with salt. Unlike the battle against the Spaniards, there was no legitimate way this could be interpreted as an action against the king’s enemies. In June of the following year his fleet was involved in another dubiously legal affair. A group of Spanish ships who were sailing in company with two Genoese carracks was attacked ; most of the vessels were seized and the cargoes taken into Calais for disposal.24 Warwick plausibly needed the proceeds of the sale of prize goods to pay the garrison, whose wages were once more in arrears. It is also clear that his activities at sea were welcome to many in England, particularly on the south coast, who feared more French raids like that on Sandwich in 1457, and who had lost goods to sea robbers. John Bale, a London chronicler, praised ‘the erle of Warrewyk, having a strong and myghte naveye kepte the strayt sea,’ (the Channel) and ‘all the cominalte of this lond hadde him in greet laude and chierte’. Bale perhaps ominously also

22 C. F. Richmond, ‘The Earl of Warwick’s Domination of the Channel and the Naval Dimension to the Wars of the Roses, 1456–60’, Southern History, 20/21 (1998–9), 6. 23 Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Davis, R. Beadle and C. Richmond (Oxford, 2004–5), ii : 340–41. 24 Richmond, ‘The Earl of Warwick’s Domination of the Channel’, 7.



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noted that only the earl ‘laboured for the honour and profite of the king and the londe’, being prepared to fortify Calais and perform other feats of arms.25 If, however, Warwick’s position at Calais seemed secure, since most of the south-east of England, which had a crucial role in supplying Calais and its garrison, was on his side, relations between Warwick, York and the Crown were breaking down. The queen had accused York and the Neville father and son, Salisbury and Warwick, of disloyalty at a Council meeting at Coventry in June 1459. Over the summer, we may presume that York and Salisbury in England and Warwick in Calais debated what their next steps should be. On 20 September, Warwick arrived in London with an armed force largely composed of the Calais garrison. The intention was that this group should be combined with those of the duke of York, who was in Ludlow, and those of Salisbury, who had to march south from Middleham in Yorkshire. The Lancastrians (Henry, the queen and their supporters) acted quickly to prevent this junction taking place, but on 23 September their attack on Salisbury and his men at Blore Heath, near Newcastle-under- Lyme, ended in disaster. The Lancastrian leader Lord Audley was killed along with 2,000 men. The meeting of the three Yorkist leaders then took place at Worcester. The decision was taken to withdraw to Ludlow, a Yorkist stronghold, to await the Lancastrian army, probably double the size of their own forces. The turn of events, which had seemed inconceivable in 1455, now appeared imminent ; many of the soldiers from Calais had left their posts and come to England to fight for a noble faction against their own monarch. The coming battle could not be explained, in the usual way, as an attempt to rid the king of evil counsellors. Henry VI’s own banner was prominently displayed over his tents, positioned among his army, drawn up at Ludford Bridge, on the plain below Ludlow castle. Sir Andrew Trollope, who had spent most of his adult life fighting in France, and who had been master porter of Calais since 1455, was in charge of this Calais contingent. A direct attack on royal forces in the presence of the king whom he had sworn to serve was too much for his sense of honour. It has been suggested that his links to the Beaufort family were also an issue, but his oath to the king and the horror of open resistance to God-given authority, which was part of the contemporary mind-set, may well have weighed more heavily with him.26 Clearly the paying of the garrison’s arrears, before Warwick took over the captaincy, did not influence the allegiance of Trollope and his men at this juncture. They were the best armed and most experienced part of the Yorkist army. Faced with the news that most of Trollope’s squadron had slipped way to join the king, some time on 12 October, York and the Nevilles retreated to Ludlow Castle from their battle lines, under cover of an artillery barrage, 25 R. Flenley (ed.), Six Town Chronicles of England (Oxford, 1911), 147. 26 Trollope’s support for the Lancastrian cause continued to the end of his life. He was leader of a Lancastrian squadron at the battle of Wakefield (where one report suggests he disguised his men as Warwick’s retinue by giving them the bear and ragged staff to wear), wounded at second St Albans and finally killed leading the van of the Lancastrian army at Towton in 1461. A. Curry, ‘Sir Andrew Trollope’, ODNB.

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and then fled for their lives. The remainder of their forces had no alternative but to surrender. York himself went over the Welsh mountains to take ship for Ireland. Warwick, Salisbury and York’s eldest son, the earl of March, rode south to Devon. Here a ship was found, and by way of Guernsey they reached Calais on 2 November.27 The situation that confronted them in the town and the Pale was probably rather better than they may have anticipated. The Lancastrians had responded to Warwick’s arrival in England to support York with more resolution than usual. Henry, duke of Somerset, Edmund’s son, had been appointed as captain of Calais (Warwick being now a rebel) on 9 October, just before the events at Ludford Bridge. By the end of the month, he had put together a force including Trollope and his men and had sailed for the town to take control. However, the remnant of the garrison in the town, commanded by Lord Fauconberg, Warwick’s uncle, refused him entry to the port. According to one English Chronicle ‘the sovdyers that came with hym were strypped oute of theyre harnrys by thaym of Caleys’.28 Somerset’s ships were forced to make landfall in the bay at the foot of Scales Cliff on the border of the Pale. From this point, what was left of his forces made their way inland with some difficulty and established themselves in the castle at Guisnes ; the conflict between the Yorkists and Lancastrians in England was reproduced in miniature in the Pale, with the town and castle of Calais in Yorkist hands confronting the Lancastrian garrison in Guisnes Castle. Once re-established in his fortress, Warwick proved immune to the attempts of the Crown to dislodge him. Although his estates in England had been taken into royal hands following his attainder in the parliament held at Coventry in November 1459, he still had the support of many of the Staplers. The Coventry parliament attempted to prohibit trade with Calais and placed restrictions on supplies being sent to the town, but to little avail. The Staplers were probably convinced that there was little hope of the Lancastrians’ repaying the debts of the Crown incurred under the Yorkist regime. Warwick’s foreign policy, which was pro-Burgundian at this point, was also more popular with them than the pro-French policies of the queen and her party. As far as supplies were concerned, many in Kent and elsewhere on the south coast were prepared to ignore the restrictions in gratitude for what they saw as Warwick’s support for their safety and their trade by his earlier actions in the Channel. The English Chronicle reported that ‘it was seyde that alle Kent fauored and supported thaym [Warwick’s men]’.29 Soon, in fact, a trickle of supporters of Warwick, and through him the Yorkist cause, came from Kent to join the earl. It was now clearer than ever that Calais was no longer an outpost of English power on the 27 M. A. Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford, 1998), 169, suggests they left from north Devon, but this would have entailed a much more difficult voyage round the Cornish peninsula than the relatively straightforward passage to Guernsey from somewhere like Dartmouth. John Dinham was responsible for obtaining the boat. 28 ‘Forced to give up their arms and armour’ ; Marx (ed.), An English Chronicle, 1377– 1461, 81. 29 Ibid., 82.



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far side of the Channel but, from the point of view of Henry VI’s government, a rebel base providing security for those plotting against their regime. Developments in the last days of 1459 and in 1460 confirm this interpretation. Although the royal forces had tried to imprison Warwick’s own ships in the harbour at Sandwich in December, in January 1460 John Dinham and a force from Calais came into the harbour at Sandwich, perhaps before dawn, certainly early in the day. The Lancastrian commanders Lord Rivers and his son, Sir Anthony, were captured ‘in theyre beddes’, and Warwick’s ships were freed to join the rest of his squadron at Calais, leaving only the Grace Dieu behind because she was ‘broke in her botome’.30 Rivers and his son were taken captive to Calais, where they endured being exposed to public scorn by Salisbury and Warwick. Their relatively humble origins were made fun of (Warwick teased Rivers that his father was ‘but a squyer’ who had ‘sthen hymself made by maryage’).31 Not long after this exploit in March, Warwick sailed from Calais to join York and his party in Ireland to prepare for what was in fact the Yorkist invasion of England. By late May, Warwick had returned to Calais, his reputation enhanced by successfully facing down a fleet commanded by the duke of Exeter, Henry VI’s naval commander, off Dartmouth. Exeter had made no attempt to attack Warwick’s fleet when he had encountered it but had turned away and run for sanctuary to the nearest port. In Calais itself, Fauconberg’s men had decisively defeated the Lancastrian forces from Guisnes in an engagement at Newenham Bridge in April, although a small remnant still held out in the castle and engaged in skirmishing against Warwick’s men. A letter dated 14 June from a Calais resident, probably either a master mariner or a merchant, to a correspondent in the Middle Temple gives a vivid picture of the continued use of the town as a base for assaults on ‘enemy’ shipping ; he gives details of an attack by ‘diverse caruelles and balingers of warr’ on three French war ships and the capture of a ‘holke’, with a cargo largely of victuals, despite an artillery battle between the ships off Boulogne. It finishes significantly with the remark that ‘daily as my lorde (Warwick) hafe any knowlage of an enemye anone my lorde makes his schippes to go to the see’. This writer was also well aware that the plans put together in Ireland were about to be put into operation.32 Ten days later, on 24 June, Fauconberg led another assault on Sandwich, which resulted in the town being secured as the Yorkist base on the south coast. Warwick, his father Salisbury, and the earl of March landed at the port two days later.33 From the Yorkist point of view, Calais had amply proved its worth as a base from which to mount their bid for the Crown. The triumphant advance on London of the Yorkist forces was watched with pleasure in Calais. Within a matter of weeks, Warwick returned to the town to be greeted enthusi30 Marx (ed.), An English Chronicle, 1377– 1461, 82. 31 C. L. Scofield, ‘The Capture of Lord Rivers and Sir Anthony Woodville, 19 January 1460’, EHR 37 (1922), 253–5. 32 The letter is transcribed in C. L. Kingsford, ‘The Earl of Warwick at Calais in 1460’, EHR 37 (1922), 544–6. 33 Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, 177.

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astically by his wife and mother and the townspeople ; Somerset realised that his position at Guisnes was untenable, and after submitting to the earl he withdrew to Dieppe. Following these successes, there now seemed every likelihood that the Pale would enjoy stable rule, that piracy in the Channel would be controlled, and that the Staplers could look forward to peaceful trading conditions. The disaster that overtook the Yorkists on the last day of 1460 at the battle of Wakefield, where the duke of York and many others of his party were killed, did not in the end greatly delay this happy outcome of events for Calais. By the end of March 1461, the former earl of March, now proclaimed king as Edward IV, had slaughtered many of the Lancastrians at Towton and driven Henry VI and his queen to precipitate flight to Scotland. The Staplers had, it appeared, backed the winning side after all. In the view of one commentator, Warwick’s determined use of sea power and his successful keeping of the seas were ‘a direct cause’ of Henry’s deposition.34 The years between 1461 and 1469 were in fact relatively without incident for Calais and its inhabitants. The knowledge that the fugitive Queen Margaret had bought French support for the Lancastrian cause by promising to restore Calais to France, if she ever regained power, perhaps did not cause much overt alarm.35 A letter to John Paston I in the autumn of 1462 included another rumour that ‘there were cc in Caleyse sworn contray to the Kyngys well for defaute of there wagys and that Qwen Marget was redy at Boleyn with myche syluir to paye the souderys in cas they wold geue here entresse’.36 Warwick continued as captain but paid only occasional fleeting visits to the Pale ; his attention as ‘the dominant figure in the new regime’ was fixed on more important issues, particularly the pacification of the north and the reduction of those strongholds still in Lancastrian hands.37 Problems still remained for the garrison and for the town. First of all was the old one of finance. How could the wages of the soldiers be paid ? In this instance a more permanent solution was found than the usual expedient of borrowing from the Staplers with repayments coming from the customs revenue in a more or less ad hoc fashion, according to the needs of the garrison for pay and the Crown for finance, at any particular time. By a so-called Act of Retainer, first negotiated in 1466 but confirmed and reissued in 1473, the payment of the garrison, in the town and the castle and at Guisnes, Hammes and the Risban tower, would become the responsibility of the Company of the Staple. The company would, in return, collect the custom and subsidy on all wool exported from England, except that going to Italy, which did not pass through the Staple, and the ‘ordinary’ revenues arising in Calais. According to the detailed arrangements, the Company would pay the garrison a total of £10,022 4s. 8d. per annum and also maintain the fortifications. A further £3,000 per annum from the customs proceeds would be retained by the Staplers to pay off gradu34 Richmond, ‘The Earl of Warwick’s Domination of the Channel’, 14. 35 Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, 235. 36 Paston Letters, ii : 287. 37 Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, 220.



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ally the Crown’s debt to them of £32,861. They would also pay some small fees and dues amounting to around another £800 and cover the costs incurred in the safe convoying of the wool fleets to the town. If, after these annual obligations, which finally amounted to £15,022 4s. 8d., there was any surplus remaining, this would be paid to the Crown.38 It has been calculated that from 1467 to 1483 there was an annual average surplus paid to the Crown of £705.39 The payment of the Calais garrison was no longer a drain on English royal finances. Similarly, Edward IV was able to reduce the danger of attack by Burgundy, which had been a more or less ever present worry for the burghers and traders of the town since the siege of 1436. The Yorkists had tended to look for support from Burgundy since the beginning of their campaign against the Lancastrian regime. It could be seen as a natural consequence of their hostility to a truce with France in the 1440s and the accusation that Normandy had been lost through the treacherous inertia of Edmund, duke of Somerset. Edward concluded a commercial treaty with Burgundy in 1467 and betrothed his sister Margaret to the new Duke Charles the following year. England and Burgundy were once more allies. His attitude to France, a more potent threat to the security of Calais, generally reflected the old animosity between the two kingdoms. This policy caused little controversy in England until it became an issue in the rift between Edward IV and his erstwhile henchman Warwick, increasingly apparent after 1467. Once Edward had recovered the throne in 1471, he maintained his alliance with his brother-in-law and mounted an invasion of France in 1475. This bloodless invasion led to the conclusion of the Treaty of Picquigny and the payment of a pension to Edward by Louis XI. The delicately balanced relations between England, Burgundy and France that ensued ensured a period of relative security for Calais. This might have been thrown into disarray by the death of Charles of Burgundy in battle in 1477. However, despite the subsequent takeover of both Picardy and Artois by France, thus surrounding the Pale with French territory, there seemed little fear of a French attack in the last years of Edward’s reign. Louis’s priorities lay elsewhere, and he had perhaps little wish to stir up trouble so near his northern borders. Given that Warwick had so successfully used his base in the town as a springboard for the Yorkist enterprise against Henry VI, was there a possibility that, as his relationship with Edward IV deteriorated , the town could be used in a similar way ? The king’s agreement with the Staplers had made it much more difficult to use the bait of promising to pay the garrison’s arrears of pay as a way of gaining influence with the soldiers. The more complex issue of how the loyalty to the Crown of the soldiery in general, and their local commanders in particular, might be manipulated or undermined by the captain remained. Although the garrison, as has been frequently remarked, was the largest and most professional 38 E. Power, ‘The Wool Trade in the Fifteenth Century’, in E. Power and M. M. Postan (eds.), Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1933), 74–5. 39 D. Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547 : A Study in Early Tudor Government’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1997), 44.

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body of fighting men in the territories of the king of England, these men did not constitute an army in the modern sense of the word, with a clear chain of command leading back ultimately to the Crown. Many were the indentured retainers of one or other of the holders of the most important military posts in the Pale, the captain of Calais himself or his lieutenant, for example.40 Their status in this matter was no different from that of most of the men fighting in France before the 1450s, or of the members of the liveried retinues of nobles, often described as the defining feature of so-called bastard feudalism. In this situation, was their first loyalty to their ‘good lord’, the phrase often used in indentures and other documents, or to the Crown ? Both Somerset in the 1450s and Warwick on his appointment as captain made sure that the most important commands were in the hands of their supporters. Yet how effective was this tactic ? Sir Andrew Trollope’s defection to Henry VI’s forces at Ludford Bridge was the direct cause of the flight of Warwick and his co-conspirators from the field of battle in disarray. On the other hand, Lord Fauconberg had refused entry to the port of Calais to Henry, duke of Somerset, later in the same year, even though Somerset had been appointed captain by Henry VI in Warwick’s place. Despite these uncertainties, there seems to be little doubt that Warwick intended to use Calais as the base for his plot against Edward IV in 1469 and possibly, as before, as the springboard for an invasion of England. Relations between the earl and the king had deteriorated since the king’s marriage in 1464. Warwick probably disliked the queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and found the rapid advancement in the king’s favour of her many relations very irritating. A more serious source of disagreement with the king was over relations between England and Burgundy and England and France. As has been said, the king greatly preferred an alliance with Charles of Burgundy to a rapprochement with Louis XI of France. Despite his acquiescence in the Yorkist friendship with Burgundy in 1459–60, Warwick had actively and persistently campaigned against both the alliance of 1467 and the marriage of Margaret and Charles. He found, however, that he was no longer able to influence the king. A further source of tension related to a family matter. Warwick was determined to marry his elder daughter Isabel to the king’s brother George, duke of Clarence ; Edward refused to sanction the match. In the summer of 1469 Warwick seems to have brought the complex web of intrigue aimed at restoring his dominance over Edward to some sort of conclusion. In June his latest great ship, a potential warship, the Trinity, had been commissioned with elaborate ceremonies at Sandwich. In July Isabel was married to Clarence in St Mary’s church at Calais without royal consent. Within five days the wedding party was back in England, and before the end of the month Warwick seemed to have mounted a successful coup.

40 It has been calculated that at least half the garrison was made up of personal retainers, with the remainder probably being auxiliaries, servants etc. rather than true fighting men. J. R. Rainey jr, ‘The Defence of Calais, 1436–77’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1987), cited in Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 58–9.



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Following a misjudged reaction to a rising in the north, probably fomented by Warwick, Edward was Warwick’s prisoner. By October, however, Edward had reasserted his authority and attempted a reconciliation with Warwick. It did not last beyond the spring, when rebellion broke out in Lincolnshire ; on this occasion, intercepted letters left no doubt that Warwick and Clarence hoped to use the rising as a cover for their own moves against the king. Both were forced to flee with a small group of supporters, taking ship at Dartmouth on 9 April 1470. At this point Edward’s experience of events in 1459 proved invaluable. He had little doubt that Warwick would again make for Calais with the intention of using the town as his base, as he had done eleven years before. Warwick had some idea of the swiftness of the king’s reaction to his flight when he heard that his Trinity had been seized at Southampton before this great ship could join the squadron from Dartmouth. On arrival off Calais, the marshal Lord Duras denied Warwick access to the harbour, remaining adamant even when the young duchess of Clarence went into labour on board ship and lost the baby. Warwick was forced to make instead for Harfleur in Normandy.41 The failure to gain entry to Calais, however, was not fatal to Warwick’s plans. After a summer spent in negotiations with Louis XI and Margaret of Anjou, Warwick once more sailed for England on 9 September. By the end of the month Edward IV was in exile in Bruges, and Henry VI had been restored to the throne. How did these rapid changes in loyalties affect Calais ? Philippe de Commines, who visited Calais on behalf of the duke of Burgundy in the immediate aftermath of Warwick’s coup d’état in favour of Henry VI, has given a picture of the fears and uncertainties in the town. He found that the entire garrison was wearing Warwick’s livery, with the badge of the bear and ragged staff, and that the door of his lodgings was adorned with white crosses and rhymes in praise of the alliance between Warwick and Louis XI. Significantly he was told that as soon as the ferry came from England with the news of Edward’s flight to Bruges, in less than a quarter of an hour, everyone was wearing the Warwick badge. Commines then comments it was hard to know who did this out of fear and who did it out of support for Henry. The priority for many at this time was to be on the winning side.42 We may find it significant that support for Henry was shown by wearing Warwick’s badge ; clearly few, if any, believed that Henry himself had played any active role in his own readeption. A similar somewhat ambiguous attitude to allegiance is, perhaps, shown in the bastard of Fauconberg’s abortive attempt to use the Calais garrison against Edward IV after his return to England in 1471. Fauconberg had induced the Calais garrison to set sail for Kent and to march on London with ‘a greate people of Kent and of shipmen’,43 with some vague idea of assisting Henry VI. He was probably unaware of his cousin Warwick’s death at Barnet and of Edward’s complete destruction of 41 Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, 286–7. 42 P. de Commines, Mémoires, ed. J. Blanchard (Paris, 2001), 243–5. 43 C. L. Kingsford (ed.), Chronicles of London (Oxford, 1905), 185.

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the Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury on 4 May until he arrived at London on the 12th. He and his followers were now in the eyes of contemporaries clearly ‘haynous traytours and robbers’. Faced with the determined defence of the City of London by its citizens, most of his followers slipped away, with those from Calais making for their ships on the Thames to return to Calais ‘the sonest they cowlde’.44 Few wished to remain to face Edward’s vengeance. When considering the whole role of personal loyalties and the membership of noble affinities in the actions of the Calais garrison and other armed forces of the day, it must be remembered that indentures routinely included a phrase that made clear that war against the king was excluded from the obligation to serve one’s lord. In 1408 an indenture between Henry, Prince of Wales, and Thomas, earl of Arundel, stated that the obligation was to serve : en temps de pees come de guerre, a pees e a guerre sibien depar decea come de la ou sur la miere pur terme de a vie et pour estre ovesque monditseigneur le prince a pes et a guerre encounter toutz gentz du monde except nostre tresredoubteseigneur le Roy Henry.45 A less formal indenture between Warwick himself and Robert Cuny esq. from 1467 includes the phrase ‘the said Robert is w’holden and belest with and toward the said Erle ayenst all persons his ligeance except’, that is saving his loyalty to the king.46 Such a provision would not have been regarded as a mere form of words at this time but a serious undertaking. Open rebellion against the monarch was not only treason but also a sin. There is no doubt that captains of Calais did make efforts to ensure that members of their affinities occupied the most important positions in the town. This process has been set out for Somerset and Warwick in detail.47 This has shown that Warwick in 1456 got the support not only of well-known professional soldiers like John Dinham and his uncle Lord Fauconberg but also Calais burgesses including John Prowde and Richard Whetehill. It must be remembered that this was the expected way for a great lord to act when he was in the position of being able to put lucrative positions or other advantages in the way of his ‘men’. The whole system of good lordship that permeated society from top to bottom was predicated on this fact. It only became a potential danger when the system of government was weak or under attack, as was certainly the case in the late 1450s and 1460s. Warwick’s powerful personality and his driving ambi44 C. F. Richmond, ‘Fauconberg’s Kentish Rising of May 1471’, EHR 85 (1970), 673–92. ‘Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV. in England and the Final Recouerye of His Kingdoms from Henry VI.’, ed. J. Bruce, in Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV, introd. K. Dockray (Gloucester, 1988), 37. 45 M. Jones and S. Walker (eds.), ‘Private Indentures for Life Service in Peace and War, 1278–1476’, in Camden Miscellany, xxxii (London, 1994), 137. ‘In time of peace as of war, in peace and in war both at home and abroad or at sea for life in order to assist the said lord the prince both in peace and in war against all people of the world except our most dread lord King Henry.’ 46 Ibid., 172. 47 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 49–51.



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tion were what made his hold on Calais a danger to the monarchy, rather than the way he made appointments, which was not in itself unusual for the time. After Warwick’s death at the battle of Barnet in 1471 and the triumph of the Yorkist cause, Edward IV appointed one of his most loyal supporters, William, Lord Hastings, as lieutenant not captain of Calais. This has been taken as sign that the king wished to keep better control of the place, since he himself was the titular captain. Some of Warwick’s appointees, who had not abandoned their loyalty to the Crown, did, however, remain in office. Newly appointed men, on the other hand, often had direct links to the royal household as well as a position in Calais in the retinue of Hastings.48 The fact that these new men included Sir John Paston ( John Paston II)49 makes it possible to not only to see how the system of ‘good lordship’ operated in a particular case but also to get a more intimate picture of life in Calais for the garrison at this time from some of the asides and casual remarks in letters in the Paston collection. The idea of serving in Calais was not strange to the gentry of Norfolk. A neighbour and relation of Margaret Paston’s, Osbert Mundford , had served in the garrison in the 1450s and had jocularly offered to buy John Paston I a ‘stoop of beer to comfort you after your travail of the sea’, should Paston visit him in Calais.50 A member of another family, the Knyvets, had been commander of the castle at Sangatte at the time of the Burgundian invasion of 1436 and had been accused of surrendering it ‘shamefully and cowardly without any stroke’.51 John Paston II probably took up service in Calais after the fall of the Lancastrians in the 1470s for two reasons. He needed an income and would receive a wage as a member of the garrison. It was also a way of wiping out the memory of his and his brother’s support of the Lancastrians, particularly the earl of Oxford, in 1470 and at the battle of Barnet in 1471. It would show unmistakeably his desire to serve a new ‘good lord’, William, Lord Hastings. From some date in the summer of 1472, John Paston II was as familiar with Calais as with London.52 He travelled frequently back and forth between the two as his military duties and his family concerns required. This may well have been the normal pattern for the ‘gentle’ members of the garrison ; their presence was not continuous but interrupted by frequent visits to their estates and families in England. This does not imply that John Paston II took his duties lightly. In the autumn of 1473 he was in correspondence with a maker of armour in Bruges, who wished to make him a complete set of ‘harness’ at a price ‘que vous seres content 48 D. Grummitt, ‘William Lord Hastings, the Calais Garrison and the Politics of Yorkist England’, The Ricardian, 12 (2001), 262–74. 49 The identification of members of the Paston family can cause problems ; here John Paston I (1421–1466) is the father of both John Paston II (Sir John, 1442–1479) and John Paston III (1444–1502). Edmund (d. by 1504) was also his son. 50 Paston Letters, ii : 485. Mundford was taken prisoner by Fauconberg at Sandwich in June 1460 and executed at Calais. 51 R. Virgoe, East Anglian Society and the Political Community of Late Medieval England, ed. C. Barron, C. Rawcliffe and J. T. Rosenthal (Norwich, 1997), 164. 52 C. Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century : Endings (Manchester, 2000), 146.

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de moy’.53 At much the same time, Hastings also wrote praising Paston for his ‘gode attandancez’ and his ‘gode and effectuelle deuoirs’ that he had put into his assistance to Hasting’s deputy ‘in all suche thinges as mowe concerne the saufgarde of my charge there’.54 Paston also had time to travel into Flanders ; on one occasion, in early 1473, to Ghent, where he not only saw the duke of Burgundy himself but also family friends, including two ladies known as Gretkyn and Babekyn. He was clearly flirting with these two ; though, having remarked that one of them looked much better because she had lost some weight, he was then irritated because she asked all the time, ‘How faret master John yowre brother ?’55 The social element of life as a member of the garrison could also be enhanced by young and noble visitors to the town. John Paston was charged by Hastings to look after Lord Souche and two young heiresses, one Sir Thomas Hungerford’s daughter, the other Lady Harrington. Paston called them ‘iii grett jowellys’ but also reflected that since Calais was ‘a mery town’ it presumably had more than enough going on to keep them entertained.56 Certainly he himself expected to be ‘verry mery at Caleys thys Whitsontyd’. He not only needed his ‘newe vestment of whyght damaske’ to wear there, but, on a more sober note, he remarked that since his former ‘lord’ the Lancastrian earl of Oxford was rumoured to be causing trouble in Essex, it was as well for him to be out of the way on the other side of the Channel.57 Later in the same year he asked for his musical instruments to be sent up to London so that he might have them in Calais ‘to avoyde idelnesse’ there.58 By 1475, when Edward IV’s expedition to France was in preparation, John Paston II was urging his younger brother Edmund to join him in the garrison. The pay was reasonable ; a young man could be ‘in suche wagys as ye schall can lyve lyke a jentylman’. There was also a clear opportunity for the young man to join his brother, as another member of the garrison had died leaving a vacancy ; it was ‘nowe ore neuer iff ye can brynge it a-bowt’.59 John Paston III, despite all his responsibilities for the family estates in Norfolk, also spent some time in the town in 1475 and later.60 The overall impression of those letters in the Paston collection that are either written from Calais or refer to the town and the garrison is how little fuss or bother was made about the journey from England to the Pale and how normal it was for someone of their social standing to be involved in matters there. It is also the case that the role of the town as a source of news and intelligence for those in England regarding happenings in France and the Empire was fully appreciated. Letters to or from the Paston brothers often paint a vivid picture of 53 Paston Letters, ii : 409. ‘The price will be agreeable to you.’ 54 Ibid., ii : 410. 55 Ibid., i : 455. 56 Ibid., i : 460–61. 57 Ibid., i : 463. 58 Ibid., i : 472. 59 Ibid., i : 486. 60 Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century, 150–51.



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the situation. In 1477 John Paston II, in a letter to his brother, after describing Louis XI’s siege of Boulogne, remarked that ‘it weer worthe xlm li’ (£40,000) if only it was in English hands.61 Edmond Bedyngfeld’s letter of August 1477 to John Paston II similarly gave a clear and succinct account of the siege of SaintOmer by the French king with the shrewd comment that the French were far more concerned to act against the Burgundians than the English.62 Much of the other content of the letters concerns the family preoccupations of the Pastons, but there is also family banter that casts some further light of Calais life. John Paston III on one occasion remarked that you could get as good food (‘deynte vytayll’) in Norwich for 1d. as the Treasurer of Calais produced for 15d.63 There are also hints that Calais was relatively unhealthy. The younger John advised his older brother to dress particularly warmly when in the town, since he was convinced he had been ill there because of the cold. The older John likewise blamed a stomach ailment on the town ; he wrote in 1475, ‘I mysslyke somewhat the heyre heer for by my trowthe I was in goode heele whan I came hydder and all hool and to my wetyng I hadde neuer a better stomake in my lyffe and now with-in viii dayes I am crasyd ageyn.’64 The role of Calais in the buying and selling of horses, a constant feature of the Cely correspondence, also appears in this collection. John Pympe, a Paston friend from Kent, was so keen for John Paston III to buy him a horse in Calais that he finally took to verse, addressing him in these terms : Fresh amorouse sihtys of cuntreys ferre and straunge Have all fordonne yowr old affeccioun In plesurys new yowr hert dooth soore and raunge So hye and ferrew that, like as the fawcon Which is aa-lofte tellith scorne to loke a-down On hym that wont was her federys to pyke and ymps Ryght so forgotyn ys yowr pore Pympe. He finished his plea, ‘thys being the vi lettyr that I have sent yow’.65 Taken all together, this evidence does reveal another side to the life of the Calais garrison in the late fifteenth century. There were pleasures there to enjoy without any countervailing feeling of being remote or cut off from home and family in England. Edward IV successfully strengthened the chain of loyalty, if not quite of command, to the benefit both of the Crown and of the town. Once Edward’s army had departed back to England in 1475, after the campaign ended by the Treaty of Piquigny, the inhabitants of Calais may perhaps have felt that they could now look forward to a period of greater stability, when the focus would be more firmly on the wool trade and the Company of the Staple than on the repercussions of political turmoil in England and the doings of the garrison. Warwick 61 Paston Letters, i : 502. 62 Ibid., ii : 419–20. 63 Ibid., i : 580 64 Ibid., i : 594, 487. 65 Ibid., ii : 417–18.

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had perhaps come close to making the town and the Pale a private fiefdom in a way much more familiar in the lands of the Empire than in England. The territory was, however, by 1475 firmly back under royal control, with reinforced links to the royal household and to the merchants of the city of London. Sir John Paston was perhaps not the only soldier who found life there had not only financial advantages but was also agreeable and entertaining.

6 The heyd ay o f t he C o mpa n y o f t he S ta p l e : t he merch a n t s a n d t he i r l i ve s

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T

he Act of Retainer, particularly after its confirmation by parliament in 1473, marked the beginning of a period of relative stability for the Company of the Staple. Although the company had taken on heavy responsibilities with regard to the payment of the garrison and the upkeep of the fortifications of Calais by the terms of the Act, it was reasonable to suppose that the wool trade would be prosperous enough to bear these burdens, and that the Staplers would see their loans to the Crown gradually repaid. The cycle of the soldiers’ wages being in arrears, followed by threatened or actual mutinies by the garrison, crisis loans to the Crown by the Staple merchants, and promised repayment from the already heavily anticipated receipts from the customs would be broken. The Company and its members would have more control of their own affairs and would not be so much at the mercy of events that were none of their making. The merchants had operated for much of the previous fifty years in a difficult and demanding environment. The possibility of attacks from either Burgundy or France on their trading base and the incidence of piracy in the Channel varied with the political situation, but at times they could reach crisis level. This, of course, happened in 1436 with the Burgundian siege of Calais. For English merchants, these foreign troubles had been compounded by the period of civil strife in the 1450s and 1460s, which many hoped was now ended by the resumption of the Crown by Edward IV in 1471. Their trading partners, principally merchants from Flanders and Brabant, had faced similar difficulties ; in their case largely concerning conflicts between the dukes of Burgundy and the powerful trading cities of Flanders. Both groups of merchants were also caught up in the consequences of the prevailing views of the nature of wealth, particularly with regard to international trade, and the way in which this might advantage or disadvantage a ruler and a state. As we have said, the rulers of both Burgundy

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and England followed bullionist policies and were concerned to put barriers in the way of an outflow of bullion from their territory, since this constituted, in their view, a seeping away of wealth. In modern terms, tight protectionist policies were followed, ensuring the close regulation of trade and the terms on which it was conducted. In the case of Calais these policies had also been influenced by the way in which the proceeds of the wool customs were used by the state as collateral for loans, and the need to ensure that there was enough coin in the hands of the Treasurer of Calais, that is physically present in his coffers, to pay the garrison. Until 1404 the existence of the Calais mint had helped to deal with these pressures, since foreign specie brought in by merchants was deposited there for recoining, and some of this money could be used to pay the garrison. The closure of the mint, probably as a result of the Europe-wide shortage of bullion in the early years of the fifteenth century, did not mean that these policies were abandoned. In fact, as a result of petitions in the parliaments of 1420 and 1421, the mint reopened in 1422. In that year the necessary dies for striking the coins were sent over from London to the Treasurer of Calais, Richard Buckland.1 Bartholomew Goldbeter was appointed as master of the mints at the Tower of London, Bristol, York and Calais in 1423, holding the position till his death in 1431.2 Both gold and silver coins were once more struck in Calais beginning in July 1422. From the point of view of the merchants, the most important aspect of the reopening of the mint was the conditions that were consequentially attached to the sale of their wools at the Staple. What proportion of the proceeds had to be received in specie and deposited at the mint for recoining ? The regulations in force initially are not recorded, but in the 1429 parliament a series of articles were presented to the king and accepted by him, which set out the basis on which the wool trade would be conducted at the Staple. The most important of these ordinances, usually known as the Bullion and Partition ordinances, had a lasting effect on the fortunes of the Staplers and the trade of Calais. Regarding bullion, it was stated ‘that the whole payment for the said wool, wool-fells and tin shall be made promptly in gold and silver without any trickery or plotting’. The ordinance than goes on to order that ‘the bullion shall be brought into the mint at Calais, that is to say for each bale of wool of which the sack weight is sold for 12 marks [£8], £6 ; 10 marks [£6 13s. 4d.] £5, 8 marks [£5 6s. 8d.] £4, and for the wool-fells at the same rate to be forged into the king’s coin’.3 If this ordinance had been enforced to the letter it would have outlawed the use of credit in the wool trade, the normal way in which business was conducted with the merchants from the Low Countries, the great majority of the purchasers of wools at the Staple. Not only would these merchants have had to bring quite large sums in coin to Calais, making them vulnerable to rob1 CCR Henry VI, 1422–9 : 12. 2 CCR Henry VI, 1422–9 : 59–60. 3 Parliament of 1429, item XXVII [Staple at Calais] ; The Parliament Rolls of England. The mark was a money of account equal to ⅔ pound (see p. 102 below) ; neither the pound nor the mark was minted as a coin in England.



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bery on the road, but such ‘export’ of coin from the territories of Burgundy was very unwelcome to the duke, who held bullionist views quite as strongly as the English monarch, and was prepared to outlaw the carrying of bullion out of his realm. The partition ordinance was also disruptive of the usual methods of the Staplers. It required a seller to ‘make true and equal division of the money thereof with him who has wool or wool-fells for the same countries that his wool or wool-fells are from, and he is enjoined and ordered to make division with him without fraud or deception’. The wording of this ordinance as it stood was somewhat ambiguous ; the way in which it was enforced by the Company became clear from the complaints of those who came to dislike it intensely. The system set up required all the proceeds from wool sales to be pooled in the hands of the Company. Individual merchants would only receive their share when all the wool from a particular crop had been sold, something that might take a considerable time. Further ordinances put forward at the same time refer to other difficulties facing the Staplers. Some long-term residents in the town were accused of ‘plotting by subtle means to lower the price’ of wool with foreign merchants. Other traders from Flanders, Holland, Zealand and elsewhere were accused of smuggling wool out from England ‘trussed up in tonnes, pipes [wine barrels], barrels, sacks and fardles’, hiding it ‘under wood, wheat, oats, seacoal and in other ways’, to get round the obligation to trade only through the Staple. Finally there was a complaint at the way in which the wool price had fallen, while that of foreign luxuries imported in galleys and carracks had risen, ‘to the destruction of this realm, which God forbid.’4 In the ensuing years, the mint at Calais struck quite large sums, mostly in silver coins. The restrictions on credit that brought bullion into the mint also led to a large drop in the wool exports to Calais. Burgundian merchants found the bullion ordinance very onerous, while the duke found in this regulation another reason for moving away from his alliance with England towards reconciliation with France. When a retaliatory boycott of the import of English cloth to Burgundy failed to bring any change in English attitudes, the duke began his preparations for the siege of Calais in 1436. In the next four years fewer than 600 sacks of legally exported wool reached the Staple. The officials of the Company stuck firmly to the view that all existing stocks must be sold before any new wool could be put on sale, and the wool merchants from the Low Countries kept away from the market. The interruption of the trade in reality benefited no-one ; the king’s customs revenue declined drastically ; the duke of Burgundy also lost tax moneys ; the merchants, whether in England or Burgundy, faced bankruptcy. A summary of the situation in Calais, made for a Dutch delegation that came to the town in 1438 to attempt to negotiate some sort of compromise agreement, set things out clearly. Because of the partition ordinance, a wool merchant might have to wait a long time before receiving his share of the proceeds. He might find himself with no ready money to lay out 4 Parliament of 1429, item XXVII [Staple at Calais] ; The Parliament Rolls of England.

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on new stock for the coming year. There was no possibility of bargaining over prices, which tended to be set by the merchants in the largest way of business.5 The Staple system led ‘to a de facto although not de jure native monopoly of the wool trade in Northern Europe’ ;6 the partition ordinance worked to ensure that that monopoly was concentrated only in the hands of a few wealthy men. During the 1440s, the court and parliament were made well aware of the impediment to trade constituted by the bullion regulations. The manifest unfairness of the partition system for all but the most important merchants also became clear to many. A petition in the parliament of 1442 requested that both be rescinded, leaving only some minor restrictions in place. This received a rather ambiguous answer from the king, apparently leaving matters in the hands of the Staplers themselves. On their own authority, in the autumn of the same year, the Company of the Staple removed the requirement on merchants to deposit a proportion of their proceeds at the mint. This may in fact have been no more than the official recognition of a situation which already existed. No coins were struck at Calais after 1440, when only £600 of silver was minted, although in 1431/2 and 1433/4 over £40,000 in silver had been struck.7 The partition ordinance was rescinded at the same time, although it had the support of the most important wool merchants. There is some evidence to suggest that the Company of the Staple was split for most of the late 1430s and 1440s between pro- and anti-partition groups. These have been represented as the rich men ‘standing for oligarchical government, the partition ordinance and high prices’ against ‘the commonalty of smaller wool merchants’ standing for democratic control, no partition ordinance and low prices.8 The details of this conflict, however, do not survive, and it may well be that the intense dislike of the ordinance among those buying wool at the Staple was as much responsible for its withdrawal as the opposition among some English woolmen. As early as 1433, the Four Members of Flanders, the association of the leading Flemish trading cities, had written to the Diet of the Hanseatic League informing its members that Flanders had instituted a boycott of English cloth because of the way the wool trade at Calais was now conducted. They claimed ‘that the English at Calais enacted several years ago great sharp, strict and unjust ordinances concerning wool, which are being stiffened from year to year so that it is impossible to procure English wool save at heavy cost’. This was to the detriment not only of Flemish merchants but also of the Hanse, since it led to a rise in the price of Flemish cloth.9 Raw-wool exports had, of course declined markedly from their peak in the early fourteenth century, partly at least because exports of cloth, conversely, had rapidly increased, but the figures that have been collected for the period from 5 Power, ‘The Wool Trade’, 85–6. 6 Lloyd, The English Wool Trade, 256. 7 P. Woodhead, ‘Calais and Its Mint : Part Two’, app. i, in Mayhew (ed.), Coinage in the Low Countries, 198. 8 Power, ‘The Wool Trade’, 88. 9 Ibid., 85.



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1439 to about 1460 vary widely, from more than 10,000 sacks per year to much lower totals.10 The political events, both in England and in northern Europe, described in the previous chapter were responsible for this, as well as the effect of the ordinances. The recovery of the wool trade via the Staple to at least modest prosperity was as much dependent on political stability as a benign trading environment. The 1463 parliament confirmed the privileges of the Company of the Staple, although it also gave statutory recognition to the right of northern woolmen to export their wools from Newcastle without going through the Staple. The confirmation also included requirements to deposit a proportion of the sale price for coining at the Calais mint, but this must either have been carelessly copied over from earlier ordinances or was never enforced, since the mint had closed in 1440.11 There is no evidence that it reopened at this period.12 When the Act of Retainer was first confirmed in parliament in June 1467, the Staple was described as ‘now late in ruyne and decay and likely to have been dissolved’.13 This was perhaps something of an exaggeration, but it is clear that the Staplers’ decision to support the Yorkists was eventually proved to be the right one, both for the health of the Company as a whole and its base in Calais and for the prosperity of individual merchants. The way in which one particular family partnership operated can be examined in some detail because of the fortunate survival of the Cely letters and papers. These cover the period from 1472 to early 1488, with gaps from November 1482 to 1483 and for the whole of 1485 and 1486.14 The Cely family were established citizens of London. The older Richard was himself a Stapler and had done well enough to acquire lands in Oxfordshire and Northampton and an estate and family home, Bretts Place, at Aveley in Essex. His three sons, Robert, Richard the younger and George, were also all actively involved in the wool trade, although the main correspondents in the surviving letters are Richard the younger, usually in London or Bretts Place in Essex, and George and the family factor, William Cely (perhaps a cousin, though this is not certain), usually in Calais or its environs. Although the letters are mostly concerned with business affairs (this is the reason they have survived, since they became evidence in an action for debt in Chancery by Richard Cely the younger against the widow of his older brother George), casual remarks and asides allow a picture to be built up of the lives of the merchants of the Staple, something illuminated by few other sources. The papers themselves also include what have been called ‘documents of the most personal or trivial kind’, since George seldom threw papers 10 E. M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman (eds.), England’s Export Trade, 1275-1547 (Oxford, 1963), 61–3. 11 Lloyd, The English Wool Trade, 278. 12 The last coins struck at the Calais mint that have been found are dated 1439, with the last Pyx report being dated 29 Sept. 1439. Woodhead, ’Calais and Its Mint : Part Two’, app. i, p. 198. 13 Lloyd, The English Wool Trade, 279. 14 See p. 41 n. 6 above.

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away and virtually never sorted them out.15 Some of these papers also provide valuable insights into Calais life. As far as their wool business was concerned, the way in which the Celys (and, one must presume, most other Staple merchants) operated is fairly clear. One member of the partnership, in the case of the Celys usually either Richard Cely senior or his son Richard junior, would visit their usual ‘brogger’ or middleman in a wool-producing area of England to examine samples of the wool he had collected from the producers, some time after the shearing of the flocks in the summer. William Midwinter of Northleach in Gloucestershire was the Celys’ usual supplier, though others are mentioned in the letters. Once a sale had been agreed and certified by an indenture, the wool had to be packed and then transported to London. Once in London it might be stored awaiting the sailing of a wool fleet, or it might go almost immediately to the wool quay to be loaded onto a vessel for Calais. It was against the rules of the Staple to sell wool in London. Before shipment, the bales of wool had to be weighed, first of all in the presence of both seller and buyer to determine the final cost (sales were usually by weight), and then by the customs officials so that the liability for customs and other dues could be calculated. The wool was packed in canvas sarplers, which were numbered and marked with the merchant’s mark and a letter code that indicated the type of wool and the quality. Thus M on a bale of the Celys’ Cotswold wool meant it was of middle not fine quality. The position of the code was also important ; ‘clift’ wool (the damaged and possibly dirty wool from the animal’s rear) was marked on the side of the sarpler ; ‘end’ wool (the wound fleece) on the top. Wools were also graded and priced by their origins, with the most expensive coming from Herefordshire and Shropshire (known as Leominster and March wools) ; the Celys mostly traded in the wools from the Cotswolds, which might be further sorted into good, middle, good young and middle young grades. The marking of the bales and the careful grading were essential, since most sales were by sample, a system that put a lot of responsibility on the wool packers who wound the fleeces, sorted them and finally packed them in the canvas sarpler covers. These men were specialists, employed by the Company itself ; their oath is recorded in the surviving 1565 Ordinance Book of the Company. They swore that they would make their ‘packing of wools truly indifferently and sufficiently so that you shall not pack or wrap or cause to be packed or wrapped in the fleeces of the wool earth stones dung or sand’ [which would increase the weight of the sarpler]. They would also ‘truly name all manner of the wools by you packed of the country where they were grown after the nature of the said wools and not of any other country, in any manner of wise’.16 It was essential for the Company and for individual merchants that their customers felt they could 15 A. Hanham, The Celys and Their World : An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), p. ix. 16 1565 Ordinance Book, 129–30, quoted ibid., 117.



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trust the markings on the bales. George Cely wrote back in haste to his father from Calais when something had clearly gone wrong with the packing : ‘In the reverence of God see better to the packing of your wool that shall come or else your wool is like to lose that name that it had affore in time past. I never wist you send coarser wool to Calais for the country than this last was.’17 Once the bales had been weighed by the Customer at the port and the cocket (customs seal) affixed, the bales were loaded. This was overseen at the quayside by a member of the partnership, who would make a careful note of where each bale was placed. It was the common practice that the shipment should be divided among the various vessels sailing. This would, hopefully, minimise the risk of a total loss, whether from piracy or from shipwreck. The wool fleets usually sailed twice a year and were escorted by armed ships as a protection against robbery at sea. News that the ships had left was eagerly awaited in Calais, where George was often in a fever of impatience waiting for this information. If the ships became separated on the crossing, the anxiety increased until all had been accounted for. His clerk William Cely wrote to him in October 1482 while he was away at one of the autumn marts in Flanders, ‘Sir the wool ships be come to Calais all save 3 whereof 2 be in Sandwich haven and one is at Ostend and he [the ship master] hath cast all his wool overboard.’18 Once the ships were safely in the harbour at Calais, they were unloaded and the wool bales registered by the Staple collectors, on payment of a duty of 1d. in the pound on the sales value of the wool. A sample also had to ‘awarded’ by the Staple officials to certify that it was of the claimed quality ; on at least one occasion, the Celys’ factor, with the collusion of the Staple packer, changed the covers on a bale found to be full of ‘gruff ’ (coarse) wool for that of a sarpler of fine wool so that the whole consignment would not be downgraded. After this process, the wool was then ready for sale by individual negotiations between the parties. It was more than likely that it might be stored for some time in one of the wool-houses in Calais before it was once more on the move, this time almost invariably to one of the cloth-making centres in Flanders, travelling along the coast road to Gravelines, across the estuary of the Aa, and then on to its final destination. Up to this point we have said very little about the financial aspects of the wool trade ; these were labyrinthine in their complexity. There were differences in the system of weights used in England and Calais ; there was s system of conventional discounts and rebates in use to allow for things like the weight of the canvas wrappers on the bales. There were the various fees and dues payable, as well as the custom and subsidy due to the English Crown. There were freight charges for transport from the Cotswolds to London and then on by sea to Calais. Thus to calculate what the price should be at Calais, to ensure a reasonable profit to the merchant, would be difficult in any circumstances ; with the 17 The Cely Letters, letter 93. 18 Ibid., letter 198. A ship master could, by custom, throw cargo overboard if he believed the vessel was in danger of foundering.

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incomplete information provided by the Cely letters, it is virtually impossible. From the calculations that have been done it has been suggested that the profit margin on the best wools was good, but that the ‘middle’ wools (on which the taxes were the same as on the best wool) very seldom brought a good return, or indeed any profit at all, to the merchant.19 The usual bargain made with a purchaser involved credit, one reason why the bullion ordinance caused so much disruption. A cash payment, which could vary between half and a third of the total price, was usually demanded immediately, with the balance due by bills of exchange in two instalments at intervals of three and six months. The payment terms could cover a longer period, perhaps as long as eighteen months, but this was the usual arrangement. These deferred payments were often collected by the seller himself at one of the big regional marts in Flanders. The most important were the Bammis mart at Antwerp in September–October, the Cold mart at Bergen-op-Zoom in December, and the Sinxen or Whitsun mart, also at Antwerp. A further complication, in both cash transactions and those involving credit and financial instruments of some sort, was the question of the exchange rate to be used. As far as cash payments were concerned, both gold and silver coins of many different origins circulated in Calais. The closure of the mint undoubtedly reduced the amount of English coin available, so that the majority in circulation was probably of Burgundian provenance. There were two issues for a merchant to consider when he accepted payment in cash ; first, what was the official exchange rate for a particular coin ? Secondly, what was the condition of the coin, that is, did it contain the amount of bullion that it should or had it been deliberately or accidentally damaged ? When it came to recording a transaction the merchant also kept his accounts in ‘money of account’, that is pounds, shillings and pence ; these units were not represented in the coinage. The English coins normally in use in the late fifteenth century were, in silver, the groat (4d.), the half groat, the penny, the ha’penny and the farthing. There were three different gold coins, all called nobles : the old noble, valued from 1464 at 8s. 4d., the rose noble valued at 10s., and the angel noble valued at 6s. 8d. This last coin related directly to the alternative accounting system to that of pounds, shillings and pence, that of the mark worth 13s. 4d. (⅔ of a pound) and the half mark worth 6s. 8d. To navigate his way through these complexities, a merchant needed to be very cautious and also adept at rapid calculations. In his counting-house in Calais, a Stapler would have had the scales and weights necessary to weigh the coins, and also a chequered cloth marked out in columns (like that used in the Exchequer in London), which was used in rather the same way as an abacus. The kind of situation that would have been an everyday occurrence when selling wool is set out in the record of a sale between George Cely and an unnamed merchant in August 1480. George was paid half the price in cash at the rate of 25s. 4d. Flemish to £1 pound sterling ; this amounted to £34 12s. 6d. Flemish. George actually received the following coins : 19 Hanham, The Celys and Their World, 121–9.



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93 Andrews at 4s. 6d. each 18½ crowns at 5s. 4d. 6 Venetian ducats and 2 salutes at 5s. 6d. 1 Rhenish gulden at 4s. 4d. 5 Utrecht gulden at 4s. and £8 0s. 2d. in double briquets at 4½d.20 All this in George’s calculations came to £37 5s. 8d. Flemish, so he gave the purchaser change in 12 Guilhelmus (coins minted by William VI of Holland) valued at 4s. 4d. each and 14d. in small coins.21 The terms on which the credit part of this particular transaction would be concluded are not recorded, but they can be inferred from those of other bargains. One issue that often arose was the way in which exchange rates might move between the agreement for sale and the final payment on a deal at one of the Burgundian marts. The Calais rates, which were used in the town itself, were set out on a table displayed in the lower hall of the Place, the common name of the Staple Hall at Calais, and might differ quite widely from those in use at the marts. These were usually promulgated by the duke of Burgundy at the opening of the mart and were then used in all transactions taking place there. This was yet one more factor a wool merchant had to take into account when making a bargain. He could make an overall loss on a transaction if his estimation of the movement of exchange rates was wrong, something that still causes problems in a modern business environment. This was, of course, quite a different matter from the need to have confidence in a customer and his ability to meet his bills when they were presented. The Celys conducted much of their business with a small group of well-known merchants, usually from Bruges. Their largest customer was John de Lopez, presumably of Spanish or Portuguese origin but very well established in Flanders and able to purchase large quantities of wool. De Lopez was certainly involved in a complicated deal with the Celys in 1484, which allows an unusually close look at the way the Staple system operated in practice rather than in theory. Among the Cely papers is a group of documents that were closely examined by the Chancery clerks at the time of the original lawsuit and seem to demonstrate that George Cely was deliberately falsifying his accounts in respect of a deal with de Lopez. There are two separate accounts relating to this wool sale among the papers, and also a separate report from William Cely sent to London from Calais at the time. A close comparison of all three makes clear that the deal as reported by William has not been accounted for accurately in George’s personal ‘book’. Disentangling 20 The various coins in the list can be identified as follows : Andrew, a Burgundian gold coin with the cross of St Andrew on the obverse ; crowns, probably French gold coins ; Rhenish and Utrecht gulden, gold coins struck by the Rhineland Electors or the bishop of Utrecht : both ducats and salutes were Venetian gold coins. Double briquets were Burgundian silver coins. Hanham, The Celys and Their World, 177 table 3, sets out the valuation of gold coins used in Calais in Flemish shillings and pence. 21 Ibid., 179. The transaction itself can be found in TNA C47/15, fol. 11.

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the differences between English and Calais wool weights and the currencies used is no easy matter. The purpose of what is quite an elaborate deception is also obscure, until it is realised that what is at stake is not an attempt to defraud either de Lopez or Richard, George’s partner, but to cover up a breach of the regulations imposed on its members by the Staple Company. George had apparently sold a large quantity of wool to de Lopez, all on credit, with the payment eventually due in London bills. In 1484 the Company had put in place a ban on credit sales, and always discouraged payments in London since this made it hard for the Company to discharge its obligation to pay the garrison’s wages.22 The Company members might approve such regulations in a session of their court, but did not always obey them if they operated to harm their own personal business. Other aspects of the wool trade and the conduct of business at the marts, however, were probably an enjoyable part of the business life of the Calais Staplers. The safety of the journey to Antwerp or Bergen op Zoom on horseback from Calais worried the partners in London, and the merchants usually travelled in a group. Once there, as well as conducting their own business and seeking out their debtors, Staplers like George more or less invariably had a large number of commissions to fulfil for family, friends and business contacts. Everyday goods and exotic luxuries from all over the known world could be bought at these marts, with far more choice than was available in Calais or London. One list exists in the Cely papers of the goods bought by George at the Cold mart at Bergen op Zoom in 1482. He spent a total of £10 4s. 7d. on everything from corals, furs, a tapestry or bed-covering in the fashionable verdure pattern (twining leaves and stems), a lute and lute strings and 3 ells of satin to salmon and tunny (cured or salted in a barrel). Earlier, in 1478, a friend called Shipden commissioned him to buy printed books including one called Belial, a satire about the devil, suing in the heavenly courts over the possession of souls. The Staplers also frequently travelled to Bruges itself. This was not only where many of their customers had their base but was also a banking centre. There was a large English community of merchants and clothiers in the town, so that important contacts could be made and friendships flourished. The Staplers seem to have frequented particular inns in the town, and they would often carry out commissions for one another as they did at the marts. In 1482 George was in Bruges for more than six weeks, staying at the ‘Shepys Clawe’ (the English version of the Flemish name, which in fact translates as the ‘Sheep’s Head’), and paying extra for a fire and a glass window in his room.23 It was also at Bruges that the Staplers made contact with wisselers, Flemish money-changers and bankers, who could provide cash for bills and also arrange the transfer of money to London. The question of the role of interest on the sums involved in all these 22 A detailed exposition of this ‘fraud’, including a transcription of some of the key entries in the accounts, can be found in A. Hanham, ‘“Make a careful examination” : Some Fraudulent Accounts in the Cely Papers’, Speculum, 48 (1973), 313–24. 23 Hanham, The Celys and Their World, 219.



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transactions is difficult to determine, since the practice of usury was outlawed by the Church. However, it seems that by manipulation of the exchange rate used by the receiver of a loan and that used when it was repaid, what amounted to covert interest could be charged. The rates varied according to the mart ; at the Sinxen mart at Antwerp in 1480 between 2.5 per cent and 4.4 per cent of the sum lent was charged.24 Looking at the way the Staplers operated in the wool trade in the later fifteenth century, one view of their activities lays emphasis on their extreme conservatism. They were quite happy to deal with two separate systems of wool weights in England and in Calais, with neither being used anywhere else. They only used the more up-to-date banking methods, used in international trade by the Italians, in an emergency. The collection of debts from customers at the marts was a somewhat ramshackle system, largely operating on a customary basis. Yet for all this, it permitted the Company to discharge its obligations and its members in the main to enjoy a reasonable standard of living in what was certainly a demanding way of business.25 In Calais itself, many of the Staplers, who do not seem to have usually brought their families to live in the town, took lodgings with a local family. Although George Cely himself owned a property in the town with a yard and a stable,26 he also lived in lodgings ; in 1479, with a widow, Mrs Bornell.27 At this time he was still unmarried and was open to all the temptations of the town. As might be imagined in a place containing a large body of soldiers, as well as merchants, their clerks and apprentices, there were plenty of opportunities to meet young women. George received a carefully composed declaration of love from a certain Clare writing in French. ‘Tout le Coer de Clare est à vous Jorge Cely, tous jour en mon Coer’, she declared and demanded that George should write to her. She mentions that she had given George a token at table (‘ceste ensaigne que je vous dissoye à la table que je vous enuoraye vne letter’) that she would write to him. We cannot say whether this is a hint at a decorous evening spent at a family dinner, or a glance across the table in some tavern. George’s servant Bartholomew brought the letter with a token to prove its authenticity. The fact that the letter is in French may indicate rather closer relations with the French neighbours of Calais than is often thought to be the case.28 The back of a business letter about the sale of fells, from John Dalton, a Cely factor, includes the words of a lovesong, also in French, which may be connected with an evening spent with Clare. It is a drinking song in dialogue form, which would have allowed plenty of opportunity for a young couple to enjoy themselves.29 24 Hanham, The Celys and Their World, 191. 25 A more detailed discussion of the financial aspects of the Staplers’ business can be found in A. Hanham, ‘Foreign Exchange and the English Wool Merchants in the Late Fifteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 46 (1973), 160–75. 26 The Cely Papers, 192. 27 The Cely Letters, letter 28. 28 Ibid., letter 54 ; Hanham, The Celys and Their World, 49–50. 29 The text runs in Hanham’s translation : ‘I drink to you Mademoiselle / I pledge you sir /

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In the early 1480s, before his marriage, George seems to have had at least one other liaison in Calais, which was discreetly referred to in letters from Dalton and William Cely. These concern a woman called Margery, who seems to have borne George at least two children, both of whom died in infancy. The first is mentioned in a letter from Richard to George in Calais describing Richard and his father sitting in the new orchard, presumably of the family house in Essex, with Richard the younger explaining to his father ‘aull as hyt whos’ in Calais and the father being ‘rhyt sory for the dethe of the schylde’.30 The father’s compassion for his son’s loss shows understanding for a young man away from home and left to his own devices. News of the second child comes first from a letter from William Cely to George in London telling him that ‘Margery’ wants a new dress for her churching ‘as sche hadd the toder tyme’. Sadly, a letter dated sixteen days later told George that Margery’s (and we must presume his) daughter had ‘past to Godd’. The baby ‘hadd a grett pang : what sycknesse hytt was I cannot say’, William concluded.31 The fact that the Staplers had liaisons with women in Calais seemed to be generally treated in a matter-of-fact way, even if worthy of mention in a letter. Two other letters reported that the woman renowned for her ‘good podyngys’ was with child, but the father was said to be not George but another Stapler, identified as the man who bought an Irish dagger from John Dalton.32 The fact that George Cely enjoyed singing with Clare is not surprising, since among the Cely papers is an account of the money he spent on music and dancing lessons and on repairs to his instruments, apparently the harp and the lute. The payments were incurred in 1471–3 and were made to one Thomas Rede, said to be a harper at Calais. He taught George dance-tunes and songs, things that would be very welcome in company.33 He does not seem to have had any official position, so it might be presumed that there was enough interest in music in the town for him to earn his living from lessons and the like. The songs George learnt can for the most part be identified with surviving pieces. John Paston had also sent for his instrument when a member of the garrison at much the same time.34 Perhaps both soldiers and the younger merchants spent their leisure time together playing and singing around tavern fires in the winter and outside on summer evenings. The songs they sang, including Myn hertis lust and O rosa bella (both by the composer John Bedyngham), give the impression that because you are so pretty / I drink to you mademoiselle / I feel love in its spark / which pierces me through the heart / I drink to you mademoiselle / I pledge you sir.’ The Celys and Their World, 50. 30 The Cely Letters, letter 117 31 Ibid., letters 181, 188. 32 Ibid., letters 141, 142. 33 The accounts are printed in A. Hanham, ‘The Musical Studies of a Fifteenth Century Wool Merchant’, The Review of English Studies, n.s. 8 (1957), 271–4. For further information on the songs, see D. Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999), 56, 58, 59, 60, 65, 385, 550. 34 John Paston II to John Paston III, 22 Nov. 1473 ; Paston Letters, i : 472



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their company included young women. There is another verse scribbled on an odd scrap of paper that perhaps expresses some regret at the possible outcome of such pastimes. The writing has been interpreted to mean, ‘To waste thy substance at night and repent in the morning. If he sorrowed at eve as he does in the morning, many a man would ride on horseback who now goes on foot.’35 Archery provided another way of occupying the young men at Calais. In August 1478, a match was arranged by the married Staplers resident in Calais, challenging the bachelors to a competition, with a dinner costing 12d. a man as the prize. One doubts if this was enough to divert the Staplers’ younger colleagues from the other pleasures in the town.36 Calais was not devoid of the jealousies and quarrels that easily grow among a relatively isolated population where the majority are competing in the same field of activity. On one occasion, as Richard wrote to George in September 1478, a friend of the Celys had left a large bundle of goods in his wool-house in ‘Schewsrete’ while he went back to London. The wool-house had been broken into, a casket taken out of the bundle and its contents stolen. A servant had gone into the yard, found the window open and looking in saw canvas, linen cloth, chair covers, knives and other things strewn about. The Company officials had ordered everything to be packed up again and taken into the Staple Hall, otherwise these goods might also have been stolen during the night.37 A more personal disagreement with a certain Botrell in January 1481 led him to throw dung into the Celys’ wool-house through an open window hoping to spread it all over their stock of fells. Joyse Parmenter, one of their servants, got a man ‘wyth a donge forke in hys hand to caste the dong aside’, but Botrell beat him up and spread the dung about to the damage of the stock. Parmenter’s reaction was to get together a group of other Staplers to bear witness to the damage, asking them to breakfast first, so there would be support for the Celys in any claim for compensation.38 Botrell was evidently punished for these ‘discourtesies’, as Parmenter called his behaviour, for in August of the same year he was let out of prison and warned to ‘voyde the town of Cales and the Marches, wyffe, chyldern and goodes by Friday nexte noon, payn of deth’. William Cely was confident that in these circumstances his employers would soon regain possession of one of their wool-houses. A dispute over this may have been the root of the trouble.39 The Celys, like many of their contemporaries, found comfort in the practices and liturgies of the church, but as far as one can tell it was not a matter of great personal concern. The appropriate ceremonies should be properly performed in the accepted manner, but there was little room for a more introspective approach in their busy lives. In September 1476 George Cely was asked by his brother Robert to buy two vernicles for a friend, like those recently given to 35 Hanham, ‘The Musical Studies’, 274. 36 The Cely Letters, letter 29. 37 Ibid., letter 34. 38 Ibid., letters 140, 142. 39 Ibid., letter 185.

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St Olave’s, Hart Street, in London, probably at one of the marts in Flanders.40 The fine Flanders work on the vernicles may have been admired in London.41 A letter from 1479 records the death of ‘your man wyth your akys’ at Calais and reassures George that a mass and derge and ‘all ye ryghtys a Cresten man schuld haue’ have been duly performed.42 The salutations in the letters tend to be conventional and formulaic ; ‘thanks be to God’ or ‘by the grace of God’ and the like. William Cely addresses both brothers in the most formal terms as ‘right worshipful sirs and my reverent masters’, concluding his letters only with the phrase ‘by yowre servuant William Cely’. Even a certain Thomas Kesten, writing a masterful begging-letter to the Celys in 1484 when he was in considerable financial difficulties, only writes that he promises ‘as I am a Christende to pay you and euery man as sone as I can’, with the hope that ‘if God and you my goode maysterys wolde helpe me wyth your goode worde and wylle wpon a goode mareage I myght the soner helpe bothe you and oder’.43 In Calais itself, the towers of the two major parish churches of St Nicholas and St Mary dominated the view of the town from the sea, together with the towers of the town hall and the Staple Hall. St Nicholas’s Church was near the castle and probably that most in favour with the garrison. It was there that Richard II married Isabel of France in November 1395. St Mary’s also stood within the walls and was more closely connected with the town and the burgesses. In 1462 it acquired a new bell, later known as La belle anglaise, in all probability bought with donations from merchants ; there is no evidence, however, that the Celys donated any gifts to this church or in fact ever attended it. Their loyalty was to St Olave’s, Hart Street, in London, perhaps an unmistakeable indication of how they identified themselves. Their true base was in London, and they were Londoners. Other Staplers divided their loyalties. Thomas Betson left money to repair the rood loft at All Hallows, Barking by the Tower, in London but also £30 to the ‘garnishing of the Staple Chapel in St Mary’s to buy some jewel’.44 This church could also play a role in public affairs ; it was here that George duke of Clarence was married to Isabella Neville in 1469 by the archbishop of York, the earl of Warwick’s brother, an occasion celebrated with enormous pomp and expense.45 There were few other religious buildings in the town, the most notable being a Carmelite convent. There was nothing comparable to the cathedral at Saint-Omer or the many churches and religious foundations in Bruges. More revealing of their personal tastes and the amenities of the town are the 40 The Cely Letters, letter 5. 41 A vernicle was an embroidered or woven representation of the face of Christ on a cloth, representing that traditionally used by St Veronica to wipe Christ’s face on the way to Calvary. 42 The Cely Letters, letter 75. 43 Ibid., letter 219. 44 C. Carpenter, Introduction to Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483 (Cambridge, 1996), p. xxix. 45 Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, 232. Hicks locates the marriage in the castle, but there was no suitable chapel there for the celebration by an archbishop of a nuptial mass that had strong political implications and needed to be publicly advertised.



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petty-cash accounts that can be found mixed in with more important matters in the Cely papers. One is an account for food for a week at Lent. This includes a very wide range of both fish and shellfish, everything from oysters and mussels to salmon, green fish, eels, cockles and porpoise. These were cooked with cinnamon, spices, herbs, mustard and vinegar. During the week, the Celys entertained guests on four occasions, including on one evening the master lieutenant (the deputy of the mayor of the Staple and the leading official of the Company in the town). The total cost came to 39s. Flemish ; these seem to have been lighthearted occasions, though one wonders precisely what was implied by the entry ‘lent Allsson to pay for wymnen 4s. 6d. Flemish’.46 George Cely, and to a lesser extent his brother Richard, were also extremely interested in hawks and horses. It almost seems as if the obtaining of well-trained hawks from contacts in the Netherlands was a minor part of their business, so frequently were they asked to fulfil a commission of this kind. William Cely wrote to the brothers in September 1482, complaining how expensive goshawks had become in Calais, three or four nobles a hawk. Similarly, earlier in the same year, he reported how John Dalton had bought a new young horse at the fair in Oldenburgh ‘of a gray colour and he is but young for he was never broken yet’, but he thinks he will develop as well as Bayard, another horse that seems to have been a great favourite. All this is a reminder that while the occupation of Stapler in Calais at this period was a way of life requiring good business sense and acute awareness of fluctuations in the market, the merchants could enjoy hawking in the marshes of the Pale and derive pleasure from owning a good horse much as they would have done on their estates in England. Perhaps surprisingly, the garrison hardly features in the Cely correspondence, except with regard to negotiations with the Staple authorities over their pay. The assumption might be that the merchants had little contact with or interest in the soldiers, although on the other hand, since the Celys’ correspondence is mainly about their wool business, frequent mentions of the garrison would not be expected. What evidence there is suggests that the merchants and soldiers had relatively good relations at this time. A letter of November 1480 from William Maryon to George Cely at Calais raised the possibility that George might be tempted to join up with his friends in the garrison (‘seche sowdyerys as ye be aquaynted wythall’)47 if war were to break out at this time. William Cely also wrote to George two years later, explaining how he had assured the contact with a possible bride for George that those who knew him in Calais ‘both merchauntys and soudeers commend yow grettly sayng yf that gentellwoman schuld be worth dubbell that sche ys ye were worthy to hawe her’.48 More generally, there is also evidence that the merchant community lent money on a personal basis to the soldiers. George himself was willing to lend against pledges (he lent 6s. 8d. to one soldier against a cameo), while William Cely reported to George 46 The Cely Papers, item 137, pp. 188–91. 47 The Cely Letters, letter 110. 48 Ibid., letter 215.

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and Richard in London on a complicated situation regarding the repayment of a debt for £60 incurred by one John Garnett, soldier.49 Since it is clear how closely both the business activities and the family loyalties of merchants like the Celys linked them to London, an issue of some importance is the ease with which communications could be maintained between Calais and London, one indication being the time taken to exchange letters, or to travel from one to the other. As far as business letters are concerned, the speed of the post was always a matter of interest. Correspondents tended to record carefully what letters had been received and by what route, so that any that seemed to be missing could be traced. In the spring of 1482, on 2 April, Richard Cely informed his brother George at Calais that he had received a letter written on 27 March.50 At the end of the month the post was even quicker ; William Maryon in London wrote on 20 April that he had received a letter written on 15 April at Calais.51 This looks like a reasonable service, but delays could occur. William Cely at Calais, writing to his master George at Bergen-opZoom on 23 April, noted anxiously that, though he had sent letters to London ‘at every passage’, none had come from London in the last few days.52 It was not until 2 May that he could inform him that letters had finally come through from London, written on 22 April.53 In the month of April 1482, as another example, George received a total of twelve letters in the surviving collection. This evidence is, of course patchy ; there is no way of knowing if many more letters were, in fact, sent or received, but from those that do survive this brief survey conveys the impression that in normal circumstances the postal arrangements worked well and caused little real anxiety. When delays did cause anxiety to Richard and George in London in October and November 1483, the reason was not the dilatoriness of William Cely in Calais in answering their queries, or storms in the Channel, but the fact that a close watch was being kept on the Channel crossing by Richard III’s officers at the time of the Buckingham rebellion, and ‘no man that yeed that would bear any letters for searching’.54 As far as the journey to and from Calais goes, this again was not a source of great anxiety. There is some evidence that travellers came up the Thames to the city, after staying at one of the outlying suburban villages, rather than going overland the whole way from Dover. This was certainly the case in an account of daily expenses from the 1480s. The accountant is one of George Cely’s servants or apprentices, perhaps William. He accounts for boat hire up and down river between Woolwich and London on frequent occasions and also includes payment for the wherryman. It was only 1d. to go by river to the city, cheaper than getting shaved (4d.) or having shoes mended (3d.).55 49 The Cely Letters, letter 217. 50 Ibid., letter 148. 51 Ibid., letter 153. 52 Ibid., letter 156. 53 Ibid., letter 160. 54 Hanham, The Celys and their World, 302 ; The Cely Letters, letter 201. 55 TNA, PRO, C47/37/16, fol. 28.



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Calais was of course of political and strategic importance to the English as well as the centre of a vital component of English trade. Is there evidence that at this period the Staplers were made unduly anxious by the situation of their commercial base and the shifting alliances of this borderland between France and Burgundy ? In some ways it is hard to come to a definite conclusion on this point. Many of the letters include snippets of news about the current relationship between neighbouring rulers or rumours of raids and the like. It was, however, expected of a letter-writer at this time that bits of news would be included at the end of any missive. In the absence of more formal ways of getting news, this was obviously welcomed by the recipients. Thus William Cely finished a letter to Richard and George in December 1483 with news of a skirmish off Calais between some English ships and a mixed French and Breton fleet. The Bretons fled, but thirty sail were taken from the French by Calais ships. His disgust is reserved for the English ships that let the Bretons escape. Similarly in January 1487 he goes into some detail about the state of affairs in Bruges and Ghent and the burgesses’ quarrel with their ruler the King of the Romans (that is, Maximilian). His anxiety, however, is strictly commercial ; he thinks that a conclusion of the trouble will be to the great benefit of English trade ; he finishes by saying news has just arrived of ambassadors from Bruges and Ghent going to Maximilian to sue for peace ; and, that done (he says), ‘shall an embassy come from thence into England in as possible haste as may be to make a good peace’.56 The life of a wool merchant in the latter decades of the fifteenth century in Calais was, therefore, busy and exacting but also provided many opportunities for making new contacts and savouring new experiences. The control that the Company had over merchants and their activities might be irksome at times, but it had been part of the conditions of the trade for over one hundred years by the time the Act of Retainer was agreed. The Calais merchants had to be aware of the negotiations with the Crown over the method of paying the garrison, or over the ‘surplusage’ that it was hoped would be available in any one year, but this was perhaps less of an interruption to trade than the erratic and sudden demands for loans to the Crown that had been frequently made before 1466. In Calais itself the Staplers formed a distinct community a little apart both from those permanent residents who were burgesses and from the garrison. Their factors and apprentices might be long-term residents in the town, but the Company members themselves travelled continually back and forth across the Channel. In their hearts they seem to have remained Londoners for the most part, but, nevertheless, Calais society could be agreeable, with many opportunities for the energetic and enterprising in merchant circles as in military ones. 56 The Cely Letters, letter 240.

7 R e l i g i o u s a n d p o l i t i c a l ch a n ge : H e n ry V II, H e n ry V III a n d t he R ef o rm at i o n

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T

he way in which Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had used his tenure of the Captaincy of Calais to establish a base in the town, which could serve the purpose of advancing his personal interests rather than those of the Crown, provided a lesson to Edward IV and subsequent rulers that they were not eager to forget. Edward and his successors tied the town and its forces much more closely to allegiance to the Crown. Those who would once have been called Captain were now designated Lieutenant (from 1471) or Deputy (after 1508) ; their power and authority clearly came from the king and were dependent on his approval. It is debatable to what extent these changes reflected wider developments in the governance of the whole realm of England or were driven by the particular circumstances of Calais itself. It was beyond the seas, surrounded by the territory of both the Empire and France, but its great value to England was not doubted. Official documents often included phrases describing the town as a jewel among the possessions of the king of England. A poem written not long after the fall of the town to the English in 1347 described it as ‘Caleys that ryall towne / ever yt mot wel cleve / Unto the crown of mery Yngland.’1 The writer of the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, around 1436, called it and Dover the ‘tweyne eyne to kepe the narowe see’,2 and the key to English prosperity. The Venetian ambassador Giovanni Michele reported in 1557 to the Senate of Venice that without Calais, the English ‘would not only be shut out 1 Quoted in D. Grummitt, ‘ “One of the mooste pryncypall treasours belonging to his realme of Englande” : Calais and the Crown, c.1450–1558’, in D. Grummitt (ed.), The English Experience in France, c.1450–1558 : War Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange, (Aldershot, 2002), 48. The original poem can be found in Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History Composed during the Period from the Accession of Edward III to that of Richard II, ed. T. Wright (2 vols. ; London, 1824–46), ii : 226. 2 G. Warner (ed.), The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (Oxford, 1926), 2.



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from the continent but also from the commerce and intercourse of the world’, becoming ‘dependent upon the will and pleasure of other sovereigns’ for access to other lands.3 In these circumstances, the question of the way the town and the Marches should be ruled, and the links between these areas and the remainder of the realm, remained a live issue for the Crown till the end of English rule. What were the precise intentions of Henry VII and Henry VIII with regard to the governance of Calais ? Was the system in place under earlier fifteenthcentury monarchs continued with only minor changes ? Or was a new style of government for Calais but one aspect of a design to establish a more centralised and coherent system of government in all parts of the English realm ? Were changes introduced in reaction to events, or were they part of some plan, perhaps associated with a notable individual royal servant like Thomas Cromwell ? At this period there is a much better chance of attempting to answer questions like these because of the rather different and more copious evidence surviving from this period compared with that for earlier decades. Until the closing decades of the fifteenth century, most evidence for the government of Calais comes from Exchequer accounts and the principal classes of Chancery writs. While there are, as we have seen, also some private business and family letters, there are few informal documents relating to public affairs. From the 1490s, the accounting methods used for Calais change, with the surviving documents in a different format. There is also a much larger body of material relating to things like landholdings in the Pale and the town, the local regulations for the town and the state of the fortifications. A great many more informal state papers, letters and reports also survive. Two large collections of the letters of Lords Deputy, those of Lord Lisle,4 in office from 1533 to 1540, and those of Lord Cobham from 1544 to 15505 also exist. This body of material allows a much better idea to be gained of the aims of policies affecting Calais, and their relation to the political situation in England in general, often matters of speculation in the earlier years. In many ways the last years of the fifteenth century and the opening years of the sixteenth were a quiet period for Calais. Henry VII, as a Lancastrian, was of course well aware that the town had supported the Yorkists from the 1460s, but he also knew that in 1484 the authorities in the town had been suspected of complicity in the rebellion against Richard III led by the duke of Buckingham, and that the garrison of Hammes had gone over to support the Tudor claim to the throne at the end of the same year.6 Most of those appointed to administrative and military posts in the town and the Pale by Richard III remained in post 3 The report is quoted in J. G. Nichols (ed.), The Chronicle of Calais in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII to the year 1540 (London, 1846), pp. xxv–xxvi. 4 The Lisle papers were seized when Lord Lisle was arrested and put in the tower in 1540. They are now in TNA as SP 3, vols. 1–18. A large selection was edited by M. St Clare Byrne and published in 1981 in six volumes (The Lisle Letters, Chicago, 1981) ; this was followed by a single-volume edition aimed at the general reader, The Lisle Letters, selected and arranged by Bridget Boland (London and Chicago, 1983). 5 BL Harley MSS 283–4. 6 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 57–8.

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until the 1490s. A residual fear that Calais could become a base for a rival regime perhaps motivated the removal of some office holders at the height of the Perkin Warbeck affair. Sir Thomas Thwaytes, the Treasurer, was in fact convicted of treason in 1495, and Adrian Whetehill, the Comptroller, was bound in recognisance and fined £200 on suspicion of complicity in support for Warbeck. It has been argued that the majority of those appointed to major offices at this time, and, similarly, many of those holding minor posts as well, were members of the king’s household and thus stood towards the king in a special relationship. Some have seen this as something akin to the building of an affinity, and a continuation of the system once known as bastard feudalism. Many historians, perhaps inadvertently, convey a sense of disapproval of this way of appointing royal officers, implying that decisions were too closely based on personal connections instead of ideas of merit and the like. This, in their view, ensured that public life could only too easily become dominated by factions headed by prominent individuals, and the quarrels between them. This interpretation perhaps misunderstands the nature of government and personal connections in a small but hierarchical society. At any one time the ‘pool’ from which a ruler could select those to serve him was limited. In a society where travel and communication in general were slow and often unreliable, personal links were all important. Where else but at court, or in the household of a prominent noble, would a rising administrator gain the experience needed for more important appointments ? Some might advance through the Church, but would also need the all-important personal recommendation when an appointment was being made. The idea of good lordship, of needing and receiving support form a social superior, while in turn providing something similar to inferiors, could be found at all levels of society. The Pastons, with their endless complex legal problems exemplify this need in the fifteenth century. In the Lisle letters, the modes of address from inferiors to superiors demonstrate similar attitudes : Lisle’s servants describe themselves in letters as ‘your lordship’s most bounden during life’ or ‘your lordship’s most bownden servant’.7 Showing much the same attitude, in an earlier period, William Cely usually addresses George and Richard, his employers, ‘Right worshipful masters after due recommendation I lowly recommend me unto your masterships’.8 Social deference was expected and expressed and was the norm of a society held together by personal bonds. These, however, only became a source of disharmony or even conflict if those in authority were weak or indecisive. Open disloyalty to the monarch was something that very few would undertake lightly. A more bureaucratic professionalism could easily come into being alongside this personal system, as administration itself devel-

7 This is the usual form of salutation used in letters from people like John Husee to either Lord or Lady Lisle. 8 Salutation used commonly in the letters from William Cely to his two employers ; Cely Letters, passim.



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oped, with better systems and methods of record keeping, without necessarily replacing it. Given Henry VII’s reputation for financial acumen, it is not surprising that the accounting system for Calais underwent changes during his reign. The Calais accounts until 1489 had gone through the normal Exchequer route, finally being enrolled on the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer’s Rolls of Foreign Accounts. From this date, however, the Treasurer of Calais presented his accounts at the king’s Chamber, where they were scrutinised and accepted as ‘declared’ accounts. Instead of the cumbersome rolls previously used, the Calais declared accounts can be found from 1489/90 in large paper folios, many of which have clearly been meticulously checked, as is evidenced by the initials on each page.9 The receipts of the Treasurer included the income from rents and dues arising in Calais and the Pale. The most important element was the money due from the Company of the Staple under the terms of the Act of Retainer of 1466. This was renewed in 1487, with the significant change that the Company would no longer retain any of the ‘surplusage’ over and above the money they were bound to pay from the custom receipts for the maintenance of the Calais garrison. All would now go the king, since the Staplers’ debts from the reigns of Edward IV and earlier had been paid off. As a detailed study of the accounts has made clear, this provision enabled the Company to make regular payments into the Chamber, averaging nearly £2,000 per year. These cash payments were particularly welcome as a source of bullion for the Chamber.10 The king, indeed, found this apparently plentiful source of ready money far too useful to ignore. In the later years of the reign, the Company found itself under heavy pressure to pay large sums into the Chamber, which impinged on its ability to fund the wages and expenses of the garrison at the rate originally laid down. Thus in 1505–9 the Staplers only paid £5,784 per annum to the Treasurer of Calais instead of the £10,022 laid down in the statute ; in the same period a yearly average of £4,020 found its way to the king’s Chamber.11 The final renewal of the Act of Retainer in 1515 placed this diversion of funds on a legal footing ; it was clearly laid down that half the sum of around £10,000 due to the king from the Staplers should go to Calais and the remainder to the king ‘in his chamber, his Exchequer in Westminster or ellis where in suche place and to suche persons as his Grace shall appoynte to his use’.12 This system remained in force until the Staplers found themselves unable to collect the sums required from the customs on wool as the trade itself slipped into decline. From around 1523 the Staplers found themselves in increasing financial difficulties, until by 1532 their debts to the Crown had grown to the sum of £22,163 9s. 10d. The system set up by the Act of Retainer was no longer viable, and the Act itself was suspended in March 1533. The finances of Calais, if it was to be maintained as a military base, if it was 9 The books can be found in TNA at E101/200/16 and DL/28/2 nos. 1–3 for the reign of Henry VII. 10 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 181–2. 11 Ibid., 183. 12 7 Hen VIII cap. 10, quoted ibid., 185.

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in truth a jewel of the English Crown, would have to be re-examined and some new policies devised. Before, however, looking at how Henry VIII and his ministers dealt with this problem, the maintenance of the fabric of the town and the fortifications at the end of the fifteenth century will be examined. The most important building that was constructed in the reign of Henry VII, to a modern observer, is the day watch-tower or Tour de Guet (Figure 2). This is because it alone of all the buildings of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Calais, together with the much damaged and rebuilt Church of Our Lady, survives in a recognisable form. It can clearly be seen on the sixteenth-century views of the town and still today dominates the view from the sea (see Figure 5 in Chapter 8 below). It now stands as a rather forlorn and isolated tower in the midst of a square used mainly as a car park, but originally it was attached to the town hall, the crease of the pitch of its roof bring visible on the east side. In the sixteenth-century view, to the west there was also a more elaborate tower that adorned the Staple Hall (see Figure 4 in Chapter 8 below).13 Not a great deal is known about the appearance of this building, and from about 1499 the Staplers also used the former Princes Inn, which lay behind the old hall, as their headquarters. A rough sketch exists of this after the Staplers had rebuilt it with corner towers and heraldry over the central gateway. It became the Hôtel de Guise after the French reconquest of the town, and some traces of it existed until the almost complete destruction of old Calais in 1940–45.14 The main problem facing those charged with maintaining the fortifications of the town and the other strong works in the Pale, at this period, was how to protect the town or the garrisons against the siege guns and artillery possessed by any likely enemy. Edward IV had tried to ensure that the garrison was well equipped with gunpowder weapons of all kinds.15 There may in fact have been more ordnance available in the town and its outlying fortresses, in his reign, than in the Tower of London, the base of the Master of the Ordnance, but little had been done to adapt the walls to withstand the onslaught of the improved bombards and other siege guns of the period. The old castle to the north-west of the town still had only the high stone walls usual before the later fifteenth century ; these could not stand for more than a very short time against the bombardment of the improved artillery of the period. The usual remedy was to reinforce the walls and ramparts with extensive earthworks, which could absorb the force of the missiles hurled against them. They might also be lowered in height and provided with large platforms or outworks on which guns could be mounted. In Calais, it was also essential to keep the moats, waterworks and sluices in repair, since these waterways were also an important element in the defence of the town. 13 The place of this tower in modern views of the town has been taken by the tower of the Hôtel de Ville, constructed in the early nineteenth century. 14 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, iii : 339. 15 The whole issue of the use of artillery at this period is discussed in D. Grummitt, ‘The Defence of Calais and the Development of Gunpowder Weaponry in England in the Late Fifteenth Century’, War in History, 7 (2000), 253–72.



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Figure 2. The day watch-tower, built by Henry VII, which presides over the marketplace of modern Calais. It is the only substantial building surviving from the period of English rule.

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Between 1492 and 1502, the moat or ditch between the Milkgate and the Beauchamp tower, on the seaward side of the town immediately behind the East jetty, was dug out and provided with a new countremure or brick facing. The day watch-tower was newly built, and repairs were undertaken to the castle and some of the outlying forts like that at Hammes. The windows were repaired in several of the buildings in royal ownership in the town, while the waterworks at times needed emergency repairs, for example in the winter of 1489/90 when yet another old hulk was sunk in the watercourse at Newenham Bridge to try and alleviate the effects of storm damage. The repairs to the castle do not seem to have done anything to remedy its ‘old-fashioned’ defences but were in part concerned with displaying emblems associated with the Tudors, including two ‘gret red rosis’. A similar rose with ‘a crowne over it’ was placed over the Lantern gate, the main entrance to the town from the sea. King’s beasts, in this case a dragon and a greyhound, were also placed on the quayside by the gate.16 Thirty-six tons of expensive Caen stone (which had to be transported by sea from Normandy) were used in ‘the Counsail chambre at Calais for a fayre fore front of a batilment with rosis, portculyoses and ostrisfethers’.17 It could be argued that this display of emblems, intended to signify the permanence and stability of the Tudor dynasty, was not wasteful ; Calais was a centre of diplomatic encounters and negotiations as well as a military base, and in the early 1500s this function was of great importance, while an attack from either the French or the imperial forces was relatively unlikely. The work-force needed to undertake these works was relatively large and, given a total population in Calais of around 4,500, formed a significant element in the town. It has been estimated that over 700 individual workmen were employed by the Crown at Calais between 1489 and 1497, excluding the skilled masons, plumbers and carpenters who were permanent members of the garrison. Many of these men worked for only a few days for the Crown, but, even so, these figures give some idea of the availability of labour in the town and the importance of the royal works as a source of casual employment. There were also some workmen whose main source of income was the Crown, for example the nine labourers who worked for a whole year on the ditch and the countremure. From the form of their surnames, a large proportion of the workers had Flemish or Germanic origins ; names like de Heer, Easterling, Hansman, or those beginning with the particle ‘van’ certainly point to this. Some were perhaps men who lived in the Pale itself ; others may have been drawn to Calais from further afield by the availability of work.18 In general, however, Henry VII’s reign marked a period of peace for Calais. 16 These beasts, which also included the lion and the antelope, were a frequent feature of royal buildings constructed at this period ; for example, St George’s Chapel, Windsor. 17 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, iii : 341, quoting TNA E101/201/17. 18 This paragraph is based on an analysis of the details of workmen contained in TNA E101/200/17 and DL/28/2 nos. 1–3, the declared accounts of the Treasurer of Calais covering the period 1489–97. This is contained in S. Rose, ‘The Royal Works at Calais in the Reign of Henry VII’ (MA dissertation, University of London, 1991).



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The attention of France was focused on northern Italy rather than its own northern frontier, and, while there were trade disputes with the imperial authorities in the Netherlands and tensions caused in the early 1490s by Margaret of Austria’s support for her supposed nephew, the impostor Perkin Warbeck, these did not seriously threaten armed intervention in the Pale. It has in fact been suggested that ‘in the early sixteenth century Calais society was no longer dominated by war’.19 On Henry VII’s death, however, Calais itself became an important factor in policies put forward by Henry VIII and his ministers, and the town was affected not only by Henry’s view of his relations with France and the Empire, and the way in which he conceived of his role as king, but also by religious affairs and the tumult of the Reformation. Although expenditure at the beginning of the reign was very low, money was once more made available to spend on improvements and repairs at Calais a little before Henry’s expedition to France in the summer of 1513. His arrival in the port at the head of an army of 11,000 men recalled, as it was perhaps intended to, the great days of Edward III and Henry V, although the only actions undertaken were sieges of Tournai and Thérouanne. At this time, work was undertaken on the Falconbridge bulwark and the bulwarks and great wall behind the castle. These bulwarks were outworks intended to strengthen the old walls. They were usually faced with stone or brick work, but provided defence in depth rather than height, with a central core of earth or rubble to absorb the force of artillery. Each was also provided with a gun platform with defensive loops. The earliest examples of this kind of defensive works tended to be round, while those designed in the later sixteenth or seventeenth centuries had complex diamond-shaped exterior forms, intended to create a clear field of fire in all directions. Improvements like those undertaken in the 1490s were also made to the ditch on the north side of the town. Altogether it seems some £5,500 was spent on the Calais fortifications between 1511 and 1521.20 This was, however, nowhere near enough money to give Calais proper protection and modernised fortifications. The State Papers include a continual stream of reports both from those in authority in the town and from special commissioners, complaining that the town’s defences were insufficient or in bad repair. In 1521, 1526, 1527 and 1528 these complaints came to the Council. In 1527 it was Wolsey himself who reported that the town was ‘in no litel disorder . . . clerely unfurnished of tymbre ston borde and of every thing requisite for the same’.21 Storms in the Channel, which had caused such problems in the 1430s and the winter of 1489/90, were again responsible for a breach in the dunes near Newenham Bridge and damage to a new wharf in the harbour. The authorities made lists of the repairs that were needed, but there is little evidence that these were undertaken until 1530, when £1,400 was spent on work to the harbour and the flood defences at Newenham Bridge. This was probably the result of 19 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 147. 20 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, ii : 342–3. 21 Ibid., 344.

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the appointment of a new surveyor of the works. The new incumbent of the post, William Lambert, went to London in early 1531 to show the king and the Council his plans for the town. Money was spent, but yet another survey in 1532 revealed that things were still in a bad way. Sections of the walls had fallen down, the wharf at the Lantern gate needed between 600 and 700 tons of timber to be fully protected from storms, while the ditches, as ever, needed to be scoured and rid of accumulated silt and rubbish. The suggested works were estimated to cost £1,200.22 Henry VIII himself was well aware of the situation, since he spent some time in October 1532 in Calais and in the intervals of negotiations with Francis I of France drew up ‘a devyse . . . for the fortificacion of the said towne’. This was addressed to the king’s Almoner Edward Lee and dealt with repairs and improvements to the town’s defences as a whole, and also to the harbour. The king’s plans are detailed and carefully thought out and intended, above all, to add to the ability of Calais to withstand an artillery bombardment from the heaviest guns then made. He suggested that for example ‘Becham’s bulwerke’ should be made ‘so massy that it be not well bateable’. The field of fire of its guns should extend from ‘the see to the mouth of the haven, as alonges the greve to Flanders wardes and the way to Lantern gate’. It should be connected to Beauchamp’s tower by ‘a travers . . . with an arche for the water to pass under . . . for the defence of the brais as for the covering of the sighte of the same soo as no man shall loke nor see alonge the said brais’. Beauchamp’s tower should also be ‘taken downe to the too wyndose at the nether end of the iveys groyng on the same’ and then ‘massied up with lyme and sand, stone rubishe and chalke’, with a gun platform on the top. The king’s scheme then described all the other fortifications at Calais, making the same kind of recommendations ; bulwarks should be ‘massied up’, provided with gun platforms with co-ordinated fields of fire, and often with a light bridge connecting the bulwark to the main walls so that reinforcements could be rushed in or the defenders swiftly withdrawn. His final recommendation was that the whole wall should be repaired with new gun loops and with ‘a rampier of erthe to be laide to the wall as too cartes may goo affront thereupon’ the same height as the wall. With regard to the haven, the king’s concern is focused on the need to strengthen the east jetty and also on the improvement of the sluices and floodgates controlling the waterways around the town. These floodgates themselves should be protected with a travers. He also recommends the provision of earth dikes to protect the low country from flooding by the sea, one going from the sluice in Dikeland (the marshy country immediately around the town) to the high country, and the other protecting the area on either side of the ‘plashe’ at Newenham Bridge. All the earth needed for these dikes should ‘be digged but onely in too places where by reason therof too grete pondes to be made wherin so moche the more water shalbe receyved’.23 22 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, ii : 346. 23 Henry’s ‘device’ is in BL Cotton MS Faustina E VII, pp. 33–8. It has been printed in The



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It has been suggested that Henry had no expectation that his scheme would be implemented in a short space of time. None of his ideas appear in a list of repairs that needed to be carried out, drawn up in 1533 when Lord Lisle became deputy.24 Perhaps Henry’s notoriously fickle attention was engaged more on his religious and personal affairs at this time than on this scheme, or perhaps the amount of money needed to complete the whole programme was too large. Accounts for repairs carried out in the winter of 1533/4 relate mostly to small items of maintenance like repairs to the tiling of the roof of the ordnance house and the King’s Wardrobe and to work on the ‘seabanks’.25 They incidentally provide a picture of how the works were organised ; carts carry chalk and rubble from Scales cliff to the West jetty ; others bring ‘sea turf ’ from the ‘Flomarsh in Dyckland’ to repair the sea banks. Bricks are taken from the ‘Kinges bryckerye at Newname bridge to the Maysons lodge’. Supplies are sent by boat from St Peter’s just outside the walls of Calais to Guisnes, but none of the work carried out was of major importance.26 If the defences had been thoroughly modernised according to the king’s plans, the town would certainly have been in a much better position to resist the French in 1558. Lisle wrote frequently to the Council in London, either complaining that the fortifications were in a dire state of repair or requesting more money or materials when work was authorised. He was well aware of the weakness of the Beauchamp and Dublin towers, and these were in fact rebuilt in 1535 with the reduction in height and the provision of gun platforms that the king had described in his ‘device’. Other recurring problems were the collapse of sections of the walls and the need for repairs to the harbour works. Outside the town itself, he was commanded to level some of the sandhills that had accumulated along the road to Gravelines and could hide the advance of an army from Imperial territory and obstruct the field of fire of the guns on the Calais defences. Sir Edward Ryngeley, the high marshal of Calais, reported to Lisle in June 1534, when he was at Hampton Court on a visit to the king, how he had met the king in the garden there. He had explained to the king how much work was being carried out in the town on the towers and walls, and especially on the sandhills. His letter finished, ‘Sir my poor vice shall be unto your lordship that the drags and plows shall go still upon the sandhills till such a time that you may shoot level over them from the mount at Beauchamp Tower.’27 An earlier letter in May from John Husee, Lisle’s London agent, included a carefully worded section that hinted at the fact that no money had been received for this work ; the king had desired ‘Mr Treasurer to present his hearty thanks to your lordship’, but no money was specifically mentioned.28 Chronicle of Calais, 125–9. 24 J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (eds.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (London, 1862–1910), vi : item 930. 25 Ibid., item 78. 26 Ibid., item 1577. 27 LL ii : letter 212. 28 LL ii : letter 186.

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Despite this apparent royal approval, it could hardly be said that all was well with the general state of the physical defences of the Pale. Two years later, in March 1536, Lisle wrote directly to Thomas Cromwell reporting on a visit to the castle of Guisnes, a vital fortress almost in sight of the French at Ardres. Lisle said that ‘I rode to Guisnes and there . . . have viewed the break of the wall there and as far as we can perceive and see the said wall will fall daily more for the greater part of it that standeth is cloven and every day falleth’. The damage was probably caused by a heavy frost which was also responsible for the collapse of the wall between the Lantern gate and the Water gate at Calais. In Lisle’s view there ‘was no remedy but a new wall must be made on the outside of the same’. This would be 500 feet long and should include a bulwark with a 30 foot gun platform on the top. It would cost £1581 3s. 4d.29 In this case the repairs were put in hand almost at once, with over 400 feet of the new wall built by July. These works became the first phase of an extensive rebuilding programme at Guisnes, which went on from 1536 to 1541 (see Figure 3). There are, in this case, various reports from commissioners and plans made in the years up to 1551, which testify to the work carried on.30 In 1541, when relations with France were tense, miners from Cornwall and Devon were sent over to help in the excavations. There seems to have been a total of over 1,400 men employed on the works which were costing an average of over £1,500 per month. The work slackened off over the winter but was pursued with the same energy in the summers of 1542 and 1543. It might be thought that as a result Guisnes would have been a strongpoint, whose formidable fortifications would have been a real impediment to any attack. Much of the work was, perhaps, of low quality or misconceived (a massive bulwark erected in front of the keep had to be demolished in 1551, possibly because springs had undermined the foundations ; the flooding of the diggings for foundations had caused problems in 1541). In 1552–3, £6,627 5s. 8d. was spent on this fortress, and a further £1,217 the following year.31 When the castle was attacked in 1558, however, it succumbed to an artillery bombardment in less than a week, despite the spirited and vigorous defence of the garrison. Much of the work at Guisnes in the 1540s was undoubtedly a response to the French repair of the fortifications at Ardres. These were less than ten miles from Calais itself and much nearer to Guisnes. Small bulwarks made mainly of earth were also thrown up on the western edges of the Pale as additional strong points and are shown on the maps or ‘platts’ made in 1545 and 1550.32 From 1541 also the money available for works at Calais itself was increased to levels far beyond those pleaded for by Lisle. One calculation puts the total spent by Henry VIII on the fortifications of the Pale at £12,675 between September 1538 29 LL iii : letter 653. 30 There are plans and drawings of the fortifications at Guisnes in BL Cotton MS Augustus I ii, fol. 23, and 71 supplementary 15. Also see Sir P. Egerton (ed.), Life of Lord Grey of Wilton (London, 1846), p. xxiv. 31 Colvin, History of the King’s Works, ii : 367–9. 32 Ibid., 372–5.



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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Figure 3. A drawing of the town and castle of Guisnes, although the whole area within the castle walls is not included. The captions on the drawing itself are in French. The large bulwark shown before the castle walls may be the Mary bulwark, which played an important role in the siege of the castle in 1558. The earth mound that was the core of this outwork is the only feature of the castle now remaining, surmounted by an eighteenth-century clock tower. (BL Cotton MS Augustus I ii, fol. 23)

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and his death in January 1547. A further £30,736 was spent during the reign of Edward VI, making an average of £7,500 per annum for the last twenty years of English rule.33 Was it in truth the ‘strongest town in Christendom’, the phrase used by the duke of Norfolk to a French ambassador in 1541 ?34 There were perhaps good reasons to doubt this. First of all, there were clearly difficulties in obtaining supplies of good quality materials for the works. There were brickworks and lime-kilns in the Pale, but these could not provide all that was needed. The only stone quarried within the same boundaries was a poor sort of chalk rubble from Escalles (Scales Cliff ). This could be used for infilling behind the framework of a wharf or for the core ‘stuffing’ of a bulwark, but it was not suitable for facing stone or the like. Anything of this nature had to be brought over from England or obtained otherwise outside the Pale. The same applied to all timber needed in building except for bundles of faggots, which could be cut in the woods near Guisnes. There are also signs, in Henry VIII’s time, of a shortage of suitable labour ; finding sufficient skilled bricklayers was a particular problem, while the soldiers of the garrison were sometimes brought in to help with general labouring. Lee, the surveyor of the works at Calais, assured Thomas Cromwell in 1539 that he had not found men ‘more willing nor take more paynes than they doo’, but there is room to doubt that this was really the case.35 A couple of years later a Welshman was hanged at Guisnes, convicted of stirring up trouble among the workmen. Another problem, which is constantly referred to in all the documentation concerned with the works, is the nature of the subsoil around the town and the damage caused by the high tides and frequent floods to the system of moats, sluices and ditches that formed a major element in the defences of the town. Deep excavations had to be made to find firm ground on which to build towers or bulwarks. In 1541 at Guisnes it was necessary to dig down twenty-five feet to find firm footing for a new bulwark, and chains of men were employed, trying to drain the water collecting in the pits. On the other hand, the marshy nature of the low country of the Pale could be seen as its best defence. No invading army could advance through the mud and ‘plashes’ of the area and certainly could not bring up its artillery over such soft ground. This was well understood by the commanders of the garrison. In 1534, Sir Robert Wingfield was ordered to reflood the land he had drained for pasture.36 A year earlier, one Gervois de Vader, probably to the great concern of the officers, had reported that he had brought a group of horses with his servants over the marsh at Cowbridge, and found it hard enough to support carts where once it had been impassable. In his view any ‘car may pass over it as in the streets of Calais’.37 The defence of the town also depended on more than the state of its fortifica33 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 167 and note. Colvin, History of the King’s Works, ii : 361. 34 Ibid., 356. 35 Ibid., 353. 36 Letters and Papers, vii : items 431, 1362. 37 Ibid., vi : item 852.



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tions. How well trained and effective was its garrison in the sixteenth century ; were they true fighting men or were they, at least in part, seekers after comfortable jobs ? Had too many members of the permanent garrison successfully petitioned those who could dispense patronage at Calais, and appoint those who caught their eye to a ‘room’, as the phrase went, in the garrison with the wages and other perquisites which belonged to it ? The fighting men who were brought over from the British Isles for particular campaigns in France, usually known as ‘crews’, were often ill disciplined and could cause trouble in the town. In 1523, at the time of the expedition into French territory led by the duke of Suffolk, there was a near riot triggered by a purse being cut in the market square in Calais when a Welsh soldier was buying apples.38 It was some time before calm was restored. Elis Grufydd, a Welsh member of the permanent Retinue, writing of the soldiers sent over to Calais at the end of Henry’s reign, had hardly a good word to say of any of them. Both the soldiers and their officers were fighting from purely mercenary motives. They were ‘the palest and weakest and the least able to look after themselves that ever came out of England’. The only trouble their captains took ‘was to lie with whores in their beds at Calais until dinner time’.39 Grufydd found those who were in the town in 1545 for the campaign against Boulogne to be no better. He described the forces as ‘depraved British and foreign soldiers from all nations under the sun’, including Welsh, English, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scots, Spaniards, Gascons, Portingals, Italians, Arbannoises, Greeks, Turks, Tartars, Almains, Germans, Burgundians and Flemings.40 These were mercenaries, supplementary ‘crews’ sent over for a particular campaign, but it is clear that there had been concern about the permanent members of the garrison, or the Retinue as it was called at this date, for some time. In the late fifteenth century this concern tended to centre on the issue of the loyalty of the garrison to the Crown and fears that a powerful lieutenant or deputy might act like the earl of Warwick and attempt to set up a personal military base in Calais which might be used against the Crown. The way in which Edward IV seemed to tie both command at Calais and membership of the garrison much more closely to himself and the court has already been discussed. The issues in the sixteenth century were somewhat different. Holding a permanent position in the garrison in Calais and the Pale had become desirable. Supplicants wrote to the deputy pleading that they might be considered for any vacancy ; money or valuables probably changed hands frequently in this connection. There are many letters in the published Lisle correspondence and the series of letters and papers that testify to this. In August 1533 Sir John Russell made 38 M. B. Davies (ed.), An Ill Journey for Englishmen : Elis Grufydd and the 1523 French Campaign of the Duke of Suffolk (Farnham, 2006), 20 ; based on Hall’s Chronicle. 39 E. Grufydd, ‘An ill journey for Englishmen’, in ‘Chronicle 1523–50 from his History of Wales to 1551’, trans. and ed. M. B. Davies (typescript in the library of the Institute of Historical Research, London), 27 ; the transcript was published in the Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts of the Fouad I University, Cairo, 7, 11, 12 (1944–50). 40 Grufydd, ‘Boulogne and Calais, 1545–1550’, in ‘Chronicle 1523–50’, 14.

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clear to Lisle his doubts about this kind of proceeding : regarding the sale of an office by one George Browne to a certain Pole, Russell stated, ‘this thing I am and have been always against as much as any man, for the reason thereof the King shall never be well served nor the town well furnished’.41 Others, however, wrote to Lisle in a different tenor, like John Grenville, who wanted to know the moment an old member of the garrison died so that he could offer ‘the room of a spear’ to a ‘friend of mine’. He openly promised Lisle 20 marks (£13 13s. 4d.) and a ‘kirtle of velvet’ for Lady Lisle if all went well.42 This open sale of positions in the retinue was only one of the problems concerning the governance of the town and the Pale, which had become increasingly obvious after the arrangement with the Company of the Staple set up by the original Act of Retainer in 1466, and its subsequent extensions in 1487 and 1515, had collapsed. The Company had first been unable to fulfil its financial obligations to the Crown and provide the wages of the garrison in 1523, in part probably a consequence of the disruption of trade caused by the duke of Suffolk’s expedition in that year. By 1527, the Staplers were forced to petition the king, begging him to reverse the decline in the town’s trade ; meanwhile the wages of the garrison slipped into arrears. By 1532 the Company owed the Crown over £22,000 ; the following year the Act of Retainer was abolished. This left the problem familiar from the first years of the English occupation of Calais of how the town was to be financed and governed. Relations between the Crown and the Staplers were finally resolved on the basis of an indenture agreed in October 1535, which will be further discussed in Chapter 8 below.43 Money for the garrison was found in the funds accruing to the Court of Augmentations. The wider problems presented by Calais were investigated by a commission headed by Sir William Fitzwilliam, directed by Thomas Cromwell to inquire into the activities of the main officers in the town and the Pale, the state of the retinue, the rents and other dues in the possession of the Crown, the condition of the harbour, and finally ‘every thing whatsoever it bee touching and in any wise concerning the prouffit, weale, suretie ordenaunce and good governaunce of this towne and marches’.44 The findings of the commissioners cannot have given much comfort to Cromwell, since Fitzwilliam began his report to him with the following dismal conclusion. ‘We assure you that we have fownde this towne and marches farre out of ordre, and so farre that it wold greve and pitie the hart of any good and true Englissheman to here or see the same.’45 Fitzwilliam then goes on to describe a somewhat unconvincing picture of how willing those in authority were to admit that things had fallen into a sorry state, and the joy in the streets expressed by the people, who exclaimed, ‘How moche are 41 LL i : letter 44. 42 LL i : letter 60. 43 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 186–7. 44 The charge to the commissioners is BL Cotton MS Caligula E ii, p. 106a, printed in The Chronicle of Calais, 133–5. 45 Cotton MS Caligula E ii, p. 98, printed ibid., 130–33.



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we bound unto our gracioux souvereign lord that it pleaseth his majesty to loke upon us.’46 Sworn information was taken from juries composed both of members of the garrison and of aldermen, burgesses and commoners. Fitzwilliam’s conclusion was that the town could only be brought back into good order by an Act of Parliament setting out anew all the various duties, responsibilities and powers of the various officers and the means by which they should be appointed. This Act was passed in 1536, and its terms not only explain some of the problems that had arisen in the territory but also set out what was hoped to be the remedy for them.47 The preamble made the usual assertion that Calais was one of the ‘mooste pryncipall treasours belonging to this the realme of England’ and declared that the Act was necessary because of the decay of the town and the neglect of the officers. It set out the exact composition of the Retinue and the number of officers, including all those who would be in receipt of royal wages. The membership of the Council to govern the town was established, with the precedence of the officers to be included (the Deputy, the High Marshal, the lieutenant of the castle, the Treasurer, the High Porter, the Comptroller and the under marshal) in the town itself and at Guisnes, Hammes, the Risban tower and Newenham Bridge. No burgesses or members of the Staple were to be included. All these officers were expected to be resident, requiring licences to leave the town. The selling of ‘rooms’ was explicitly forbidden. Moreover, the number and nature of the members of the Retinue was now laid down by statute, not by the terms of the individual indentures of office-holders as had been the case in the past. This can certainly look like a determined shift in royal policy, but may reflect more a change in bureaucratic methods than a change in the administration, which was obvious in the town itself. Problems that had arisen in the territory as a whole were addressed in other clauses. There was a perceived need to increase the population of the Englishborn in the town ; there were too many aliens and too many vacant houses or plots. Too many members of the garrison also acted as ‘artificers and handy craftsmen’. This would be forbidden, except for those who were also ‘bowyers, fletchers, crossbowmakers, armourers or smiths’, pursuing crafts with military significance. No soldiers were to be ‘butchers, bakers, brewers, poulterers, fishmongers, chandlers, or other vitaillers’ ; nor should they keep taverns or alehouses or retail shops. The hope was that this would create opportunities for English craftsmen and shopkeepers to come to the town. Other clauses forbade the holding of property by aliens, though the taking out of letters of denizenship by property-holders was encouraged, with the requirement to repair decayed houses. Only those who spoke English might keep a ‘tippling house’. Similarly, the clergy must speak English and must be resident. The possibility of a siege perhaps lay behind the requirement that all households must have provisions

46 Ibid., 131. 47 Statutes of the Realm, iii : 27 Henry VIII, cap. lxiii. The Act is also dicussed by Grummitt, ‘ “One of the mooste pryncypall treasours” ’, 46–62.

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for six months in store and keep ten gallons of water readily available.48 Finally, it was laid down that Calais would acquire the right to send two members to all future parliaments, one chosen by the deputy and the council, the other by the mayor, burgesses and freemen of the town. What was the rationale for these clauses ? One conclusion might be that the soldiers of the retinue had become very hard to distinguish from the ordinary townsmen. When their wages fell into arrears, taking up another occupation might have been necessary for survival, especially if they now had families living in the town. Wariness of aliens could be easily explained by nervousness about spies from enemy territory. Were clergy who preached in something other than English to be discouraged because of their suspected reformist views or because they might be spreading disaffection ? The original commission led by Fitzwilliam had required those appointed to seek out any who had ‘imagenyd, conspired, concelyd, spoken committed or doon any treason’ against the king.49 Was there something of the same fear here ? It’s hard to say. The career of Robert ap Reynold of Oswestry, a Welshman, who, having failed as a merchant, joined the Calais garrison in 1531/2, gives some indication of the reality behind the investigation and the terms of the Act. He certainly was involved in trading activities, apparently being both a horse dealer and a supplier of exotic pets like canaries. He also seems to have been prepared to concoct rumours and spread gossip in order to maintain his position as an informant to the court in London. In 1539/40 this led to his imprisonment and considerable trouble in the garrison, since he implicated Sir John Wallop, the commander at Guisnes, in a socalled plot. Much of the evidence of his activities comes come from the writings of Elis Gruffyd, who loathed him, but even so there were clearly problems with certain members of the garrison at this time.50 The precise motivation behind giving Calais the right to two MPs is also open to speculation. On the one hand, it could be portrayed as a measure to strengthen the links to the Crown of an important frontier town. Berwick on Tweed had sent members to Westminster from around 1512. Tournai had also sent members to parliament in 1515 during its brief period in English hands, and it has been suggested that this was a way of demonstrating that this recently conquered town was now in truth an English town and part of the dominions of the king of England. It was also the case that the overall number of MPs, which had been more or less static during the fifteenth century, had begun to increase quite markedly in the sixteenth.51 This right was conferred on Calais by statute, not by the simple issue of a writ of summons, with the method of 48 Calais had a very uncertain water supply ; the French in the 17th century attempted to deal with this by building an enormous cistern onto the side of the Church of Our Lady in the town. 49 The Chronicle of Calais, 133. 50 P. T. J. Morgan, ‘Robert ap Reynold of Oswestry, a Friend of Thomas Cromwell’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 58 (1965), 77–83. 51 A. D. K. Hawkyard, ‘The Enfranchisement of Constituencies, 1509–1558’, Parliamentary History, 10 (1991), 1–26.



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election and the payment of a parliamentary wage of 2s. per day also set down in the legislation. This seems to indicate a more considered policy change, perhaps the initiative either of Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had led the investigation into the governance of Calais and probably drafted the Act itself, or of Thomas Cromwell. Similarities have been drawn with the act for the administration of justice in Wales, passed in the same parliament, which ‘incorporated united and annexed [Wales] to and with this his realme of Englande’.52 Both territories, one a detached enclave across the sea, the other a mountainous and half-tamed region, with a population that seemed foreign to many Englishmen, were to be tied more securely to the Crown and the central government in this manner. In the case of Calais, the provision for MPs could also be interpreted as clarifying the constitutional position of this territory as an integral part of the present realm of England and not some remnant of the lost lands in France. Most of those who were chosen either by the council of Calais or by the burgesses to represent them in parliament were ‘diligent and mainly obscure soldiers, officials and aldermen’,53 who showed little inclination to act independently in the house of Commons. In 1539, however, the burgesses chose as their MP one Thomas Broke. He was an alderman and held a minor position in the administration of Calais, but he also seems to have had a close connection with Thomas Cromwell and to have been a fervent supporter of the reform party within the Church of England. He was not, of course, alone in this. Questions of religious belief had caused dissension and confusion in Calais for some time before his election to the House of Commons. This issue linked the town closely to the situation in England with regard to the Reformation, to the king’s own views on religion, which were subject to change, and to the balance on Henry VIII’s Council between reformers and conservatives in religion. The willingness of both Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Cromwell to take action in favour of reformers in Calais also had great influence on the way matters developed. Particularly as relations between England and the Catholic powers on the continent deteriorated, there was also the additional fear of the possibility of the possession of Calais being a pawn in plots by papal supporters against Henry himself. Until the 1530s Calais was an ecclesiastical backwater. There were few religious houses and none of any note. The town itself was divided into two parishes, with churches dedicated to Our Lady and St Nicholas. Outside in the Pale were around twenty other other parishes, but most of the clergy were absentee pluralists.54 The Crown was patron of all these livings and undoubtedly regarded them as a useful source of rewards for clerical clients ; the total possible income from them was some £500, a not entirely negligible amount.55 The first good evidence that the Reformation was having an impact in Calais came in 52 Ibid., 8. 53 H. F. Chettle, ‘The Burgesses for Calais, 1536–1558’, EHR 50 (1935), 501. 54 P. T. J. Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais, 1485–1558’ (DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1966), 210. 55 Ibid., 213.

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1528. Philip Smith, a native of Calais, who was the Staplers’ chaplain and also the parson of Pepling in the Pale, was found to keep no fewer than twenty-four ‘suspicious’ books, including works by Erasmus, Luther and Melanchthon, in the chapel at Staple Hall. In some ways the only surprising thing about this was that such books had not been found in Calais before. The constant journeying of the merchants and others to the marts in the Low Countries and to places like Antwerp provided many opportunities to examine and buy such works and to make contact with those attracted to the new ideas. Both John Frith and William Tyndale were at Antwerp at this time and may have had links with Smith. Smith was recalled to England and interrogated by Wolsey but did not suffer any other penalty.56 In 1533 and 1534 other suspected Lutherans were investigated in Calais, and most of the acts of the Reformation parliament were implemented in the territory with little apparent difficulty. The small community of nuns in the town was dispersed with no trouble, but for the moment the Carmelite friary remained.57 Splits over religion were, however, becoming more obvious in the council of Calais and the garrison. Lord Lisle, deputy since 1533, and his wife were both conservative in their views, and Lady Lisle in particular was wedded to the old ways. A report had been sent to Cranmer in 1535 that Lisle was reluctant to administer the oath of supremacy as the law required. John Husee, Lisle’s confidential agent, had advised him also not to ‘meddle no more with such like matter for they are here taken for the worst part’, when Lisle had sent another member of the garrison to Cromwell for reading possible forbidden books.58 Husee also wrote to Lady Lisle in 1538, begging her to ‘leave part of such ceremonies as you use as long prayers and offering of candles and at some time to refrain and not speak though your ladyship have cause when you hear things spoken that liketh you not’.59 Both were opposed in certain circumstance by the archbishop of Canterbury’s commissary in Calais, John Butler, a friend of reform.60 In London Thomas Cromwell, who was in frequent contact with Lisle, often seemed to favour reform but was also constrained by the king’s attitudes, which were liable to change erratically, and by the wider political situation both in England and in Europe, which was also subject to rapid change. In this delicately balanced situation, Cranmer nevertheless attempted to further the cause of reform in Calais by sending preachers to the town. Dr Hoore, who arrived in 1536, was, according to Elis Grufydd, treated shamefully by the deputy and his supporters. They spread false stories that during Lent 1537 Hoore had ridden to Boulogne to visit prostitutes. There was no proof of the 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 215–7. 58 Husee to Lisle ; LL ii : letter 264. 59 Husee to Lady Lisle ; LL v : letter 1120. 60 The commissary was the personal representative of the archbishop in the Pale. The area was anciently attached to the diocese of Thérouanne but had been transferred to Canterbury by the Pope after its conquest by Edward III.



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story, but it effectively destroyed Hoore’s reputation.61 In the summer of the same year, two priests, William Minstrelsey and William Richardson, were accused of holding papist views and dispatched to London as prisoners. Cromwell in fact rebuked Lisle and the council severely by letter for neglecting to do this with sufficient speed. The king was astonished at the ‘papistical fashion that is maintained in that town’ (Calais), and Cromwell hinted that Lisle would lose his position if he let such abuses be ‘suffered or winked at as have been hitherto in manner in contempt of his most royal estate’.62 Minstrelsey was hanged later that year ; Richardson, who had been called by John Butler ‘a great enemy to the truth’ and confessed on examination to the possession of indulgences and the denial of the royal supremacy, would suffer a worse fate in 1540.63 The situation became even more tangled with the arrival in Calais in the summer of 1538 of a priest known as Adam Damplyp, although apparently his name was really George Bucker. This young man had been in Rome with Cardinal Pole but had then gone on to Germany, where he had become a fervent reformer. On reaching Calais on his way back to England, he initially made a favourable impression on both Lord and Lady Lisle, but was then found to be preaching what they and the council saw as heresy in the chapel of the Carmelite convent. To their consternation, his views proved to be very popular in the town, with everyone flocking to hear him. Grufydd’s account of these events suggests that, as well as concerns about the doctrine he was teaching, especially with regard to the question of the Real Presence in the Mass and the need for justification by faith alone, the key Lutheran belief, his popularity aroused jealousy among the Carmelites in particular, who saw him receive more gifts in three weeks than they had received in three years. His final sermon exposed as a fraud supposed miraculous Hosts kept in the shrine of the Resurrection in St Nicholas’ Church in Calais, which had been pulled down by royal decree the previous Easter.64 The council was at first undecided how to react to these events but took the step of sending Damplyp to London for the investigation of his views. Once this had occurred, the incident became caught up in the struggles and intrigues at court over religion and between the various noble factions. Both Cromwell and Cranmer were involved, as were Cromwell’s opponents, the faction led by the duke of Norfolk. From the letters sent by Lisle to London and other papers, it seems that most of those concerned were trying at the same time to avoid too great a violation of their personal beliefs and to follow, as far as possible, the attitude to Catholic beliefs being promoted by the king. The king’s attitudes at this time seemed to be shifting in a more conservative direction. Now that papal supremacy was no more in England, the king saw less need to maintain friendly relations with reformers. The duke of Norfolk and his supporters could see that 61 E. Grufydd, ‘Chronicle’ extract, ed. P. T. J. Morgan, ‘Un Chroniqueur gallois à Calais’, Revue du Nord, 47 (1965), 201. 62 Cromwell to the Council of Calais ; LL iv : letter 980. 63 L. E. Whatmore, ‘Martyrdoms at Calais in 1540 ?’, Downside Review, 64 (1946), 171. 64 The whole Damplyp story is told in Elis Grufydd’ s Chronicle. See Morgan, ‘Un Chroniqueuer gallois’, 201–2.

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if Cromwell was successfully linked to a supposed nest of heretics in Calais it would be easier to destroy his influence with the king.65 The activities of William Smith, newly appointed as priest at Our Lady’s Church, John Butler, the commissary, and the MP Thomas Broke made the accusation that the garrison and townsmen of Calais were turning more and more towards heretical ideas easy to maintain. Smith made strenuous efforts to encourage the reading of the Bible in English and even on one occasion, according to Grufydd, gave a sermon comparing Lady Lisle to Jezebel.66 Lisle made little effort to calm the situation ; Grufydd again has a story of Lisle greeting a great lout of a soldier who had been bullying those who did not attend Mass with the words, ‘Aha Leach my friend ! Look how your faith and mine is coming back in this town.’ It was not perhaps surprising that when Broke spoke against the Act of Six Articles in the House of Commons in June 1539, and repeated his opposition outside the House, that he was arrested, along with John Butler, and put briefly in the Fleet prison. In Calais, Lisle and his supporters continued to attack the supporters of the Reformation in the town and the garrison. As the international situation became more threatening in 1540, it was easy for Norfolk and Lisle to convince the king that the situation should be thoroughly investigated by a commission, which was despatched under the leadership of Sussex. The situation became more complicated when it emerged that the two Catholic priests imprisoned earlier, were possibly implicated in a plot to hand Calais over to Cardinal Pole. Richardson and Peterson were convicted of treason and executed with considerable brutality in the market square on 10 April 1540, as the Chronicle of Calais recorded. Another priest, Edmund Brindholme of Our Lady’s Church, and a layman, Clement Philpot, were similarly executed in August of the same year.67 Lisle himself was connected to the supposed conspiracy through his chaplain Gregory Botolph, and he was removed from his position and forced to return to England to face imprisonment.68 Turpin, the chronicler of Calais, noted ‘in the monithe of June Arthur Plantagenet, vicounte Lisle . . . was put in the Towre of London, his goods seased his wyffe kepte in one place his dowghtar in another and his dowghtares in anothar place that none of them might speke with other and all his servaunts discharged’.69 This did not prevent Sussex and his commission from continuing to put pressure on suspected Protestants, with Broke finding himself in more trouble, being accused both of eating meat in Lent and of acting fraudulently as deputy customer at the Lantern gate. Some degree of stability was not restored until the young but energetic Lord Maltravers was made deputy towards the end of the year, a position he held until 65 P. Ward, ‘The Politics of Religion : Thomas Cromwell and the Reformation in Calais, 1534–40’, The Journal of Religious History, 17 (1992), 155–70. Also A. J. Slavin, ‘Cromwell, Cranmer and Lord Lisle : A Study in the Politics of Reform’, Albion, 9 (1977), 316–36. 66 Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 224. 67 The Chronicle of Calais, 47–8. Whatmore, ‘Martyrdoms at Calais in 1540 ?’, 168. 68 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1547’, 75–7. 69 The Chronicle of Calais, 48.



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1544. A contemporary assessment of his time in office noted ‘the perfection’ with which he governed Calais. The quality of the garrison was much improved, and ‘he furnished them of horse and supplye for exersice of feates of armes’. He moreover ‘did not spare to make them banquets’ as well.70 Certainly the question of religious beliefs was no longer as divisive as it had been in the recent past, while worsening relations with France made the readiness of the Retinue a matter of greater concern. In the years from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of his son in January 1547, Calais had not ceased to engage the interests of the monarch. Its functions as a military base and as a centre of diplomacy had been very evident. Both kings had led armies though the port and out into the Pale to wage war against France. Henry VIII in particular had used the town as the base for ceremonial encounters with other rulers. Although the meeting of the Field of Cloth of Gold had taken place in 1519 in the open country between Guisnes and Ardres, all the English participants and their multifarious requirements had come through the port of Calais. In 1532 there were similar festivities for the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I, culminating with a ‘costly banquete’ at Sandingfield on the borders on the Pale, laid on by Henry. Turpin’s Chronicle of Calais in fact largely consists of accounts of the princes, lords, bishops and others of importance who passed though the town on various missions. On a more mundane level, the need to care for the town and its defences was a continuing burden. There is little doubt that this was seen as necessary, even if at times maintenance was somewhat neglected. Less certain is how life seemed on a more everyday basis to the townspeople. Concentrating on the records of the garrison and the works can convey the impression of a town in a continual state of decay and of a garrison in a more or less constant state of alarm. One interpretation asserts that the ‘men of the Pale lived in fear’.71 Another view, backed up by concentrating more on the relations between the Pale and the government in London, sees it as a ‘political community [that] actively influenced national politics’.72 To a French historian, it was ‘un petit morceau d’Angleterre overseas’.73 A consideration of the business community and the more personal aspects of life in the sixteenth century may help to reach a more balanced conclusion on the importance of the town and the life of the people of Calais at this time.

70 Ibid., 190. 71 Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 242. 72 Grummitt, ‘ “One of the mooste pryncypall treasours”’, 62. 73 Joseph Calmette, quoted ibid.

8 The town a n d t r a de : The f o rt u n e s o f t he C o mpa n y o f t he S ta p l e a n d o f t he J o h n s o n pa rt n er s h i p

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W

e are fortunate that Calais in the early sixteenth century was extensively surveyed by royal officials. There is thus in existence a collection of plans or ‘platts’, to use the contemporary expression, sketches of the town and prominent places in the Pale, and terriers and rentals with details of all the landholdings.1 The sketch of Calais from the sea (Figure 4) gives an overall impression of the town ; the prominent landmarks are the day watch-tower, the bell-tower of the town hall and the spires of the two churches enclosed within the circle of its walls, St Nicholas and Our Lady. The small sketch of the walls and the quayside outside the Lantern Gate (Figure 6), the area known as Paradise, the quarter where fisherman lived, shows groups of half-timbered houses with courtyards and gardens as well as the long curve of the east jetty, so often damaged by the action of the tides and the waves. The pattern of landholding is recorded in a thorough survey carried out in 1556 using the most up-to-date methods of the day. There is also a sixteenth-century copy of a terrier or rent roll dating from the reign of Edward IV.2 Other documents from the sixteenth century detail the dues and tolls payable to the Crown from the Pale and set out the regulations governing the conduct of business in the town and the garrison. From this evidence we can build up a good picture of the life of the townspeople. Many were, of course, in business as traders and artisans, whether members of the Company of the Staple or not. A more intimate im1 BL Cotton MS Augustus I ii ; a view of the town is fol. 70, a map of the Pale, fol. 71, and the sketch of the quayside is fol. 57a. There are also sketches or plans of Guisnes and some of the other fortifications. 2 The survey of 1556 is TNA E315/371 and 372. This survey has been extensively analysed in H. Dillon, ‘Calais and the Pale’, Archaeologia, 4 (1892), 289–388. The Edward IV terrier is E315/407. There is also a rental in BL Harley MS 3880. The surveyors of 1556 used compass bearings and accurate acreages to identify holdings.



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pression of the way of life of one family of Staple merchants can be gained from the Johnson papers, another collection of family letters and accounts that, like those of the Cely family, came to be preserved in the National Archives because of a legal action.3 A description of the town written in 1520, from the point of view of a visitor who was neither a soldier nor a diplomat nor a trader but who came out of a spirit of curiosity, much like a modern tourist, is also worthy of note. The writer, a monk from the Benedictine abbey at Montreuil, visited the town just after the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I at the Field of Cloth of Gold between Guisnes and Ardres. He was fairly complimentary about its appearance, even if he was less enthusiastic about the inhabitants. He arrived in the evening after the gates were closed and thus spent the night in an inn in the suburbs. Once inside the walls the next morning, he saw the whole town including the port and ships, the royal residence, the houses of merchants, churches, in fact everything that was either grand or unusual. His experiences with the Calaisiens echo those of any person who has arrived in a town in the wake of a major event without having made advance arrangements. In his view the prices charged for accommodation and food to Frenchmen were extortionate. In his case, he and his companions were charged twenty solidos for 2 mackerels and a chicken, with bread and four small bottles of wine.4 The innkeeper wanted even more money for their beds and the stabling of the horse for the following night, but an appeal to a soldier of the garrison prevented the monk from having to pay this sum. It was nevertheless clear to him that the men of Calais were unpleasant and grasping.5 Returning to the surveys mentioned above, it is possible to use them to get a detailed idea of the boundaries of the Pale and the landholdings within it, with the area of each accurately recorded as far as was possible. The boundaries differed little from those set out in the Treaty of Brétigny in 1361, except in the area known as the Picardy encroachments, to the south-west in the so-called 3 Some items from the Johnson collection have been printed in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, for the Reign of Henry VIII, passim. The remainder are unpublished, but those relating to the trading company were transcribed by Barbara Winchester, ‘The Johnson Letters, 1542–1552’ (PhD thesis, London, 1953). The later letters, dealing with the fortunes of the family after the company ceased trading, have not been transcribed. The typescript volumes of letters, which form part of Winchester’s thesis, have been used here to refer to the letters, and the numbers given to them are those used in these volumes (which are continuously paginated). 4 It is hard to relate this figure to modern values ; Servois, the editor of the printed version (next n.), comments that the meal was expensive for the period, even if the menu had been better than that recorded. 5 The account of this visit is in a letter in the Vatican archives ; it has been transcribed and edited by G. Servois, ‘Un Voyage á Calais, Guines, Ardres et Boulogne en 1520’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, ser. 4, 3 (1857), 1–6 (also published separately). When the monk reached Ardres he found it equally hard to find accommodation in the town, even though this was French territory. When he visited the site of the Field of Cloth of Gold he was most impressed by Henry VIII’s temporary buildings, likening the event to the arrival of the Queen of Sheba at Solomon’s court.

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Figure 4. This view of Calais from the sea was drawn at the same time as Figure 6. It forms part of a large ‘platt’ or plan of the whole Pale. The principal buildings are clearly visible. From left to right within the walls, the towers belong to : the church of Our Lady, the Day Watch tower with the Town Hall to its left, the Staple Hall and St Nicholas’ church. The castle is on the far right. On the quayside can be seen the Lantern gate and the sluices to control the elaborate water defences surrounding the town. (BL Cotton MS Augustus I ii , fol. 70)

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· 137 · Figure 5. This is a photograph of modern Calais taken from the site of the Risban tower ; the towers still to be seen are those of the church of Our Lady, the day watch-tower and the nineteenth-century Town Hall.



‘high country’. It seems Picard farmers had quietly nibbled away at what was in any case an ill-defined frontier, until this area was acknowledged to be in their possession. They had clearly not been intimidated by the kind of notice Sir Thomas Flynderon was reported as erecting ; this consisted of a sword chained

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.

To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Figure 6. This drawing, one of the series done in the reign of Henry VIII, shows the harbour and the east and west jetties with contemporary ships. The houses in the town are probably, at least in part, an accurate depiction of what existed at this time. Some have stepped gables in the Flemish style ; open courtyards and gardens are also depicted. Sluices and their mechanism can also be seen on the quayside. The buildings outside the walls formed the fishermen’s quarter known as Paradise, a name still in use in modern Calais. The Risban tower can be seen on the right on the dunes fronting the coast. (BL MS Cotton Augustus I ii, fol. 57A.)

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to a post, the blade of which was engraved with the words, ‘No man be so hardy to take me awaye. Ffor this ys the right pale between Ingland and Ffraunce.’6 The descriptions of the landholdings in the Pale also make plain the extent to which much of the land was now used productively compared with the fourteenth

6 Quoted from TNA SP1/168, fol. 185, dating from c.1540, in Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 19.



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century. Many artificial waterways or watergangs used for drainage purposes are mentioned, often designed to flow into the major rivers, those of Hammes and of Guisnes. The garrison and its officers had land in the so-called Scunnage or St Peter’s, an area now the site of the modern industrial town. The other parishes in the Pale were divided into plots rented by various individuals. In Froyton (now Fréthun), for example, there was an area of marsh and also the Little Common of 54 acres. The rest of the parish was divided between eight plots varying in size from 30 to 405 acres ; one named house, the Red Chamber, was held by Robert Whetehill, a member of a prominent Calais family.7 Much of the land was pasture ; there was also some arable, woods in the high country and fisheries which were commercially exploited. That on the border between Froyton and Calkwell (Coquelles) was known as Whetehill’s fishery.8 Hopyards are also mentioned elsewhere in the survey, with the hops being used for the considerable quantity of beer brewed in Calais.9 More information about the ‘betterings’, as they were called, the improved and drained land in the Pale, is found in a list of the customs of the Pale. This mentions not only the digging of dykes and ditches but the planting of quickset hedges to control stock and improved farming methods like the use of copious quantities of dung.10 During the late fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth the Pale of Calais clearly became a much more productive place than it had been in the fourteenth century. In a full analysis of the survey published in the late nineteenth century, the author H. A. Dillon was fortunate in being able to relate the buildings mentioned to the existing street plan of Calais. Even at that date, however, before the destruction of the old town in the Second World War, there were few remnants of English Calais extant. All the area to the west of the town, including the Church of St Nicholas, had been demolished when the Citadel was built by the French in the seventeenth century, although some small fragments of the old castle wall were incorporated into the new fortifications at one point. In the eastern part of the town, the Church of Our Lady remained along with the day watch-tower and the gateway of the Staplers’ Inn (the Prince’s Inn of the fifteenth century), renamed the Hôtel de Guise after the recovery of the town by the French. In the western parish of St Nicholas were originally situated most of the buildings needed by the garrison and the royal officials. These included a gun foundry, the royal Bakehouse, the King’s Wardrobe and numerous store houses and workshops. In the eastern parish of Our Lady were found most of the commercial buildings, as well as the headquarters of the Company of the Staple and the town hall, both of which were in the market place. Most of the large properties mentioned had names ; thus Thomas Windebank lived in the Nettlebed near the church of Our Lady, while near the market-place were Robert Love’s property the Swanne, Richard Swart’s Rose and John Delanoy’s Woolsack.11 There 7 Dillon, ‘Calais and the Pale’, 339–40. 8 Ibid., 336. 9 One hopyard was at Hammes near the castle ; ibid., 344. 10 Ibid., app. ii, pp. 370–1. 11 Ibid., 317–8.

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is no reason to think that these tenements were taverns. Altogether it has been calculated that Calais in 1556 contained about 30 almshouses, 78 houses fit to be called ‘mansions’, 6 brewhouses, more than 8 general storehouses, 81 specialist wool stores, and 22 herring hangs or fish stores. There were charities for the relief of poverty, known as Trinity tables, associated with both parishes, which held property in the town. Many of the houses had gardens or courtyards, and there were other open spaces in the town as well as the market-place, giving it a pleasant open aspect even if completely surrounded by fortifications.12 The wealth of the town was evident from the inventory of church goods taken in 1552/3.13 The Church of Our Lady was well provided for, with a goodly collection of church plate, including no fewer than six ‘challiceis with sixe patentes all gilte weyng cxxx ounce’. There were sets of vestments in the canonical colours, including several embroidered with flowers of gold. The altar frontals included one of ‘grene silk with birdes of golde’. In addition there were all the towels, canopies, pots, candlesticks and other items needed to ensure that services were properly celebrated and foreign visitors suitably impressed. The parish was also holding £330 in cash at that date, although some was earmarked for repairs and the minister’s wages.14 St Nicholas’s Church likewise had a worthy collection of church plate valued at £35 16s. 4d., but there is perhaps a hint of the disturbances caused in the 1530s by the preaching of Adam Damplyp and the general support for the Reformation in the town in the fact that noted as ‘stolen out of the church’ are various items including ‘a case that covered the sacrament lined with grene’, valued at 18d., and ‘two canapies for the sacrament, one of redde sarsenet fringed with golde and a nother of white silke needle worke fringed with golde’, worth 2s.15 Most of the parish churches in the villages of the Pale, on the other hand, had very little in the way of the objects and vestments needed to perform the liturgy of the Mass and more or less nothing of any value. Sometimes there is a note that a chalice has been sold, or that bells have been stolen ; one set of bells was in fact said to have been sold ‘for the making of a bulwark’.16 The fact that so many clergy were absentees in the early part of the century perhaps contributed to this state of affairs, while the spread of Protestant theology may also have ensured that there was no great enthusiasm to provide new vestments and the like. A set of detailed regulations also survives for the way in which the gates should be opened and closed and the watches set. It is clear from these that the daily opening of the gates was attended with some ceremony. After the watch bell had been rung three times, ten gatekeepers would march into the marketplace, led by fifes and drums, and would meet there the watch ‘appointed for that daye which be fortie in number’. They would then move off to the Deputy’s 12 The gardens and courtyards are clearly visible on the sketch of the quayside, Figure 6. ‘Void’ ground and gardens are also noted in the survey. 13 The inventories are printed in Dillon, ‘Calais and the Pale’, app. v. 14 Ibid., 384–6. 15 Ibid., 386–8. 16 Ibid., 383.



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lodging, where the keys of the gates to be opened would be handed over. The whole party would then return again to the market-place, where the master porter or gentlemen porters would join them and lead them to the Lantern Gate. An elaborate ritual was then set down relating to the order of opening the wickets and finally the great gate itself. This ceremony could be varied at different times of the year and if any of the other gates were also going to be opened. Particularly elaborate procedures were laid down for the herring season (from Michaelmas, 29 September, to St Andrew’s day, 30 November), when the harbour would be full of foreign vessels. The process of shutting the gates was similarly complex but attended by less ceremony. Once the gates had been shut, all lodging-house keepers were supposed to inform the ‘clerk of the reports’ of the numbers and places of origin of any strangers staying with them. The way the watch should be kept was also prescribed, with special arrangements for Christmas and Easter week as well as the herring time.17 Were these regulations a sign of nervousness among the townspeople or the garrison ? At times when war seemed to threaten, the watch was perhaps kept more rigorously, but rather similar routines would have been found in most walled towns in this period. Calais was a busy town and port, which had long prospered both from the wool trade and the autumn herring fishery as well as its function as a major crossing point of the Channel. All this brought goods and traders from both sides of the Straits of Dover into its port and its market, and in contemporary opinion made necessary the kind of regulations detailed above. The nature of this trade, although not its precise extent, can be understood from the categories of goods on which tolls were imposed. Fish, wheat, rye, beans and rapeseed were both brought into the town and sent out into Picardy and Flanders. General merchandise travelling the same route included beer and ale, wax, honey, dyestuffs, wine, spices like pepper, ginger and cinnamon, mercery and more everyday goods like faggots and tiles. The market for luxury goods in Calais, especially when events involving great public displays of wealth were taking place, is hinted at by the special regulations affecting jewellers bringing ‘gold or silver broches, stones or anye ringes oytches or such lyke’ into Calais. They were expected to pay a toll of 6d. at Oye sluice. This was quite separate from the penalty of forfeiture imposed on those who were suspected of smuggling jewellery or gold into Flanders and Brabant to avoid the bullion regulations.18 Compared with the fifteenth century, when the commercial concerns of the Company of the Staple and the military needs of the garrison dominated the town, there are some small indications that, particularly in the period of peace in the late 1490s and early 1500s, some at least of the town’s inhabitants had time for other pursuits. Fishing and fowling in the marshes were favourite 17 The Chronicle of Calais : ‘Ordenances for watch and ward of Calais’, transcribed from BL Cotton MS Faustina E vii, pp. 89–102b, can be found on 140–62. The rules for the opening of the Lantern Gate are on 141–3. 18 ‘The Casualties of Mark and Oye’, of which these dues form part, are printed in Dillon, ‘Calais and the Pale’, app. i, pp. 367–9.

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occupations of both merchants and soldiers. The Customs of the Pale laid down that anyone resident outside the lordship ‘shall not foule within the Lordship without he agre with the Baillie’.19 The territory was also very well placed, at the point where Flemish and Germanic culture met that of France, for the acquisition of books both in MS and in print. One correspondent of the Celys, as already mentioned, commissioned George to buy for him ‘in the mart two little books imprinted. One is entitled or called “Belial” and another “Formularium Instrumentorum”.’20 Other evidence from the mid fifteenth century relates to texts, like a verse version of De Re Militari, being produced in Calais. One manuscript of this treatise has a verse epilogue in which the writer specifically mentions that Calais is his home. Two other manuscripts are extant that originally belonged to William Sonnyng, ‘Alderman de Calleis et a son fys’. These probably date from the 1470s. The second of them contains material relating to the laws and customs of Calais, and also a copy of the LIbelle of Englyshye Polycye, the poem that emphasised the need to control the narrow seas for the benefit of England’s prosperity.21 Officers in the Calais garrison have also been identified as book-lovers, at times commissioning splendid volumes, which finally became part of the Royal Library. The most prominent of these was Sir Thomas Thwaytes, who was in Calais from 1468, Treasurer from 1485 to 1490, but arrested on suspicion of supporting Perkin Warbeck in 1494. He acquired a five-volume set of Froissart’s Chroniques, some Xenophon, a collection of other Flemish and French chronicles, and possibly also a copy of the Brut or English chronicle.22 Lord Hastings, Sir John Donne and Sir John Tyrell have also been identified as bibliophiles based in Calais in the reign of Edward IV.23 Given these predecessors in the garrison, it is easier to understand why Lord Berners, the Deputy of Calais in 1520–26 and 1531–3, spent much of his time in the town completing his translation of Froissart’s Chronicles into English, a formidable undertaking that he began in 1521 and finished about 1525. He also translated The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius into English from a French version in 1532.24 At a less exalted social level, other residents of Calais were also writing, translating and publishing their works at much the same time. Elis Grufydd, the Welsh member of the garrison, whose chronicle is such a valuable source 19 Dillon, ‘Calais and the Pale’, app. ii, p. 374. 20 Hanham, The Celys and their World, 213–4. ‘Belial’ was a story about Belial suing in the court of Heaven for the possession of souls ; the other was a collection of legal precedents for use in a church court. 21 J. Boffey, ‘Books and Readers in Calais : Some Notes’, The Ricardian, 13 (2003), 67–74. 22 His copy of the ‘Grand chronique de France, 1329–1350’ is BL Royal MS 20 E VI. The first folios are splendidly illuminated and decorated, but from fol. 24r, although spaces are left for decorations in the text, none are provided. This may mean that the volume was unfinished when Thwaytes was arrested and the MS was confiscated by the Crown. 23 A. F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘Choosing a Book in Late Fifteenth Century England and Burgundy,’ in C. Barron and N. Saul (eds.), England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (Stroud, 1995), 82 ; Boffey, ‘Books and Readers in Calais’, 72. 24 J. P. Carley, ‘Bourchier, John, second Baron Berners (c.1467–1533)’, ODNB.



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for events in the town in the 1520s and 1540s, also translated medical and geographical texts and had no trouble finding the books on which he based the earlier parts of his chronicle (which begins with the creation of the world) while stationed in the town.25 Thomas Broke, who was involved in the turmoil of the Reformation in Calais, as we have seen, also wrote at least one religious text of a plainly reformed nature, Certeyn Meditacions and Things to be Had in Remembraunce . . . of Every Christian before He Receive the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of Christ. This appeared in 1548, when he had been elected as an MP for Calais for the second time. He also translated texts by Calvin and produced an edition of The Fourme of Common Praiers Used in the Churches of Geneva.26 It is too easy to assume that Calais was an isolated enclave of English territory cut off from communication with its neighbours. In many ways, by the sixteenth century it was something of a cultural crossroads, where influences from both the north and the south met to produce a much more vibrant society than is sometimes imagined. When living in Calais, for example, the Lisles had close and easy relations with individual Frenchmen and were happy to send some of Lady Lisle’s children by her first husband to be educated in France. James, the youngest Basset child, was sent to school in Paris, at the Collège de Calvi, at the age of 7 in 1534, under the special protection of Guillaume Poyer, the president of the Parlement de Paris, whom Lord Lisle had met as part of a French embassy.27 The experiment was not altogether a success, since the Collège demanded payment in advance, and it then transpired that the pupils were expected to speak Latin at all times. This did not improve James’s chances of learning to speak French. After some time with a private tutor in Saint-Omer, he was sent back to Paris in 1537 and enrolled in the Collège de Navarre, one of the most distinguished educational institutions in France.28 In 1534 Anne Basset, his sister, was sent to live with an aristocratic family at Abbeville, while a year later Mary Bassett went to another family, related to the first, in the same place.29 The Lisles seem to have seen their time in Calais as providing an opportunity to give the children a thorough grounding in both French language and culture. The Company of the Staple had traditionally had few links with France, with virtually all its wool sales being to merchants from the Low Countries, who supplied the cloth makers of Flanders with their essential raw material. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the wool trade had declined markedly from its peak in the fourteenth century but was still profitable. In the years from 1500 to the end of the reign of Henry VIII, most of the wool exported went from the port of London to the Staple at Calais, although small amounts of wool were also exported from Hull, Boston, Newcastle and Southampton. Although there 25 Morgan, ‘Un Chroniqueur Gallois á Calais’, 195. 26 D. Grummitt, ‘Broke, Thomas, (b.c.1513, d. in or after 1555)’, ODNB. 27 LL v : letters 553–4, 556, 559–60, 563 relate to James Basset’s time in Paris in 1534. 28 The letters relating to James Basset at the Collège de Navarre are LL iv : letters 1044–5, 1051–3, 1062, 1064, 1068, 1070, 1078, 1235. 29 LL iii : letters 570–74, 577–8, 587–8, 597A.

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were of course often quite sharp variations from year to year, sometimes caused by extraneous problems like the state of relations with foreign powers, or the existence of a state of war and the consequent interruption of trade, the total number of sacks of wool exported averaged around three thousand per year. The graphs of the total annual raw wool exports created for England’s Export Trade do not show any sudden deterioration of the trade in the early sixteenth century, rather a gentle decline with, in fact, some improvement in the 1530s (see Figure 7). The Company of the Staple was constrained not only by trading conditions, but also by the terms of the Act of Retainer of 1466 and its renewals, particularly that of 1515. These bound the company, as we have already explained, to providing the money necessary for the payment of the garrison at Calais. The Company was able to fulfil these conditions until 1523 but after that date incurred larger and larger debts to the Crown. It seems that this may have been due not so much to the decline of their trading activities but the rapacious way in which the terms of the Act were enforced by the Crown. By this date also the Company had declined greatly in size. General pardons issued in 1470–72, at about the time of the confirmation of the Act of 1466, listed as merchants of the staple men originating from all over England from Devon to York, though Londoners (usually noted as members of the Mercers’ or Grocers’ Companies) are the most numerous, followed by merchants from York and Leicestershire.30 In 1527 the Staplers sent a heartfelt petition to Wolsey begging relief from the dire straits in which they found themselves. They had declined in number, they claimed, from a company of 400 to around 140–160 shippers. Their problems were, so they said, due to ‘the contynuall debate, contention and warre’ that had prevented buyers coming to Calais and the shippers from sending wool to the Staple. Over all hung the ‘ponderous acte of reteynor’, which made it easy for buyers to bargain for lower prices, since they knew of the obligations that made it necessary for the Staplers to sell their stock as quickly as possible. The petition also mentions the strength of the competition from Spanish wool in the Flemish market, and finally the disease and high mortality that had badly affected English wool flocks in the recent past. This had allowed ‘rich graysiers, brogers, and engrossers’ to raise prices so high that it was impossible for the staplers to make a living, especially as it ‘standeth with reason and with the comen wealth’ that English clothiers should be ‘first served’ and have the pick of the market in raw wool.31 The growth of the cloth industry in England and the increased competition from Spanish wools in the markets of Flanders were probably the most important reasons for the decline in exports of raw wool from England. There were also, of course, more general economic problems at the period, which undoubtedly caused the Company to be an easy target for those who feared that the 30 CPR Edward IV, 1467–77 : 212–13, 290–92, 315–16. 31 The petition is printed in R. H. Tawney and E. Power (eds.), Tudor Economic Documents (London, 1951), ii : 24–8.

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500

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Figure 7. Exports of raw wool through the port of London by both denizen and alien merchants from Michaelmas 1529 to Michaelmas 1543. No figures are available after this date. (Data from E. M. CarusWilson and O. Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1963), 73–4)

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Total number of sacks

realm was in a state of general decay. A pamphlet dating from about the 1530s, entitled ‘A Treatise concerning the Staple and the Commodities of this Realme’, roundly accused the Company of the Staple, and their carrying of wool out of the realm to Calais, of being the cause of most of the economic problems of the day. One problem, it claimed, was their use of credit rather than ready money (something that, of course, had been going on for over a century) ; other difficulties related to their competition with the clothiers for raw wool.32 There is 32 Ibid., iii : 90–114, ‘A Treatise concerning the Staple and the Commodities of this Realme’, c.1519–35.

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also evidence that the merchants of the Low Countries no longer found Calais a good and convenient place in which to do business. The number coming to Calais dropped considerably, even when good wools were available through the Company.33 The immediate consequence of this financial crisis for the Company was that they were compelled to deliver into the king’s hands their property in Calais, including both the original Staple Hall and the refurbished Prince’s Inn. This was eventually recovered by the Company in 1550. To some extent the revocation of the Act of Retainer, and the ending of its financial provisions, create an unduly pessimistic impression of the fortunes of the wool trade and the Company in the period from the 1540s to the loss of the town. Clearly the wool trade was no longer the main element of England’s export trade or a convenient cash cow for the Crown, but, although operating on a reduced scale, it was not inherently unprofitable. The fortunes of the family partnership of Johnson & Company illustrate this well and also reveal the changes that had taken place in the Company of the Staple since the days of the Celys. The Johnson family itself and its connections exemplify how, in the sixteenth century among merchant families, Calais in truth seemed to be as much part of the English realm as any of the islands around the coasts. The founder of the Johnson clan, Willem Jansen, had probably come to London from the Low Countries with his family, eventually taking out letters of denizenship. Two of his sons, William and Richard, already in trade as drapers, then went to Calais, where William became an alderman. Although he was married, he had no children. His brother Richard, however, had three sons by his second wife, John, Otwell and Richard. Richard, the youngest of these, was born in Calais in 1521, and his older brothers may also have been born in the town.34 John was apprenticed to a wealthy member of the Staple Company, Anthony Cave, a fortunate choice of master that determined the course of both John’s career and his personal life. By the time the sequence of surviving business letters and other documents begins in 1542, John was acting as a partner of Cave, who had no sons of his own, and was married to Cave’s niece Sabine Saunders.35 By this marriage, he was intimately linked with the landowning gentry of the midland counties. The Caves were a well-connected and wealthy family, as were the Saunderses. Sabine was one of a family of twelve ; her oldest brother was a prominent Chancery lawyer, while another, Laurence, was ordained in the Church of England and would eventually suffer martyrdom in the persecutions in Mary’s reign.36 Johnson and his family were based firmly in this milieu, living at Glapthorn Manor near Oundle from the summer of 1544. It was from this pleasant base among the rolling hills and woods of Northamptonshire that John made his frequent trips to Calais in pursuit of his business interests. When he stayed in the town, as he often did for quite long periods, he was not 33 Rich, The Ordinance Book of the Company of the Staple, 17–18. 34 B. Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait (London, 1955), 22–3. 35 Ibid., 65–6. 36 Saunders’s fate was recorded in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.



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out of the ambience of his wife’s family connections. Anthony Cave had been brought up by his uncle William Saxby, also a merchant of the Staple. Saxby had owned a large quantity of property in Calais itself, including no fewer than three wool-houses and other tenements, some of which was left to Anthony Cave when William died in May 1517. Another of Cave’s Saxby uncles, John, had himself a son called William, who had married Anne Baynham, the daughter of a Calais merchant.37 When John Johnson stayed in Calais, he normally lodged with Mistress Margaret Baynham, a widow, and was clearly on intimate terms with her and her family. Her precise relationship to the Saxby family is not known, but she may well have been the widow of a brother of Anne. In one letter from Henry Southwick, John Johnson’s apprentice and agent in Calais, she is referred to as Johnson’s aunt.38 Mrs Baynham visited England in the summer of 1548 and was expected to stay with the Cave family at Tickford in Buckinghamshire, where the Johnsons were invited to join the party.39 This is probably but one example of the web of relationships and business and family contacts that linked well-to-do families in the English countryside with the townspeople of Calais. There is nothing in the Johnson papers to suggest that these links were exotic or unusual. Another family, the Tates of Coventry, London and Calais, show the same kind of linkages, this time enduring over a long period. The information comes from the records of the Mercers’ Company, since all those mentioned were either mercers themselves or the children of mercers. John Tate II ,who died in 1515, was a merchant of the Staple with property in Calais, shipping wool through Sandwich in the 1460s. His brother Robert I was also a Stapler. John’s sons Bartholomew and Thomas kept up the connection with Calais in a rather different way ; both seem to have become not Staplers but soldiers in the garrison, with Thomas being mayor of the town in 1532 and 1540. It seems reasonable to suppose that there were other families, whose records do not survive, who similarly moved easily between England and its territory on the far side of the Channel.40 Much more similar to the way of life of George or Richard Cely in the 1470s and 1480s was that of John Johnson’s younger brother Otwell. He usually remained in London, in a house that belonged to Anthony Cave in Lime Street, and was concerned with the administration and finances of the family company. His letters and the accounts he kept show a shrewd business sense and a determination to keep track of the finances of the partnership, which seems to have existed on a financial knife edge. They also show how the actual commercial 37 The family tree of the Cave and Saxby families appears in Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait, 17. The will of William Saxby, dated 5 April 1517, appears in R. E. C. Waters, Genealogical Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley, Their Ancestors and Descendants (London, 1878), i : 75–6. 38 Typescript of Johnson letters, letter 398, p. 707. 39 Ibid., letter 592, p. 1045. 40 A. F. Sutton, A Merchant Family of Coventry, London and Calais : The Tates, c1450–1515 (London, 1998), passim.

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operation of a typical Stapler partnership was misunderstood in ‘A Treatise concerning the Staple’, the pamphlet mentioned above. The use of cash was not really an option for Staplers. Virtually all the business was done by credit instruments or bills of exchange. The old-fashioned system of settling bills in person at the marts in the Low Countries was, however, still that normally used. On one occasion Henry Southwick lamented to his master John Johnson that ‘by a great misfortune’ one merchant’s bills ‘are chawed with mysse or rattes soo that they are no more then legable’. He was not unduly worried, as ‘the men be honest’ and ‘the billes be pledable ynoughe’.41 It is noticeable, however, that most trade in wool at Calais now involved ‘Hollanders’, including merchants from Harlem and ‘Laythes’ (Leiden). There is little mention of Bruges or Ypres, and it was at the marts at Antwerp that the settlement of bargains was usually made. The partnership also employed their own agent in Antwerp, Robert Andrew, a clear indication of the importance for their business of that market and all its exchange and banking facilities. The raw wool to be sent to Calais was collected by Johnson himself, often from neighbours in Northamptonshire, but, more importantly, he also owned a large flock himself. By around 1550 he may have owned as many as a thousand sheep. Anthony Cave was also himself a producer of wool. In the 1540s the surviving letters are often full of complaints that the price of wool had become extortionate and that there were real shortages of the best and finest Cotts (Cotswold) wools.42 In 1547 Johnson wrote to Cave about the supply problems and other matters. He complained that he could not, ‘at any reasonable reconynge get anye wull of Sir Raphe Warryn’, one of their neighbours. This was perhaps particularly galling because, as he went on to explain, ‘the sayles be lyk to be good that a chylde maie now sell wull at Callais’.43 Once the raw wool or fells had been purchased, they were sent to London to await one of the biannual wool fleets in much the same way as had happened in the fifteenth century, with the goods of the partnership split up among several ships. The consignment that went by the winter wool fleet in 1545 was divided among seven ships, most from the port of London but including the Trynyte from Hull and the Mary Pitie from Flamborough.44 In Calais the wool was stored in various wool-houses until it was sold. The clearest idea of how this was organised comes from letters written by John Johnson, giving directions to Henry Southwick, his apprentice, or Humphrey Lightfoot, who acted as John Johnson’s factor, when Johnson was about to return to England leaving them in charge. In June 1545 Lightfoot was told that wool belonging to the partnership could be found in two separate wool-houses, the weigh-house, ‘Mistris Baynam’s heringe hange’, the ‘skollehowse behind William Stevin’s’, and ‘a lytell howse in Masindewe Street’.

41 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 65, pp. 123–4, dated 24 July 1544. 42 Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait, 175–6. 43 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 473, p. 837. 44 Ibid., letter 250, p. 460.



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Finally, in the ‘Longe Hayle’ were large quantities of wool and fells belonging to Anthony Cave.45 Letters passed frequently and often quite speedily between London, Glapthorn and Calais. Richard Johnson, for example, wrote to John on 21 April 1548 from Calais ; six days later John wrote a reply at Glapthorn.46 This was not an unusually fast exchange. The general tone of these letters between the partners in Johnson & Company and their friends makes clear the good relations which existed between them and often, in small asides or passing comments, casts some light on life in the town. What might be called the Baynham circle was very close to the Johnsons and Caves. One of the most poignant letters in the whole collection graphically describes the impact that an outbreak of the plague could have on a small community like that of Calais. The Baynham household were first touched by the outbreak on Palm Sunday 1545 (29 March). A friend who had been staying in Mrs Baynham’s house fell sick, so everyone left the infected premises. The same thing happened to her sister’s daughter. Both families took refuge in my garden in masondue street, where she and I and with a great nombre of yonge frute do continue in great sorowe and heviness of harte, God be mercyfull unto us and comfort us. And what shall become of these two sick persone we are uncerten yet, but they are very weake and feble. They be in Gode’s hands. The letter concludes with a postscript : This beinge written in the morning. John Grant and Margery, my sister’s daughter departyd this worlde about xi of the clock before dinner. Nowe is our lamentation and mourning greater than ever it was before.47 The sudden and painful death of Otwell Johnson from the sweating sickness on 10 July 1551 in London was another demonstration of the often appalling impact of infectious diseases at the time.48 Most communication with Mrs Baynham, however, was on a happier note, recording the exchange of presents, beer, quails or cheese, for example. It is also clear that as well as dealing in wool on her own account, Mrs Baynham had an interest in the herring trade. Although the great majority of the letters in the surviving collection deal with the wool trade and the operation of the Staple system, it is clear that the Johnson brothers and their associates were also involved with trading other commodities, usually through Calais. In 1542 Otwell became the owner of a ship, the George Bonaventure of Calais, which was to be used in the distribution of the autumn herring catch, dried and smoked in the Calais herring hangs and then packed in barrels for export. The cargo of the George was 45 Ibid., letter 184, p. 354. 46 Ibid., letter 554, pp. 974–77. 47 Ibid., letter 114, pp. 229–30 ; Mrs Baynham to John Johnson, written on 1 April. 48 This death was reported to John Johnson in Calais in a letter written the same day ; John received it on 15 July. Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 701, p. 1236.

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destined for Le Havre in Normandy, but, like two earlier consignments of herring belonging to the Johnsons in the same year, the vessel was taken by Scottish pirates just off her destination. These misadventures illustrate the point that, judging from the evidence in the Johnson papers, the possible loss of cargoes to privateers and the like was more of a worry to Calais merchants than attacks across the land frontiers. One of the few occasions when Johnson mentions anxiety about the journey to Calais also relates to the rumoured presence of French ships in the Channel. In his view this made it ‘veray daungerous to passe bitwene Dover and Calleis’, so he would retire to Glapthorn and wait there for better news.49 The English campaigns in France in the 1540s caused annoyance to merchants because ships were arrested by the Crown and were not available for the wool fleets or because storehouses at Calais were similarly taken over for royal goods. There could also be anxiety about how war would affect the possibility of settling bills at the marts and the whole system of exchange. The possibility of a successful French invasion of the Pale was not something that seemed to weigh on the minds of the townspeople or visiting merchants. In 1545 Johnson was of the opinion that the French had little appetite for such an attack, and they would receive ‘short cortesie’ if they did attempt it.50 The news circulating in the town is often added as the last paragraph to letters, or the correspondent may apologise for no news being available, a continuation of the practice common in the earlier letter collections. The topics most frequently commented on concern the Low Countries and the Empire, rather than France. One letter from Southwick to John Johnson, written from Calais in February 1546, makes fun of French attacks on Boulogne but proposes taking precautions against problems cashing bills in Flanders should war break out in that quarter.51 The Johnson brothers, and their family connections in both England and Calais, were all fervent supporters of reformed religion. The news recorded, therefore, often relates to this. One letter to Anthony Cave in June 1545 mentions the Diet of Worms and remarks on ‘the princes of the contry beinge turned from Papists to Protestantes viz from the Devill to God’.52 Since the bulk of the surviving correspondence related to the reign of Edward VI, no hostility to supporters of the reformed religion in Calais was mentioned ; the turmoil caused by preachers like Damplyp seemed to have subsided. In Imperial territory, things could be more difficult for those who held heterodox beliefs. Richard Johnson wrote to his brother from Antwerp in November 1547, letting him know that 49 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 201, p. 383. 50 Ibid., letter 175, p. 342. 51 Southwick remarked : ‘John of Calles, general of a C [i.e. 100] men kepethe the Red Pile at the Frenchemen’s noses quietlye which ys a great displeser to owr sayd enemye.’ His idea concerning bills was to put them ‘in some Flemmynge’s name’, if Johnson knew someone who could be trusted in this way. Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 99, pp. 199, 200. 52 Ibid., letter 175, p. 343.



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his wife’s aunt had been arrested at Saint-Omer for ‘certain folysshe wordes spoken against an image of Saynt Adrian’.53 Overall, the evidence from the Johnson papers portrays the lifestyle of the members of this family company, and its connections in Calais, as quiet, restrained, professional but not unduly puritanical. Even if the wool trade could be depicted as in decline compared with the fourteenth or even much of the fifteenth century, to the Johnsons it was an established way of life with a rhythm and a system of its own. A wool merchant had to be cautious and aware of events that could upset either the supply of the raw material in England or the market for his wares in Flanders and elsewhere. There was clearly a need for meticulous accounting in view of the varying rates of exchange, the varying values of the coinage used and the customs of the trade, with varying allowances and discounts in operation. Richard Johnson, the youngest of the brothers, who was often left in charge at Calais while John went home to Glapthorn, was at times seen by his older brothers as lacking in skill and application in these matters. John was well capable of writing letters in both French and Flemish,54 and the assumption can be made that Richard also had at least some skill in Flemish, since he travelled often to Antwerp. The personal commissions that the brothers often fulfilled for relations and friends provide further insights into Calais life, as do some of their personal accounts. When John Johnson first went to Calais in 1538 he was able to buy shoes and other clothing from local craftsmen with no trouble, including the costs of trimming his best gown with fur. At least one goldsmith also worked in the town, since in 1545 Johnson ordered a ‘casting-bottell for rosewatter’ to be made out of silver, some of which he himself supplied.55 A more unusual request that Johnson expected Henry Southwick to fulfil was to provide a ‘round tent’ for his friend Mr Brudenell. The tentmaker was apparently to be found in Bruges. The finished design would be about 24 feet wide with an adjoining ‘jaques’ and would be ornamented in the Brudenell colours of blue and red.56 Perhaps in an attempt to expand their activities, the Johnsons also imported small quantities of cloth through Calais into England. In 1546 Otwell expected to be able to sell frisadoes imported from Calais at a good price, even if the profit margin was reduced to allow the Johnsons to get a foothold in a new line 53 Ibid., letter 536, p. 942 and n. Eventually Somerset intervened with the Imperial authorities on the woman’s behalf, and she escaped the full rigour of the law on the grounds that she was drunk when she made the remarks. 54 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 270, p. 497, for example, is in French to a merchant from Dunkirk. In 1546 John Johnson advised Richard Whethill of the well-known Calais family that if Whethill sent him a letter in English, he would translate the same into Flemish. Ibid., letter 242, p. 452. 55 Ibid., letter 297, p. 542. This bottle was for Anthony Cave’s wife, since Cave had mentioned this among other demands, including those for a doublet of a particular design, wine, vinegar and a sturgeon in other letters, including letter 145. In letter 318, p. 578, Johnson asks for the bottle to be sent over quickly because it is needed for Mrs Cave’s imminent confinement. 56 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 318, 10 February 1546, pp. 577–8.

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of business. The same could not be said of some linen cloth that had also been imported through Calais ; no-one in London was interested at the kind of price John wanted Otwell to charge.57 By 1550, the Johnsons had also moved into the business of shipping victuals to Calais. In May of that year Otwell was writing to John giving him news of the shipment from Lynn of wheat to Calais and also the extension of this trade to malt and possibly rapeseed, on which he anticipated the profit could be good.58 Johnson & Company ran into severe financial difficulties soon after their move into the grain trade, and in fact the partnership was bankrupt by 1553. This commercial disaster for one group of merchants should not, however, be taken to imply that by 1558 Calais, as a trading centre, was in terminal decline. The Johnson failure reflected some unwise investments and a lack of financial control following the death of Otwell, who had held all the strings of the business together in his capable hands. Of the remaining brothers, John and Richard, the former was really hankering after the life of a country gentleman, and the latter lacked the commercial and financial expertise to control all the many bargains in which the partnership was involved. Calais itself, however, was still commercially viable as a port of entry of English produce to the Low Countries and the adjacent French lands, and as a source of imports from these areas to England. Merchants had learned to live with the nature of the Pale. What caused them alarm, on occasion, was not the possible threat posed by French armies on the borders but the presence of hostile shipping in the Channel and the dangers this threatened to their own ships and their cargoes. These sixteenth-century traders would have endorsed the plea made to the Crown by the fifteenth-century writer of the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye : Cherysshe marchandyse, kepe thamyraltye That we bee maysteres of the narowe see.59 57 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 402, pp. 717–18. 58 Ibid., letter 624, pp. 1104–5. 59 The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye.

9 The e n d o f t he s to ry: t he l o s s o f C a l a i s to t he F re n ch

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D

espite the extravagant remark of Phillippe de Crèvecœur in 1489 that he would happily spend two years in Hell if he could have the pleasure of chasing the English out of Calais,1 the English in the Pale usually felt secure behind their defences. The Celys and the Johnsons displayed greater concern in their letters over events in the Low Countries and the Empire than in France. It has been suggested, however, that, after the French had recovered Boulogne in 1550,2 there was in fact much to fear from France, and that French attention definitively moved away from Italian adventures towards the northern frontier and expansion in that area. This, inevitably, would focus attention on the question of Calais and the Pale. In the 1540s two incidents had, perhaps, given an early indication that the attitude of the French was changing from that expressed by Louis XI, who had told his son on his death-bed not to make any attempt on Calais for fear of disturbing the English.3 The first was a dispute over an area of pasture on the border between Guisnes and Ardres called the Cowswade. In the spring of 1539, French farmers were found to have built a bridge over a stream, which allowed their cattle easy access to this grazing, to the fury of the English, who saw it as part of the Pale. The dispute escalated over the summer of 1540, after the arrival of Lord Maltravers as deputy. The garrison at Guisnes demolished the French bridge, which led to a flurry of letters passing between the governments of Henry VIII in London and Francis I in Paris. Henry also sent more men to 1 ‘Je consentirai volontiers à passer deux ans aux Enfers pour avour le plaisir de chaser les Anglais de Calais.’ From C. Demotier, Annales de Calais, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours (Calais, 1856), 101, quoted in Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 239. 2 The French recovered Boulogne by purchase in 1550, four years earlier than specified in the Treaty of Camp in 1545. 3 ‘De ne mener nulle pratique sur Calais de paour d’esmouvoir les Anglois’. Quoted in Derville and Vion, Histoire de Calais, 83.



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Guisnes. Over the winter, attempts to settle the dispute failed, and for a brief period in the spring of 1541 it looked as if war might in fact break out over this essentially trivial dispute. After a last exchange of letters over French attempts to mow the hay on the pasture, in the end, both sides let the matter drop. The whole incident has been seen as a ploy in the intricate diplomatic situation at this date, involving Henry’s relations not only with France but also the Empire. It also, perhaps, should have made clear to the English commanders in Calais that a resolute response to French incursions or threatened aggression might well cause the French to withdraw rather than to escalate the dispute further.4 The second incident occurred during the war in the Boulonnais, after Boulogne itself had fallen to the English in September 1544. A French force entered the Pale from the east and did considerable damage to the villages on the road to Gravelines. As Otwell Johnson reported to his brother John at Glapthorn, he had received a letter from Henry Southwick in Calais, in which there is mencion of a shrode feat that Frenshemen did in Monday last, being the 21 of this present [September] in our lowe countrey of Calleis, vidit. They burnte Olderkerke, Newekerke, Hoffekerke, and Oye, saving hier and ther is a howse standing and went clearly away unfought with, but to our losse of 3 or 4 hundred of our Englisshe white coates, the Cleveners of our side showing themselves veray hyerlinges, God send us some other recompense. Some men say that they come to Wale and ther bournte also.5 The fact that accurate news of this raid had reached Otwell a matter of days after it had taken place gives some idea of its scale. On the other hand, Otwell’s letter goes on tranquilly to deal with outstanding bills of exchange and betrays no sense of alarm at any possible extension of French activity. The garrison should, perhaps, have noted that the low country was more or less indefensible unless flooded. Even if there had been fortifications in this area (the castle at Oye had been demolished in 1436 and never rebuilt), they would have provided little protection against a swiftly moving mounted raiding party. The townspeople of Calais, nevertheless, trusted in the effectiveness of their fortifications, the garrison and the considerable amount of artillery on the walls and the bulwarks. Was this trust in fact justified ? The works undertaken in the early 1540s on the orders of Henry VIII had been largely completed and undoubtedly did improve the ability of the town’s defences to withstand an artillery barrage. The Beauchamp bulwark in particular was well designed and had a wide field of fire, covering both the harbour and the road along the dunes to the east. The weak spot was the old castle in the north-west corner of the town, but, as could have been argued at the time, this area had forward protection from the fortifications at Newenham Bridge. The sluices at the bridge and at the harbour also allowed this corner of the defences to be swiftly surrounded by water by letting in the 4 Grummitt, ‘Calais, 1485–1540’, 95–100. Grummitt puts the dispute firmly in its wider context both in English politics and the European situation. 5 Typescript of Johnson Letters, letter 226, pp. 425–6.



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sea, making any successful assault unlikely. Thomas Petit, who drew the surviving ‘platt’ of the Pale in the Cotton collection in the British Library, was made surveyor of the works at Calais in 1546, although he seems to have done little work in the town until 1549/50 when some repairs were ordered. More extensive building work took place in 1551/2, with a total of over £30,000 being spent before December 1553, but the detailed accounts have not survived. In Mary’s reign, plans were drawn up for the building of at least three new bulwarks, but none of this work was carried out before 1558.6 The suspicion must be that the existing works had begun to suffer from lack of maintenance and also from the fact that royal attention was focused elsewhere. It is useful to compare the total military costs of Calais and the marches with those for campaigns in both Scotland and France. Figures put together for the Privy Council showed that the overall costs of Calais from about 1538 to the end of July 1552 reached a total £371,428 18s. 9⅝d. (divided between about £151,000 on fortifications and about £220,000 on wages.) The total cost of operations in France from 1544 to 1550 reached £1,342,552 3s. 7¾d. Costs incurred on campaigns in Scotland from 1542 to 1550 reached £954,115 18s. ⅞d. Was the average cost of £26,530 per annum for the defence of Calais really excessive for the English Crown ? The answer perhaps lies in the other obligations and expenses that arose and the government’s view of priorities. The costs of Calais perhaps only seemed burdensome to the Crown when other military adventures were also in progress. Apart from the fortifications themselves, the safety of Calais depended on the weaponry available to the defenders. A thorough analysis of the victualler’s accounts for the later fifteenth century has shown that from around the 1470s the best contemporary guns were made available to the town. Between 1473 and 1478, 212 new or refurbished guns, ranging from one great bombard called the Great Edward of Calais to 116 brass and eight hake (personal) guns, were bought by the victualler in office at the time, William Rosse. In 1481 a survey of the supplies in the town and Pale recorded 124 large guns on the walls and bulwarks and about sixty-four smaller weapons. At Guisnes there were sixty-six cannons of all descriptions and about forty-five smaller weapons.7 In 1533, a list was drawn up of the ordnance ‘now about the quarters of Calais’ and also of the ‘ordnance needful for defence of the town’. In the town at this date were 284 pieces, including both brass and iron guns, some clearly of considerable size. These included seven brass serpentines and fifty-one iron ones and two brass culverins. The list of the additional artillery needed went into considerable detail : on the Bolen (Boulogne) gate, for example, twelve more pieces were needed, including three double brass serpentines and three more for the mount (bulwark). In all, according to the writer of the list (it was produced as part of the survey of the town’s defences undertaken by a commission headed 6 Colvin, The History of the King’s Works, ii : 357–9. 7 Grummitt, ‘The Defence of Calais’, 263–6.

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by Lord Lisle), another 70 guns were required at Calais.8 This was only for the town itself ; no mention was made of the outlying fortifications or the castles at Hammes or Guisnes. Most of this additional armament was probably supplied, but it would only provide an adequate defence for the town if supplies of powder and shot were also sufficient and the guns could be served by skilled gunners. By the reign of Edward VI in 1552, there was room for doubt whether in fact the royal government was willing to provide these essential supplies in sufficient quantities. At the end of July and the beginning of August in this year letters to and from members of the Council mention the need for munitions at Calais and Guisnes. The problem is seen as lack of money. Sir Philip Hoby wrote to William Cecil on 1 August that he must ‘remind my lords of the lack of munitions for Calais and Guisnes’ and that a remedy is ‘impossible without money’. Two days later his exasperation at the lack of response was such that he wrote ‘For God’s sake help the miseries of the ordnance office for lack of money.’9 As well as paying attention to these pleas for munitions, the Privy Council might have been well advised to take rather more notice of reports brought back from France by Thomas Stucley. Stucley had left England in 1551 when under suspicion by the Northumberland regime as a supporter of the duke of Somerset. He had then entered the service of Henry II of France but reappeared in England in August 1552, apparently with intelligence of French intentions to move against Calais and even invade England itself. The young king recorded carefully in his journal that Stucley had been told all this by Henry II himself because the king was ‘perswaded that he [Stucley] wold never retorne againe into England’. Henry’s plan was that once he was at peace with the Emperor, he ‘ment to besiege Cales and thought surely to wine it by the way of Sandhills [the dunes along the coast] for having Risebank both to faver the toune and also to beat [bombard] the market place’. When Stucley told Henry II this was impossible, Henry then went on to explain that he in fact also intended to invade England, landing in the neighbourhood of Falmouth and Dartmouth. The reaction of the Privy Council to this information was to inquire from the English ambassador in France whether it was likely to be true. On hearing that the French king, not unnaturally, denied ever having had such a conversation, Stucley was put in the Tower. Stucley’s own confession after his arrest should perhaps have been taken more notice of, since it not only revealed the good intelligence that the French had of Calais and its defences, but to some extent seemed to betray knowledge of a plan to attack Calais, very similar to that employed in 1558. He apparently said that the fort at Newenham Bridge was of ‘no importance in strength’, while Risban, the key to the harbour, was ‘pregnable in 4 howres’. He also remarked that ‘the drowning of the country by sluses’ served ‘no purpose’.10 8 Letters and Papers, vi : item 930. 9 C. Knighton (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Edward VI, 1547–1553, Preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1992), items 689, 692, pp. 248–9. 10 The Journal of Edward VI, printed in Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth, ed. J. G.



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The only person who perhaps had second thoughts about the importance of Stucley’s revelations was William Cecil, who wondered whether Stucley should be sent back to France as, in effect, a double agent, and concluded that it was important ‘to see the estate of Callise and Guynes and the marches well ordered and garded with officers’.11 Other evidence in fact makes clear that by this date some at least at the French court were beginning to think seriously about the possibilities of the reconquest of Calais and the Marches. This change of heart did not, of course, take place in isolation but in the context of the relations between the various European states, particularly France and the Empire, at this date. The accession of Mary and her marriage to Philip II of Spain drew England into the orbit of the Habsburgs, with the result that the policy of cautious friendship with France, which had largely been followed by Northumberland, was no longer a possibility. England seemed to have joined the enemies of France, with the likelihood that English forces would assist those of Philip II in any war, most probably on the borders of the Low Countries. The Habsburg fortress of Gravelines was almost as near to Calais as the French fortress of Ardres. An English fleet in the Channel could be of great value in keeping secure communications between the Low Countries and Spain. The fluctuations in relations between these states can be gauged from incidents like the offer in 1553 (probably somewhat tongue in cheek) of Anne de Montmorency, the Constable of France, to come to the help of Calais if attacked by the Emperor. Some two years later the French envoys negotiating for a truce with the Habsburgs took careful note of the state of the fortifications when passing through Calais on their way to Gravelines.12 The one person close to Mary’s government who seemed to have grasped the possible direction of French policy towards the English enclave was her ambassador in Paris, Dr Nicholas Wotton. Wotton was a highly experienced diplomat with much experience in both France and Imperial lands ; he may also have lived in Calais as a child, since his father Robert Wotton was appointed High Porter in 1508 and Comptroller from 1519. Nicholas would have been about eleven years old on his father’s first appointment. His older brother followed his father into the Calais administration, being Treasurer from 1540 until his death in 1551. Wotton thus probably had a better understanding of the vulnerability of the town and the Marches than other diplomats or privy councillors in Mary’s service. He was formally appointed ambassador to Henry II by Mary in August 1553, one of his advantages from her point of view being his quietly conservative religious views.13 His concerns over Calais came to the fore when Henry Sutton Nichols (London, 1857), ii : 455–6. Stucley’s confession is printed from the Cotton MSS as a footnote to the Journal. As his later career as a privateer and adventurer made clear, Stucley was something of a rogue, so that the scepticism with which his revelations were greeted is perhaps not surprising. Peter Holmes, ‘Thomas Stucley (c.1540–1578)’, ODNB. 11 Literary Remains of Edward the Sixth, ii : 542. 12 D. Potter, ‘The Duc de Guise and the Fall of Calais, 1557–1558’, EHR 98 (1983), 485. 13 M. Zell, ‘Wotton, Nicholas’, ODNB.

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Dudley arrived in France as an exile from England. Dudley had military experience as a member of the garrison of Boulogne in 1547 and was openly hostile to Mary’s regime, particularly her efforts to return England to Catholicism. Henry II was prepared to give some limited support to the group of disaffected English Protestant exiles in France to which Dudley belonged when it suited his plans for dealing with the Habsburgs, especially Philip II.14 Wotton became concerned about their activities and especially those of Dudley in November 1556. In a series of reports he explained that, from contacts with merchants at Rouen, he had heard that Dudley was inciting the French king to attack the Pale. Dudley was putting about the story that there were only victuals there for less than three weeks and that he and his fellow conspirators could hand the place over to the French. Four days later, Wotton reported an even more alarming conversation with a gentleman of Henry II’s bedchamber. This gentleman, on being told that Dudley’s brother Edward, Lord Dudley, was captain of Hammes Castle, remarked happily, ‘Why then he may do the French King’s pleasure.’15 The flow of intelligence on the same matter continued at the end of the month. On 30 November Wotton wrote that an informant had told him that Dudley’s role in any attack on Calais would be to hold the straits of Dover against English ships, to prevent any aid or provisions reaching the town. In Wotton’s opinion, the queen should use merchants travelling in Brittany and Normandy to discover if there was any truth in these rumours. It was certainly the case that disaffected Englishmen and also Scots were being offered commissions in Henry’s forces. The queen’s response to these reports was a request for Wotton to make a formal complaint to Henry II regarding the ‘help and reward’ given to those plotting against herself, pointing out ‘how dishonourable this violation of their word is and the bad example it may be to other princes’.16 At much the same time Wotton had news of another and potentially more serious plot against Calais. This involved a French poet from Le Mans, one Nicolas Denisot. Denisot was clearly charming, handsome, clever and unscrupulous, and very attractive to women. He had fled France for England around 1547 to escape an imbroglio over a woman of higher social class than his own. In England, being well educated in all the fashionable Renaissance literary skills, he had become tutor to the three daughters of Edward Seymour, duke of Somerset. He was back in France by 1549, again under something of a cloud, and may possibly have been also passing information to the French king by this time.17 In 1556, he was engaged to teach the children of Sir Edward Grimston, the Comptroller of Calais, despite having a mignonne dame in Paris and plenty of opportunities for employment there. As Wotton put it in a report in October, warning the queen of his possible activities, ‘he being a craftie childe it is 14 J. A. Löwe, ‘Sutton [Dudley], Henry’, ODNB. 15 W. Turnbull (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Mary, 1553–1558, Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office (London, 1861), 275–6. 16 Ibid., 281. 17 C. Jugé, Nicolas Denisot du Mans, 1515–1559 (Paris and Le Mans, 1907), passim.



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thought he goes not thither but to practise some matter of importance’.18 By January 1557 Wotton had news, which he relayed to the Council in London, of what Denisot and an accomplice had intended to do in Calais. Their scheme was apparently to remove a section of timber from the wall of the powder magazine at Calais and then ignite all the powder and munitions, causing a large explosion and probably a lot of damage to the castle and the town. The conspiracy came unstuck when Denisot’s colleague committed suicide19 and Denisot was arrested. Denisot, however, escaped from his prison, the town and the Pale, typically with the assistance of ‘a young maid whose parents knew nothing of it’. She went on his behalf to Ardres and managed to arrange his escape to France with the Governor. Wotton remarks ruefully that the council of Calais ‘think that Devisat [sic] went about no secret practice against them’, but he has information from Paris that ‘the common report there is it lacked but little that Calais was delivered to the French king’.20 Wotton was very punctilious in reporting all the gossip in the French capital to Mary’s Council and in listening to the sometimes scarcely believable stories of his informants.21 There is, however, little evidence that the Privy Council in London was greatly alarmed by his stories. In May 1557 Giovanni Michiel, the envoy from the Venetian Republic to Mary’s court, sent a long and detailed description of the condition of the English realm to the Senate in Venice. The section on Calais and Guisnes betrays no hint of concern about the security of the territory, although it does make clear its importance to England as a means of ‘access to other countries’. Even though the Pale was separated from the rest of the kingdom by the straits of Dover, help was always at hand, since ‘they can at any time without hindrance, even in spite of weather, at their pleasure enter or leave the harbour (such is the experience and boldness of their sailors)’. Moreover, as Calais was very near both France and the Empire, the English could ‘join either the one or the other as they please . . . in prejudice of the enemy’. The inhabitants were also of ‘most unshaken fidelity’, and the territory was considered ‘by everyone as an impregnable fortress’, not only because of the garrison but because of the way the Pale could be flooded. The only slight hint of doubt is the remark regarding the flooding that ‘some engineers doubt it would prove so if put to the test’.22 Michiel’s assessment of the security of Calais, and the imperturbability of the Privy Council in England, would soon prove to be greatly mistaken. In the spring of 1557 French forces under the duke of Guise had been sent to Italy but had had little success. Another French force under the Constable Montmorency 18 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1553–1558, 281. 19 Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 246. 20 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1553–1558, 281, 284. 21 A man called Lant was particularly ready to tell Wotton somewhat tall stories of plots against the queen. Ibid., 285–6. 22 Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice and in Other Libraries in Northern Italy, vi/2 : 1556–1557, ed. R. Brown (London, 1881), 1050–51.

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had attacked Philip II in the north-east. This force suffered a total defeat by Philip’s forces, which included a small English contingent, at Saint-Quentin in August 1557. In these circumstances, what direction should French policy take ? There was an urgent need for a military success to wipe out the effects of the disaster at Saint-Quentin and to strike a blow against the Habsburgs and their allies. There seems to have been something of a rush among leading French military men and advisers to the king to claim the credit for the plan to attack Calais, once it had proved successful ; opinion among recent writers, however, ascribes the plan firmly to the initiative of the king himself.23 There was already to hand intelligence of the real state of affairs in the Pale. Henri II had acquired a set of plans of the fortifications in 1552/3. The French ambassador to England, François de Noailles, had taken a close look at the fortifications on his return to France in June 1557. His opinion that they were in a ‘hopeless state’ rapidly found its way to Jean de Sénarpont, the French governor of Boulogne. Information like this may well have influenced the king’s decision to recall his best military commander, and one of the most powerful men at the court, the duc de Guise, from Rome. Guise received his new orders on 14 September, at much the same time as the duke of Alva’s forces entered Rome. By 9 October he was back in France and appointed lieutenant du roi, a position that gave him almost viceregal powers throughout the kingdom. The firm plan to attack the English Pale may have been drawn up at a meeting at Compiègne in November. There were, of course, other possible targets for the French, including Saint-Quentin. The case for Calais was strongly made, and immediately after this meeting, at the king’s instigation, Sénarpont and the very experienced military engineer Piero Strozzi reconnoitred the town and its fortifications. Despite all the regulations about the control of aliens in the town, set out in the watch regulations from the time of Henry VIII, these two, in some sort of minimal disguise, were able to wander unchallenged round the town, looking carefully at the fortifications and other means of defence. The conclusion drawn from their investigations seems to have been that, while an immediate attack would have been unwise as the town was still full of soldiers from the English forces present at the battle of Saint-Quentin, who were drifting slowly back to England, it might be possible to attack the town in the depths of the winter around the time of the New Year festivities. This would be something of a gamble ; the marshy ground might make an approach very difficult, but on the other hand such an undertaking would achieve surprise since winter attacks were very rare at this date. Moreover, the English garrison was often reduced at this time of year, both to save money and because the chances of any attack were thought to be minimal. Guise was well aware of the dangers of mounting a campaign like this in the winter, writing to the king that what was impossible in the winter could be easily done in the spring. However, he concluded, the information he had received about the condition of the enemy did give him great hope. 23 This matter is fully discussed by Potter, ‘The Duc de Guise’, 481–512.



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From the beginning of December 1557 the French force were assembled at Compèigne ; there were some German and Swiss mercenaries as well French troops, and care was taken to equip them with hurdles and the like, to allow artillery to be put in place on marshy ground. The French do not seem to have made any particular efforts to keep all these preparations secret. The Venetian envoy sent reports to the Serenissima, including a fair idea of French intentions. Spanish and Flemish informers also knew much of what was afoot, even if they were not certain of the destination of the army being gathered together. The only military commanders in Flanders, Artois and Picardy who seemed to ignore what was in preparation were the English in Calais. The deputy of Calais, at this crucial point in its history as an English town, was Thomas Wentworth, Lord Wentworth, who was in his early thirties in 1557. He had held the position since September 1553, despite having been a loyal supporter of Northumberland. He had some military experience, having fought well at Pinkie against the Scots, but was dismissed as ‘rather lightweight’ in a dispatch of Simon Renard, the ambassador of the Emperor. He also had a young pregnant wife and a small son under two years old present with him in the town. He perhaps hoped that, as had happened in the past, the most that the French intended was a raid into the Pale, burning and looting in the countryside but keeping away from the towns and their artillery. By the middle of December, rumours were clearly flying round the whole northern frontier area about what seemed to be in preparation by the French. Notice was taken of small signs like the fact that the bakers of Ardres had been ordered to produce enormous quantities of bread. The Spanish commanders at Gravelines and at Hesdin received messages from their spies, which made it clear that far more than a raid was intended ; the content of one message was later proved to have been very close to the plan the French actually followed. These were all sent on to Wentworth, and he was sufficiently alarmed by 27 December to arrange a meeting between himself and Lord Grey, the commander at Guisnes, to discuss what to do. A letter was sent to Mary, conveying the intelligence that the French army might be intending to attack Calais, but there was still very little sense of urgency. It is doubtful whether any extra precautions had been taken to deter an attack by this time. The master of the ordnance at Calais was in London, having gone there the previous May to seek more supplies, and had not yet returned. No stocks of victuals had been laid in to prepare for a siege. No approach had been made to the Spanish to the north to seek their aid if an attack did materialise. The report of the meeting on 27 December between Wentworth, Grey and the commanders of the other fortifications, which went with the letter to Mary, exuded an almost defeatist tone. No attempt should be made to defend Guisnes town ; all the forces should be withdrawn to the Castle, where a great want of victuals was noted. This becomes the common plaint as all the various fortifications are discussed ; it was reported that there was only the Captain’s store at Hammes, the same at Newenham Bridge and Risban. In Calais itself the situation was no better, something the writers of the report put down to

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‘the restraint in the realm’, which has prevented victuallers ‘to have any recourse hither ; whereby is grown a very great scarcity of all such things [butter, cheese, bacon, wheat, etc.] here’. The real danger in their opinion was to the low country, which could not be defended, and it was, therefore, their intention to ‘gather all our men into strengths [fortresses], and with the same to defend your pieces to the uttermost’. The final sentence of the report, however, ends on the gloomy note, ‘all the power is insufficient to defend the pieces in case the enemy shall tarry any space in the field’.24 The Privy Council’s reaction to these missives was to order the general muster of a relief force and the collection of a fleet, actions that would undoubtedly take some time to accomplish. It must also be remembered that, even if letters were passed from Calais to London with the greatest possible speed, they were still received at least a day or more later, when the situation in Calais itself had moved on. Wentworth further confused matters by following up his communications of 27 December with another letter two days later, which said that, after all, Hesdin and perhaps Risban rather than Calais itself were the main objects of any French attack, information that was also sent on 30 December to Vande­ ville, the captain of Gravelines : Mes espies dissent que les ennemys ont en tests Renty ou Hesdyng de votre coste ou la Risebanque de la nostre ; à quoi nous pourvoyns le mieulx que pouvons pour leur donner la bienvenue.25 Wentworth, secure in this belief, did not ask for help from the Spanish garrison but spoke sardonically of making the French welcome. On 31 December his complacency was rudely shattered. The advance guard of the French cavalry appeared on the hills above Sangatte, while a French fleet from Boulogne had put to sea to cut communications between Calais and English ports and prevent the arrival of reinforcements in the town. The way in which matters then developed is set out in a letter from Wentworth to the queen dated 2 January 155826 and a petition sent to the queen in March of the same year by John Highfield, Master of the Ordnance in Calais, who in fact returned to the town on New Year’s Day.27 These give a clear picture of what happened, which can be supplemented by letters and other documents in the French archives. The initial attack was made on the fort at Newenham Bridge and the small bulwarks at Fréthun and Nesle. The bulwarks could not be held,but the men escaped, even managing to bring some of the cattle off the marsh with them. Some of this area was flooded with fresh water from the Hammes river, but, 24 E. Arber (ed.), An English Garner : Ingatherings from our History and Literature, iv (London, 1882), 187–9. Letter and report of Lord Wentworth to Mary. 25 ‘My spies say that the enemy intends to attack Renty or Hesdin on your side or Risban on ours ; if they do we shall do our best to make them welcome.’ Wentworth to Vandeville, 30 Dec. 1557 ; quoted in Potter, ‘The Duc de Guise’, 491. 26 An English Garner, iv : 192–5. 27 Ibid., 196–201.



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Wentworth wrote, ‘I would also take in salt water about the town but I cannot do it by reason I should infect our own water wherewith we brew . . . our brewers be so behind hand in grinding and otherwise . . . we shall find that one of our greatest lacks. Howsoever the matter go we must shortly be forced to let in salt water.’ At the beginning of this letter, however, Wentworth felt reasonably optimistic. He had convinced himself that the enemy, although present in great numbers, was suffering from a lack of victuals in their own camp. He also told the queen that the French had, as yet, been unable to unload their large artillery pieces from the ships and put them in place to bombard the town. If the queen could but send the English fleet and also reinforcements of both men and supplies (which he had also requested from Philip II in the Netherlands), all might yet be well. By the end of the letter the tone was more cautious. He knew that the French were going to attack from the Risban ; the town was full of refugees from the low country. His final remark, ‘I fear this shall be my last letter for that the enemy will stop my passage : but I will do what I can tidily to signify unto your Majesty our state’, reveals a more realistic estimate of the situation of the defenders of Calais.28 No matter how swiftly the queen and her Council reacted to the news from the Pale, it was far too late to put together a relief force to drive the enemy away from the town of Calais itself. Given the slowness of communications and the time it took to assemble ships and men, this was out of the question. Wentworth wrote his letter at ten o’clock on the evening of Sunday 2 January. The order from the Privy Council to ‘certain nobles and gentlemen’ to put together a scratch force from their servants and tenants to gather at Dover on the following Friday or Saturday had only gone out on the same day.29 Sir William Woodhouse, the vice-admiral of England, had been informed of the French approach to Calais on 31 December, but by the time he managed to get a small squadron of ships off the town on 3 January, the Risban fort was already in French hands and it was impossible for English vessels to enter the harbour. The orders to him to clear the narrow seas and ‘chase the enemy thence’ with a much larger force went out on January 8, by which time Calais had fallen. Again his response was swift, but a severe long-running epidemic of flu reduced the number of men fit to serve as crew, and a storm on 9/10 January damaged those ships that had put to sea.30 The full story of the French assault on Calais is set out in Highfield’s petition. This states that early on the morning of 3 January the deputy ordered the women and servants at Marck to seek refuge in Flanders, with their cattle, if possible. It is probably at this time that Lady Wentworth and other refugees left Calais, making their way along the sand dunes to the estuary of the Aa and then crossing the river to Gravelines. This journey along an exposed road in 28 Ibid., 193–5. 29 C. Knighton (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Mary I, 1553–1558, Preserved in the Public Record Office (London, 1998), 305. 30 D. Loades, The Tudor Navy : An Administrative, Political and Military History (Aldershot, 1992), 172–3. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1553–58, 307.

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harsh weather conditions (there was a prolonged hard frost) cannot have been easy. At the town itself, the French pressed forward with great success ; first Newenham Bridge fell, followed shortly afterwards by the tower and bulwark on the Risban. In both cases, the commanders felt that their position was hopeless ; the garrison at Newenham Bridge fell back to the shelter of the town walls without striking a blow ; that on the Risban tamely surrendered to the attackers, convinced they could do little against the heavy guns, which the French had brought round behind the town and installed on the dunes, to cover both the Risban tower and the harbour. It is arguable that the loss of these two strong points in fact made Calais indefensible. The sluices which controlled the waterways were at Newenham Bridge and now controlled by the French. The opportunity to use the ‘water weapon’ had been lost. Risban tower controlled access to the harbour as well as providing a platform from which all the seaward walls of the town could be bombarded at close range. No reinforcements from England could come directly to the port, and the direct line of communication with England had been severed. At this point, however, when Calais was open to the full weight of the assault of the French army and its artillery, Wentworth seems to have shown the energy and courage that had been lacking earlier. The country people who had flocked into the town were organised to assist in its defence. A few Flemings and Spaniards did manage to get past the French patrols in the low country to offer their help. Highfield mounted a determined counter-barrage against the enemy but lost some of his best pieces quite quickly and also suffered from a lack of ‘cannoneers and pioneers’. Despite the weight of the French barrage, the town had not suffered a great deal of damage by Wednesday night. On Thursday (6 January), a fresh barrage opened up against the Castle, where the walls were weakest. According to Highfield, the decision then seems to have been taken to withdraw the English forces from the Castle to concentrate them in the town ; the plan was that the Castle towers would be filled with gunpowder, which would be fired as the French approached the fortifications. This did not succeed ; the munitions failed to ignite. The French made an assault from the Risban across the harbour at low tide and were soon inside the castle itself (see Figure 8). Other sources suggest that the French found the castle contained only a few defenders, who fled into the town, but that the French then faced a determined counterattack centred on the bridge over the Castle moat. In either case, it seems that at some point in the night of 6/7 January there was hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Calais, and the decision had to be taken whether to fight to the death or negotiate surrender. Highfield clearly wished to paint himself in the most favourable colours possible and suggested that he was for fighting on, while Wentworth felt that this would serve no purpose. In the early hours of the morning of 7 January the terms were agreed. All the inhabitants of the town and the garrison could leave with what they could carry, except for fifty of the most prominent individuals who would be held for ransom. The civilians, who had mostly congregated in the two churches and some of the larger wool-houses, could have taken up the offer of French citizenship and



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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Figure 8. The Siege of Calais in 1558. It clearly shows the disposition of the forces of the duc de Guise and their attack across the harbour from the Risban to the castle. It was originally published in Rome by Claudio Duchetti in 1602 as Il vero ritratto di Cales preso a Inglesi del Re Christianissimo l’Anno m·d·lviii. (BL, Maps C.7.e.4)

remained in the town, but this was hardly an alluring prospect at this juncture. The Swiss and German mercenaries in the pay of the French thoroughly looted the town and were guilty of some assaults. Even in the intense cold, the trek over the dunes to the safety of Gravelines was preferable to remaining in the ruins of Calais. John Foxe included in his Book of Martyrs the story of one refugee family. John Thorpe and his wife, good Protestants but in poor health, found themselves ‘cast out into the wild fields harbourless desolate and despairing of all hope of life ; having their young infant taken away from them in the said fields by the soldiers’. This time, however, the story did not end in disaster. The Thorpes were looked after overnight by Flemish villagers and found their child sitting by the fire in an inn when they made their way to the coast to take ship for England.31 Meanwhile Guise and his commanders, although no doubt elated by the swift fall of Calais, were still faced with the necessity of taking the subsidiary fortresses of Hammes and Guisnes, which still held out. They also faced the possibility of having to face a relieving force from Gravelines or from England. The chances of relief from England were in fact minimal ; the storm that had 31 An English Garner, vi : 202.

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damaged Woodhouse’s fleet and the news of the fall of Calais, which reached London on 10 January, had the effect of paralysing Mary’s not over-active administration. The English were stunned by this unforeseen and unnervingly swift disaster. Lord Grey of Egerton, the commander at Guisnes, could more reasonably look for aid to the Spanish forces commanded by Emmanuel Phili­ bert of Savoy in Bruges. Emmanuel Philibert was well informed of the situation, since not only did Lord Grey send his wife to Bruges as his envoy but Highfield the gunner had also been allowed to leave Calais by dint of some well-aimed bribery and had fled to Bruges with his wife.32 It was Grey’s intention to fight to the death. He had already written to Mary early on 4 January telling her of the situation at Calais as he saw it and pointing out that he ‘was clean cut off from all aid’. For lack of reinforcements he would be ‘forced to abandon the town [of Guisnes] and take in the soldiers thereof for the Castle’. But having victualled the Castle to the best of his ability, he would ‘not fail to do the duty of a faithful subject and Captain although the enemy attempt never so stoutly’.33 There are in fact several good accounts of what then transpired. One was written by Thomas Churchyard the poet, who was stationed on the Mary bulwark at Guisnes throughout the siege.34 Another is part of a biographical note of the services of Lord Grey of Wilton by his son Arthur, who was himself present throughout the action.35 Grey knew the Pale well, having been lieutenant of Hammes castle in the 1530s, with a house in Calais, where he was one of a known Protestant group among the garrison. He had also had military experience during the siege of Boulogne and in the Pinkie campaign in Scotland, where he sustained a pike wound in the mouth. He was appointed to Guisnes in 1552 by the duke of Northumberland despite his closeness to Somerset. He was kept in post by Mary, who may have thought his military experience was more important than his adherence to reformed religion.36 At Guisnes, Grey had some 1,300 men in the Castle, including 500 Spanish reinforcements who had been sent in by Vandeville from Gravelines. Of these 150 were stationed in the Mary bulwark, which had been rebuilt as one of the most up-to-date kind of defensive work, possibly able to stand a prolonged artillery bombardment (see Figure 3 in Chapter 7 above). He had also had, of course, more time than Wentworth in Calais to prepare for the French assault. Arthur Grey’s account of the siege of the town is vividly written and gives a very clear picture of what this kind of action involved. On Monday 13 January at daybreak, the French brought up their guns and began the bombardment of the Mary bulwark, using two batteries of thirteen and nine guns. Despite its strength, the bulwark was damaged ; the enemy guns ‘clean cut away the hoop 32 An English Garner, vi : 200. 33 Letter of Lord Grey to Mary. Ibid., 203–4. 34 This is printed ibid., 205–17. Churchyard had an extensive and varied military career and wrote prolifically often on public events as well as moral and improving verses. 35 Arthur, Lord Grey, A Commentary of the Services and Charges of William Lord Grey of Wilton, ed. P. de M. Grey Egerton (London, 1840). 36 J. Lock, ‘Grey, William, thirteenth Baron Grey of Wilton, (1508/9–1562)’, ODNB.



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of brick of the whole front of our bulwerk wherewith the filling being but of late digged earth like sand did crumble away’. The French then sent in a party of ‘xl or fifty forlorn boys with swords and rondells to view and essay the breach’. These boys were allowed through the breach, and having ‘received a few pushs of the pike, they retired’. Two bands of Gascons then attacked, but this time the fighting was extremely fierce, with the defenders using artillery, pots of wild fire and other weapons, so ‘jolly Mr Gascon was sent down with more haste than he came up’. Nevertheless, French artillery continued to cause a lot of damage to the fortifications before night fell. All that night the garrison then worked at repairing the breach. Grey then continues to describe the fighting on the next day. The French had by this time brought up a very heavy gun, which was placed in the market square of the abandoned town, and which played on the castle walls and the bulwark. This continued on Wednesday, with shot from this gun driving ‘clean through the rampart and a new countremure of earth raised upon the same’. Grey was very nearly killed, sitting on a bench in the bailey with other officers. That afternoon another assault was made through the breach in the walls by the Swiss and the Gascons. This became the most bitter hand-to-hand fighting, with neither side gaining the advantage. In the end, Grey brought into play two guns he had kept hidden, and ‘the ditches and the breach being covered with men, what havoc they made it is not hard to guess’. It was clear that though ‘we went not scot-free so surely no small number of their carcases took up their lodgings that night in the ditch’. Once again the night was spent in trying to repair damage, but now the English and their Spanish allies were running out of munitions, not only powder and shot but also pikes. At this juncture Grey himself was accidentally wounded in the foot by the scabbardless sword of one of his own soldiers in the darkness and confusion. When morning came, after a disturbed and noisy night, the besieged garrison saw that the enemy had spent the time making a bridge across the ditch. A continual bombardment knocked out the last two guns on the bulwark and killed the gunners. After another furious assault, it was clear that the Mary bulwark could be held no longer, and the few survivors managed to withdraw into the castle itself. During the night a trumpeter came to the side of the ditch and announced that Guise was prepared to offer a parley to Grey. The remnants of the garrison by now had had enough, and the soldiers ‘all came in rout together . . . and prayed him [Grey] to harken to the message and to have consideration of their lives which as long as any hope remained they willingly had ventured’. Grey would have rejected their pleas, wondering ‘what sudden unwonted faintness of mind had so assailed them’. His council, however, agreed that a parley was necessary. Grey’s wish was that his garrison should march out of the castle under their ensigns. This the French were not prepared to grant, nor would the garrison return to the walls to fight for this right. The soldiers felt that to put them in to further jeopardy was ‘but like oxen to thrust them to the butcher’s’. In the agreement finally reached, Grey and his senior officers were taken prisoner, but the remaining soldiers would be allowed to leave each with ‘their

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armour and weapons and a crown in his purse’.37 Grey’s defiance of the vastly superior French forces38 did not save Guisnes, but it did restore some pride to the English, who had been left with the uncomfortable feeling that treachery had somehow been involved in the fall of Calais so easily and so quickly. At Hammes, the last remaining fortification in the Pale, the garrison saw the French flag flying over Guisnes castle on 20 January. They were all well aware that no help would come to them. Lord Dudley had sent a letter to Wentworth on 3 January, which made very clear his feeling of isolation in his castle in the marshes. He explained how he had heard ‘much shotte this nighte’. He sent what intelligence he had of the enemy and begged for more supplies ; ‘and suerlie if I had bene better appointed with horsemen and footmen I would have trusted with the help of this gentleman that is with me to have bene the deaths of manye more’.39 He received no answer to this plea, as the letter was intercepted by the French and never reached the deputy, nor to a later one sent to the Spanish. No doubt feeling abandoned to their fate, under cover of darkness, Lord Dudley and his men slipped away through the marshes to the safety of Saint-Omer.40 In less than three weeks the whole Pale had fallen into French hands. This astonishing news was greeted with jubilation in Paris and the deepest gloom in England. Henry Machyn recorded in his diary : The x day of January heavy news came to England and to London, that the French had won Cales the whyche was the heviest tydyngs to London and to England that ever was hard of for lyke a traytor yt was sold and delivered unto them the [blank] day of January.41 The Spanish ambassador reported that that the English even refused to go to Mass after hearing the news.42 The French found to their delight a large quantity of booty in Calais itself ; apart from the wool and wool-fells in the Staplers’ stores, almost a million gold pieces were said to have been captured, along with 160 guns of various calibres. Henry II made a triumphant entry into the town on 25 January, within days of the final French triumph. To Guise the victory was a sign of God’s favour, a view echoed by the choir of the royal chapel in Paris, singing Psalms including ‘When Israel came out of Egypt’ with its imagery of the sea fleeing and the

37 Grey, A Commentary, 18–38. 38 The exact size of the French army is not known, but the best estimate suggests that there were 29,000 infantry, including about 6,000 Swiss. The cavalry figures might be anything from 2,500 to 5,000, but they took little part in the fighting at either Calais or Guisnes. Potter, ‘The Duc de Guise’, 495. 39 Intercept quoted ibid., 493. 40 Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 268–9. 41 J. G. Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, 1550–1563 (London, 1848), 162–3. 42 Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain, Preserved in the Archives at Simancas and Elsewhere, xiii : Philip and Mary, July 1554 – November 1558, ed. R. Tyler (London, 1954), 351.



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hills dancing before the might, in this instance, not only of God but also of the armies of France.43 After the initial euphoria had died down, the French made strenuous efforts to protect their new conquest. They feared either an attack from the Spanish forces on their northern border or an attempt by the English to mount an expedition to retake their lost territories. Guise wrote to the cardinal of Lorraine at the end of January that he expected an attack before the French had the time and the leisure to establish themselves in Calais.44 No such attack in fact materialised, despite the fact that a swift counter-stroke would have provided the best chance of recovering the Pale. Mary’s government made some effort to put together a fleet, but it all came to nothing. The only minor salve to English feelings of humiliation by their enemy was a successful attack by English ships on a French army attacking Gravelines in July. There were in fact three very small groups of English troops still hanging on, in two fortified churches and a small bulwark near the border with Gravelines around Oye. They were not finally moved until attacked by the new commander of Calais in August. To the relief of the French, who had faced considerable difficulties in supplying the forces holding the Pale, as well as attempting emergency repairs on the damaged fortifications, no further military response came from either England or the Spanish in the Netherlands.45 The question of the future of Calais and the Marches then became one of the issues discussed at the negotiations for a peace between France, Spain and England that produced the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in April 1559. By this time Mary was dead, and the English had little leverage at the peace conference, which dealt mainly with the concerns of Philip II and Henry II. A provision was included in the treaty that the English could regain Calais by purchase for 500,000 écus after eight years, provided that during the whole period no act of aggression had been committed against France. This was a blatant face-saving device and did little to assuage English anger and the suspicion that treason was the real cause of the loss of the Pale. Was this suspicion justified ? There is little evidence to support the claim ; no individual can be identified who benefited from the loss, who received any kind of reward from the French. It was perhaps natural that the civilian refugees, some of whom settled near the Tower of London at St Katherine’s, others of whom joined relations all over England and Wales (the widow of Robert ap Reynold finished her life living with cousins in Steyning in Sussex),46 should want to blame the garrison who from their point of view had let them down so badly. Highfield, the gunner who bribed his way out of captivity,47 had no doubts about the cause of the disaster : 43 Potter, ‘The Duc de Guise’, 495. 44 Ibid., 506. Potter, 507, is of the opinion that ‘an immediate Anglo-Burgundian counterattack from Gravelimes would almost certainly have succeeded’. 45 Ibid., 507–11. 46 Morgan, ‘Robert ap Reynold of Oswestry’, 83. 47 Highfield’s wife had providently collected all his money and plate together, so he was

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The cause was not only by the weakness of the Castle and the lack of men : but also I thought there was some treason for as I heard there were some escaped out of the town ; and the Frenchmen told me that they had intelligence of all our estate within the town.48 The French, however, had had this information for months and had no need to buy traitors to obtain it. Wentworth was undoubtedly very slow to act on the information that he had and confused matters by changing his mind over the seriousness of the situation just before the French attack. Mary’s government was perhaps culpable in taking so little account of the accurate and alarming information provided by Wotton, at a time when it was not too late to reinforce the town and the Pale. Of the most important officers, the captains of the Risban tower and of Newenham Bridge, who had shown little or no inclination to fight the French, were executed. Lord Grey, the hero of Guisnes, was ransomed but found it very hard to raise the necessary sum, eventually being helped by a loan (not a grant) from Elizabeth. He complained in 1560 that this debt and others he had incurred left him and his family ‘utterly undone for ever’. He was soon once more in royal service on the Scottish borders and was appointed governor of Berwick.49 Wentworth was indicted for treason by Mary’s government, and put on trial by Elizabeth after his return from captivity in 1559. He was acquitted for lack of evidence and largely retired from public life thereafter. Edward Grimston, who had also gone into captivity with Wentworth, managed to escape from the Bastille in Paris by sawing through the bars of his cell window with a file smuggled in by the English ambassador. He avoided detection in Paris by claiming to be a Scot. When he finally got back to England in December 1559, he too was put on trial but was comforted by the knowledge that the queen had ‘fully resolved to pardon’ him. He was in fact acquitted. He later also served in Scotland, and then settled down to the life of a country gentleman in Suffolk.50 Was Calais then soon forgotten by the English despite the trauma of its loss ? The provisions of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis were abrogated by an English attack on Le Havre in 1560 in league with Huguenots. Nevertheless, from time to time, the recovery of the town was occasionally seen by the English as both possible and desirable. A list was drawn up early in Elizabeth’s reign of all those still remaining in the Pale who might assist an invading force. It was not very impressive. About thirty named individuals are included, both men and women, but most seem to be of fairly lowly status, for instance at ‘Ark [Arques] an odd fellow called mounsieur de Prye ; sure’ or at Hammes ‘one Haines that hath in farme all the fishing in the pooles from Hammes to Ard [Ardres]’. The informable to offer Monsieur d’Estrées a bag containing 350 crowns. Highfield was in fact jailed by the Spanish in Bruges. 48 An English Garner, iv : 200–201. 49 Julian Lock, ‘Grey, William, thirteenth baron Grey of Wilton’, ODNB. 50 Barry Denton, ‘Wentworth, Thomas second Baron Wentworth’, and C. S. L. Davies, ‘Grimston, Edward’, ODNB.



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ant, however, insisted that ‘yf there be anie hollow-harted amongst them they all will hate him lyke a toade’.51 In 1568 the marquess of Winchester suggested that ‘many years experience hath shown him how necessary the possession of Calais is to England for defence of the coast between Dover and Portsmouth’,52 but the queen was not inclined to do more than negotiate in a rather desultory way with the French, when opportunity offered, for the return of the Pale. The opinion of the seventeenth-century historian Fuller—‘now it [Calais] is gone, let it go. It was but a beggarly town’—perhaps reflected what was the general view in England by that time.53 The Staplers, who had of course suffered the biggest losses of any group excluded from the town, might not have agreed with this verdict, but it was clear that the English had lost the desire to recover the town now part of the proudly-named French Pays reconquis. 51 A transcription of BL Harley MS 282, fol. 154, is included in Nichols, The Chronicle of Calais, pp. xxx–xxxii. 52 R. Lemon (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547[–1603], Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, i : 1547–1580 (London, 1856), 307. 53 T. Fuller, Church History of Britain, ii : 428, quoted in Morgan, ‘The Government of Calais’, 280.

C o n c lu s i o n



E

dward III and his successors poured money and men into Calais and what became known as the Pale for over 200 years, yet, when it was lost, the ripples created in English society seem to have subsided quickly. Within a relatively short space of time, all that was left was a vague remembrance that the town had once been an English possession. More recent historians, indeed, often tend to pass over its loss with the barest of mentions, virtually all seeing the fall of the town as a blessing in disguise, since this ended the need to finance the garrison and defend the Pale. Geoffrey Elton remarked that ‘Calais—expensive and useless—was better lost than kept’, although he acknowledged that neither Mary nor the nation saw it that way.1 Conrad Russell saw it as a financial burden, which was also frequently a base for political disaffection. In his view, even keeping the garrison in food was ‘not a practical proposition for a small power in a time of inflation’. Its loss was financially ‘a blessing but it was also a national humiliation.’2 Elizabeth was bound to demand its return at Cateau-Cambrésis, but this was something of a face-saving measure. In Norman Jones’s view it was doubtful whether the ‘English government expected ever to get the territory back’.3 In much the same spirit, neither of the two most prominent Tudor naval historians thinks it worthwhile to speculate what might have been the effect on the Armada campaign if Calais, the scene of the famous fire-ship incident, had been in English rather than French possession at that juncture. Nicholas Rodgers merely remarks on Calais roads as ‘open and dangerous’,4 while David Loades adds that the anchorage was also open to 1 G. Elton, England under the Tudors (London, 1955), 222. 2 C. Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments : English History, 1509–1660 (Oxford, 1971), 26–7, 144. 3 N. L. Jones, ‘Elizabeth’s First Year : The Conception and Birth of the Elizabethan Political World’, in C. Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984), 41. 4 N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea : A Naval History of Britain, i : 660–1649 (London, 1997), 269.



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English attack, even if supplies for the Spanish could have been obtained from the French governor of the port.5 Is there some justice in these views, with their underlying assumption that all rulers between 1347 and 1558 were in fact wasting money on a useless, even if prestigious, English possession across the Straits of Dover ? I would answer this question with a resounding ‘no’. First of all, although there were frequent financial crises during the years of English rule, these were due more to the rigid nature of medieval royal finance, especially in the first years of its possession by England, than to an absolute inability on the part of the Crown to afford the ‘luxury’ of maintaining the town, the Pale and the garrison. The system set up under the Act of Retainer in the last third of the fifteenth century worked remarkably well and eventually broke down because of the king’s diverting the funds generated by this arrangement elsewhere. From the 1530s Henry VIII, and to a lesser degree Edward VI, maintained the funding for the garrison at a satisfactory level and were able to spend quite generously on updating the fortifications, while also incurring heavy military expenditure elsewhere. There is perhaps more room to doubt whether the town was ever much use as point of entry to France for English armies. For this purpose it was situated too far north and too far from the centre of the French kingdom. Ports on the Norman coast were much better placed for this purpose. The most effective campaigns mounted by English kings on the far side of the Channel began with their armies landing in this region, not at Calais. The town was, however, invaluable as a diplomatic ‘listening post’, with opportunities for gathering information from and making contacts with the official and unofficial travellers who used it as a staging post, not only on voyages across the Channel but between France and the Imperial lands to the north. Turpin’s Chronicle, which lists all the notable travellers passing through the town between 1492 and 1540, permits an appreciation of this aspect of the life of Calais. The years 1533 and 1534, for example, record the passage through the port on both their outward and their return journeys of the duke of Norfolk and his party ‘to goo to the pope or to the frenche kynge or to bothe’, the return to England of the duke of Richmond, and the passage to and from the court of Henry VIII of ‘Ser Philipe de Shaboot high admiral of Frunce’ and his companions.6 The Venetian envoy, writing in 1557, may have made a mistake when assessing the strength of Calais’s fortifications, but he was right to some extent when he said that its possession prevented the English, ‘being on an island’, from being ‘shut out from the commerce and intercourse of the world’.7 The town’s importance as the site of the wool staple was only one aspect of the economic value of the town to England. Its loss finally brought the export trade in raw wool to an end as a significant part of English overseas trade. The Company of the Staple itself never recovered from the loss of its base and its 5 Loades, The Tudor Navy, 251. 6 The Chronicle of Calais, 44–5. 7 Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1556–7, 1050.

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enforced move to Bruges. It can be argued, however, that this was as much due to the general changes in trading conditions and practices in sixteenth-century Europe, which made a staple system no longer appropriate as a way of managing trade, as the loss of Calais. Before the export trade in raw wool declined to negligible proportions, individual merchants, the Crown and ultimately the realm as a whole had benefited from the trade and the prosperity it brought. It is also the case, as the Johnson Letters demonstrate, that Staple merchants were prepared to trade in other goods, particularly wine and all manner of things from the Netherlands. There is at least the possibility that, if Calais had remained in English hands, this general trade would have gradually taken over from the business of the Staple, with the town becoming a trading centre for the region, perhaps as a rival to Antwerp. Fuller was able to dismiss Calais as a beggarly town because, by the time he wrote, entrepreneurs’ attention was directed to the Indies and the Americas. In 1558 this development lay in the future, and perhaps it could not have been anticipated in view of Spanish domination of the Atlantic at that time. The loss of the town and the Pale undoubtedly caused a loss of English prestige, especially as a military power. There would, in fact, be no further really successful British military interventions on the continent until the late seventeenth century and the career of the duke of Marlborough. The loss of this ‘principal treasure’ of the realm of England perhaps did compel the English to turn their attention, with much greater force, away from the lands across the Straits of Dover towards the Atlantic and eventually the Americas and India. The future of England and ultimately the British realm lay in sea power and overseas empire, not in close and direct involvement in the tangled politics of the northern states of continental Europe.

B i b l i o gr a phy

Manuscript sources British Library, London Cotton MS Augustus I Cotton MS Augustus II Cotton MS Caligula E II Cotton MS Faustina E VII Cotton MS Faustina E VIII Harley MSS 283–4 : Lord Cobham’s papers Harley MS 3880 : Calais rental 1552

Borthwick Institute, York Staple 2 (formerly BL Add. MS 43847)

The National Archives, Kew Exchequer Accounts Various, France (E101) Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer’s Foreign Accounts (E364) Duchy of Lancaster Accounts (DL 28) Chancery Miscellanea (C47) Ancient Correspondence (Cely and Stonor Papers) State Papers Supplementary ( Johnson letters)

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris MS fr. 693, fols. 248r–279v : Saint-Omer Chronicle, ed. C. J. Rogers (unpublished transcription and translation)

Printed primary sources Allmand, C. T. (ed.). ‘Documents Relating to the Anglo-French Negotiations of 1439’, Camden Miscellany, 24 (1972), 79–149 Arber, E. (ed.). An English Garner : Ingatherings from our History and Literature, 8 vols. (London, 1880–97)



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I n dex

Aa river  7, 65, 101, 163 Abbeville  13, 14, 64, 143 Agincourt, battle of  56 Aiguillon, siege of  10, 14 Anne of Bohemia, queen of England  54 Antwerp  130, 147, 151 Aquitaine, duchy of  3, 37 Ardres  8, 35, 36, 37, 54, 68, 122, 133, 135, 153, 157, 159, 161 Arras  71 Congress of  56, 61–2 Artevelde, Jan van  9 artillery, Burgundian  64–5 Audricq  37 Avesbury, Robert, chronicler  5 Aymery of Pavia  24, 31 Bale, John, chronicle of  82–3 Balinghem  56, 65, 68 Barnet, battle of  91 Baynham, Margaret  147, 148–9 Beauchamp, Richard, earl of Warwick  60 Beauchamp, Roger de  60 Beaufort, Cardinal  56, 61 Beaufort, Edmund, duke of Somerset  76–80 Beaufort, Henry, duke of Somerset  84, 86, 88 Beaufort, John, earl of Somerset  60 Beaulo, Enguerrand de  11 Bedford, John, duke of  60, 61, 62 Berners, Lord  142 Betson, Thomas  108 Beurle, John de  60 Bisele, Henry  45 Black Prince ; see Edward, Prince of Wales Blore Heath, battle of  83 Botolph, Gregory  132 Boulogne  8–9, 10, 69, 85, 93, 125, 153, 154, 158, 160, 162, 166 Brétigny, Treaty of  26, 29, 37, 135



Brindholme, Edmund  132 Broke, Thomas, MP  129, 132–3, 143 Bruce, Robert, king of Scotland  3 Bruges  15, 40, 42, 43, 64, 68, 70, 104, 108, 111, 147, 166, 173 Brut, The  55, 67, 68, 70, 71, 77 Buckland, Richard, Treasurer of Calais  60, 96 bullion  43, 46 bullionism  51, 96 Bullion Ordinance  96–7, 102 Calais, passim Act of 1536  127–8 almshouses in  140 artillery in  116, 155–6 books and learning in  142–3 booty taken at  168 borders of and landholdings  24–5, 26, 135–40 Carmelites in  25, 130–31 communications with  110, 149 finance  56–8, 60–61, 73–4, 80, 86–7, 115, 126, 155 diet at  109, 135 disputes among merchants  107 fishing and fowling  141–2 flooding as a defence  124–5, 162–4 fortifications of  73, 116–21, 154 foundation of  7–9 garrison of  32–3, 34–5, 61, 74, 87–8, 125–6, 127 governance of  29–30, 45, 47, 127 harbour works  120–21 horse trade in  93, 109 Mint  52, 57, 96–7 MPs for  128–9 music in  105–6 as a naval base  81–3 Our Lady’s Church ; see St Mary’s Church plans of  134

· 183 ·

· 184 ·

Index

Calais (cont.) records of  113, 115 reformation in  129–133 refugees from  169 regulations for the watch in  140–41 St Mary’s Church  70, 88, 108, 129, 132, 139, 140 St Nicholas’s Church  55, 108, 129, 131, 140 trade of  49, 142 treatment of French refugees from  25 victualing of  27–29, 162 workforce in  118 Calvyle, Hugh de  60 Camoys, Lord  68 Castillon, battle of  78 Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of  169. 170 Cave, Anthony  146, 147, 149, 150 Cecil, William  156, 157 Cely, George  101, 102–10 Cely, Richard, junior  107, 109–10 Cely, William  53, 99, 101, 103–4, 106 109–10 Cely family, letters  99–100 Charles IV of France  2 Charles VI of France  54, 59 Charles VII of France  59, 61, 62 71, 77 Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy  87–8 Charles, duke of Orleans  56 Charny, Geoffrey de  31 Chiriton, Walter  33, 44 Clarence, George, duke of  88–9, 108 Cloth of Gold, field of  133, 135 Cobham, Lord  113 coinage  102–3 Company of the Staple  86, 98–9, 104, 139, 143–6, 173 ; see also Staple Company ; Staplers ordinance book  100 regulations  100–101 Compèigne  160, 161 Coulognes  31 Cowswade  153–4 Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury  129–32 Crécy, battle of  1 Cromwell, Ralph, Lord, Treasurer of England  60 Cromwell, Thomas  113, 122, 124, 126, 129, 130–32 Curteys, William, abbot of Bury St Edmunds  63

Dagworthy, Sir Thomas  15 Damplyp, Adam (George Bucker)  131, 140, 150 Dartmouth  85, 89 David II of Scotland  15 De Re Militari  142 Denisot, Nicholas  158–9 Dieppe  9, 14, 62, 86 Dillon, H. A.  139 Dinham, John  85, 90 Dordrecht  42, 73 Dover  56, 110, 150, 171 Dudley, Edward, Lord  158, 168 Dudley, Henry Sutton  158 Dunkirk  69 Duras, Lord  89 Edward III of England  1, 31 32 relations with France  2–4, 9 and Crécy campaign  5–6 and siege of Calais  11–13 and burghers of Calais  19–21 Edward IV of England  87, 92, 95, 115 Edward VI of England  150, 156 Edward, Prince of Wales  31, 36, 78 Elizabeth I of England  45 Exeter, duke of  85 Fauconberg, bastard of  89 Fauconberg, Lord  84, 85, 88, 90 Findern, Sir Thomas  77 Fishmongers’ Company  44, 46 FitzWilliam, Sir William  126–7, 129 Flynderon, Sir Thomas  137 Foxe, John  165 Francis I of France  153 Fréthun  139 Froissart, Jean, chronicler  1, 5–6, 12 19, 25, 31, 142 Gaunt, John of  34 Geoffrey le Baker, chronicler  11, 19, 21 Ghent  3, 15, 40 42, 63, 68, 70, 71, 92, 111 Gilles li Muisit, chronicler  16 Glapthorn Manor  146, 150, 151 Gloucester, Humphrey, duke of  58, 60–63, 69, 73, 74 Good Parliament ; see parliaments Gravelines  12, 16, 65, 68, 101, 121, 157, 161, 161, 163, 165, 166, 169 Grey, Lord, of Wilton  161, 162, 166, 170 Grimston, Sir Edward  158, 170 Grocers’ Company  46, 144



Index

Grufydd, Elis, chronicler  125, 128, 131, 132, 142 Guisnes  18, 35, 49, 56, 65, 68–9, 70, 74, 84, 85, 86, 133, 135, 153, 156, 161, 167 fortifications of  122, 124 river  139 siege of  165–8 Halidon Hill, battle of  3 Ham, Pierre de  11 Hammes  35, 36, 86, 113, 116, 156, 158, 161, 165, 166, 169, 170 river  66, 73, 139, 162 Hanseatic fleet  82 Hanseatic league  98 Hardi, Colin  14 Harfleur  62 Harlem  147 Hastings, William, Lord  91–2 Henry III of England  2 Henry IV of England  57, 58–9 Henry V of England  56, 59 60 Henry VI of England   56, 60, 66, 73, 76–8 Henry VII of England  113, 115, 116, 118–19 Henry VIII of England  113, 119, 120, 124, 129, 133, 153, 173 Henry II of France  156, 158, 159, 169 Henry, duke of Lancaster  37 herring  149 Hesdin  161 Highfield, John  162 163–4, 169–70 Hoore, Doctor  131 Horton, Nicholas  68 Husee, John  121–2, 130 indentures of service  90 Isabel of Portugal, duchess of Burgundy  69 Isabella of France, wife of Richard II  54–5 Isabella, regent of England  2, 3 Jacqueline of Hainault  60 James I of Scotland  60 Jean le Bel, chronicler  12, 17–18, 19 John II of France  36 Johnson family : and religion  150–51 origins of  146 bankruptcy of  152 Johnson, John  146–9, 151 Johnson, Otwell  147, 149, 151–2, 154 Johnson, Richard  149, 150, 151 Knighton, Henry, chronicler  17

· 185 ·

La Roche-Derrien  15 Lambert, William  119 Lancaster, earl of  14 Le Crotoy  10 Le Havre  170 Leiden  147 Libelle of Englyshe Polycye  112, 142, 152 Lisle, Lady  139, 143 Lisle, Lord  113, 121–2, 126, 130–32, 143 London, Chronicle of  61, 62 Lopez, John de  103 Louis IX of France  2 Louis XI of France  87–8, 89, 93, 153 Ludford Bridge, battle of  83, 88 Ludlow  83 Lynn  151 Male, Louis de  16 Maltravers, Lord  133, 153 Manny (Mauny), Sir Walter  19–20, 36 March, earl of  84, 85, 86 ; see also Edward IV Marck  31, 35, 56, 65, 68, 69, 163 Margaret of Anjou, queen of England  76, 83, 86, 89 Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV  87–8 marts in Flanders  102, 104, 105, 147 Mary I of England  157, 161, 163, 166 Maximilian of Habsburg  111 Mercers’ Company  144 Michele, Giovanni  112, 159 Midddelburg  42, 47–8 Middelham  83 Minstrelsey, William  131 Monstrelet, Enguerrand de, chronicler  70 Montgomery, John de  29 Montreuil  135 Mortain, count of  67 Mortimer, Roger  3 Mundford, Osbert  91 Neville, Richard, earl of Warwick  78–89, 90–91 Neville, Isabel, duchess of Clarence  88–9, 108 Neville’s Cross, battle of  15 Newenham Bridge  65–6, 73, 85, 118, 119–20, 154, 156, 161, 164, 170 Northampton, peace of  3 Ostend  69 Oxford, earl of  92 Oye  31, 35, 56, 65, 68, 69, 74, 154, 169

· 186 ·

Index

parliaments : of 1346  13 of 1351  28 of October 1362  43–4 of October 1363  44–5 of November 1376 (‘Good Parliament’) 46–7 of 1382  48 of November 1390  48 of 1435  63–4 of 1442  98 of 1453  78 at Coventry, November 1459  84 of 1463  99 Partition Ordinance  97–8 Paston, Edmund  92–3 Paston, John I  86, 91 Paston, Sir John (John Paston II)  91–3 Paston, John III  92–3 Pepling  130 Petit, Thomas  155 Philip VI of Valois and France  3, 6, 25 Philip II of Spain  157, 160, 163, 169 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy  59, 61–3, 67–72 and defence of Calais  13–14, 17–19 Philippa of Hainault, queen of England  20, 24, 25 Philpot, Clement  132 Pinkie, battle of  161, 166 Piquigny, Treaty of  93 Pirton, William  74 Poitiers, battle of  36 Pole, Cardinal  132 Ponthieu  2, 10 Portsmouth  171 Prince’s Inn  146 Prowde, John  90 Radcliffe, Sir John  64, 66–7 records and sources  4–5, 134–5 financial and tax  33–4 Retainer, Act of  86, 95, 99, 111, 115, 126, 146, 173 Reynold, Robert ap  128 Ribemont, Eustache de  31 Richard II of England  54–5 Richard, duke of York  76–86 Richardson, William  131, 132 Risban and Tower  7, 12, 18, 35, 70, 73, 86, 156, 161–4, 170 Rivers, Lord  85 Rivers, Sir Anthony  85

Rodin, Auguste  20 Rosse, William  156 Rouen  77 Ryngeley, Sir Edward  121 Saint-Pierre, Eustache de  20, 25, 26, 30 Saint-Omer  7, 8–9, 16–17, 36, 37, 59, 64, 65, 108, 143, 151, 168 chronicle of  19, 21 staple at  40 Saint-Quentin, battle of  160 Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue  4, 11, 36 Saint-Valéry  10 Salisbury, earl of  78, 83, 84, 85 Salvayn, Roger, Treasurer of Calais  59 Sandwich  29, 31, 67, 81, 83, 85, 88 Sangatte  18, 19, 35, 56, 68, 91, 162 Saunders, Sabine  146 Saxby, William  147 Scales Cliff (Escalles)  84, 121, 124 Sénarpont, Jean de  160 ships : George Bonaventure  149 Gracedieu  84 Mary Pitie  148 Plenty of Hook  27 Seynt Barbara of Dordrecht  81 Trinity  88, 89 Tryntye of Hull  148 Sluys  69 battle of  3,9,14, 21 Smith, Philip  130 Smith, William  132 Southampton  43, 81, 89 Southwick, Henry  148, 151 St Albans, first battle of  78, 80 Stafford, Humphrey, duke of Buckingham  74, 76 Staple Company  40, 44, 49 ; see also Company of the Staple records  41, 43 ordinances  50–52 Staple Hall  51, 103, 108, 146 Staple Inn  139 staple system  39–40 location of wool staple  46, 48 Staplers  115 loans to the Crown  78, 80–81, 86 support for Warwick  84–5 Stourton, Lord  77 Stucley, Thomas  156–7 Swynbourne, William, captain of Marck  59



Index

Tamworth, Nicholas de  60 Tate family  147 Tewkesbury, battle of  90 Thérouanne  119 Thorpe, John  165 Thwaytes, Sir Thomas, Treasurer of Calais 114, 142 Tour de Guet  116 Tournai  119 Towton, battle of  86 trade, policy on  42 Trollope, Sir Andrew  83, 88 Troyes, Treaty of  59, 62 Turpin, Richard, chronicler  132–3 Usk, Nicholas, Treasurer of Calais  58 Vienne, Jean de  11, 18, 19 Villeneuve-le-Hardi  12 Wakefield, battle of  86 Wallop, Sir John  128 Walsingham, Thomas, chronicler  23 Warbeck, Perkin, pretender  114, 119, 142 Warwick, earl of ; see Neville, Richard Waurin, Jean de, chronicler  71 Wells, Lord  70, 77 Wentworth, Thomas Lord Wentworth 161–4, 170

· 187 ·

Wesenham, John de  28–9, 33, 35, 44, 45 Whetehill, Adrian  114 Whetehill, Richard  90 Whetehill, Robert  139 Whittingham, Robert, Treasurer of Calais 64 Whittington, Richard  58 Winchester, Marquess of  171 Wingfield, Sir Robert  124 Wissant  9, 10 Wolsey, Cardinal  119, 144 Woodhouse Sir William  163, 166 Woodstock, Thomas of, duke of Gloucester 55 Woodville, Elizabeth, queen of England  88 Woodville, Sir Richard  63 wool exports  98–9 wool trade  47–8, 96–8, 100–103, 143–6, 147–8, 173–4 financial aspects  101–2, 104–5 Woolwich  110 Worms, Diet of  150 Wotton, Dr Nicholas  157–9, 170 Wroth, John  44 Ypres  15, 40, 42, 147 Zierikzee, battle of  9