The import merchants of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1464-1520: Some evidence from Durham Cathedral Priory

Northern History

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 71-87

  Threlfall Holmes, M ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61249519485     PISSN: 0078172X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/007817203792207951     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. J. F. Wade, 'The Overseas Trade of Newcastle upon Tyne in the late Middle Ages', Northern History, XXX (1994), 31-48;
2. The Customs Accounts of Newcastle upon Tyne, ed. J. F. Wade, Surtees Society, CCII (1995);
3. The Accounts of the Chamberlains of Newcastle upon Tyne 1508-1511, ed. C. M. Fraser, Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne Record Series, 3 (1987).
4. Valuable work on the earlier middle ages has included J. Conway Davies 'Shipping and Trade in Newcastle upon Tyne, 1294-1296', Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th ser. XXXI (1953), 175-204;
5. J. Conway Davies, 'The Wool Customs Accounts of Newcastle upon Tyne for the reign of Edward I', AA, 4th ser. XXXII (1954), 220-308;
6. C. M. Fraser, 'The Pattern of Trade in the North-East of England, 1265-1350', Northern History, IV (1969), 44-66.
7. C. M. Fraser first realized the potential of the Durham obedientiary account material for the history of the regions trading activity in 'The Pattern of Trade', in which she drew upon the Durham account material published in Extracts from the Obedientiary Accounts of Durham Cathedral Priory, ed. J. T. Fowler, SS, XCIX, C, CIII (1898, 1900, 1901).
8. For details of the actual goods purchased in these categories see M. Threlfall-Holmes 'Late Medieval Iron Production and Trade in the North-East', AA, 5th ser. XXVII (1999), 109-22
9. and M. Threlfall-Holmes, 'Durham Cathedral Priory's Consumption of Imported Goods: Wine and Spices, 1464-1520', in Revolution and Consumption in Late Medieval England, ed. M. Hicks (Woodbridge, 2001), 141-58.
10. Wine purchases are found in the wine purchases section of the bursars' accounts and in the church expenses section of the sacrists' accounts; Spanish iron in the iron purchases section of the bursars' accounts; and spices in the spice purchases sections of the communars' and bursars' accounts,and in the bursar/cellarer indentures.
11. Wade, Customs Accounts, pp.289-99, provides an invaluable index of merchants' names enabling the existence and extent of overseas trading activity in the years for which customs accounts survive to be established for any given merchant.
12. For published extracts from these accounts, see Fowler, Extracts, the only serious fault of which is that omissions and contractions made by the editor are not clearly signalled in the text. The range of information contained within the Durham obedientiary accounts is vast, and relates both to the Priory's income and to its expenditure. The income portions of the accounts have been studied in particular by R.A. Lomas, 'Durham Cathedral Priory as a Landowner and a Landlord, 1290-1540' (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Durham Univ. 1973).
13. The accounts also provided a rich source of material for R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400-1450 (Cambridge, 1973)
14. and for Margaret Bonney, Lordship and the Urban Community - Durham and its Overlords, 1250-1540 (Cambridge, 1990).
15. The missing years are 1477/78, 1489/90, 1490/91, 1491/92, 1502/3, 1516/17, 1517/18, and 1518/19. In addition, the account for 1483/84 has only partially survived, and the entire expenditure membranes are missing. The most damaged accounts are those for 1479/80, 1480/81, 1488/89, 1494/95, and 1519/20, where parts of the edges of the documents are missing and there is a certain amount of fading. However, the majority of the information contained within these accounts is still retrievable.
16. The best introduction to the complexities of the Benedictine organization and accounting system is still R. H. Snape, English Monastic Finances in the the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1926), especially pp. 22-70.
17. More details of the system as it was operated specifically in Durham may be found in Dobson, Durham Priory, ch.8, esp. pp. 253-65.
18. For example, the hostillar's account for 1508-9 is drawn up in the manner of a pro forma, with blanks left throughout for quantities and prices to be inserted. For roughly half of the roll, these gaps have been completed with the relevant details (in a different hand and ink to that of the bulk of the account) but other sections have been left incomplete.
19. In this article, references to these accounts are only given where the full location is not clear from the context. References to the bursars' accounts are given in the form 'B 1467/8, wine purchases', the latter being the heading of the relevant sub-section of the account. The communar's accounts are similarly referenced as 'C [etc.]'. The manuscripts are to be found in the Durham Cathedral Muniments (DCM) collection, and are held at No.5 The College, Durham.
20. Only a single page of the merchant gild records from this period has survived, and this contains only a few names of officers of the gild, with no information on their trading activities. It is published in Extracts from the Records of the Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upn-Tyne, ed. F. W. Dendy, SS, XCIII (1895).
21. Five merchants was both the average and the modal number of suppliers of wine to the bursar in any one year in this period.
22. In the following paragraphs, biographical data concerning family and civic office is taken from C. H. Hunter-Blair, The Mayors...and Sheriffs of the County of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1399-1940', AA 4, XVIII (1940). Details of import and export activities are taken from Wade, Customs Accounts.
23. Hunter-Blair, AA 4, XVIII, 22.
24. B 1500/1.
25. George Carr is one of the few names to have survived from this period in the Minute Books of the Merchant's Company of Newcastle, where he is listed as mayor in 1490. Dendy, Records of the Merchant Adventurers, p. 81.
26. B 1464/5, wine purchases.
27. B 1466/7, B 1467/8, B 1468/9, iron purchases.
28. C. M. Fraser, 'The Early Hostmen of Newcastle upon Tyne', AA 5, XII (1984), 174.
29. Dendy, 'The Struggle Between the Merchant and Craft Gilds of Newcastle in 1515', AA 3, VII (1911), 99.
30. A. F. Butcher, 'Rent, Population and Economic Change in Late-Medieval Newcastle', NH, XIV (1978), 73.
31. B 1464/5 and B 1466/7, iron purchases.
32. B 1506/7, B 1478/9, B 1469/70, and B 1472/3, wine purchases.
33. B 1499/1500, spice purchases.
34. B 1505/6, B 1519/20 wine purchases;
35. C 1510/11 spice purchases;
36. B 1515/6 iron purchases.
37. Wade, NH, XXX, 45;
38. Fraser, AA 5, XII, 169-70.
39. Bursar/Cellarer Indenture (B/CI) 1480/1 oil, honey, etc. purchases;
40. B/CI 1478/9 fish purchases;
41. B 1478/9 necessary expenses.
42. S. Thrupp, 'The Grocers of London, A Study of Distributive Trade', in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. E.Power and M. M. Postan (1966), p. 273.
43. Bonney, Lordship and the Urban Community, pp. 169-74;
44. Naomi Morimoto, 'The Demands and Purchases of Wine of Durham Cathedral Priory in the first half of the Fifteenth Century', The Nagoya Gakuin University Review, 20(2) (1983), 101-2.
45. Morimoto, Nagoya Gakuin Review, 20(2), 101-2.
46. Jennifer I. Kermode, 'Merchants, Overseas Trade and Urban Decline: York, Beverley and Hull, c. 1380-1500', NH, XXIII (1987);
47. J. N. Bartlett, 'The Expansion and Decline of York in the Late Middle Ages', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 12 (1959-60);
48. D. M. Palliser, 'A Crisis in Medieval Towns? The Case of York, 1460-1640', NH, XIV (1978).
49. While the customs accounts show clearly that wine was imported directly into Newcastle, there is also some evidence that it was purchased by Newcastle traders from London dealers, and an increase in this practise may be what is indicated here. M. K. James, in Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, ed.E. M. Veale (Oxford, 1971), pp. 189-90, quotes a case which came before Chancery in 1473 in which a London merchant refers to a debt owed to him by Nicholas Hanyng and William Stroder of Newcastle upon Tyne for four tuns of wine bought by them from his servant. Nicholas Hanyng sold half a tun of wine to the Priory in 1467/68.
50. Hoskins argued for the success of Newcastle despite this lack of evidence, concluding that 'there can be little doubt that had Newcastle been taxed in 1523-7 she would have emerged as not lower than fourth among the provincial towns' (my italics). W.G. Hoskins, 'English Provincial Towns in the Early Sixteenth Century', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 6 (1956), 4.
51. R. B. Dobson, 'Urban Decline in Medieval England', TRHS, 5th ser. 27 (1977), 19.
52. Butcher, NH, XIV, 75.
53. Palliser, NH, XIV, 115;
54. Kermode, NH, XXIII, 52.
55. A comparison might be drawn with Chester in the west, where competition from Liverpool was at least as significant as the magnet of London in its declining importance in the sixteenth century. Jenny Kermode, 'The Trade of Late Medieval Chester, 1500-1550', in Progress and Problems in Medieval England, ed. Richard Britnell and John Hatcher (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 286-307.
56. Some evidence for the volume of such trade can be found in the enrolled customs accounts, such as those printed by H. L. Gray, 'Tables of Enrolled Customs', ch. 8 in Power & Postan, Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, for the years 1398 to 1482. These suggest that Newcastle may indeed have survived the fifteenth century with its overseas trade largely intact; for example, tunnage was paid on an average of 69 tuns of wine per year in the period 1410-29, 74 tuns in 1430-49 and 124 tuns in 1450-79.
57. The sophistication of the Priory as a purchaser and its willingness to purchase from across the country is discussed in M. Threlfall-Holmes, 'Monks and Markets, Durham Cathedral Priory 1464-1520' (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Durham Univ. 2000), pp. 232-34, 248-50, 321-22.
58. This suggests that more than solely local lead-mining activity relieved the 'commercial and industrial decay' of Newcastle in this period described by A. J. Pollard, North Eastern England During the Wars of the Roses (Oxford, 1990), p. 74.
59. Sea travel involved several risks besides the obvious storms: for pirate activity, see Wendy R. Childs, 'The George of Beverley and Olav Olavesson: Trading Conditions in the North Sea in 1464', NH, XXXI (1995).
60. Newcastle did have an advantage over other east coast ports in the favourable terms that its merchants negotiated for the conduct of its principle export trade, in wool, gaining statutory exemption from the Calais staple requirements in 1463, and a 75% reduction in the standard rate of custom and subsidy for five years from 1489. Newcastle's share of England's wool exports actually doubled over this period, from 2.9% in 1453-1460 to 6.7% in 1496-1506. Wade, NH, XXX, 38, 42.