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A great deal of Betson's business would be done at the mart of Calais itself, where he met with the dignified Flemish merchants, scions of old families with estates of their own, and the more plebeian merchants of Delft and Leyden, and the wool dealers from sunny Florence and Genoa and Venice.
The great company sheltered him, arranged his lodging, kept a sharp eye on the quality of his wool, made rules for his buying and selling, and saw that he had justice in its court. It was in this setting of hard and withal of interesting work that Thomas Betson's love story flowered into a happy marriage.
Nevertheless your ladyship must cause him to be merry and of glad cheer, and to put away all fantasies and unthrifty thoughts, that comes no good of, but only hurtful. A man may hurt himself by riotous means; it is good to beware. Meanwhile what of little Katherine Riche? She recurs over and over in Thomas Betson's letters. Occasionally she is in disgrace, for she was not handy with her pen.
Here is something very different from the modest Thomas Betson's injunction: 'The costes of my burying to be don not outrageously, but sobrely and discretly and in a meane maner, that it may be unto the worship and laude of Almyghty God. The worthy old clothier was not unmindful of the worship and laud of Thomas Paycocke also, and over £500 in modern money was expended upon his burial ceremonies, over and above the cost of founding his new chantry.
And so on, with details of the number of fells shipped in like manner by the Michael of Hull and the Thomas of Newhithe, where they lay 'next the mast aftward under the fells of Thomas Betson's', over 11,000 fells in all. How invigorating is such a list of ships.
Katherine Riche was William Stonor's stepdaughter, one of his wife's children by her first husband; she was Thomas Betson's affianced bride, and at this time she was about thirteen years old.
It is pleasant to observe that bad-tempered old Mistress Croke, Dame Elizabeth's mother, was not unmindful of Betson's forbearance during those visits when she had railed upon him with her sharp tongue: As for the tidings that is here, I trust to God it shall be very good. And he came to him again on Friday ... and he was well amended and so said all the people that were about him.
In the May of the same year in which Betson's partnership with Stonor would seem to have ended, old Richard Cely was up there doing business and reporting it to his son, 'Jorge Cely at Caleys'.
As the editor of the Stonor Letters remarks, 'The sincerity and honesty of Betson's character as revealed in his letters, forbids one to suppose that he was to blame. The stapler, who would make a good livelihood, must do two things, and give his best attention to both of them: first, he must buy his wool from the English grower, then he must sell it to the foreign buyer.
My lady your wife is reasonably strong waxed, the Lord be thanked, and she took her will in that matter like as she doth in all other. There are, indeed, a hundred evidences of the warmth of Betson's affection for the Stonors and of the simple piety of his character. Sometimes he ventures to give them good advice.
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