United States or Niue ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For ships put out not only from Hull and Colchester, but from Brightlingsea, Rotherhithe, Walberswick in Suffolk, Rainham in Essex, Bradwell, Maidstone, Milton, Newhithe, and Milhall. In August 1478, the Celys were paying the masters of twenty-one different ships for the freight of their sarplers of wool after the summer clip.
How they smack of the salt too, those old master mariners, Henry Wilkins, master of the Christopher of Rainham, John Lollington, master of the Jesu of London, Robert Ewen, master of the Thomas of Newhithe, and all the rest of them, waving their hands to their wives and sweethearts as they sail out of the sparkling little bays, with the good woolsacks abaft or under hatches shipmen, all of them, after Chaucer's heart: But of his craft, to rekene wel his tydes His stremes and his daungers hym besides, His herberwe and his moone, his lodemenage, Ther was noon swich from Hulle to Cartage.
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.
Thomas Betson died in 1486, and was thus an exact contemporary of those other Merchants of the Staple, George and Richard Cely, whom he must have known; indeed, William Cely, their cousin and agent, writes from London to George in Calais in 1481, advising him that he has dispatched 464 fells to him in the Thomas of Newhithe, 'and the sayd felles lyeth nexte be afte the maste lowest under the felles of Thomas Bettson'. By the aid of the 'Stonor Letters and Papers', which contain many letters from and concerning him during the years of his partnership with Sir William, and of the 'Cely Papers', which are full of information about the life of a Merchant of the Staple at Calais, Thomas Betson may be summoned before us by a kindly magic until he almost lives again.
Word Of The Day