FRENCH CANNINGS:
The Canynges of Bristol in the 15th Century
From
Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century
, Eileen Power, University of London, Routledge & Kegan, 1933, Los Angeles Library 382.42 P887
[Everything not in square brackets is directly quoted from the text.]
[IN THE COMPANY OF MAYORS OF BRISTOL]
William Canynges the Younger held, besides fourteen shops, at least seventeen tenements, a close and two gardens in Bristol, and lands in Wells, the hundred of Wells and Westbury on Trym. Similarly Philip Mede, mayor, owned lands in the counties of Somerset and Bristol; Hugh Withiford, mayor, left lands in Shropshire in Oswestry and round about; and another mayor, Robert Jakes, had extensive property in various parts of Leicestershire. ... Philip Mede married his daughter to Sir Maurice Berkeley, lord of Beverston; and the famous Canynges' son and heir, John, was considered an eligible match for Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Middleton, Esq., of Stanton Drewe. When Canynges drew up the marriage agreement he promised that he would "competently find" John and Elizabeth in meat, drink and clothing, and all things necessary to their degrees during his life, and would leave his son as well off as any man left his son in Bristol within a hundred years "saving only Robert Cheddar." [Note: Cheddar is cognate with Ceoddar of Ceoddar Gorge, one of the oldest inhabited sites on Britain, in the Mendips Hills. This last sentence is the ending of Wm Canynges' will, as I remember it posted on the walls of St. Mary Redcliffe in Bristol.] p. 234
[THE CANYNGES' AS PART OF BRISTOL'S NUCLEUS OF POWER]
In Bristol there was no parallel to the foreign colony of Englishmen in Lisbon, nor to the Hanseatic colony in London. Detailed records of Bristol's dealings with her various customers prove tha her trade was mainly in English hands, and reveal a rich and powerful group of native merchants, controlling all the affairs of her city.
[Note: powerful blocs of foreign merchants were able to take up residence in a major city, and, through their ability to make loans to sovereigns, and other influences, were able to "call the shots" to a large extent. The Steelyard was the name of one such enterprise, the home of the Hanseatic merchants in London. The English merchants were never able to win an equal location in a Hanseatic town, and were forced to live in scattered dwellings and obey curfews. However, the English virtually owned the area of Gascony on the southwest corner of France. Incidentally, it is within this area, in Bearn, that the only other instance of the name Beautrine, as far as we can find, derives. --- KS]
Sometimes a commercial enterprise was carried on from generation to generation, as was the case in the Canynges family. William Canynges, burgess and merchant, who died in 1396, left his share in the ship Rodecog to his son Simon, and the rest of his property (after his wife's death) to his son John. This John traded with the talents committed to him, continued like his father to deal in cloth, shipped it to Spain and Bayonne, imported thence woad and iron, and in 1899 was elected mayor. He survivied his father barely nine, years, and died in 1405, pssessed of three halls and five gardens, six tenements, twenty-two shops, and other lands and "void places" in Bristol, leaving six young children under age. His wife thereupon was married again to a prosperous merchant, Thomas Yonge, and three of her children distinguished themselves. One, Thomas Yonge, deserted trade for the law and became the well-known judge and member of Parliament who in 1451, for petitioning that the Duke of York should be declared heir to the throne, was cast into the Tower. Another, Thomas Canynges, made his way in London as a grocer, until in 1456 he was elected mayor there; and a third, William Canynges, followed his father's profession in Bristol, sent his ships to Iceland, the Baltic, Spain and Portugal, France and the Netherlands, increased the family property, and was mayor five times. He outlived both his childless sons; at his death the family vanished from Bristol, though his great-nephew and heir occasionally imported goods thither, and it was from the mayor of London that the nineteenth century statesman, George Canning, was descended. p. 235
[FACTORS AND ATTORNEYS]
The position of factor was normally the next step taken by the ambitious apprentice... This would probably mean living abroad, for the merchant usually kept a resident factor in towns with which he dealt constantly, with fuller powers of transacting business than his apprentices. Often the factor was a younger member of his family like John Canynges who seems to have been the factor for his father William Canynges. p. 236
The attorney was usually... an agent appointed to transact a particular piece of business, though the words "factor" and "attorney" were sometimes used indiscriminately, and not in the strict legal sense in which the attorney, with more complete powers than the factor, would have fuller authority to act for another. ... From the customs... it would appear as though Canynges, Shipward, Gaywode, and Baron, in partnership. once during four months (1465-6) shipped goods through no less than seventy-one attorneys, monopolizing almost the whole of the native trade of Bristol. But the fact that Canynges and his associates then had a license to ship customs free makes it plain that the attorneys were the real owners of the goods, and succeeded in shipping them under the name of this influential partnership... [p. 237]
[THE EMERGENCE OF SHIP-OWNERS AS A DISTINCT GROUP]
It is further remarkable that the other extant customs accounts at this time not only yield no evidence of such a partnership, but scarcely even mention the name of Canynges. Now this period was the very climax of Canynges' career, and it seems at first strange that he, traditionally the greatest Bristol merchant of the century, should appear to be taking so little active part in foreign trade. The story of Canynges, however, marks a new stage in the evolution of Bristol's trade. For one of the most notable features of the time is the emergence of the shipowner as a still more wealthy and influential citizen of Bristol than the merchant ... and had developed probably from that newly emerged class of merchants making their fortunes entirely by foreign trade. [p. 237]
... it may possibly have been from among the drapers [manufacturers of wool cloth] that this distinctive mercantile class arose. The fortunes of the Canynges family were very likely typical. In Richard II's reign John Canynges and William the elder were concerned both in the production and in the export of cloth. But in ... all later accounts, the name of Canynges never appears. William Canynges the younger was therefore probably in the first instance purely a foreign merchant, procuring the cloth which he exported from drapers or clothiers. Just as the cloth producers and cloth dealers in England were thus ceasing to trade abroad on their own account ... so the ship-master now seldom entered goods in his own name, but ... became more exclusively concerned with navigation.
Early in the century many merchants were themselves ship-owners, having perhaps a share in a ship with five or six others [Walter Derby owned part of the Nicholas and the Trinity and the Marie; Thomas Sampson owned the Cog Joan, William Spaynell owned a "barge"]. ... Later in the century, however, many more [merchants] owned the whole of a ship, and gradually a wealthy class of ship-owners appeared possessing small private fleets of ten or more vessels. These great ship-owners, employers of several hundreds of men, fully occupied with the building, equipment, and management of their craft, concerned themselves little, if at all, with the buying and selling of goods, but made their profits on the freights paid by merchants whose goods they carried. [p. 238]
Pre-eminent among such ship-owners was William Canynges the younger, himself once a foreign merchant. According to his contemporary and fellow-citizen, William of Worcester, he kept 800 men for eight years employed in his ships, and had workmen, carpenters, masons, etc. to the number of a hundred men. ... Canynges... controlled about a quarter of all the shipping at the port of Bristol, owning nearly half of Bristol's ships, and amassed his wealth not by dealing in cloth ... but by carrying the merchandise of others. ... The rate of payment was high, since risks were considerable; for wine it was usually at least a sixth of its price in England. [p. 239]
[INCREASE IN THE SIZE OF SHIPS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
Early in the century few of Bristol's ocean vessels can have carried more than 100 tuns, and the average cargo of the Bordeaux wine ships was 88 tuns, though one ship loaded 179 tuns. By the middle of the century, however, ships from Bordeaux were bringing on an average 150 tuns. ... French and Spanish ships visiting Bristol ... vary from 80 to 250 tuns. ...the last quarter of the century [was the] time of the great ship-builders, Canynges and Strange. Worcester puts four of Canynges' ships at under 200 tuns, three more between 200 and 250 tuns, the Mary Canynges at 400 tuns, and the Mary Redcliffe [Redcliffe] at 500 tuns, the size of the largest of [the Earl of] Warwick's ships in 1464. [Note: Warwick is the county in which Foxcote house is located.] The most difficult figure to believe is that of 900 tuns for the Mary and John. Worcester, however, was scrupulous in those measurements of his which we can check to-day in Bristol. ... he states that it cost Canynges the great sum of 4,000 marks to build.
The total tunnage of Canynges' ships must thus have amounted to close on 3,000. ... Canynges might have received in freights during one year over 10,000 pounds. [This at a time when the entire annual income of a king or nobleman might be 20,000 pounds.][ p. 240]
[MERCHANTS' MARKS]
The George ... probably the one enumerated by Worcester as of 511 tuns, was freighted ... with the goods of sixty-three merchants worth altogether over 1,000 pounds. Such a multifarious division of the cargo was very common when merchants preferred not to risk too large a consignment in one vessel. Each merchant distinguished his particular goods by a "mark" of his own, and this was legally recognized as establishing at least rpima facie evidence of ownership in case of shipwreck, piracy, or other mishap. p. 241
[In the next instalment I hope to focus on the nexus of the Canynges enterprise and influence as it shifts to London, its possible role in the origins of the East India Company, and the development of trans-Atlantic ventures. To sum up perhaps overly hastily, it seems that the Canynges' and Yonges' group, including also the Forsters who must be the same family as that of Stephen Forster, partner of William Canynges, in London, continued to wield much influence through the grocers' trade. It was the London grocers' "mistery" who had possession of the "kinge's beme", that is, actual possession of the scale or "beme" used to establish accurate measurement of ships' cargoes, the control of which could give many trading advantages to its members. It was likewise the grocers who, almost exclusively, controlled the spice trade. As one example, Stephen Forster made the largest purchase of pepper ever made by a single merchant. Through the spice trade of course, the quest for a route to India was powered. Another topic to study is that of the War of the Roses, the shift of power from the Lancastrian to the Yorkist spheres of influence, and the part played by the Company of the Staple in that conflict. It will be remembered that William Canynges "financed both sides of the War of the Roses" as stated in St. Mary Redcliffe Cathedral, Bristol. The term "The Company" is used in reference to both the East India Company and the Company of the Staple. As an uneducated American outsider, I'm nevertheless intrigued with the prospect that The Company, used so frequently in English writings on either subject, may have included many of the same members or even have been the same general group.]
-------- Kim Salisbury, Bixby Knolls, California, December 23, 2000 -------
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