To his surprise she only shrugged.
“Then I’ll work for someone else.”
“I can take you to the shire court for that,” he warned her. The Statute forbade desertion for higher wages. But Agnes was not impressed.
“And what does Elias get paid?” she demanded.
“None of your business,” he snarled. His own little workforce was of course being paid the highest wages in the area.
“You’ll pay me the same, and from now on you’ll pay the two elder children full wages too,” she retorted calmly. “Take me to court if you like.” With a brisk nod she closed the door and left him standing there.
Although it was against the Wilson interest, Edward could not help admiring the stubborn woman who stood up to his father so firmly; and he knew very well that Agnes was right. For the Statute of Labourers, in practice, could only be enforced where local landlords wanted it to be; if farmers were anxious to employ labourers on any terms they would simply disregard it. Walter was in no position to take Agnes to court, but before he left Avonsford that day he swore to his son:
“Damn that woman. I’ll get even with her. You’ll see.”
It was in any case only a minor irritation. In the next few years Walter not only sold his grain, but drove an ever-increasing flock of sheep up on the high ground, and here again he took advantage of Gilbert de Godefroi’s conservatism and drove them on to pastures, out to the old sheep house beyond, that the knight had not used for years.
One other measure from Parliament was directly useful to them at this point. For years, the king had given a monopoly of wool exports to the merchants of the Staple – the oligarchy of rich traders who operated only through a single mart or Staple, usually across the Channel. This made it easy for the king to levy customs duties and also put at his disposal a small group of monopolists who would make him large loans. But this system angered the smaller wool traders who managed in 1353 to obtain a new Ordinance of the Staple which allowed local trading.
“Now we can sell our wool through Winchester or Bristol,” Walter exulted, and by expert trading, and occasionally misrepresenting the quality of his wool, he soon increased his profits still further.
But then, in 1355, came his greatest chance of all. For in 1355, Thomas de Godefroi went to war.
Few campaigns in history have been more glorious than that of the Black Prince in 1355. Even Edward Wilson was moved to admiration by the splendour of it. As for Thomas de Godefroi, it seemed to the young knight that his hour had finally come.
“Thinks he’s one of King Arthur’s knights,” Walter remarked scornfully.
It was true. But it was not surprising. For the whole proceedings were bathed in the golden light of chivalry. Some ten years before, Edward III had vowed to establish a round table at Windsor, and both the huge table itself and a building to house it had been begun. Of still more significance, on St George’s Day 1348, that noblest and most self-conscious of chivalric institutions, the Order of the Garter, was inaugurated with the Black Prince and the Earl of Salisbury amongst its founder members. To a young man like Godefroi, they seemed glorious days. A great and chivalrous king was surrounded by his sons – Edward the Black Prince, John of Gaunt, Lionel of Clarence – great men in their own right, all of them, yet steadfastly loyal to their father. This was kingship as it was meant to be.
Though Thomas certainly did not know it, the chivalrous notions that he had learnt in the splendid hall at Whiteheath, and which were now reaching their greatest flowering, came from several sources. The courtly troubadours of southern France had supplied the idea of courtly manners, and that every knight must serve a lady. The Church, with its cult of the Blessed Virgin, had reminded the knight that it was the lady of religion he must serve. The stoic philosophers of ancient times, through the writings of Boethius a thousand years before, who was so well-loved that the Saxon King Alfred had chosen to translate him, had told the nobleman that he was above the triumphs and misfortunes of this world, which he must suffer bravely and gracefully. This was the final amalgam, with its philosophical, religious and sexual appeal, that was now so wonderfully mixed together in the tales of King Arthur and his chivalrous knights; and there was no finer exponent of the knight’s calling than Edward, Prince of Wales, the Black Prince.
“He’s only a year or two older than me,” Thomas would remind himself as he strove to emulate his hero.
For if the plague had left the country a dark and desolate wasteland, it seemed to Thomas that the glittering triumphs of English arms and chivalry were shining through the darkness.
The enthusiasm for the campaign amongst most of those taking part went far beyond chivalry. Never had the prospects of profit been better: for the highest and the lowest. A Welsh foot soldier was paid two pence a day; a mounted archer six pence – and this when the yearly wage of a ploughman was supposed to be about twelve shillings a year, so that even the foot soldier would earn the labourer’s yearly wage in just seventy-two days. It was not only wages that attracted, in any case: it was plunder. Every foot soldier stood a good chance of finding loot in the rich provinces of France; as for a knight, he would hope to capture a nobleman.
“There’s your path to fortune,” Gilbert reminded his son. “We must have a knight to ransom. That’ll save the estate.”
The ransoms were huge. A French knight could often be sold back to his family for over a thousand pounds. Indeed, so valuable were captured nobles that a thriving commodity market in them had developed. Captives were sold between knights, or even to syndicates of merchants for cash against an anticipated ransom, so that a French nobleman might after a little time find that he was owned by a confusing collection of men spread all over the country, each of whom had a percentage interest in his life.
But if the remedy was clear, there was one problem: the cost of entry.
It was not only the armour with its burnished plates for the forearm and the front of the leg. It was not only a squire and a servant to accompany the knight. It was also the warhorse. For the high-bred charger, the destrier, was a necessity. With names as high-sounding as their noble owners, these splendid equine aristocrats were often imported from as far away as Spain and Sicily. Wonderful to look upon, magnificent in action, one of these beasts could cost an astounding hundred pounds.
And as usual, the estate was short of cash.
In his six years of trading since the plague, Walter Wilson had done spectacularly well. Exactly how he had managed to save a hundred pounds even Edward could never quite work out. But it was the possession of this remarkable sum that now allowed him to make the most brilliant transaction of his career.
For late in 1354 he lent this entire sum to Gilbert de Godefroi to equip his son Thomas for the war. He even lent the money without interest or fee of any kind – his conditions were cleverer than that. It was a loan which, in the circumstances, Godefroi was glad to accept.
“The terms are these,” he explained to Edward. “If he takes a knight, he repays the loan, plus one twentieth of the ransom; if not, then he either repays the loan without interest, or he loses his security.”
“And what’s his security for the loan?” Edward asked.
Walter grinned.
“Some of his best fields – and the fulling mill.”
How cleverly his father had baited the trap! Edward chuckled as he thought of it. If young Godefroi captured a knight, there was a good chance of profit; but if not, then they both knew very well that the Godefroi estate would be more short of cash than ever.
“You see,” Walter muttered. “We’ll get that Shockley mill.”
Although Edward had no liking for young Thomas de Godefroi, he watched the preparations for the war with admiration, and he could see why the young noble, who had viewed his own estate with so little interest, should be so full of enthusiasm now. Many parties of men came through. There were the Welsh foot soldiers, dressed in green and white. There were men at arms, knights and squires. One of the most splendid sights was the mounted archers. They rode proudly, their six-foot bows of yew, maple or oak slung behind them; they even rode about the battlefield, only dismounting to shoot their deadly hail of arrows – up to twelve in a minute with a range of almost four hundred yards and a force that could penetrate armour. And Thomas himself looked handsome, Edward had to admit, as he rode out of Sarum, with the white swan on his surcoat, on his way to seek his fortune.
The campaign of the Black Prince against King John the Good of France was a triumph beyond even Thomas’s hopes. In 1355 they had campaigned around Bordeaux. The next year they had pushed further still. And on September 16, 1356, against a much larger French force, the twenty-five-year-old Prince had led his army to the great victory of Poitiers.
It was the stuff of legend.
Before the battle, Thomas had heard the stirring address the Black Prince made to his troops; and with the prince he had knelt to ask God’s blessing; he had joined in the triumph when the King of France himself was captured, and he had been standing just outside the legendary feast when the prince, in his most famous gesture of chivalry, treated the fallen king like an honoured guest. What knights had been captured – the flower of French chivalry. And what ransoms agreed. The King of France was to pay three million crowns – five times King Edward’s yearly income. Huge territories had been gained as well. How proud he was to have acquitted himself with honour in these noble proceedings: why, even the prince himself had smiled upon him.
There was only one problem: he had fought so valiantly, pressing on into every fray, that he had forgotten to capture a knight. He was returning almost empty-handed.
He was one of the few that did so. Almost every man at arms found plunder. Many even stayed on in the distracted kingdom for several years, forming themselves into mercenary companies whose profiteering would be remembered in France for generations. But when he had been invited by a friendly knight to join one of these, he had refused.
“A Godefroi fights for honour,” he had stated coldly, “not for money.”
And so honour was all that he brought back.
It was not enough.
Gilbert and his son behaved with quiet dignity, as befitted them, when they transferred some of their best fields and the profitable fulling mill into Walter Wilson’s hands. By this transaction Walter became a direct tenant-in-chief of the king. But more important, he was Shockley’s landlord.
Edward had never seen him so exultant.
“We’ve half ruined those Godefrois,” he cried in triumph. “Now we’ll kick out that cursed Shockley too.”
But it was this plan that caused Edward, for the first time, to contradict his father.
In their many negotiations, which were always carefully orchestrated, he always played the soft role to his father’s hard one; and no one valued more than Edward his father’s blunt manner and vicious calculation. It had served them well. But he had also noticed in the last year a look in men’s eyes which told him that they resented Walter, and several times recently he had been convinced that his softer approach could actually have brought them more. Moreover, young Shockley had done well in Salisbury. He was getting influence.
“Stephen Shockley’s a member of the city guild now,” he pointed out. “Why quarrel with him? We need friends, not enemies.”
Walter stared at him, amazed. “Shockley? A friend?”
Edward shrugged. “Why not? If he’s useful.”
The older man was silent. His life had been led for revenge, and he had been successful. He longed to humiliate a Shockley. But his clear-sighted mind told him his son was right. He scowled.
Edward went on. It was something, he realised, that he had wanted to say for some time.
“Make him a friend. Soon we’ll be richer than Shockley. That’s what I want.”
The two generations faced each other and then, to Edward’s surprise, the older man gave way.
“Do what you like, damn you.” And he turned away.
The next day Edward Wilson went into the city of New Sarum and after a satisfactory interview with Bishop Wyvil’s steward, transferred the mill at a handsome profit to the bishop, who he knew had always wanted to get it.
“Now the bishop’s our friend as well.” He smiled.
Sometimes in the years that followed, he had to admit that old Walter might, after all, have been right; for the profits they could have reaped from the fulling mill were handsome. The cloth industry, in particular the production of broadcloth, was booming. But then so was every other aspect of their business. Though other parts of the country were still suffering from the shock of the plague, Wiltshire, and the city of Salisbury in particular, were thriving. And the Wilsons still continued to thrive more than most.
It is often supposed – quite erroneously – that the Black Death of 1348 was an isolated event which was not repeated until the great plague of 1665.
In fact, throughout the intervening centuries, there were numerous outbreaks of the plague; and probably the most severe of all, almost as terrible as the original, was the second visitation of 1361. It raged in London with a particular fury.