This was the way in which fortunes were being made, but few at Sarum, with its rich old market, its medieval guilds and their long established practices, were doing so. Some were, however.
“Look at the Webbe brothers,” he would cry admiringly. “They’ve not only gone into broadcloth but they actually export it to Antwerp themselves.”
This powerful pair of merchants had done exactly that, cutting out the middlemen on the way and making themselves a fine name in the town.
The trouble was, as he ruefully acknowledged, that he had not the resources to invest in such a large scale enterprise.
But now Thomas Forest had offered to supply his young friend Edward Shockley with exactly that. His plan was well-calculated to suit both men.
Thomas Forest was a gentleman. Of that there was no doubt. At the manor of Avonsford, which he had largely rebuilt, his father had added to the family’s social status in several ways. He had acquired an imposing coat of arms – a splendid if garish creation featuring a lion rampant on a field of gold, which was proudly displayed over the fireplace in the hall and also on his tomb in the little village church. As well as this proof of gentility, he had commissioned, shortly before he died, another addition for the manor: a fine portrait of himself. It was not, admittedly, by the great Holbein who had painted the king and the leading figures in the land; but it was by a competent follower, a young man from Germany who had given his narrow, cunning face an austere dignity which it certainly never possessed. This painting of portraits was a new fashion in England, at least amongst the gentry: but Forest had shrewdly realised its value in stamping the family’s importance on the minds of anyone who visited the house, and though he groaned at the price, he paid it.
“Get yourself painted, Thomas,” he instructed his son. “We’re a new family now, but one day . . .” He could see the long line of family likenesses that would one day hang on the walls of the gallery.
Thomas Forest continued his good work of raising the family’s status with, if possible, even more urgency than his father. He married the daughter of a rich clothier from Somerset, who had, through her mother, some claims to noble ancestry that had yet to be defined. She brought an impressive dowry. The estates were mostly let to tenants: the last remnants of the old village he therefore knocked down and built some fresh cottages a mile away. This allowed him to make a handsome new three hundred acre enclosure around the house in which he kept deer. Cottages, fields and hedges were all swept away and replaced by an open space planted with clumps of trees: the resulting deer park stretching towards the river was a much more agreeable prospect than the straggling houses of the peasants. At the dissolution the Forests had not obtained any of the great estates, but they had bought at cheap prices a number of farms that had belonged to the lesser friaries and it was on one of these, where there were some underemployed tenants, that Forest now proposed to set up a weaving business. He also supplemented his income by acting as steward for several small estates which the crown or the church were too lazy to manage properly themselves. By paying a low rent for them and then managing them through his own steward with ruthless efficiency he was adding handsomely to his revenues every year. Soon he hoped to join the ranks of the Justices of the Peace: for that was the first step on the ladder of full acceptance into the gentry and could lead to parliament, the king’s court, and who knew what titles and riches.
Shrewd though he was, however, Thomas Forest as a rising gentleman had no wish to soil his hands with any personal involvement with trade – at least, not visibly. And so young Edward Shockley with his fulling mill was exactly what he needed.
“I can provide the money to set up as many looms as we want: we’ll put them on one of my farms and we’ll make enough broadcloth to keep your mill going full time – build another mill if we need to. And I want you to run the whole thing, Edward, because I can trust you.”
Thomas Forest had a memorable face – sallow and narrow-set, but dignified with jet black hair and eyes and a long, thin moustache that drooped almost to the line of his jaw, so that when he was displeased he could look as grim as an executioner; when he chose to be pleasant however, he had a warm smile which he would accompany with a disarming and courtly inclination of his head. To Edward Shockley he was always particularly courteous.
He offered the young merchant generous terms, and at one of their meetings Shockley suggested:
“What we should do is try to export our cloth ourselves – cut out the middlemen, like the Webbes do.”
To his delight Forest nodded.
“I agree. And I want you to go to Antwerp to find us an agent.”
Shockley made the journey that February with high hopes. But before he went, Forest gave him careful advice.
“We want a man who can trim his sails to the wind – a privateer.”
Edward knew what he meant. The situation on the continent, with the recent wars in Italy and the constant unrest between Protestants and their Catholic rulers in Germany and the Netherlands, was always uncertain. Only the year before, the English had finally thrown the powerful German Hansa merchants out of London and English exporters could therefore expect harassment from them in return. The merchants who did best in these stormy times were the bold adventurers and opportunists.
“We must also find a man we can control from a distance – someone who needs us more than we need him.” He gazed at the young merchant thoughtfully. “Find a man with a weakness.”
Shockley had pondered this advice carefully on his journey to Antwerp. He stayed ten days in the busy port on the tidal river Schelde, with its Gothic cathedral, famous for possessing six aisles, and whose towering western spire reached seventy feet higher than even Salisbury’s. He visited its great guildhalls, markets and printing works, astonished by the scale of every building he saw. There were a thousand foreign merchant houses: English and French, Spanish, Italians, and Portuguese from the south, from the north, Germans and Danes. And on the sixth day, in a street of tall brick-gabled buildings, he found his man.
He was a huge, blond Fleming aged about thirty-five; he was clever and knew the markets well; he had a large family; he was looking for business. And he was in debt.
“If he can’t pay soon, they’ll take his house away,” Shockley told Forest.
“He sounds like our man,” the landowner agreed.
He was taking the Fleming to meet Forest at Avonsford that day. If Forest approved, then the deal between the three of them would be struck and the business would be ready to begin.
There had been a brief shower of rain just before Edward collected the Fleming from the George Inn that afternoon, and as they rode up the Avon valley glistening in the sunlight, he was glad that the place was looking its best.
For although he and Forest were intending to make use of the big foreigner, he was uncomfortably aware that the merchant, used to the huge metropolis of Antwerp and the mighty castles and palaces of Germany and France, might be a little contemptuous of the market town and modest manor houses of Sarum. The evening before when they had dined together at the inn, his companion had expressed the general view of the continentals when he leaned back comfortably and remarked:
“You English live poorly: but I grant that you eat well.”
He need not have worried, however. For as they passed through the stone gateway and rode down the newly planted avenue that led through the deer park, the Fleming nodded in warm approval.
It was when they came in sight of the manor house, however, that his companion reined his horse and stared in open-mouthed amazement.
“It is beautiful,” he said in frank admiration. “I have never seen such a thing better done.”
For when the Forests had rebuilt Avonsford Manor fifteen years before, they had incorporated into it a remarkable feature. And as a result, with the sun glancing off the still wet walls, it presented a most extraordinary sight.
“It’s like a chequerboard,” the Fleming cried in delight.
No description could have been more apt. The house now consisted of two large, gable-fronted wings between which stretched a two storey central section long enough to contain a row of five fine windows; in the middle of this now perfectly symmetrical arrangement was a broad, low-arched doorway. But the striking feature of all this, and what had excited the merchant’s admiration, was the stonework of the walls. For here the Tudor masons had demonstrated one of the triumphs of their local craft. The entire façade was divided into perfect squares, about a foot across, and these had been alternated between local grey stone of a light shade and carefully knapped flint which was darker. When the sunlight caught it after a shower, this flint gleamed almost like glass.
It was a design that had been used in this and other regions where grey stone and flint had been found since Roman times, but nowhere was it more elegantly and precisely done than in the five valleys around Sarum.
As the two drew closer to the gleaming grey building however, it was another feature that caught the visitor’s eyes. Edward saw to his amusement, as they approached the entrance, that the Fleming’s gaze was so fixed upon this last ornamentation, that he did not even notice Thomas Forest had come out of the door to greet them.
He was staring at the chimneys.
“My God,” he shouted this time, so that his voice echoed around the whole house, “what do you call those?”
“Chimneys,” Forest answered quietly.
In the reign of Henry VIII, a brief but never-to-be-forgotten fashion appeared in the architecture of England, and one which was not found anywhere else in Europe. For the English took it into their heads to create chimney stacks unlike any that the world had seen before. They were always made of red brick, and placed on top of great and medium sized houses, wholly irrespective of whatever material, plaster, brick or stone, the rest of the building was made of. They were huge. Their stacks rose in ornate columns, often heavy spirals, and were crowned with still more bulky capitals of brick or tile, carved into elaborate shapes. The capitals of the brick chimney stacks at Avonsford were particularly splendid and cumbersome, being octagonal in shape with overhanging scalloped edges. They proclaimed, if such a proclamation were needed, that the owner of the house aspired to the highest social status, that in time the house itself would grow to be as elaborate as its chimneys: they were its greatest and most preposterous glory.
The meeting went well, and after less than an hour, Forest concluded the deal. Its terms were simple. The Fleming was to act as exclusive agent for the new venture; Forest would finance any other dealings he wished to undertake. He would also pay off the merchant’s debts, taking his house in Antwerp as security. In effect, by the end of the afternoon, Forest owned him.
“And the secret of him is,” young Shockley had confided to Forest before hand, “he likes to live well and he spends his money as fast as he makes it: he’ll never pay off his debt to you.”
When the matter was satisfactorily clinched, the three men fell to talking of general matters.
Sitting comfortably in the big panelled hall the merchant grinned knowingly at them both and asked:
“So – you English are Protestant this year, like us. Soon you will change your minds again, ya?”
Shockley opened his mouth to protest, but to his surprise Forest made only a sign of caution.
“In Antwerp there is a rumour that your boy king is sick. He will die soon. What then?”
“Nonsense,” Shockley protested. Only the previous year the fifteen-year-old king had passed through Sarum and he had seen him with his own eyes: the boy had looked pale, but he had smiled and acknowledged the loyal cheers of the crowd with every sign of healthy enjoyment. It was true that there had been news of a temporary sickness that February, but a London merchant had told him the young king was better now.
To his surprise, once again, Forest did not deny the charge.
“The country will follow the religion of the monarch,” he told the Fleming quietly.
“Whatever it is?” Shockley asked sharply.
“I think so.”
The Fleming laughed.
“It’s true what they say then – you English believe in nothing.” And he slapped his knee in amusement.
Hearing these words, Shockley’s face clouded. He remembered Abigail and Peter Mason that morning. He thought of his own, foolish admission of his Protestantism to Katherine a little earlier. Could it really be, now, that the country would change religion again?
As he left, he asked Forest anxiously:
“So you really think the king is so ill?”
Forest took his arm confidentially:
“Concentrate on the new business, Shockley. Don’t worry about politics or religion. Just follow Bishop Capon.” He gave him a warning look. “If trouble comes, keep your head down, that’s all.”
The Fleming was in a boisterous mood as they rode back to the city. He understood perfectly the hold Forest now had over him, but he was relieved at the same time to be free of his debts. As they passed the old castle hill and approached the city gates he blew out his cheeks and demanded: