Authors: Thomas B. Costain
It is not mere speculation to say that these thoughts were in Edward’s mind as he sipped the rich wines and listened intently to the straightaway talk of the practical Yorkshireman. Shortly afterward he put a new policy
into effect. When he returned to England after winning a great naval victory, he inveighed, according to John Lord Campbell in his
Lives of the Lord Chancellors
, “against the whole order of the priesthood as unfit for any secular employment and he astonished the kingdom by the bold innovation of appointing a layman as chancellor.”
It was not Pole who was selected for this experiment but a soldier named Sir Robert Bourchier. The reason almost certainly was that Edward had reached the conclusion that Pole would be more useful in producing wealth than in handling it after it had been made. He, Edward, could always find a chancellor, but where would he find another servant with the authentic Midas touch? Certainly, however, the long and close connection between monarch and merchant, which was to last for many years, dates back to this meeting under William de la Pole’s own roof.
Pole served as mayor of Hull four years. During this time he represented the city in Parliament and he went to Flanders several times to conduct negotiations with the free states as the king’s representative; with success, quite clearly, for the king continued to employ him in ambassadorial roles. In 1335 he was appointed to the post of custos to prevent the export of gold and silver and was made receiver of customs at Hull, in return for which he agreed to pay the expense of the royal household at a rate of ten pounds a day. The next year found Edward in desperate straits. His plans were maturing for the great war and his money was flying right and left. In 1338 Pole made two loans, huge ones for a private citizen, the first for eleven thousand pounds and the second for seventy-five hundred pounds. In return for these and still other advances not specified, he received twelve royal manors in the north country, including the lordship of Holderness, and certain houses in Lombard Street, London. Edward promised as well to find husbands among the nobility for Pole’s two daughters. Whether it was due to royal matchmaking or because the daughters were fine catches, it is on record that Blanche, the elder of the two, became Lady de Scrope of Bolton and Margaret became Madame Neville of Hornby, Lancashire.
It was soon after this that the ambitious king found himself so involved in debt that he pawned his crown to raise a sum of fifty-four thousand florins from three rich citizens of Mechlin. Needless to state, it was the period of Pole’s greatest usefulness to the king, who was turning more and more to the Yorkshireman for assistance. By midsummer 1339 the loans made by Pole had reached the total of £76,180, as already stated.
And this brings us to the time when the wool magnate would learn something about the ways of kings who get themselves involved in financial difficulties.
Kings did not make satisfactory debtors in these days. They had too much power. Consider what would happen a hundred years later when Charles VII of France, who as dauphin had failed to go to the assistance of Jeanne d’Arc, found himself deeply in the debt of Jacques Coeur, the fabulous merchant prince of that day. Coeur had financed the final campaign of the Hundred Years’ War which resulted in the expulsion of the English. King Charles did not have the money to pay him back and so it occurred to him (or it was whispered in his ear by advisers) that he could get out of the difficulty by having Coeur arrested and charged with various criminal and treasonable offenses. This was done and the fabulous Jacques, owner of departmental stores all over France as well as a fleet of merchant ships, was convicted on the most trumpery and absurd list of indictments ever concocted in that or any other country. Whether this possibility had occurred to Edward is a matter of pure speculation, but tracing the course of the two cases leaves a conviction of the closeness of the pattern. There was this difference: Edward did not pursue Pole with the savagery which Charles of France and the vindictive nobles around him showed to the merchant who had climbed too high. Coeur was sentenced to death, escaped from his prison, and reached Rome, where the Pope of the day appointed him to the command of a fleet against the Turks. He died on the island of Chios before having the chance to offer battle.
None of this is to be found in the sudden breaking off of relations between King Edward and his creditor. This is what happened. Edward returned to London toward the end of 1340 in a mood of sullen resentment. Everything was going wrong. The Flemish allies were still shilly-shallying, the crown officers at Westminster were lax in raising and dispatching the troops and supplies needed on the continent. The money he had been borrowing here, there, and everywhere had melted away as soon as he got his hands on it. He was dissatisfied with everyone.
His first step was to have the constable of the Tower of London arrested on the charge that the place was not guarded with sufficient vigilance. That same night orders were issued “privily” for the arrest of William de la Pole, his brother Richard, Sir John de Pulteney, and a number of others. The blow fell without warning. Pole had gone to bed, believing himself secure in the king’s favor, although he had undoubtedly been wondering about the security for the enormous loans he had made the king. He was rudely awakened from his slumbers and told that he was under arrest. On what grounds? The king’s pleasure, declared the
officers of the law. He was taken to the Fleet prison and consigned to a cell.
In 1337 Pole had been commissioned, together with one Reginald de Conduit, to buy wool and sell it abroad for the king. There had been no indication at the time that Edward had been dissatisfied with the results. Perhaps someone in his train had whispered to him that his two agents had kept too large a share of the profits for themselves. This was made the basis of the charges brought against the Yorkshireman and on which he was convicted in the Exchequer and sent to Devizes Castle in the west. The next year the case was aired in Parliament and the conviction of Pole was annulled. Nevertheless, he was kept in confinement and the year following he was back in the Fleet. Finally on May 16 he was released after being mainperned (a form of medieval parole), to be available to the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer from day to day for a close study of his accounts.
In the meantime King Edward had been riding the high horse of his displeasure with all his official servants. He was using two brothers at the time in the most important offices under the crown. John de Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, had also acted at one time as chancellor, but now his brother, Robert, Bishop of Chichester, held the secular office. It was the conduct of the two brothers which evoked the king’s angry invective against having priests in secular office. Perhaps they had been lax and easygoing and they had made it clear that they did not favor the king’s “secret business,” in other words the pending war with France. Robert de Stratford was dismissed from office in favor of Sir John Bourchier, a rough and relatively untutored soldier, and thrown into prison. Stratford decided to get himself out of trouble as soon as possible. Making his submission, he was released and returned to his clerical office.
But the archbishop, John de Stratford, was made of sterner stuff. He was, it became apparent, a strong admirer of one of his predecessors, the sainted Thomas à Becket; so much so that during the closing years of his life he built a chantry in the parish church of his native town to the memory of Becket. When Edward issued a proclamation charging him with malfeasance in office, the archbishop wrote a resounding denial which he sent out to be read in all the churches of the land. When Parliament met at Westminster to act on his conduct in office, he put in an appearance in his pontifical robes, with the cross of Canterbury carried before him and a train of clerical attendants trailing in his wake; a second Becket and just as determined to assert himself. When he was refused admittance, he took up his stand in Palace Yard and refused to leave. Officers of the crown came out and declared him a traitor to the king.
“The curse of Almighty God,” cried the archbishop, “and of His blessed
Mother and of St. Thomas, and mine also, be on the heads of them that inform the king so. Amen, amen!”
This was a dangerous situation, for St. Thomas was venerated throughout the whole Christian world, and the parallel between the two archbishops was too close for comfort. The case was postponed a year and the charge was then annulled.
But Pole had no clerical immunity to stand behind. Although the charges against him had been annulled by Parliament, it was not until 1344 that his own lands were restored to him; but not those he had received from the king “by gift or purchase.” In other words, the king received back the properties he had turned over to the merchant against the loans.
Pole’s moments of glory as one of the chief advisers of the king had come to an end. It had been an expensive lesson, but he was not being pursued, at any rate, with the ferocity shown Jacques Coeur when the latter was thrown from office. And up in the hills of England the sheep runs were still thickly tenanted and so there was always the valuable wool which had been the basis of the Pole fortunes. Quietly the Yorkshireman, like the good cobbler, returned to his last.
Later he was taken back, partially at least, into the king’s favor; although it is not on record that he advanced any more loans. In July 1345 he was summoned to London to treat with certain “lieges” on “arduous affairs of the realm” and the following year to attend a council “to speak of secret things.” His advice, obviously, was still worth having. In 1355, in return for “his great services in lending money to the king,” he was made a knight and banneret. In March of that year he surrendered certain manors to the king and in August he executed a release to Edward from all debts up to the preceding November 20. In 1360 Pole and his wife were granted some escheated lands in Yorkshire “in consideration of his great services to the king.” Escheated land came from someone who had been found guilty of a state offense; this grant to the Yorkshire merchant, therefore, cost Edward nothing.
Sir William de la Pole died in 1366, but in the intervening years he had been quietly and profitably at work. He left four sons and much property to divide among them. His eldest son, Michael, had already begun to carve the great career which would make him richer and more prominent than the father. Michael served through the whole of the French wars, first under the Black Prince and then under the king’s second son,
who was known as John of Gaunt. He became in time chancellor of England and was made Earl of Suffolk.
This was accounted the main accomplishment of stout Sir William. He was the first merchant prince of England to found one of the great noble families, the earls and later the dukes of Suffolk. He lived long enough to have a glimpse of the honors his descendants would win.
T
HE Hundred Years’ War was fought, supposedly, over Edward of England’s claim to the throne of France. Actually it was the inevitable outcome of the conditions which existed. It had to be fought sooner or later. Ever since Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II and took with her that huge stretch of territory in France, which included nearly all of the western and southern provinces, the French had lived for the day when they could drive the English back over the Channel. They created continuous trouble along the frontiers of the fiefs still held by the kings of England.
A further incentive had arisen through the close trade ties between England and the Low Countries. The French had been looking with covetous eyes at the Flemish wealth and had seen to it that Count Louis of Flanders, sometimes called Louis of Crécy, who exercised a nominal suzerainty over the great cities, was favorable to them. England could not allow the French to become predominant in the best market they had for their wool and had been striving for years to form a firm alliance with the Low Countries.
Finally there was Scotland and the alliance between that country and France.
All that was needed to set the fire ablaze was a pretext, a blow from either side, a bold step, a rash statement. The citizens of London had appointed captains and had set themselves to drill in the expectation of a French fleet landing on the Kentish coast. The Channel Islands were fortified and garrisoned, and new forts were built on the Isle of Wight. King Edward seized the funds which were being held in the cathedrals for a new crusade. Parliament, in a continual state of flurry, granted the subsidies which Edward kept demanding.
To make sure of the good will of the Flemish people, Edward sent a
commission headed by the Bishop of Lincoln to discuss terms. The commission traveled in great state and tossed gold about in the best tradition of the king. With the bishop were a number of young English knights who wore red patches over their eyes and answered questions with cold silence. The explanation of this singular conduct was that the young men had sworn to wear the patches and to refrain from giving any information, even on such trivial matters as the weather, until they had performed some worthy deed of arms on French soil. The mission made a strong impression by their liberality but received no promises.
Half of the Low Countries were vassals of the German emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria. Queen Philippa’s oldest sister, Margaret, was married to Ludwig and so it was arranged that the two monarchs should meet. That momentous event occurred at Coblenz, where two thrones had been raised on the market place, in the presence of a vast congregation of the nobility of Europe. Standing before Ludwig, who was holding his scepter and had a drawn sword suspended over his head by a mailed knight, Edward put into words for the first time in public his pretensions to the throne of France.
Philip of Valois, declared the English monarch, was withholding from him the duchy of Normandy and the province of Anjou. Not only that, he was keeping unjustly
the very crown of France itself
.