6 - The heyday of the Company of the Staple: merchants and their lives

Summary

The Act of Retainer, particularly after its confirmation by parliament in 1473, marked the beginning of a period of relative stability for the Company of the Staple. Although the company had taken on heavy responsibilities with regard to the payment of the garrison and the upkeep of the fortifications of Calais by the terms of the Act, it was reasonable to suppose that the wool trade would be prosperous enough to bear these burdens, and that the Staplers would see their loans to the Crown gradually repaid. The cycle of the soldiers' wages being in arrears, followed by threatened or actual mutinies by the garrison, crisis loans to the Crown by the Staple merchants, and promised repayment from the already heavily anticipated receipts from the customs would be broken. The Company and its members would have more control of their own affairs and would not be so much at the mercy of events that were none of their making.

The merchants had operated for much of the previous fifty years in a difficult and demanding environment. The possibility of attacks from either Burgundy or France on their trading base and the incidence of piracy in the Channel varied with the political situation, but at times they could reach crisis level. This, of course, happened in 1436 with the Burgundian siege of Calais. For English merchants, these foreign troubles had been compounded by the period of civil strife in the 1450s and 1460s, which many hoped was now ended by the resumption of the Crown by Edward iv in 1471.