3 - Setting up the Staple: a new role for Calais

Summary

If Calais was to be more than a garrison town, it needed a sound commercial base. Edward iii's action in encouraging new immigrants to settle in the town immediately after the siege, luring them by the grant of property, showed a sound understanding of this fact. We can interpret the establishment of a staple for lead, feathers, cloth and tin in Calais in early 1348, and the exemption of Calais burgesses from all dues except royal customs on trade with England, as further attempts to make it a desirable place for traders to base themselves. Without, however, going as far as the French historians who deny that Calais ever had any economic value for England and claim that its possession was only a matter of prestige, it can be argued that, at least until the last decade of the fourteenth century, there were considerable difficulties in developing a vibrant urban society in Calais outside its role as a military and diplomatic base. The solution to the problem was, perhaps, found in the establishment of Calais as the staple town for the sale of English wool and wool-fells to continental, mainly Flemish, merchants.

There was nothing new in the idea of setting up a staple system. It involved the designation of one or more places as the only locations in which wool (or any other commodity) could be legally bought or sold.