Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE CELYS AND THEIR CIRCLE, 1474–82
- PART II THE WOOL TRADE
- 5 The trade in fleece-wool
- 6 Wool-fells
- 7 Monetary matters
- 8 Customers and marts
- 9 Calais and the Staple Company
- PART III RICHARD AND GEORGE CELY, 1482–9
- Postscript on later family history
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE CELYS AND THEIR CIRCLE, 1474–82
- PART II THE WOOL TRADE
- 5 The trade in fleece-wool
- 6 Wool-fells
- 7 Monetary matters
- 8 Customers and marts
- 9 Calais and the Staple Company
- PART III RICHARD AND GEORGE CELY, 1482–9
- Postscript on later family history
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
The part played by fells – the wool-bearing skins – in the wool trade as a whole has been somewhat under-estimated by students. This neglect no doubt reflects the fact that fells formed a relatively small proportion of the total English wool export. But, equally, contemporary documents reveal little about fells by comparison with the amount of information available on fleece-wool. For example, there is no schedule of prices to be put beside those which survive for wool. It has recently been implied that the sale of fells at Calais was concentrated in the hands of a few ‘specialists’, while the great majority of staplers dealt almost exclusively in fleece-wool. It is true that, as far as the few surviving particular port books go to show, some men had a decided preference for fleece-wool, while a very much smaller number concentrated their trade on fells. Among the latter were several members of the Skinners’ Company, notably (in 1488) Roger Grantoft, John Pelet and John Pasmer, a merchant adventurer who had joined the Staple company three years earlier. Thomas Granger, George Cely's host, belongs in this category. But the vast majority of established staplers, like the Celys and later the Johnsons, habitually sold both kinds of ware, and even Granger and William Maryon occasionally added a few sacks of fleece-wool to their consignments of fells. An individual's shipments could vary widely from one shipping to another, and the proportions of fleece-wool and fell shipped to Calais also varied considerably.
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- Information
- The Celys and their WorldAn English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century, pp. 148 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985