Sometime around the mid-fifteenth century the three Cely boys, Robert, Richard and George, were born to an established wool-merchant, Richard Cely senior, and his wife Agnes. The elder Richard was a worshipful citizen of London, proud to be designated ‘merchant of the Fellowship of the Staple at Calais’. He was, it seems, in a minority among the larger exporters of raw wool, in that the wool trade constituted his main business interest. Many of the leading staplers of the period were also merchant adventurers, importing and exporting a variety of other goods in addition to their trade at the Calais wool staple, the only authorized point at which good quality English wool might be sold abroad. But although Richard was not one of the richest or most influential men in City politics, by the time that the Cely papers begin, about 1473, he was a man of substance, with a town-house in a desirable area of London, an estate in Essex, and other land in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, and was enjoying the seniority in his Company which past office-holding and long continuance conferred.

There can be little doubt that merchants (that is, men engaged in wholesale trade) thought of themselves as forming a distinct class in society, however shifting the outer edges of the stratum, however realistic might be their hopes of marrying daughters into a higher class and of making their sons into landed gentlemen, well-beneficed clergy, or rich and influential lawyers, and however close the threat of the sickness, unlucky venture or political reversal which could overturn a man's fortunes and send him and his children into penury.