Alien merchant colonies in sixteenth-century England: community organisation and social mores

M.E. BRATCHEL

I. Merchant Colonies

The organisation of communities of medieval merchants into 'nations' under some form of consular jurisdiction is a theme well-worked by historians. These formations provide much of the introductory material for Goris' magisterial study of southerners in Antwerp.1 In the English context, German historians long ago produced exhaustive descriptions of the purely jurisdictional and administrative aspects of Hansearie community life.2 And for the ltalians, in England as elsewhere, extant examples of the statutes that governed overseas colanies are available in printed form.3

Though the formal organisation of a particular colony obviously depended on the continuing existence of a significant merchant com­munity, a degree of self-government has come to be regarded as a normal aspiration of the medieval merchant. lt is true that the French and south Germans in Antwerp were not regulated under consular government; and that in England the Iist must be extended to include merchants from the Low Countries and lberia. But these have been treated as exceptions, requiring explanations, which have been found in local and specific political and geographical conditions. 4

The present article is not directly concerned with the statutory organisation and regulation of alien merchants in Tudor England. Rather, these colonies, with certain qualifications, have been taken as

Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14:1, Spring 1984. Copyright© 1984 by Duke University Press.

Correspondence may be addressed to Dr. M. E. Bratchel, University of the Witwaters­rand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

1. J. A. Goris, Etude sur !es colonies marchandes meridionales (Portugais, Espag­nols, Italiens) a Anvers de 1488 a 1567 (repr., New York, 1971), pp. zs-Bo.

2. See particularly, K. Engel, 'Die Organisation der deutschhansischen Kaufleute in England im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert bis zum Utrechter Frieden von 1474,' Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 19 (1913), 445-517; 20 (!914), 173-225.

3· G. Masi ed., Statuti delle colonie fiorentine all'estero (Milan, 1941); E. Lazzar­eschi, ed., Libro della communita dei mercanti lucchesi in Bruges (Milan, 1947).

4· On this theme, see for example E. Coomaert, Les Franfais et le commerce in­ternational a Anvers fin du XVe-XVIe siecle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1961), I, 133-34·

39

40 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984) 1

microcosms of the societies from which they issued. lt is contended that, properly understood and comparatively analysed, the merchant communities concentrated in the great commercial centres of northern Europe offer a useful corrective to some of the more ambitious inter­pretative models currently being developed by medieval scholars.

II. Community Organisation: The Imperative

The establishment in western Europe of privileged and quasi­autonomaus alien communities has traditionally been traced to a some­what disparate conjunction of needs and circumstances. At one Ievel, the western colanies appear as a shadowy projection of early merchant Settlements in the more insecure frontier regions of the Baltic and the eastern Mediterranean. More directly, explanations have been sought in the mentality of the merchants themselves; in the policies and fiscal requirements of governments in the host societies; andin the diplomatic convenience and jealous attentions of the states from which the mer­chants hailed. There is no doubt that the alien merchant communities in England during the fi.fteenth and sixteenth centuries exemplify each of these specifi.c impulses.

From the late twelfth century there is evidence of an organised Hansearie community in Novgorod, centred on the church of St. Peter.5 The early history of privileged ltalian mercantile quarters seems to begin with the V enetian colony in eleventh-century Constan­tinople, and with ltalian Settlements in the Levant established before and during the First Crusade.6 These developments were intimately connected with the needs of merchants operaring in potentially hostile surroundings, as witnessed by the defensive towers of the Italians in the Levant and by the role of the Hansa church in N ovgorod as a place of refuge at times of attack. In both arenas, community organisa­tion appears to have been closely connected with the spiritual needs of Latin Christians settled in an alien religious environment, whilst the early history of ltalian colonisanon in particular is largely associated

5· P. Dollinger, La Hanse (Xlle-XVlle siecles) (Paris, 1964), pp. 42ff. 6. V. Slessarev, 'Ecclesiae Mercatorum and the Rise of Merchant Colonies,' Business

History Review, 41 (1967), 177-97; Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 72, 99; H. F. Brown, 'The Venedansand the Venetian Quarter in Constantinople to the Close of the Twelfth Century,' Journal of Hellenie Studies, 40 (1920), 68-88; P. P. Argenti, The Occupation of Chios by the Genoese and Their Administration of the Jsland, 1346-zs66, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1958), I, 3-30.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England

with the processes of conquest. These eastern Settlements, which merge imperceptibly into the genuine colonial ventures around the Black Sea and in Livonia, invite contrast with the more closely regulated mer­cantile communities of the West. Clearly important differences sepa­rate the two regions, in terms both of organisation and of jurisdiction. And yet, whether in the fortified frontage that the Steelyard of the German merchants in London presented northward towards Thames Street, or in the detailed shape and structure assumed by the relatively small Italian colonies in the medieval West, it is tempting to infer at least some translocation of forms and mentalities.

The influence of distant models notwithstanding, in England the organisation of alien merchants into colonies must also be explained by more immediate concerns. These concerns, abundantly illustrated in the English records, are perhaps best articulated in the preamble to the Statutes proposed by the Lucchese merchant community resident in neighbouring Antwerp in the middle years of the sixteenth century. For these merchants the advantages of a well-ordered colony were symbolically represented by the beautiful chapel maintained by the Lucchese in Bruges, the former centre of their business activities; the disintegration of consular organisation was manifested in an inability to raise funds to support the community's honour and reputation, and by growing tensions and discord within the community itself. Mind­ful of an idealised past, and of present realities, the Lucchese mer­chants petitioned for the renewal of the consulate and for the establish­ment of some suitable place where the nation could come together in unity to worship God and to offer reverence to the Lucchese cult of the Volto Santo. 7 The emphasis is upon corporate religious observance, hut upon a religious observance closely entwined with the honouring of the home Republic and with the ordering of harmonious relation­ships wirhin the expatriate community.

The aspirations of the Lucchese merchants in Antwerp are clearly reflected in the organised life of merchant colonies in Tudor London. Community life found its most visual expression in religious ceremo­nial. This is true for the Hanseatics, whose enthusiastic participation in the religious life of pre-Reformation London culminated in the Corpus Christi festivities;8 for the divers ltalian nations a similar pattern emerges in Statutes governing the observance by the Floremines of the

7· Lazzareschi, pp. 283-84. 8. Engel, 19:498.

42 Journal of A1edieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984) r

feast of St. J ohn the Baptist, 9 by the V enetians of St. Mark, 10 andin the devotions of Lucchese merchants centred on the London church of St. Thomas of Acon, where the Volto Santo was venerated.11 The Sunday mass testifies to the spontaneaus corporate life of the merchant communities, but at the same time gave rise to many of the regulating ordinances that in themselves established corporate identity. The issues involved were financial and disciplinary. In English cities the alien colonies did not possess churches of their own, but this did not preclude regular payments to parish clergy and parish clerks of the local choreh­es frequented by aliens.12 Moreover, expenses were incurred through the endowment of chapels and special masses and the presentation of gifts. F or example, merchants of the Steelyard attending the London church of All Hallows the Great presented that church not only with stained-glass windows but also with elaborately carved stalls reserved to their own use.13 In the English records there are some fleeting ref­erences to what is called the chapel of the Holy Cross in the church of St. Thomas of Acon which bear witness to the Lucchese cult, 14

and the kind of running expenses incurred by the maintenance of such a chapel are clearly detailed in the surviving Libro della comunita dei mercanti lucchesi in Bruges.15 The formal organisation of merchant colonies was a necessary prerequisite for the collection of dues, and the object of the dues was in large measure the seemly conduct of religious observances. The collection and administration of dues, which the merchants were ever reluctant to pay/6 served constantly to reaffirm consular authority, as did the ordinances insisting on the personal as

9· Masi, pp. 183-84. 10. Calendar of State Papers (CSP) Venetian, I, 335· I I. Almerigo Guerra, Storia del V olto Santo (Lucca, I 88 I). Same Lucchese mer­

chants expressed the wish to be buried in the church of St. Thomas, though it was in the much-favoured house of the Austin Friars that the sepulchres of some of the most prominent members of the Lucchese community were to be found: London Guildhall MS. 9I7I/J, London Commissary Court, Reg. More, fo. q6r; MS. 9I71/9, Reg. Bennet, fo. 147v; MS. 9171/5, Reg. Sharp, fos. 376Av-377r; Archivio Notarile Distrettnale Lucca (ANL), Testamenti ser Benedetto Franciotti, Il, fos. 220r-225r.

12. Engel, 19: 497-99. IJ· Engel; Helen Zimmern, The Hansa Towns (London, 1889), pp. I99-2oo; Thomas

Allen, The History and Antiquities of London, Westminster, Southwark, and Parts Adjacent, 4 vols. (London, 1828), IJI, 509-12.

I4· John Watney, Some Account of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon in the Cheap, London, and of the Plate of the Mercers' Company (London, 1892), p. 40; Corporadon of London Record Office (CLRO), Wills proved and enrolled in the Court of Hustings Roll I74(7); London Guildhall MS. 9I7I/J, London Commissary Court, Reg. More, fo. 176r.

I5· Lazzareschi, pp. xx, xxx, xxxv, Il2, 131-33, 2JI-p, and passim. I6. CSP Venetian, I, 273, 277, 282, 285, 289, 302, po, 325, 351, 524. See also Masi,

PP· 182-SJ.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 43

weil as the financial participation of the merchants in corporate acts of worship.17

From the regulation of religious life to the channelling of social activities was but a short step. Indeed, Ugo Tucci has rightly depicted the mass itself as being, for the expatriate communities, "a social oc­casion of high significance." 18 More overtly, the blending of social and religious life may be illustrated in the feasting arranged annually on 4 December by the Steelyard community for the merchants and their distinguished guests to mark St. Barbara's Day; or in the regula­tions that sought to curb excessive expenditure by the Italian con­sulates on similar occasions;19 or in the maintenance by the Italian communities of a general meeting place, in a room known as 'Lumbar­deshall,' wirhin the London house of the Austin Friars.20 In all these instances consular government appears as the coordinator of com­munity life, and its role in this regard assumes an especial intensity because of the significance of social occasions for the community's image and for its relations with surrounding society. These latter points are plainly observed if we move from religious to secular and civic pageantry. A royal visit or a coronation procession offered opportunity for the design of elaborate pageant series; and extant descriptions, particularly those relating to the coronation of Mary Tudor in 15 53, show the intensity of rivalry between the nations of merchant stran­gers, and with the local authorities, in the erection and refinement of pageants.21

If the Lucchese merchants in sixteenth-century Antwerp petitioned for a revitalized consular organisation because of a concern for the community's religious life and local reputation, equal attention was

17. All members of the Florentine nation in London, for example, were obliged to attend the mass instimred on the first Sunday of every month at the expense of the consulate: Masi, pp. 183-84.

18. Ugo Tucci, 'The Psychology of the Veneclan Merchant in the Sixteenth Cen­tury,' in]. R. Haie, ed., Renaissance Venice (London, 1973), p. 370.

19. The Veneclan factory, for example, in 1456 was forbidden to pay for banquets held, or to spend more than 1. 2 on the celebration of St. Mark's festival: CSP V enetian, I, 335·

20. S. L. Thrupp, 'Aliens In and Around London in the Fifteenth Cenmry,' in A. E. J. Hollaender and William Kellaway, eds., Studies in London History Presented to Philip Edmund fones (London, 1969), p. 263; The Victoria History of the Counties of England, William, Page, ed., A History of London, I (London, 1909), 512.

21. S. Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969), pp. 53, r86, 193--95, 249-52, 319-21, p6, 33o-3r; ]. Entick, A New and Aceurate History and Survey of London, W estminster, Southwark, and Places Adjacent, etc., 4 vols. (London, 1766) I, 489; The Accession of Queen Mary, ed. Richard Garnett (London, 1892), p. II9; H. F. M. Prescott, Mary Tudor, 2d ed. (London, 1952), p. 197.

44 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984) 1

paid to the need to avert internal conflicts. 22 The issues involved here can again be best placed in focus through reference to the unique living record left by the Lucchese cornrnunity of rnedieval Bruges. Time and again the Lucchese comrnunity define the spirit pervading their Statutes in terrns of the preservation of "pace et concordia et unione." 23

Consular jurisdiction was instituted for the good and quiet of the com­munity and to avoid scandal. These rhetorical arnbitions were but­tressed by the obvious convenience for the community at large that cornplex cornrnercial and financial disputes be settled internally by arbitrators well-acquainted with Lucchese statutes and current busi­ness practices.24 And the advantages of a machinery for self-discipline were further enhanced in a world where the ill-doings of the individual rnerchant rnight result in reprisals against the nation as a whole.

The English records are less revealing, but there is plentiful evidence to show rneasures taken by the rnerchant colanies to exclude local courts and local authorities frorn internal disputes and lawsuits. The sixteenth-century statutes under which the Florentine nation in Eng­land was governed granted to the consul and his advisors all jurisdiction over disputes and civil cases between Florentines. The consul, on request, rnight refer the matter to arbitration, but appeals to the English authorities were strictly forbidden. 25 Similar restrictions were placed on Venetian litigiousness, in 1446 a fine of soo golden ducats being decreed for any V enetian citizen resident in London or Bruges who resorted to the local courts for Settlement of disputes involving fellow Venetians.26 Even more impressive are the clairns to self-government advanced by the Steelyard comrnunity. Not only were all visiting rnerchants obliged to submit to the jurisdiction of the alderrnan and a cornmittee of twelve, but the Hanseatic merchants were even able to clairn exernption from the jurisdiction of certain English courts27 and possessed a peculiar rnediator in disputes involving Englishrnen in the

22. Lazzaresehi, pp. 283ff. 23. Ibid. xvi and passim. 24. This point assumes a particular signifieanee, given the diverse eommercial dis­

ciplines that distinguished even neighbouring Italian city-states. 25. "v. Aneora: ehe nessuno giurato o sottoposto alli ordini nostri possa, in alchuna

sua quistione di merchantia, o d'altre chose civile, rieorrere a alchuna leggie, o ad altro iuditio d'Inghilterra se non al eonsolo et eonsiglieri per lo modo detto di sopra. Et in ehaso ehe rieorressi ad altra eorte ehaggia in pena di libre venticinque di st[erlinghe] per ogni volta ehe vi eontrafaeessi." Masi, p. 169.

26. CSP Venetian I, 284. 27. Historical Manuscript Commission Reports, XIII, Calendar of the Manuscripts

of tbe Marquis of Salisbury (London, 1915), 43-48; Lettersand Papers, Forei[Jfl and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (LP), XVI, 392.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 45

person of a seeond alderman drawn from the ranks of the eitizens of London.28 No doubt fuller reeords would reveal that eonsular juris­dietion in London was as preeariously superimposed upon reealcitrant mereantile eommunities as was clearly the case elsewhere. Certainly, evidenee for the exclusion of loeal powers from domestic frays eomes much more frequently from the breaeh than the observanee.29 But the statutes and the protests and the lawsuits tagether give a very clear image of what eonsular government was designed to aehieve.

The formal organisation of alien merehant colanies in western Europe represents a belief in the virtues and eonvenienee of self-help. And this theme takes us far beyond its purely jurisdietional impliea­tions. At one Ievel, the eleetion of reeognised offieials provided the community with the maehinery for a wide range of serviees. It was, for example, the alderman and masters of the Steelyard who arranged for the sale of Hansearie merehandise when the merehant to whom the goods were eonsigned was absent from London.30 It was the seeretaries of the Steelyard who fulfilled the offiee of translators on behalf of Hansearie sailors appearing to testify before English eourts.31 Andin the case of the Italians, the eonsuls played an important role in faeilita­ting the visits and loading of the V enetian and Floremine galleys. More generally, it was the officially eonstituted governing committees that represented the merehants in a never-ending series of petitions and deputations directed towards the local or national authorities in de­fence of privileges or in pursuit of grievanees.32 The advantages of a reeognised form of representation are clear. No doubt this is an im­portant factor in explaining not only community organisation itself, but also the strongly held conviction that those merchants who did

28. CLRO, Journals of the Common Council, X, fo. 316; XI, fo. 298v; XII, fo. 132v; XIV, fo. 49v; LP I,i, 903, IV,i, 1298; H.M.C.R. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury, XIII, 8, II; Engel, 20; 191--99; G. Schanz, Englische Handels­politik gegen Ende des Mittelalters, 2 vols. (Leipzig, r881), II, 430-3 I.

29. For examples, sometimes ambiguous, of the non-observance of consular juris­diction, see: P.R.O. CI/93(8), 104(16-2o), I09(59), I23(62), I94(25), 202(13-16), 2J7(19), 26](58), 279(66), 333(29), 334(78), 335(43), 368(24), 547(!9), 567(84), 57I(J), 5]2(22-23), 586(27-28), 656(45), 676(I8), 697(2), 714(44-48), 950(3o); H.C.A. 3/r fos. II, 12-17,21,27, 31, 33, 35-36; H.C.A. 3/2 fos. 442-43; H.C.A. 13/4 fos. I75-77; H.C.A. 13/5 fos. 85-86, 88-89; H.C.A. q/6 fos. IOI-2; LP IV ii 3432, IX I76. This issue is discussed in some detail in M. E. Bratchel, "Alien Merchant Communities in Lon­don, I50o-1550" (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge Univ., 1975), pp. JOB-<), po-22),

30. P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/1 I fo. 61. 31. P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/93 fos. 319ff. 32. L. Lyell and F. D. Watney, eds., Acts of Court of the Mercers' Company,

1453-1527 (Cambridge, I936), p. 432; ]. R. Dasent, ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England, n.s. (London, I89Q- ), I, 458-59, 468-69.

46 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 ( 1984) r

not pay their dues or obey the Statutes should not enjoy the support of the nation, and the very real animus against individual merchants who prejudiced the interests of the community through their private agreements with the local inhabitants.

Finally, in listing the specific influences that favoured the emergence of organised communities, it is weil to remernher that the convenience of the merchants was by no means incompatible with that of outside political forces. Fora variety of reasons alien merchants often enjoyed detailed and valuable privileges before the tax collector and the custom­house. English governments found in the elected representatives of the respective colonies reasonably cooperative allies in determining those eligible for privileges and exemptions.33 The privileges often involved reciprocal obligations: the Hanseatic merchants in London, for ex­ample, were responsible for the maintenance of Bishopsgate.34 Some form of organisation was a sine qua non for the implementation of obligations of this nature, whilst at a more general level the various 'nations' presented vulnerable and concrete targets at times of local displeasure. lt was against the commons of Genoa resident in London that legal action was commenced for the recovery of English wool captured by the Genoese.35 Nor are we concerned only with the con­venience of the host society. Relations between the merchant colonies and the political authorities at home were often fractious, but this did not weaken the parental solicitude feit by the latter for their distant citizens. In the absence of resident ambassadors, consuls often assumed the role of accredited diplomatic representatives in negotiations that were often of considerable importance to the merchants themselves.36

ltalian city-states were interested in the intimate affairs of the overseas colonies-a fact perhaps not unconnected with the traditional reputa-

33· For negotiations between the English government and the Steelyard on this matter, and their outcome, see: LP III i 979; H.M.C.R. Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury, XIII, 43-48; LP I i 696; P.R.O. S.P. r, Vol. 229, fo. 22; Eror/129/3 & 9·

34· John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1908), I, 31-32, 232-33; M. Weinbaum, 'Stalhof und Deutsche Gildhalle zu London,' Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 33 (1928), 52.

35· Archivio di Stato di Genova (ASG), Diversorum Communis Januae (Archivio Segreto), reg. 672, fos. 109-12; Literarum Archivio Segreto, 1829, fos. 36-37; Literarum Archivio Segreto, 1833, fo. 72; P.R.O. Cr/584(41).

36. As early as 1356 letters were being sent from Venice to the English king (Ed­ward III) through the Venedan consul in Bruges: CSP Venetian, I, 29. For the role of the Venetian consul in London as representative in both political and commercial negotiations-a duty which the same man might continue to perform after his term of office had come to an end-see: CSP Venetian, I, 183, 422, 561, 622, 627, 675-76, 686-89, 704, 707, 727, 735, 761, 798, 832, 836-37, 841, 918-zo, 922, 929-31.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 47

tion of the colonies as havens for political and, later, religious refugees. And reminders of past interest and protection were not infrequent preludes to appeals for assistance sent to the colaniesintimes of polit­ical or economic danger.37 Regular and effective consular administra­tion was a matter of very real concern for the home authorities. Any doubts on this score may be countered by the occasional decision by Italian states, distrustful of the judgement of their distant subjects, that consuls henceforth should be appointed in ltaly.38

III. Conzmunity Organisation: The Disincentive

There is no difficulty in proffering an impressive list of exogenaus causes as an explanation of the organisation of alien merchants into 'nations' during the medieval cemuries. The problern of why, in a par­ticular commercial centre, the practice was not universally adopted can be tackled methodologically after the same fashion.

In sixteenth-century London, French merchants were not organised under their own consuls; neither were the High Germans, nor mer­chants from the Low Countries, Spain, and Portugal. Same of these communities were of considerable size and importance. The failure to organise can be explained, partially and negatively, by the fact that these latter communities developed alternative mechanisms for their protection and representation.

F or most purposes, the functions of consular organisation might be performed ex officio by a resident ambassador. When the Lowlander merchant Jacobus van der Hoven found hirnself in difficulties during a London lawsuit, it was to the Emperor's ambassador that he turned for assistance, visiting the ambassador hirnself on a number of occasions and pestering the ambassador's secretary.39 More general grievances were frequently taken up by resident French and Imperial ambas­sadors: from the 1530S Eustace Chapuys and, later, Fraucis van der

37· Parcicularly significant were the efforts of Francesco de' Bardi, Florentine consul in London, in 1530 on behalf of the doomed Florentine republic: LP IV iii 6499, 6774; C. Roth, 'England and the Last Floremine Republic,' English Historical Review, 40 (1925), 174--95; F. T. Perrens, Histoire de Florence (Paris, r888), pp. 296--97; R. Ehren­berg, Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance: A Study of the Fuggers and Their Connections (London, 1928), p. 2 r r.

38. CSP Venetian, I, 336, 342, 353; M. E. Mallett, 'The Sea Consuls of Florence in the Fifteenth Century,' Papers of the British School at Rome, 27 (1959), r6o. The point is more clearly illustrated in the records of the Lucchese consulate in Bruges: Lazzareschi, pp. r48ff.

39· P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/8 fos. 54-57; 13/n fos. 52-54.

48 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, I4 (I984) I

Delft appear as particularly diligent advocates of mercantile interests.40

Further, the merchants themselves, eschewing the backing of either consul or ambassador, might take the initiative and combine together to fight on a specific issue. In this way, in I 502/3, the merchants of Antwerp, or a number of them, appealed to Chancery against the mayor and sheriffs of London over the vexed issue of scavage.41 And behind both private and official petitions lay the coercive power of foreign courts. Time and again the individual and group interests and grievances of the merchant communities were the subject of letters directed to the English government by distaut princes: from Fraucis I and his ministers,42 from the Emperor,43 and from any number of others.44 Insofar as community organisationwas linked to self-protec­tion and self-representation, the diplomatic correspondence is so full of merchants' affairs that it is difficult to see what additional advantages might have accrued to the resident French, Spanish, or Doche com­munities from formal consular administration.

If the lack of formal organisation on the part of the French and others may in part be explained away in terms of superfluity, several more concrete reasons have been advanced to account for divergent behaviour. Obviously one might invoke the force of numbers. The High Germans, Spaniards, and Portuguese in England were perhaps never sufficiently numerous to make organisation worth while. Pat­terns of residence and of trade may be significant. It has been argued that Spanish and Portuguese consulates in England were rendered un­necessary by the dominant role played by the governments of the much larger Iberian communities in the Low Countries.45 French historians, characteristically, have approached the problern through geography. 46 Ingenuity suggests a host of ways in which geographical

40. Calendar of State Papers (CSP) Spanish, IV ii, 664, 72o-21, 765,962,968, VII, 6z. 41. P.R.O. C1/272(35). Scavage was a tax paid by non-citizens on merchandise im­

ported from overseas. Specific charges for scavage were set for the various kinds of merchandise: N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), PP· Bff.

42. LP III i 659-6o, 712-13, 1014; IV i 1827, ii 463o. 43· LP III ii 1668; IV i 735, ii J519; XVIII i 346(67). 44· Notably, the king of Scotland: LP IV i 845, 851, ii 4671, 5059; Ferdinand of

Aragon: LP I ii 2459; CSP Spanish I 37; Henry of Navarre: LP IV ii 3823, 4382; Mar­garet of Savoy: LP IV i ron, 1454; the king of Portugal: LP IV ii 3408, 4769-70; Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, I, 383; and King Maximilian: P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/7 fo. 440.

45· Bratchel, Alien Merchant Communities in London, 150D-lSfO, pp. 295, 3oo; G. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A Study of English Trade with Spain in the Early Tudor Period (London, 1954).

46. Coornaert, I, 132.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 49

proximity might weaken the urge towards a statutory self-discipline. No doubt all of these suggestions possess an enticing theoretical validi­ty. Tothis writer, at least, the traditional explanations have come in­creasingly to appear superficial and unconvincing.

IV. Towards a Wider Perspective: Tbe ltalians

When Gino Masi edited the statutes of Floremine colonies all'estero, he was drawn by the self-defining nature of his task to treat exclusively those Floremine merchant colonies scattered beyond ltaly around the littoral regions of the Mediterranean andin northern Europe. Reali­ties are more perfectly reflected in the preface through which Masi introduces the collection. Here, in listing Floremine consulates fuori patria, Masi speaks, and in this order, of Rome, Naples, Ancona, Venice, Palermo, Lyon, Antwerp, and London.47 By the middle of the sixteemh century the Floremine Tribunale della Mercanzia was sending letters and instructions to the consuls of Floremine communi­ties.48 Certainly by the late 1 54os these records are dominared by the activities of the consulates in V enice, Ancona, Rome, Pesaro, and Naples. Nor were the Floremines atypical. Jacques Heers bears fleet­ing witness to the Genoese consulates in southern Italy and provides some details of the organised Milanese merchant colony in fifteemh­century Genoa itself.49 The examples are random. There can be no doubt that the consulates of the ciry-republics dustered thickly in the commercial and administrative centres of northern Italy and in the economically dependent south.

This fact, in some ways, should require little commemary. It is hardly strange that the earliest recorded references to Floremine con­sulates, dating from the thirteemh century, should relate to Floremine communities in the neighbouring cities of Genoa and Bologna. By the thirteenth cemury, Italy was a politically fragmented peninsula with developed and developing traditions of communal loyalties and ha­treds. Everywhere hoclies of strangers aretobe found organising them­selves into groupings of highly regional provenance. This is true of student Iife at medieval Italian universities50 and may be illustrated

47· Masi, p. xx. 48. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), Tribunall di Mercanzia 11316, Libro di

Lettere (5 giugno 1546-21 agosto 1548). 49· J. Heers, Genesau XVe siecle, abridged ed. (Paris, 1971), pp. 241, 305--6. See

also Maria Franca Baroni, 'Il consolato dei mercanti a Milano nel periodo comunale,' Nuova Rivista Storica, 59 (1975), 257-87.

so. H. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1936), I, rso-s8.

so Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (r984) r

locally by such picturesque hoclies as the universita of bricklayers from Corno and Ticino that enjoyed a distinctive but jealously regulated life in sixteenth-century Lucca.51 Y et the fierce regional loyalties and parochial barriers coexisted in Italy with an intensive interrelationship served by merchants, lawyers, and clerics and by a muted ( and relative) common tradition of language, customs, and institutions. 52 The vision of merchant colanies organised und er com­parable Statutes throughout Italy warns against explaining the northern pattern too enthusiastically in terms of alien surroundings and the vulnerabilities of distance.

Further, it is clear that the general phenornenon itself is not to be rigidly associated with specifically alien enclaves of whatever charac­ter. Present interests of ltalian historians have focused attention on the powerful Ripafratta family clan or consorteria established in Pisa and along the banks of the Serchio to the north. 53 Certainly in the thirteenth century it was fully recognised, even by the commune of Pisa, that the nobles of Ripafratta and their dependents were subject to the jurisdic­tion of a consul nobilium de Ripafratta eorumque fidelium. By oath it was established that any disputes arising between members of the consorteria, or their bomines or fideles, must be settled before the consuls of the consorteria. The details of organisation are entirely familiar. Consuls were elected annually, and their actions were syndi­cated at the end of their period in office. The consul was to be assisted by a group of councillors, and the affairs of the community were served by the appointment or ad hoc election of camerlengos, notaries, arbitrators, and commissioners. Disputes wirhin the community were to be settled internally. A limit was placed on the amount of money that might be spent by the consul on his own authority wirhont the approval of the councillors. Community organisation is explained and defended in terms of the honour of God and of the native commune.

The self-ordering of noble clans like the Ripafratta is but one in­dication of what Italian historians have called "lo spirito associativo" that characterised Italian political, social, and economic life during the medieval centuries. Obviously some caution is indicated before

SI· M. Berengo, Nobili e mercanti nella Lucca del Cinquecento (Turin, r965), P· 72; M. Paoli and F. Ulivieri, 'La compagnia di S. Bartolomeo in Silice o delle sette arti. Capitoli e costituzioni,' Actum Luce, anno VII ( 1978), pp. 95-rr 3·

52. This theme has been discussed most recently by John Larner, ltaly in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216-138o (London, r98o), pp. r-rs. See also D. Hay, The ltalian Renaissance in lts Historical Background, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1977), eh. 3·

53· Larner, pp. 86--87; J. Heers, Le clan familial au Moyen Age (Paris, 1974), PP· 48-49. rrs, 227-28, 249. 255.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England

comparing the experience of the Ripafratta with the dynamics of ltal­ian merchant colonies in sixteenth-century England. ltalian historians have traditionally argued that from the end of the fourteenth century the power of the great corporations in Italy withered before the grow­ing assertiveness of the state. 54 Recently this theme has been adopted and developed by the distinguished American historian Marvin Becker, who, in the context of Iate trecento Florence, writes of the gradual acceptance of the coercive power of the republic. 55 And there can be no doubt that communal governments did act to restriet the indepen­dent politicallife of rival associations within the state. 56 But it has now become abundantly clear that this communal offensive was imperfectly sustained and unevenly effective.57

lt has long been recognised that ltalian merchant colonies were in some measure modelled on the governments of the communes from which they came. Jacques Heers has suggested that ltalian merchants settled abroad transferred also familiar living arrangements. They recreated traditional neighbourhood links and associations, coming to dominate compact blocks of territory within the cities where they established themselves.58 There can be little question that first and foremost the Italian merchant colonies organised in Tudor London were a re.flection of a mentality-the same mentality that produced within medieval Italian cities themselves the spontaneous organisation of neighbourhoods, guilds, families, and confraternities designed to govern irrtemal affairs and to settle internal disputes. The reflection never constituted a perfect likeness. Local realities too often inter­vened. Though the houses of the Italians in Tudor London dustered in the traditional quarter around Lombard Street, 59 or in the case of the Venetians further east in the parish of St. Olave, Hart Street, 60 we do not in London find the tightly organised neighbourhood groupings

54· The point is made, for example, as a presentation of conventional wisdom by Guido Bonolis, La giurisdizione della Mercanzia in Firenze nel secolo XIV (Florence, 1901), pp. n8ff.

55· M. B. Becker, Florence in Transition, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1967-68). 56. For part of the Lucchese experience, see, for example, Salvatore Bongi, ed.,

Jnventario del R. Arcbivio di Stato in Lucca, II (Lucca, 1876), 233-35. 57· J, Heers, Le clan familial; and idem, Parties and Political Life in the Medieval

West (Amsterdam/New York/Oxford, 1977); F. W. Kenr, Hausehold and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977).

s8. J. Heers, Le clan familial, p. 162. 59· P.R.O. H.C.A. 3/I fo. so; n/7 fo. 2m 1J/8 fo. 146; 13/93 fos. 301, 3o6; R. E. G.

and E. F. Kirk, eds., 'Returns of Aliens Dwelling in tbe City and Suburbs of London,' Publications of the Huguenot Society of London, 10 (190o-8), Pt. [= vol.] I, 17-18, 30, 46-49. 96-98, I3o-3J, 164-65, III, 300.

fio, P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/7 fo. 235; 13/8 fo. 108; 13/9 fo. 36; Kirk and Kirk, I, 54• 167.

52 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 ( 1984) 1

for which Heers has prepared us. ltalian merchants in sixteenth­century London can be found scattered throughout the city: in the wards of Cripplegate,61 Bishopsgate,62 Aldgate,63 Broad Street,64 Lime Street, 65 Candlewick Street, 66 Tower Street, 61 Billingsgate, 68 and Bridge. 69 This is hardly surprising. W ealthy Italian merchants, them­selves often the scions of proud patrician families, were constrained to rent suitable houses in the city wherever and whenever these became available. But however much the life of the expatriate communities was forced to accommodate such obstacles, the Italian merchant cola­nies assume forms which in no way appear strange or distinctive to the Student of corporate, collective life and of the structure of social groupings in the ltalian commune during the Middle Ages. At one level this wider perspective serves to place the traditional explanations for the appearance and organisation of merchant colanies in context. lt highlights the significance and meaning embedded in a list of isolated 'causes.' At another level, it removes the need for any explanation, or at least transfers the burden of explanation to another and broader arena.

In postscript the question arises: To what extent is this approach helpful also for an understanding of the North Germans of the Steel­yard? The analogy cannot be presented without significant qualifica­tion. The Steelyard community is rendered distinctive by its position as the subordinate agency of an association of towns. Certainly by the fifteenth century the Hansa in England was less a spontaneaus mer-

61. Giovanni Battista Boroni had a house in Barbican Screet in the parish of S. Giles without Cripplegate: P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/8 fo. 37ff. It is true, however, that Baroni also possessed business premises simared more centrally in Abchurch Lane-see, for example, H.C.A. 13/8 fos. 94--95·

62. A nurober of very prominent Italians lived in Bishopsgare Ward, including Antonio Buonvisi, Domenico Lomellini and Lorenzo da Ponte: P.R.O. CI/2oz(8-n); Kirk and Kirk, I, PP· 38-39, 86, 129, 188; P.R.O. PROB. n/34, 19 Bucke, fos. 145v-146r. The parish of St. Ellen in this ward was clearly a subsidiary ltalian centre.

63. Especially Ragusans: P.R.O. H.C.A. 3/2 fo. 365; Kirk and Kirk, I, 1, 17, 41-42, So, 136, 185.

64. P.R.O. C1/256(2), 261(17), 974(16); LP V 1028; Kirk and Kirk, I, 14, 39-40, 73, 88, 132, 163; III, 299·

65. P.R.O. H.C.A. 3/2 fo. 424; 13/6 fo. 24; 13/93 fo. 297; Kirk and Kirk, I, 19. 66. P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/93 fo. 301; Kirk and Kirk, I, 2, 66, 134, 168. 67. P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/4 fo. 278ff.; 13/7 fo. 235; 13/8 fo. 1o8; 13/9 fo. 36; 13/11 fo.

123; Kirk and Kirk, I, 54, 72, 74, 101, 133, 167. 68. Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Canc. Inferiore, atti notarili, busta 662o,

no. 4, shows a number of Venedan merchants resident in Botolph Lane in the parish of St. George. See also P.R.O. Cr/475 (!8); Kirk and Kirk, I, 16, 6r, 85, 162; III, 300.

6g. Kirk and Kirk, I, 55, 73, 87, 135, 160. Since most of the above evidence relates to the middle years of the sixteenth century, the geographical dissemination is not explained by shifting concenrrations in time.

Bratehel • Merchant colanies in Englarzd 53

chant organisation than an instrument in the defensive struggle conducted by the N orth German towns in protection of economic con­trols, privileges, and monopolies. Further, the organisation of the Lon­don Kontor, at least in structural terms, was determined by its peculiar situation as meeting point for merchants from very different political and economic regions. This fact alone mutes any direct comparison with the ltalian experience as rooted in the intimate associations and relarionships of the individual city-state. And yet, due allowance made for these obvious differences, the Hansa had its birth as one of the sworn associations that characterised early urban political life in northern Germany; and no doubt the great Kontore, as legal corpora­tions, continued to draw strength from the familiarity of their institu­tions as faithful reflections of active merchant corporate life wirhin the Hansa towns. German schalarship has devoted a great deal of attention to urban institutions and social structure. Cologne has been particularly favoured by historians, and here clearly the whole fabric of urban life was dominared borh territorially by the parish and neighbourhood associations, and also personally by a complicated nexus of institutionalised associations based in some measure on family, Status, occupation, and religious observance.70 Nor is the vitality of private associational ties a phenomenon wirhin the confederation of Hansa towns distinctive to Cologne. 71 Ir would appear that in the case of the Germans as for the Italians, community organisation in medieval and early modern England should be explained primarily by the dynamics of life at home rather than by the specific and localised needs of distinctively alien merchant enclaves.

V. The N on-ltalians Revisited

If the above conclusions are valid, it is suggested that the failure of some communities to regulate themselves formally under consular jurisdiction might be attributed to the dissimilar nature of the com­munities themselves rather than to the accidentals that historians have tended previously to invoke. In a pioneering study, Sylvia Thrupp

70. There are many useful indications in a collection recently edited by Hugo Stehkämper, Köln, das Reich und Europa: Abhandlungen über weiträumige Verflech­tungen der Stadt Kdln in Politik, Recht und Wirtschaft im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1971), in which see particularly Edith Ennen, 'Europäische Züge der mittelalterlichen Kölner Stadtgeschichte,' pp. 1-47. For a pertinent English study of Cologne's early history, see Paul Strait, Cologne in the 12th Century (Gainesville, Fla., 1974).

71. I am thinking here of associations as diverse as rhe charitable brotherhoods and Bergenfahrer of Lübeck, and the Artushof of Danzig.

54 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 ( r984) r

depicted part of the difference when she wrote of the "more easy rela­tionships" which Lowlander merchants-:-in specific contrast to the Italians-established with both English citizens and immigrant com­munities.72 In sixteenth-century London French and Lowlander mer­chants formed significant communities.73 Neither these nor the smaller band of Portuguese merchants showed marked exclusionist or cor­poratist inclinations in either their social or their economic relation­ships. They submitred to the jurisdiction of English courts in frequent disputes with fellow countrymen. 74 The rare examples from the six­teenth century of alien merchants entering the London Iiveried com­panies relate almost entirely to Frenchmen and Lowlanders.75 Jehan Combos, sometime broker and a merchant of Toulouse, was closely connected in his business transactions with a number of Englishmen.76

His business associates also included Jacobus van der Hoven, a mer­chant of Bruges, who hirnself acted on occasion in partnership with English merchants.77 And these examples might be multiplied at will from the English court records.

Contrasringpatterns of behaviour need to be defined more rigorous­ly. There is no reason to deny that in Tudor England the more per­manently resident French and Lowlander communities developed a certain esprit de corps. This is reflected in residential arrangements: in London, French merchants were concentrated in Lombard Street and to the south from St. Lawrence Pountney in the west to St. Dun­stan-in-the-East;78 merchants from the Low Countries were largely focused around Limestreet and along the southeast margin of the city, particularly in Billingsgate Ward.79 There is abundant evidence to

72. Thrupp, p. 263. 73· The problern of numbers is discussed in Bratchel, Alien Merchant Communi­

ties in Lonaon, zsoo-zsso, PP· 17-48. 74· P.R.O. C1/6o8(5), 6u(3o), 667(32-3), 773(28), 777(14), 868(72), u49(8o);

H.C.A. 13/4 fo. 296; 13/5 fos. 256--57, 349--50; 13/6 fos. 27, 58-59; 13/7 fos. 1IJ-15, 176--78, 276--79; 13/93 fos. 296--99, 306--g.

75· Men like Thomas Martocke, mercer, a ·Frenchman long resident in England; or Bartholomew Sommerce, a native of Zeeland, described as a haberdasher in 1509; W. Page, ed., 'Denizations and Naturalizations of Aliens in England,' Publications of the Huguenot Society of London, 8 ( 1893), 164; LP I i 438 (i) m. 10.

76. P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/7 fos. 48-49, 193--97, 338, 524; 13/9 fos. 144, 229--30; 13/rr fos. 103-4, 141-42.

77· P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/8 fos. uo-12. 78. Kirk and Kirk, I, 46; P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/4 fos. 21, 181, 296; 13/7 fos. 36, 197,

zn, 384; 3/3 fo. 125. 79· P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/8 fos. 85, 110; 13/II fos. 122, 137. Apparently Netherlanders

were to become increasingly concentrated in the parish of St. Botolph. According to Stow, writing in 1598, the influx was of quite recent origins since little more than thirty years earlier there were not more than three Netherlanders in the whole of

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 55

show that these communities were engaged in a good deal of informal self-help. Established residents acted as sureties and provided lodgings and translation services for their more itinerant compatriots. 80 Docbe immigrants participated in several London fraternities whose member­ship was drawn largely or exclusively from their ranks. 81 And on at least one occasion, in I 502 I 3, the merchants of Antwerp combined to petition against dues imposed on them by the London authorities. 82

This proclivity to live together, to act together, is a very natural char­acteristic of any expatriate community. The Sentiments involved seem to me of an entirely different order to the spirit of intense corporate identity that vitalised the neighbouring consulates of the Italian 'na­tions.'

The most obvious way of explaining this difference is through emphasis on the dissimilar social and political standing of the mer­chants themselves. Many of the ltalians were young patricians at the beginning of their economic and political careers.83 Just as their in­volvement in the overseas branch provided a business education, so their participation in the life of the consulate was a reflection of, andin many cases a preparation for, the active political role that they might be expected to play at home in Italy. By contrast, of the French a fifteenth-century Floremine merchant remarked, "You French mer­chants are nothing but retailers and shopkeepers." 84 In December I 5 40 Marillac, the French ambassador in England, claimed that there were only eight orten poor French merchants in London, all of whom were the agents of other merchants resident in France.85 The contrast is enticing. No doubt it captures a partial truth. Yet the French and Low­lander communities possessed their own aristocracies of prominent

Billingsgate Ward: Stow (supra n. 34) I, zo8. In fact, many of the Lowlander mer­chants appearing before the Admiralty Court in the middle years of the century were dustered around this area: H.C.A. 13/7 fos. 107, 279; q/8 fos. r86, zJI; 13/9 fos. 6o, 144; 13/11 fo, 113.

So. P.R.O. H.C.A. 13/7 fos. 113-15, 176-78; 13/8 fos. 43-62, wz; 13/9 fos. 98-c)9; 13/11 fo. 48.

Sr. Thrupp, pp. 263-64. S2. P.R.O. Cr/272(35). 83. I have examined the composition and structure of the ltalian merchant com­

munities in England in two articles: 'Italian Merchant Organization and Business Re­lationships in Early Tudor London,' Journal of European Economic History, 7 ( 1978), 5-32; 'Regulation and Group-Consciousness in the Later History of London's ltalian Merchant Colonies,' Journal of European Economic History, 9 (r98o), 585-6ro.

S4. Quoted by F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip ll, 2 vols. (London, 1972-3), I, 393, from A. Monteil, Histoire des Franfais, ro vols. (Paris, 1828-44), VII, 424-25.

Ss. LP XVI 36o.

s6 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 ( 1984) I

men who might have anticipated a leading role in domestic urban poli­tics. And it is by no means clear that associative yearnings in Italy were the prerogative of a sociopolitical elite.

Comparative jurisprudence might appear to offer a more helpful approach. In a study of the origins of municipal consular government in the towns of southern France, Andre Gouron has shown how the incidence of consular forrns coincided, both temporally and geo­graphically, with the spread of Roman law concepts and of a Roman law vocabulary. 86 Nineteenth-century historians of university institu­tions clearly recognised that the organisation of rnedieval students into corporate national groupings assumed a peculiar vitality in the jurist universities of Italy and southern France.87 By contrast, the nations of northern, arts universities appear artificial and irnitative. 88 It rnight not be entirely fanciful to view Italian organisational structures, at least partially, in terms of a practical implementation of Italian jurispruden­tial thought. This approach is vulnerable frorn a number of directions. At the siruplest Ievel, the blurred social and geographical boundaries of Roman-law influence only imperfectly coincide with divergent behavioural patterns as outlined above. More generally, there seems to me every reason to be suspicious at least of the degree to which legal forms, thernselves an expression of habits of thought and action, can shape society or condition perceptions. And the work of Julius Kirsh­ner, 89 amongst others, has shown how far a legal terminology-even static legal terminology-can mask infinite living and social rnutations.

A rnore convincing explanation is suggested by contrasring patterns of political development. It has been generally recognised that the northern and central Italian scene, and to some extent that of northern Germany too, were the product of a very special set of historical cir­cumstances. With some regional qualifications, the Italian peninsula in the Middle Ages was subject to the theoretical overlordship of the

86. Andre Gouron, 'Diffusion des consulats meridionaux et expansion du droit romain aux XIIe et XIIIe siecles,' Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 121 (1963), 26-76.

87. This message appears to me implicitly present throughout Rashdall's monu­mental study.

88. See particularly: Heinrich Denif!e, Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mit­telalters bis 1400 (Graz, 1956), pp. 84-106; Georg Kaufmann, Geschichte der deutschen Universitäten, 2 vols. (Graz, 1958), 11, 59-68. I am, of course, aware that in specific instances the contrast may be explained in terms of geographical factors and of chang­ing circumstances over time.

89. Julius Kirshner, 'Some Problems in the Interpretation of Legal Texts re: the ltalian City-Stares,' Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 19 (1975), 16-27. I am grateful to Professor Kirshner for sending me an offprint of his article.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 57

Emperor or of the Pope. By the thirteenth century, it is true, the real power of the Emperor to intervene in Italian affairs in a practical or sustained way was very limited indeed. In many areas the same may be said of the temporal power of the Pope. In practice we may talk of the emergence of communes which usurped many of the attributes of autonomous political societies, and which over the course of time developed into quasi-independent territorial states. But these com­munities were not sovereign states in the way in which late medieval England or late medieval France may be regarded, with some technical reservations, as sovereign states, effectively and for most practical purposes. These antecedents produced wide-ranging consequences. There was no outside power with the capacity to intervene regularly and effectively in Italy. But, with the qualified exception of V enice90

and with due recognition of developments in the world of political ideas in Florence right at the end of the fifteenth century,91 neither the ltalian city-republics nor the later despotisms ever developed a self­image as truly independent political communities possessed of powers that might be defined as sovereign within the ideological constructs of the medieval world. The city-state developed as a combination of quasi-independent groups and institutions. The state was one grouping -one quasi-independent authority amongst many, one centre of loyal­ty. But just one. In summary, the Italian city-states began as composite political structures, the result of a spontaneous development taking place in the absence or behind the back of their papal or imperial over­lord. And these origins colonred Italian political life throughout the period that we are considering. 92 It is this politicallife, these political realities, that I see clearly reflected in the organisation and form of the Italian 'nations' represented in late medieval England. And I would extend the analysis to the North Germans. I do not believe that genuine city-states after the ltalian model developed on the shores of the Baltic. But clearly many of the historical ingredients are common to the polit­ical and social developments of both regions.

90. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic. But see also Eric Cochrane and Julius Kirshner, 'Deconstructing Lane's Venice,' Journal of Modern History, 47 (1975), 32 1-34·

91. The theme of developing notions of sovereignty permeates Alison Brown's Bartolomeo Scala 143o-1497 Chancellor of Florence: The Humanist as Bureauerat (Princeton, 1979).

92. 1t should be stressed that the above schema is not presented as a novel interpre­tation of Italian political life. In outline it will have been long familiar to the English reader in the form of P. J. Jones, 'Communes and Despots: The City State in Late­Medieval ltaly,' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 15 (1965), 71-96.

sB Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (I 984) I

If the ltalian and Hansearie colanies are to be explained in terms of corporate life and institutions at harne, the implication must be that French and Lowlander merchants were the product of a perceptibly different sociopolitical environment. Obviously this raises difficulties. At both central and local levels, and throughout medieval Europe, administrative hoclies possessed a wide range of judicial functions. The historiographical tradition that the medieval world was characterised by a pervasive spirit of association clearly is not of narrowly ltalian provenance. 93 In recent decades many of the most stimulating exposi­tians of the corporate structure of the early modern state have been the work of students of French history.94 In short, there can be no gainsaying that throughout medieval Europe authority was exercised, and affairs pursued, wirhin a complex web of local, regional, and per­sonal associations and corporations. These were important centres of loyalty; they possessed important, often inconvenient, rights and priv­ileges vis-a-vis central government and centralising tendencies. But over the greater part of Europe, certainly by the later Middle Ages, these associations did not supersede the wider territorial power; they never precluded a sense either of loyalty or of subj ection to an ac­knowledged and potentially dynamic central authority. The distinc­tion is not as sharp as it might be. It may be elucidated by comparing the political life of medieval Lyons with parallel developments in northern ltaly. There are striking superficial similarities of form, but these appearances hardly conceal that, far from exemplifying a frac­turing of political authority, the city of Lyons merely en joyed valuable urban privileges exercised under ecclesiastical or royal overlordship through a patrician oligarchy that often combined its municipal duties with careers in the wider political and military service of the French monarchy.95

93· Albeit the tradition still finds its most elegant expression in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in ltaly (London, 1914), p. 129. See also the recent article by J. P. Canning, 'The Corporadon in the Political Thought of the Iralian Jurists of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,' History of Political Thought, 1 (198o), 9-32. The growing vitality of 'association' during the Middle Ages in western Europe generally is discussed by P. Michaud-Quantin, 'La conscience d'etre membre d'une universitas,' Miscellanea mediaevalia ( 1964), pp. 1-14.

94· Leaving aside the enormous Iiterature concerned with the pre-Revolutionary era, one might single out P. S. Lewis's synthetical treatment, Later Medieval France: The Polity (London, 1968). More generally see A. R. Myers, 'The Parliaments of Europe and the Age of the Estates,' History, 6o (1975), 11-27.

95· Such conclusions might be drawn, for example, from the substance if not always from the thesis of Guy de V alous, Le Patriciat lyonnais aux Xllle et XIV e siecle (Paris, 1973).

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 59

Ir is against this background that diverging patterns of alien com­rnunity organisation should be understood. The records of the ltalian consulates in London, and particularly in the Low Countries, give an 0 verwhelming impression of men who in a very vital sense thought of themselves as members of their respective 'nations,' however much this sentiment might coexist with loyalty to the harne republic or to the family or to widely dispersed business associates. By contrast, French merchants in England always wrote of themselves and clearly thought of themselves primarily either as subjects of the French king living in England or as Frenchmen living under the jurisdiction of the king of Eng land. 96 It is not claimed that the lines of division were immutable. The Flemings had their own Hansa in London during the twelfth century, which thus significantly predates the establishment and consolidation of Burgundian power. But due regard given to a process of change over time, the argument that community organisa­tion was reflective of contrasring and deep-rooted political traditions finds support in a most revealing coincidence. The southern half of the Italian peninsula constituted what may be most conveniently termed the Kingdom of Naples, a state much more reminiscent of political forms north of the Alps than the city-republics of central and northern ltaly. Casual references in wills and other records indicate that there were always a number of Neapolitan merchants in fifteenth­century England. I lmow of no record of a Neapolitan consulate.97

The above synthesis must confront one very important objection. 1t may reasonably be argued that universal causes might be expected to produce universal results. Y et whatever the experience in London, the fact remains that the Flemings possessed a hoteldes consuls in six­teenrh-century Cadiz;98 the French had appointed a consul in Danzig, as elsewhere, by the end of the sixteenth century; and English mer-

96. This becomes particularly clear in the individual and group petitions of French lllerchants living in England during the difficult second half of Henry VIII's reign, as calendared in the later volumes of LP cited above.

97. The same may be said of contemporary Bruges: V. Vazquez de Prada, Lettres 'lnarcbandes d'Anvers, 4 vols. (Paris, n.d.), I, 156. On the other hand, it must be ac­know!edged the cantrast between the city-states of northern Italy and certain mercan­tile cemres ~f the south has often been overdrawn. Merchants from the southern cities often used the facilities provided by other Italian nations, and of course possessed consulates of their own, particularly wirhin Italy itself. See, for example, Carmelo T' rasselli, Mediterraneo e Sicilia all'inizio dell'epoca moderna (Cosenza, 1977), PP· 3 ro, 318-19·

98. A Girard, 'Les etrangers dans la vie economique de l'Espagne aux XVIe et XVne siecles,' Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 5 (1933), 571.

6o Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984) 1

chants were organised in Antwerp, and later in Germany. The ex­planation, as Coornaert clearly perceived, 99 isthat termssuch as 'nation' or 'consul' have been used to cover a wide range of organisational ar­rangements. The French consuls of the sixteenth century appear to have been officials appointed by the French crown to look after the interests of French subjects resident abroad. This might be evidence for a developing bureaucratic state; it is really a rather different and arguably more modern phenomenon to the one that has concerned us here. The English Merchant Adventurers were organised in Antwerp under a governor and a court of twenty-four assistants. This associa­tion was much concerned with the exclusionist and monopotist ambi­tions of a group of London merchants vis-a-vis their compatriots and rivals, and with matters of royal finance and diplomacy. The spirit and origins of the English Fellowship seem to me quite different from that of the ltalian nations in late medieval England, however many parallels may be provided at the level of community life. The case of Iberian merchants is more ambiguous. Certainly early Catalonian organisation bears marked resemblance to contemporary Italian devel­opments. But by the late fifteenth century the history of the Portuguese and Spanish nations in the Low Countries suggests that earlier tradi­tions were becoming intertwined with the politics of the Spanish wool staple and with the attempt bv the Portuguese king to control the European spiee trade.100

In conclusion, it must be emphasised, there has been no attempt here to posit a sharp dichotomy between the Italians and other European merchants. I have shown elsewhere that significant differences existed among the Italian nations themselves.101 Similarities between the Italians and the North Germans should be presented with due stress on the obvious distinctions. The guild merchant was an association of Euro­pean incidence; and it was trade associations, united and refined, that developed into the English nation as organised in the Netherlands. But these points made, the dynamic forces that spontaneously produced an extraordinarily dense pattern of ltalian merchant colonies through­out the business centres of the Mediterranean and of northern Europe are of a perceptibly different order to the variable conjunction of cir-

99· Coornaert, supra n. 4, I, 132-34. wo. A. MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, zooo-1500

(New York, 1977), pp. 163-64; Stanley S. Jados, ed., Consulate of the Sea and Related Documents (University, Ala., 1975); Wendy Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), PP· 202-4; Goris, pp. 37-70.

IOI.Bratchel, Alien Merchant Communities in London, 150D-1550, pp. 311-24.

Bratehel • Merchant colonies in England 61

cumstances that sometimes resulted in the establishment of French, English, or even of united Spanish nations. In simple terms, the former were a reflection of a vigorous self-help mentality which was less a consequence of a weak political authority than of fragmented loyalties. By contrast, Emile Coornaert has written of French mercantile ar­rangements in the sixteenth century "il annonce l'etat futur de tous les marchands travaillant hors de chez eux, soumis directement a I' autorite et a Ia protection de leur gouvernement,-les ambassadeurs supplantant desormais les 'consuls' des 'nations.' " 102 lt is the contention of this article that in essence Coornaert's conclusion is valid weil beyond the bounds of its specifically French and sixteenth-century context.

VI. Refiections and Conclusions

An insistence that the ltalians were somehow different might appear to add little to conventional wisdom. "ltaly," as John Mundy recently remarked, "always has to be 'apart' in the northern European imagina­tion.'' 103 But this no Ionger is entirely true. Particularly in the last few years a group of historians have been attempting, implicitly or explic­itly, to apply to general European history concepts that have proved useful in explaining political processes in medieval Italy. A leading figure in this regard has been Jacques Heers, who, although fully cognisant of the distinctive features of ltalian development, has never­theless raised the possibility that the difference might, in part, be one artificially created by the survival of sources.104 There can be no doubt that such work promises to contribute an important new dimension to

a more traditional European historiography that has long been con­cerned with factionalism, private jurisdictions, and the vitality of cor­porate life.

The attraction of this approach is manifest. Social history in general, and an anatomy of basic sociopolitical organisms in particular, have encouraged historians to find unity where earlier political history saw only diversity. The 'social interpretation' has eased the task of the synthesiser in a world of bewildering historical output. Further, an

102. Coornaert, I, 134. 103. ]. Mundy, 'Henry Pirenne: A European Historian,' Journal of European Eco­

nornic History, 6 ( 1977), 478. 104. Heers, Le clan farnilial, concludes with the words: "Il est vraisemblable que

des recherches particulieres, conduites en ce sens, mettraient en evidence, pour ces villes du Nord-Ouest europeen, differents aspects, notables, du maintien des solidarites familiales a l'interieur de vastes clans urbains."

62 Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 ( 1984) r

exploration of the role of family and community has offered a stimula­ting alternative to the potential constraints of Marxist catagorisation. And there is no reason to deny that in every sphere of European history much recent work on localloyalties, local grievances, and the impor­tance of corporate privileges and identities has greatly contributed to our understanding of crisis situations. Y et historians have continued to register protests agairrst an automatic appeal to factional and group rivalries, and to insist on the possibility of loyal and unselfish service to a prince whose sovereign powers were firmly buttressed by a very long tradition of politico-religious theory.105 The latter emphasis should not be dismissedas naive. Neither an instinctive reaction against nineteenth-century invocations of 'national characteristics' nor the comforting certitudes that accompany interpretations founded on the immediate interests of the most basic units of human society should blind us to the possibility of regional diversity in the way in which men thought about themselves and their relation to authority.106

A study of alien merchant colonies in sixteenth-century England must find its ultimate justification in terms of its merits as a case study. lt has been argued here that contrasring behavioural patterns were not the result of accidental or incidental details; rather an explanation has been sought in the fact that the merchants were products of a number of very different societies and represented different traditions and different needs. This conviction has determined the form of the present article and has raised issues far removed from the daily preoccupations of the alien trader. The conclusions dierate that this article should be presented not only as a contribution towards a history of merchant organisation in the late medieval and early modern period, but as a reaction to the incautious application to European history of models of community organisation that have proved valuable for an under­standing of sociopolitical relationships and tensions south of the Alps.

Research for this article was faci!itated by rhe generous financial assistance, in the form of a series of microfilm grants, of the Human Seiences Research Council, Pre­toria. A shorter version was read to the "Studiegroep Middeleeue" of the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit, Johannesburg, in October 1981.

105. For a recent example, see Ann Weikel, 'The Marian Council Revisited,' in Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler, eds., The Mid-Tudor Polity c. 1540-1560 (London, 198o), pp. 52-73.

106. I am entirely aware that group and 'national' loyalties can never be regarded as mutually exclusive in a given historical situation. Bur the habit of looking beyond the group to a wider political authority (as indeed the habit of looking beyond the group to wider socio-economic cleavages) seems to me a variable determined by a number of factors, including political rraditions as discussed above.