alternatehistory.com
1337-8: England & Holland
1337-8: ADVENTURES IN WAR-PROFITEERING
"Any account of William de la Pole must begin with a certain stumbling block--we know very little of the man's origins. His parentage is uncertain, so that he springs into the history fully-formed, already in a partnership with his brother Richard, with whom he was a Deputy of the Royal Butler and later, a Chamberlain of Hull[1]...
"...In the years that saw the heady build-up to the Long War, William de la Pole's wool trade had made him by one account "the first man of Hull," and "second to no other merchant in England"[2]. While for some men that might have been enough, de la Pole had even grander ambitions--to make himself a great man of the realm, perhaps even a titled nobleman, and a crutch to kings[3]. He started in this business by loaning money to Edward II, and when the government of his son began, de la Pole transferred to loaning it to the Prince of Wales without a missed step. Over the next few years, he became not only one of the Prince's principle bankers, but one of his principle war contractors, selling the government wax, metal, tents, victuals and other such goods. He even had a war galley constructed for the English navy[4].
"William's most significant service to the throne would prove to be a failure--he was a major player in (perhaps even the originator of) the scheme to finance the war with wool sales...[5] William and his partners in the English Wool Company--the most notable whom were his brother Richard, and London merchant Reginald Conduit[6]--promised to transport 30,000 sacks of wool to Holland and pay £200,000 into the government accounts over the next year[7]. It was an innovative plan that alas, failed to understand that the market would shift from scarcity to glut prices rather swiftly. It also overestimated the company's ability to transport the wool--by the beginning of 1338, rather than the planned 20,000 sacks, only 11,000 had arrived.
"This already difficult state of affairs was made worse by the arrival of Bishop Burghersh, fresh from his negotiations with the German princes. He immediately demanded that the merchants produce £258,000 to pay assorted bribes to the allies[8]. When they protested they could not and indeed that the sum he demanded exceeded the expected profits from the sale of the entire wool supply, he seized the sacks they had already gotten, and sold them. Sadly, the Bishop's underlings proved quite inept at this, he made only £37,000 from the entire series of transactions--less than a loan that the company had offered to produce[9]... Not for the last time, the war between England's financiers and its civil servants had ended to the discredit of both, and the weakening of England's status in the war against France..."
--William de la Pole, by Anatole Montemorency, Medieval Magazine Issue #114, 1996
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] This is likewise the case IOTL--William is a tremendously important person who left a fairly small paper trail until suddenly, he didn't.
[2] He was this rich IOTL as well. Obviously, being the richest merchant in Hull meant a lot in those days.
[3] Or so this writer feels. Just how grasping and ambitious William de la Pole is debated to this day--while that was undeniably PART of his make up, the fact remains that the Kings of England didn't exactly have to be pressed into loaning money from him, and seem to have sought him out.
[4] William did all this IOTL. He was virtually a one-man medieval conglomerate.
[5] Which I've detailed in the past, and thus won't detail here.
[6] Richard and Reginald were partners of the company IOTL as well.
[7] This was their promise IOTL. It was... well, optimistic. Just how optimistic will be shown.
[8] Ironically, Burghersh is in slightly better shape than OTL, where he owed slightly more, and by 'slightly more', I mean 'an extra 15,000 or so'.
[9] Burghersh's men have done slightly worse than OTL by a few thousand, though honestly, it makes little difference.
"Any account of William de la Pole must begin with a certain stumbling block--we know very little of the man's origins. His parentage is uncertain, so that he springs into the history fully-formed, already in a partnership with his brother Richard, with whom he was a Deputy of the Royal Butler and later, a Chamberlain of Hull[1]...
"...In the years that saw the heady build-up to the Long War, William de la Pole's wool trade had made him by one account "the first man of Hull," and "second to no other merchant in England"[2]. While for some men that might have been enough, de la Pole had even grander ambitions--to make himself a great man of the realm, perhaps even a titled nobleman, and a crutch to kings[3]. He started in this business by loaning money to Edward II, and when the government of his son began, de la Pole transferred to loaning it to the Prince of Wales without a missed step. Over the next few years, he became not only one of the Prince's principle bankers, but one of his principle war contractors, selling the government wax, metal, tents, victuals and other such goods. He even had a war galley constructed for the English navy[4].
"William's most significant service to the throne would prove to be a failure--he was a major player in (perhaps even the originator of) the scheme to finance the war with wool sales...[5] William and his partners in the English Wool Company--the most notable whom were his brother Richard, and London merchant Reginald Conduit[6]--promised to transport 30,000 sacks of wool to Holland and pay £200,000 into the government accounts over the next year[7]. It was an innovative plan that alas, failed to understand that the market would shift from scarcity to glut prices rather swiftly. It also overestimated the company's ability to transport the wool--by the beginning of 1338, rather than the planned 20,000 sacks, only 11,000 had arrived.
"This already difficult state of affairs was made worse by the arrival of Bishop Burghersh, fresh from his negotiations with the German princes. He immediately demanded that the merchants produce £258,000 to pay assorted bribes to the allies[8]. When they protested they could not and indeed that the sum he demanded exceeded the expected profits from the sale of the entire wool supply, he seized the sacks they had already gotten, and sold them. Sadly, the Bishop's underlings proved quite inept at this, he made only £37,000 from the entire series of transactions--less than a loan that the company had offered to produce[9]... Not for the last time, the war between England's financiers and its civil servants had ended to the discredit of both, and the weakening of England's status in the war against France..."
--William de la Pole, by Anatole Montemorency, Medieval Magazine Issue #114, 1996
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] This is likewise the case IOTL--William is a tremendously important person who left a fairly small paper trail until suddenly, he didn't.
[2] He was this rich IOTL as well. Obviously, being the richest merchant in Hull meant a lot in those days.
[3] Or so this writer feels. Just how grasping and ambitious William de la Pole is debated to this day--while that was undeniably PART of his make up, the fact remains that the Kings of England didn't exactly have to be pressed into loaning money from him, and seem to have sought him out.
[4] William did all this IOTL. He was virtually a one-man medieval conglomerate.
[5] Which I've detailed in the past, and thus won't detail here.
[6] Richard and Reginald were partners of the company IOTL as well.
[7] This was their promise IOTL. It was... well, optimistic. Just how optimistic will be shown.
[8] Ironically, Burghersh is in slightly better shape than OTL, where he owed slightly more, and by 'slightly more', I mean 'an extra 15,000 or so'.
[9] Burghersh's men have done slightly worse than OTL by a few thousand, though honestly, it makes little difference.
- Space Oddity
- Word Count: 700