Company of Merchant Adventurers of London
The Company of Merchant Adventurers of London was a trading company founded in the City of London in the early 15th century. It brought together leading merchants in a regulated company in the nature of a guild. Its members' main business was exporting cloth, especially white (undyed) broadcloth, in exchange for a large range of foreign goods.[1][2] It traded in northern European ports, competing with the Hanseatic League. It came to focus on Hamburg.
Origin
The company received its royal charter from
Under the Tudors
Under
Under Henry VII, the merchants who were not of London complained about restraint of trade. They had once traded freely with Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, but the London company was imposing a fine of £20, which was driving them out of their markets. Henry VII required the fine to be reduced to 10 marks (£3, 6s and 8d).[5] Conflict arose with the Merchants of the Staple, who sought to diversify from exporting wool through Calais into exporting cloth to Flanders without having to become freemen of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. The Merchant Adventurers kept control of their trade and Flanders as their port. Foreign merchants of the Hanseatic League had considerable privileges in English trade and competed with the Merchant Adventurers, but these privileges were revoked by the English government in the mid-16th century.
The Merchant Adventurers decided to use other ports.
Under the charter of 1564,
Conflict
The conflict of the Merchant Adventurers with the
The merchants who had frequented
The years between 1615 and 1689 were marked by periods, starting with the ill-fated Cockayne Project (1614 - 1617),[7] when the company lost and then regained its monopolistic privileges. It moved its staple port from Delft to Rotterdam in 1635. The company suffered from trouble with interlopers, traders who were not 'free of the company' (i.e. members), but who nevertheless traded within its privileged area.
Hamburg Company
When the Company of London lost its exclusive privileges following the Glorious Revolution of 1689, the admission fees were reduced to £2. After Parliament threw the trade open, the company continued to exist as a fellowship of merchants trading to Hamburg. Because they drove a considerable trade there, members were sometimes called the Hamburg Company. The Merchant Adventurers of London still existed at the beginning of the 19th century.
Similar groups colonising North America
In the early seventeenth century, similar groups of investors, referred to as "adventurers", were formed to develop overseas trade and colonies in the New World: the
Heraldry
The arms of the various companies were as follows:
- Merchant Adventurers of London: Barry nebulée of six argent and azure, a chief quarterly gules and or on the first and fourth quarters a lion passant guardant of the fourth on the second and third two roses gules barbed vert.[8]
- Merchant Adventurers of Bristol: Barry wavy of eight argent and azure, on a bend or a dragon passant wings indorsed tail extended vert on a chief gules a lion passant guardant of the third between two bezants[9]
- Merchant Adventurers of Exeter: Azure, a tower triple towered or standing on the waves of the sea in base proper in chief two ducal coronets of the second[10]
- Merchant Adventurers of York: Barry wavy of six argent and azure, on a chief per pale gules and azure a lion passant guardant or between two roses argent seeded or (as visible on 1765 escutcheon in Great Hall of Merchant Adventurers' Hall, York;[11])
References
- ^ Robert Brenner, Merchants and revolution: commercial change, political conflict, and London's overseas traders, 1550–1653 (Verso, 2003).
- ^ E. Lipson, The Economic History of England (1956), 2;196–269.
- ^ "Merchant Adventurers" in Encyclopædia Britannica, Online Library Edition, 2013. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
- ^ Many records of the Court Meetings of the Merchant Adventurers of London are printed in L. Lyell and F.D. Watney (eds), Acts of Court of the Mercers' Company 1453-1527 (Cambridge University Press, 1936).
- ^ £1 = 3 English marks; 1 mark = 6s 8d
- ^ Calendar of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth I, Vol. III: 1563-1566 (HMSO London 1960) pp. 178-80, item 922.
- ^ academic.oup.com https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/39/156/619/5283364?redirectedFrom=PDF. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
{{cite web}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help) - ^ Joseph Edmondson (Mowbray Herald Extraordinary), Robert Glover, Sir Joseph Ayloffe, A Complete Body of Heraldry, Volume 1, The Arms of Societies and Bodies Corporate Established in London, London, 1780(no page numbers)[1]
- ^ Edmondson, Glover & Ayloffe
- ^ Edmondson, Glover & Ayloffe
- ^ 'Merchant Adventurers' Hall', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in City of York, Volume 5, Central (London, 1981), pp. 81-88. [2] See image File:Merchant Adventurers' Hall - geograph.org.uk - 1505920.jpg[3]
Further reading
- Brenner, Robert. Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653 (Verso, 2003).
- Lipson, E. The Economic History of England I (12th edition, 1959), 570-84; II (6th edition 1956), 196-269.