by Gwyn, Peter
It will be shown later that in 1528 Wolsey had no real wish for a war with the emperor, and that the formal declaration of war made in Spain on 22 January was not of his choosing.200 Nevertheless, he must have been aware that if Charles refused to make any concessions to Anglo-French pressure, war was a possibility. During the summer of 1527 he took steps to encourage English merchants to make use of Calais as their main mart, rather than Antwerp, and while at Amiens he sought to obtain important concessions for English merchants trading with France, which suggests that he was trying to minimize the harmful economic consequences of a war with Charles some time before it took place.201 Not surprisingly, most English merchants resisted, pointing out that ‘as a town of war’ Calais was unsuitable as a centre of trade, nor could the harbour cope with the ‘great hulks and carracks that come to a mart’.202 Interestingly, Wolsey appears to have listened to them. At any rate, when the war came, instead of putting even more pressure on the merchants to use Calais, he moved quickly to keep the trading routes to the Low Countries open. As early as 25 February 1528 Margaret was aware of Wolsey’s wishes in this respect, and expressed herself willing to comply.203 An exchange of envoys took place in March and negotiations continued until 15 June when a truce between England, France and the Low Countries was signed, the main purpose of which was to allow trade to continue as normal.
That it took so long for a truce to be signed was not Wolsey’s fault. The French proved awkward; but, then, not having a vital cloth trade with the Low Countries and being desperately anxious to maintain pressure on the emperor in order to recover the French princes held by him as surety for their observance of the Treaty of Madrid, there was little in it for them.204 Undoubtedly the fact that in ail three countries merchants had been taken into custody and their goods seized complicated matters.205 There was also some suspicion on the English side that Margaret was dragging her feet: Imperialist and French forces were fighting in Italy so there was every reason for her not to make life easier for the French, or indeed the English.206 Still, there were disadvantages for her own subjects in any prolonged disruption to trade, and the English suspicions may have been exaggerated. What is certainly not the case is that Wolsey was dragging his feet.207 He must have approached Margaret almost immediately news of the defiance in Spain reached England: when precisely that was is not known, but there could have been no knowledge of it before the middle of February, and by the 24th Margaret was writing of Wolsey’s expressed concern that trade should continue as normal.208 A little later he was to show himself sufficiently determined to secure the truce to stand up to Henry’s criticisms. It was not that the king was opposed to a truce on principle – he too had been quick to recognize the importance of obtaining one209 – but he thought the final terms were far too generous to the Imperialists, especially disliking the lack of any provision for the restitution of English goods seized in Spain. Wolsey, on the other hand, believed that he had obtained the best deal possible and that delay was not in England’s interests. Rather grudgingly, Henry came round, but as a result of his opposition the proclamation of the truce was delayed until 27 June.210
In the spring of 1528 the interests of English merchants trading abroad were not Wolsey’s chief priority; securing his master’s divorce occupied that position, and would do so until his dismissal from office in October 1529. This meant that there was no question of giving up the French alliance, seen by him, and indeed by Henry, as vital for the securing of the divorce. But the alliance seems to have been disliked by almost everybody else in England, especially by merchants with interests in the Low Countries. Wolsey did his best to minimize its harmful economic consequences. Even in normal circumstances he would have wanted to to do this, but in early 1528 the situation was decidedly abnormal, and not just because of the requirements of the divorce, which put added pressure on him to intervene. From September 1526 to June 1527 it rained virtually without ceasing.211 The result was a disastrous harvest; in the whole of the century only the harvests of 1556 and 1596 were worse.212 The index figure for wheat rose from 110 in 1526 to 227 in 1527: in money terms, from £6.53s. per quarter to £13.37s. The situation appears to have been much worse in eastern England than in the west, and wheat suffered more than other grain. Other arable crops such as peas and beans were not so badly affected, the index figure rising from 148 to 195. Livestock prices hardly seem to have been affected at all.213
These qualifications need to be borne in mind when trying to assess the seriousness of the crisis. It seems unlikely that famine stalked the land. Bread and ale provided the staple diet and both involved grain; but bread did not have to be made from wheat, it could even be made, in part at any rate, from beans and peas, while ale was normally made from barley, which, if there were some local shortages, was overall in plentiful supply.214 Still, in the winter and spring of 1527-8 the situation must have seemed desperate, as it became apparent that there was not enough wheat to go round. The Venetian ambassador was reporting rising prices and great scarcity in London, and was even having to defend his own servants from attack when they bought his bread.215 Hall also recorded alarming shortages,216 and in Norwich, ‘there was so great scarceness of corn that about Christmas the commons of the city were ready to rise upon the rich men’.217 Wolsey was not long in taking action. As early as 26 September the JPs in Kent were ordered to take themselves ‘into sundry places and parts of the said county and not only to view, search and try what grains and corns be in the houses, barns, garners or ricks’ but also to force all those with surplus grain to sell it on the open market. Anyone who refused was to be imprisoned.218 Whether similar orders went out to other counties is uncertain, but by 12 November a national response to the crisis had been planned. Similar tasks were now to be performed in every county of England by specially appointed commissioners, and any statute that might have some bearing on the matter was to be vigorously enforced.219
The fact that Wolsey was prepared to contemplate having every single barn in England searched is rather impressive. Even more so is the fact that probably every barn in England was searched, and all within a surprisingly short time. The names of any who refused to release their surplus were to be presented to king and Council in Star Chamber before 21 January, and the surviving returns of the commissioners indicate that by that date not only was this achieved but that a census of all the available grain in the country had been drawn up. How accurate the census was is another matter: the surviving returns appear to be complete, even if some of the maths is occasionally awry. A calculation was made of the amount of grain needed to provide sufficient bread and ale until the next harvest as well as enough seed in times of scarcity there was always considerable pressure not to make such provision. Then, the actual amount of grain discovered was recorded, and from these two sets of figures the amount of surplus or shortfall was calculated. Armed with this information, the government could then take appropriate action.220
The usual policy at times of scarcity was to prevent the entrepreneur from acting in a way that would aggravate the situation. This he could do in a number of ways, but essentially by selling at the highest price, which would not necessarily be to the local community. In November 1528 the inhabitants of Yaxley and Holme in Huntingdonshire were greatly angered that local peas and beans were being bought up by merchants in Lynn and then sold to Scotland, with the result, so they claimed, that in their local markets the price rose and ‘some died for very hunger’.221 In acting in this entrepreneurial way, the Lynn merchants may have been guilty of the crime of ‘forestalling’, that is, of deliberately preventing produce coming to the local market and thereby affecting its price. They would have been more obviously guilty if their intention had been to play the local market by sitting on the produce only to sell when the price had risen sufficiently for them to make a fat profit. If, instead of buying it up beforehand, they had waited for the produce to get to the local market and had then bought it only to resell at a later date, they would have been guilty o
f the related crime of ‘regrating’. What they were accused of was ‘engrossing’, that is, of buying up produce while it was still growing in the fields.222 Of course, if the Crown had systematically enforced the legislation against these activities, it would have put a stop to a sophisticated agricultural economy whereby produce was being transported long distances, often to supply rather specialized markets, and, for instance, the fifty thousand or so inhabitants of London would have starved. One has, therefore, to assume that this legislation, along, perhaps, with some of the Acts which caused puzzlement earlier on, such as the banning of certain games, were quite consciously thought of as providing reserve powers for use in special circumstances. In late 1527 such circumstances had arisen.
It follows from all this that there was nothing very new about what Wolsey was trying to do in the winter and early spring of 1527-8. The statutes against forestalling and related matters date from at least the thirteenth century, while as early as 1204 it had been laid down that grain could not be exported without licence. In 1437 a slightly different approach was tried: no licence was required as long as certain conditions were met, most importantly that grain did not exceed the specified rates. It was these conditions that were in force in the 1520s, and with the price of grain well above the specified rates 6s. 8d. per quarter for wheat, that meant, quite sensibly, that none could leave the country. But the main point that is being stressed here is that the idea of regulation was very well accepted long before 1527.223 What was striking about Wolsey’s efforts were their scale and thoroughness. Never before had there been a nation-wide investigation into grain stocks, and without that knowledge it would have been impossible to judge how serious the problem was and where the government should direct its efforts. As it was, the commissioners for Staffordshire were able to report a genuine shortage, with no grain being hoarded or otherwise forestalled, and they therefore asked for the restraint on the movement of grain from county to county to be lifted in their case, so that they could obtain necessary supplies. On the other hand, some of the Northamptonshire commissioners reported that all was well,224 while in Norfolk there was found to be a sufficient surplus for some of it to be released for other counties.225
Given the reported distress of the inhabitants of Norwich at the scarcity of corn, the fact that the county of Norfolk was in surplus comes as a surprise. It may also serve as a warning against taking too alarmist a view. Shortages were indeed discovered. In ten villages along the Essex side of the river Stour, not all that far from Norfolk, the calculation in the returns was that there was a shortage of some 572 quarters of grain for bread making and some 451 quarters for ale; and this, according to a recent calculation, meant that on average these villages could raise only 53 per cent of their requirements.226 But there is really no evidence to suggest that the shortages had any devastating consequences, which may merely mean that, as was suggested earlier, people did find sufficient alternatives to grain. It may also be that the measures that Wolsey took were successful. By being able to move any surpluses to areas especially in need, the worst consequences of the bad harvest may have been averted; though the corollary to this would also have to be that in a normal year English arable farmers were producing very large surpluses. What complicates any assessment is the conjunction of the bad harvest with that temporary severance of trade with the Low Countries already discussed and the resulting threat of widespread unemployment in the cloth industry. Undoubtedly, this made things much more difficult for Wolsey. The interesting point is that, as regards the quite considerable unrest reported in the early part of 1528, it seems to have been the the trade embargo rather than the bad harvest that played the major part – another reason for not believing that there was anything remotely approaching a famine.
The surviving evidence is so patchy that no detailed study of the unrest of 1528 is possible. As in 1525, unemployment was at the heart of it and most of the trouble seems to have been in East Anglia and Kent. In other respects too it was a re-run of those previous disturbances with very much the same principals – namely, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk in East Anglia and Warham, Boleyn and the Guildford brothers in Kent – doing and writing in very much the same vein. So yet again Warham found himself having to deal with angry crowds converging on Knole, complaining of their poverty, and, most worryingly, again asking awkward questions about when the loan of 1522 would be repaid227 – and this when only the previous year, Wolsey, on his way through Kent en route for Amiens, had been relieved to find that the matter had been forgotten.228 In East Anglia the two dukes were once again having to keep a very high profile in an effort to keep a restless populace under control. A rising was planned at Bury St Edmunds in late February, but it was nipped in the bud. Earlier there had been unrest in Stowmarket and Norwich, and in April at Colchester.229 In Kent the worst trouble came in May, and then was chiefly confined to that area in the Weald around Cranbrook that was always a thorn in the establishment’s flesh. The plan there was to capture various leading local gentry, including Sir Edward Guildford, but ultimately Wolsey as well. The rebels had even worked out how to dispose of the cardinal once he was taken: to kill him with their own hands would have brought down the wrath of the pope, so he was to be put to sea in a boat ‘in the which shall be bored four great holes’, temporarily filled with large pins. Once out into the Channel, these were to be knocked out and Wolsey was to have met a watery death, but one that could have been passed off as an accident.230
In fact, the trouble at Cranbrook seems never to have amounted to much; the Guildfords’ considered view was that no more than twenty were involved, and these only ‘light persons’.231 And as with the rising in Bury, the authorities had got wind of it before anything happened, and had no difficulty in dealing with it. The same appears to be true of other parts of the country. In March Lord Sandys was informed by the king that ‘certain light persons have assembled themselves in an unlawful number about Westbury’, and unrest was also reported in Devizes, Taunton and Bridgewater.232 But the impression is never of a situation out of control, partly because, as soon as the extent of the disastrous harvest was realized, trouble of some kind was prepared for. The proclamation of November 1527 which announced the setting up of the corn commissions had also, it will be remembered, called for the strict enforcement of a whole range of statutes, most of which, however indirectly, had to do with the maintenance of law and order. Consequently, the commissioners were ordered to carry out ‘privy searches’ of their areas to round up all ‘vagabonds and idle beggars’, and to follow this up with a twice weekly sweep of all the ale-houses.233 The assumption, not borne out by what happened, was that in times of difficulty it was just such people who would cause most trouble. Still, the fact that the law enforcement machinery had been put on red alert and, perhaps most importantly, that leading noblemen and gentry such as the two dukes and Thomas Boleyn, who might otherwise have expected to spend more time at court, had been sent back to their localities in order to supervise the government response to the difficulties, must offer one explanation for the situation never having got out of hand. Another is provided by the fact that however serious the shortages, it was not starving thousands or ‘idle beggars’ who caused the unrest, but a few hundred temporarily unemployed clothworkers.
In 1527 the role of the clothworkers is even clearer than in the 1525 disturbances. For one thing, in all the areas where trouble was reported a considerable amount of clothmaking took place, and most of the reports made the connection between the unrest and unemployment. Moreover, in 1528 there was no question, as there had been in 1525, of the employers inventing a problem merely to avoid having to accede to an unpopular request for money. If cloth could not be sold to the Low Countries, then the industry would be in real difficulty. As has already been shown, Wolsey was quick to realize this, and by negotiating immediately for a truce with Margaret of Savoy he showed a determination to do something about it. Meanwhile, both he and the men on the spot did their best to persuade cl
othiers that the situation was only temporary and that there was no need to dismiss their workers. Thus Norfolk, after a meeting with forty of the most substantial clothiers in his area at which he had informed them, quite wrongly, that there was no truth in the rumour that English merchants in Spain and the Low Countries had been detained, strongly advised Wolsey to pressure the London merchants into continuing to buy East Anglian cloth.234 It is doubtful whether Wolsey would have needed this advice, but certainly he did intervene, writing to the City authorities to secure their help.235 He is also known to have instructed Lord Sandys not to allow clothiers to lay off people in Hampshire and Wiltshire.236
Hall reports a rather unsatisfactory meeting that Wolsey had with the London merchants,237 and as late as 4 May Norfolk was still writing to him of the Norfolk clothiers’ inability to sell their cloth.238 That Wolsey’s negotiations were not very successful is not altogether surprising, for until London merchants could be assured of a market for their cloth there was no good reason why they should venture their capital. The key to the problem was the truce with the Low Countries, and until this was signed and the uncertainty about markets abroad was removed, which, it will be remembered, was not achieved until the end of June 1528,239 the situation was bound to remain tense. How far English merchants and clothiers were deliberately stirring up trouble in order to force Wolsey to reverse the pro-French policy that they saw as so destructive to their trading interests is another matter. In February the French ambassador reported that this was precisely what was happening, but then, in order to explain away the widespread francophobia, he was prone to think in conspiratorial terms.240 In April a Colchester clothmaker, under cross-examination, stated that a London merchant had told him that there would be no buying of cloth ‘except we could cause the commons to arise and complain to the king’s grace and show him how the people be not half set awork’, and he had heard something similar from another source.241 But it is very easy to imagine such talk going the rounds without there being very much substance to it, and the surviving evidence is anyway a little thin. More to the point, there is no need for a conspiracy theory in order to explain the unrest. England’s main outlet for cloth had been stopped, merchants were reluctant to buy, employers were laying people off, or were about to, and in such circumstances clothworkers had good reasons to be restless.