Heirs to Merlin Chapter Five: Travel, Trade, and Industry
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- The Ars Magica Reference Document
- The Heirs to Merlin Open Content page
- The Heirs to Merlin product page on this wiki
Chapter 5: Travel, Trade, and Industry
Travel
It is not unusual for people to travel, no matter what their level in society. Even the poorest peasants go to market or to local fairs, and the richer or more pious often journey over thirty miles on pilgrimage. Longer pilgrimages are also common, from Durham to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, or even overseas, to Rome, Santiago de Compostella, and Jerusalem. (See "Pilgrimage," page 78.)
The wealthy and powerful range even further afield. Many merchants obviously must travel to buy and sell their goods (see "Trade," next page), and skilled craftsmen may find it profitable to take a sample to a noble court. The nobility themselves travel a great deal: the higher nobility still tend to go from one estate to another, living off each of them in turn (see the Nobility chapter, page 87). Bishops are supposed to visit all parts of their dioceses, checking on the monasteries and parish churches and investigating the morals of the clergy. The royal justices are required to move from place to place, holding courts in different towns. When these courts are held, many residents of the surrounding area are required to attend, thus requiring more journeys.
Crossing the Neath
We hurried along the coast road to the Neath, with Morgan as our guide. This river has the most dangerous approach of those in South Wales, on account of its quicksands, and as we approached one of our pack horses, with all my baggage on it, was almost sucked under. It had taken the lower road with some of the other animals, and was jogging along in the middle of the group. In the end it was saved by our servants, at the risk of their own lives, and not without some damage to my books. Against Morgan's advice, we hurried across the quicksands in fear, because "Terror gave us wings." Before we made it through, we had realized the wisdom of his counsel. We crossed the river itself by boat, rather than a ford, because the passages change with every tide, and cannot be found at all after heavy rain.
— From Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales*
Travel is not safe, however. Bandits are common, and it is normal for travelers to form groups for self-defense. Roads are only guarded when a fair is in progress, and not always then. The roads are usually good enough to take a cart loaded with stone, but after prolonged rain they turn into mud. Bridges should be maintained by the communities living nearby, but this is not always done. Even when the bridge is intact, tolls are almost always charged to cross them. These are generally low, but the collectors may charge whatever they think they can get away with.
Rivers play an important role in inland travel, especially in the transport of goods. However, they are often blocked with fish weirs and nets, despite royal commands to keep them clear. Indeed, the clearing of the Thames and the Medway was required by one of the clauses of Magna Carta. Tolls were also charged on rivers, generally at bridges, where the passage of boats could be controlled.
Great Fairs of England
Fair Date Length Lord Stamford Ash Wednesday Eight days Earl Warenne St. Ives Monday after Easter Eight days Ramsey Abbey Boston 24 June Eight days The King Lynn 20 July Four days Bishop of Norwich St. Giles, Winchester 31 August Fifteen days Bishop of Winchester Northampton 1 November Four days City of Northampton Bury St. Edmund's 19 November Four days St. Edmund's Abbey
Trade
Internal and international trade both play an important part in the English economy. The most important item of internal trade is grain, which has to be moved from the villages to the towns and the estates of the great lords. This cannot be taken very far, unless there is great scarcity, because the price of transport soon raises the cost beyond what people will pay. It costs roughly 1d to transport one ton one mile by land, and 1d to take the same weight six miles by water. Livestock and wool are also important commodities within the kingdom.
International trade is more visible, and it is here that the great fortunes are to be made. In broad outline, England exports wool and cloth to Flanders, and imports cloth from Flanders and wine from Gascony. (One tun of wine (252 gallons) costs about 50s, one sack of wool (364lbs, about 260 fleeces) costs about 60s. The price of cloth varies wildly depending on the quality.) Of course, many other goods, particularly luxuries such as spices, jewels, and silk, are also traded internationally. Merchants from Flanders and Cologne play an important part in the trade, and a few Italians, particularly from Genoa, also do business in England. Most of the international trade takes place in the south and east of the country, in the area of the great fairs.
Fairs
Fairs are an important part of English trade, both internal and international. There are hundreds of fairs held throughout the country, but only a few are of more than local importance: these are listed in the insert above. A fair is held at a particular time and place, and merchants may come from anywhere to buy and sell. On the whole, you do not need to be a burgess of any town to trade at a fair, and this is one of their advantages.
Everything is traded at fairs, but the most important commodities are cloth and wool. Wine and luxuries are also important. You can buy spices, hunting falcons, jewelry, and cloth of gold. English and Flemish merchants are the most important traders, but Gascons and Italians are attending in increasing numbers. The lord of the fair arranges the stalls by the commodity sold, with livestock and butchers generally kept at a distance for health and safety reasons. Within each commodity area, the merchants usually organize themselves by town, with the merchants from one place sticking together.
While many traders work from tents or other temporary shelters, many fair sites have some permanent buildings. At St. Ives the fair takes over the front rooms of many houses in the town, while at Winchester the bishop has built an enclosure for the fair outside the town, with some permanent wooden stalls. Since most structures are light and made of wood or canvas, fire is a constant risk. For example, the Winchester Fair site, and part of the town, were devastated by fire in 1191.
The lord of the fair is responsible for security and law enforcement for its duration. He usually hires a couple of dozen guards, possibly including some mounted soldiers, who are responsible for keeping order at the fair itself and sometimes on the routes leading to it. There is a special fair court which has jurisdiction over any offenses, other than pleas of the crown (see page 102) committed at the fair. The lord receives income from fees for the right to trade, taxes on trade goods, and the profits of justice. The major fairs can easily be worth £60 per year to their lords, and are thus jealously guarded assets.
Free Redcaps
Redcaps are subject to all the tolls on travel, and to assault and detention by local lords. While the Order discourages interference with them, it is difficult to strike the balance between intimidating nobles and provoking a response. If the Order could obtain a royal charter, granting the Redcaps freedom from toll and the protection of the king's peace, things would be much easier. Of course, it could be argued that the solution does more violence to the Code than the problem.
A Miner Covenant
The special rights granted to miners allow them a lot of freedom from interference from mundane authorities, and they are expected to excavate large underground areas and sell metal for their income. A covenant could set up as a mine, providing laboratories for the magi in the tunnels (which are dangerous for mundane visitors, of course) and even producing metal by magic. While initial permission would be needed, the lord would require nothing more than a regular payment, and would be unlikely to suspect the covenant's true nature.
Industry
Industrial production is not important in medieval England, but that does not mean that it is non-existent. All craft work can be seen as small scale industry, but most crafts never get beyond the stage of single craftsmen undertaking every stage of a piece of work; there is little or no specialization. London is starting to be an exception, as the high concentration of craftsmen allows specialists to make a living. There are also three industries which depart from the general rule: mining, building, and the textile industry.
Mining
Mining is a rural industry, because it must take place where the deposits are found. Important localities are Devon and Cornwall for tin, where around 500 tons is mined every year; Derbyshire, the Pennine Dales in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland, the Mendips, and Shropshire for lead; and the Forest of Dean for iron, although there are many lesser iron mines throughout the country. Coal mining, especially around Tyneside and Newcastle, is just beginning to take off, as supplies of firewood are reduced by the expansion of agricultural land.
Most mines are small scale, employing no more than a dozen miners, and open cast mines are most common. However, some shaft mines are known, especially in lead mining, which is hard to do any other way. Tin is often mined by using water to separate the ore from loose debris, but this produces large amounts of polluted water, and can damage farmland.
Since the profitability of mines depends on the supply of miners, lords often devise measures to encourage people to become miners. The most extensive encouragement is given to the tin miners in Devon and Cornwall. They may dig turves (bits of peat, used as fuel) and mine tin on anyone's land, divert streams at will, and cannot be claimed as villeins. They are subject only to the Warden of the Stannaries, and not to the local lords. Nevertheless, mining is an insecure and dangerous life, and there is always a shortage of workmen.
Building
Building work must be done on site, and once a structure is finished there will be no further employment there for most of the workers. Thus the craftsmen involved in building are more mobile than most. The unskilled laborers are usually hired from the surrounding district, but the skilled craftsmen, masons and carpenters, travel from one project to another.
Increasingly, the administration of a project is in the hands of a single master mason. He is responsible for handling the budget, hiring and firing workers, and ensuring supplies of material. He is usually paid a large sum of money, particularly if he is well known. Indeed, masons tend to be among the richest of craftsmen. The skills needed to build a gothic vault or a castle are not well codified, and are passed on from master to apprentice among the masons. The most valuable skill is the ability to work free stone, stone which can be cut in any direction without cracking, and so the freemasons are often in charge of projects.
Textiles
The textile industry allows more specialization than most for two reasons. First, everyone needs clothes, so there is a universal and steady market for their products. Second, the process breaks up into several steps, providing natural areas of specialization.
First, the wool must be sorted, cleaned, combed, and then spun into thread. This is usually done by women, working by hand. Spinning is carried out with a distaff and spindle, not a spinning wheel. Next, the thread must be woven. Much of this is done on vertical looms, but horizontal looms allow better cloth and are becoming more popular. The horizontal looms are also more expensive and take up more space, and thus push weavers into becoming professionals. The woven cloth is then fulled. This involves bathing it in an alkaline detergent while hitting it hard. This can be done by trampling on it, or with sticks, or, increasingly, by wooden hammers driven by a water mill. Obviously, a mill is an expensive piece of equipment, and as the fulling mill becomes more common, that part of the process becomes more industrial. The final stage is often dyeing, which requires specialized knowledge of the dye stuffs, and so is usually a specialized profession.
The cloth merchant often controls every stage of this process, buying raw wool and then paying craftsmen and women piecework rates to spin, weave, and dye it. A major merchant might also be able to afford his own fulling mill, although often these are built by the landed nobility and hired out to the drapers. The merchants are thus interested in keeping the prices they pay for weaving, in particular, down, and are generally opposed to weavers' gilds. The growth of such gilds in towns has encouraged the merchants to hire weavers who live in the countryside.
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