The men of London were a political force before the Conquest. Their claims and actions,
and efforts to subdue them
or win them over, show that this influence persisted during the Middle Ages. The picture is
clearer if we look at
their role in the kingdom before the growth of their own
institutions, remembering that the threads were interwoven, since national importance made
possible the march to self-government. `Londoners' or `citizens' here are simply those
who happened to act for the city at a particular time; there were always factions, so there could be no steady drive
towards independence. William the Conqueror, by building the White Tower, made London a vital military prize. Although the Tower was governed
separately, England's mightiest castle and biggest arsenal was physically part of London. The
fortress might hold out
while Londoners changed sides; it never fell to anyone who had not first gained the streets. The strong rule of the
first three Normans gave the citizens no chance to assert themselves, although we have seen that Henry I allowed them to
pay their own taxes and choose their own officers. When Henry died in Normandy on 1 December 1135 the picture changed.
While his daughter Matilda was still with her husband in Anjou, the dead king's nephew Stephen hurried across the
Channel to snatch the Crown. He was barred from Dover and Canterbury but an anonymous partisan says that he pressed
on to London, `the queen of the whole kingdom', whose people unanimously approved his claim. They naturally wanted
a quick decision-war being bad for trade and they also struck some sort of bargain to strengthen their privileges.
We do not know the terms but can see, after nearly a century, a return to the citizens' Anglo- Saxon habit of acclaiming
a new ruler on their own. Stephen dashed on to secure the treasury at Winchester - he was the last claimant to have to
do this, as it was moved to Westminster before 1200 and was back for his coronation within three weeks of his uncle's
death.
London stuck to its choice even after Matilda had plunged the kingdom into civil war. At the height of her success in
1141 she was hailed as `Lady of the English' by the captive Stephen's own brother, Bishop Henry, in his cathedral city
of Winchester. Hoping to sway the doubters, Henry sent for a delegation of Londoners who, he flatteringly explained,
held the leading place in England. They came, spoke in vain for their king and left without committing themselves.
Some two months later Matilda was grudgingly admitted to London, where a `commune' or sworn association had been
formed, presumably to defend the liberties wrung from Stephen. Matilda, who could not change her title to that of
queen until she had been crowned at Westminster, was already losing friends by her arrogance.
She now insulted the
Londoners for refusing a large sum of money, retired outside the gates and, in the words of a partisan of Stephen,
`with too much boldness ... was just bent on reclining at a well-cooked feast', when the citizens stormed out
`like thronging swarms from beehives' (Gesta Stephani). Matilda was lucky to escape and her cause never recovered.
London quickly followed up its rebuff by sending nearly a thousand men to take part in her rout at Winchester,
and in 1145 it helped Stephen to reduce Faringdon Castle in Berkshire, so averting a new attack from the west.
A fascinating thread in this struggle is London's feud with the most notorious of robber barons, Geoffrey de Mandeville,
earl of Essex. Geoffrey was one of Stephen's supporters, who joined Matilda only to desert her after her expulsion from
London. He had succeeded his father as constable of the Tower and, as a key figure, could extort lands and offices from
either side. Not content with being sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, he was made sheriff of Middlesex
(including London) by both Stephen and Matilda. Although Geoffrey's grandfather had held this office, his own
appointment, making him responsible for justice and tax collecting, violated the freedom granted to London by Henry I.
Mutual hereditary loathing is clear from a treaty in 1142 which marked the earl's second desertion of the king:
Matilda must make no separate peace with the citizens, who are his `mortal enemies'. Deprived of the Tower by Stephen,
Geoffrey soon afterwards seized a Fenland abbey from which he indulged in an orgy of ransom, torture and pillage.
He was killed in 1144 and his body, denied consecrated burial, was taken to London; there it dangled from a tree in
an orchard belonging to the Templars, before being ignominiously buried. One of the effigies in the Temple Church may
be that of Geoffrey; it was carved about a hundred years after his death and needed much restoration after the
Second World War.
Extract from “Medieval London”, Written by Timothy Baker. Cassell & Company Ltd, London:1970.
All those who are interested in the history of textiles—not just their production and
trade, but also their roles in providing such basic needs as warmth, protection, and
modesty, as well as serving as decoration and status symbols—cannot help but be
fascinated by the question of why colour preferences change. The message for economic
historians, too often unheeded, is that they must always take full account of fashion
trends, and thus of colours. Indeed: Can anyone possibly imagine the use of clothing
in any society, past or present, while ignoring its colours?
Thus, for example, those studying the economic history of the early modern
Low Countries, the preeminent European region for textile manufacturing, and in
particular those who have observed data on textile purchases in sixteenth-century
town accounts, will be struck by the very high proportion of luxury-quality woollen
broadcloths that were black, uniformly dark black, in colour. For example, as table
4.1 demonstrates, black accounted for the colour of 75.04 percent of all such woollens
purchased for the burgermasters and aldermen of Mechelen’s town government
(and 81.66 percent by value) in the eighty-year period from 1471 to 1550 (about 233
out of 310 so purchased).1 Even more striking is the fact that for the more limited
period from 1501 to 1550, black colours accounted for virtually all of those textiles:
an astonishing 97.6 percent (while browns accounted for the remaining 2.4 percent).
That does not mean, however, that other colours were absent from the civic treasurer’s
annual accounts. We do find many examples of red, green, blue, and other colours in
the much cheaper textiles purchased for the lesser, minor officials and civic employees.
The crucial point, therefore, is that the civic leaders, who sought to emulate the
upper mercantile bourgeoisie and nobility in dress, had come to esteem black as the
primary colour of sartorial elegance in this era. The term “urban patriciate” to
describe the political oligarchies that ruled or predominated in these towns of
medieval Flanders and neighbouring Brabant has some real meaning.2
THE PROBLEM OF MEDIEVAL SCARLETS AND MULTICOLOURED
CLOTHS DURING THE BLACK DEATH
If, however, we were to go back two centuries, to the era of the Black Death in the midfourteenth
century, we would find—from the civic treasurers’ accounts of Mechelen,
Bruges, and Ghent3 —that other colours were far more highly esteemed and, further,
that there were virtually no black textiles at all listed in the accounts of this period. In the
Bruges civic accounts, the first purchases of black woollens (from the Douai drapery)
do not appear until as late as 1389. Not until after the 1430s do black and other darkcoloured
textiles—in dark blues, greens, purples, and greys—become decisively
prominent. Instead, and especially in the post–Black Death era, by far the most
prominent colours are bright vivid ones: various reds, and particularly multicoloured
textiles, both those known as “medleys,” made from a mélange of wools in a wide
variety of colours, and striped (rayed) textiles, whose weft yarns differed in colour(s)
from the warps. In both medleys and striped cloths, red yarns were often predominant.
By far the most highly esteemed, most regal colour in medieval Europe, especially
during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, was that shade of brilliant or
vivid red known as scarlet; and by far the most expensive woollen textiles (rivalling
imported silks) of this era were the scarlets, everywhere—in the Low Countries,
England, France, Spain, Italy.4 The scarlet was to medieval Europe what the imperial
purple had been to the Roman Empire. The latter contained an exceptionally expensive
dyestuff extracted at enormous cost from various Mediterranean molluscs (Murex
brandaris, Purpura haemastoma). Indeed, after the Roman Empire had imposed a strict
monopoly on imperial purple, from the reign of Alexander Severus (225–235 CE),
one that was maintained by the succeeding Byzantine Empire (from the fifth century),
the closest and really the only alternative dyestuff available in the medieval West for
indicating such regal status was scarlet: a colour obtained from the desiccated eggs of
various pregnant shield lice or scale insects of the Coccidae family (genus Coccus) that
fed upon various species of Mediterranean oaks. The most important was the
Kermococcus vermilio (sometimes referred to incorrectly as Coccus ilicis). These insects,
in medieval Europe and the Islamic world, were cultivated in the Iberian peninsula
(especially Portugal, Andalusia, and Valencia), Provence, Languedoc, Morocco, the
Maghreb, Tunisia, and Asia Minor. From the Caucasus region—i.e., present-day
Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—and adjacent regions of Iran, scarlet dyestuffs
were also extracted from a related insect: Porphyrophora hameli. From the Spanish
conquests of the sixteenth century, the New World provided a new and more powerful
form of scarlet dyes: Mexican cochineal, which the Spanish called Grana cochinilla and
whose modern scientific name is Coccus cacti, or more properly Dactylopius coccus.
