Chapter 5 Beyond Wales and England

Rome and Tournai

In the early days of February 1515, Richard Downe, warden of the Palmers’ Guild, departed Ludlow to make his way to London. The council of the guild (the elders and office holders) had sent him off with £3 13s 4d to undertake ‘his besynes’ in London, while also giving him additional money for their ‘besynes to Rome’ to obtain their ‘previleige’.¹ His activities in London are unclear, but he evidently remained there for some time: in the ensuing six weeks, William Yenance was sent from Ludlow to London to deliver a further £6 13s 4d to Downe.² Then, in April, Downe sent a priest to Ludlow – one Sir John – to command the guild to send an additional 10s (which was dispatched on 18 April), while also instructing the guild to pay 6s 8d to Sir John.³ Four months later, on 30 August, the guild sent more funds to the warden in London: £120 in cash, along with an additional £10 consisting of gold and silver taken from their treasury.⁴ It appears at this point that the warden must then have departed, either to Rome or Tournai. The surviving records do not provide details of his journey or his activities once he left England, so we do not know the order of his itinerary.

In total, the guild recorded that they paid £310 in ‘expenses and charges of our privilege’ – a sum that resulted the acquisition of a papal indulgence, securing remission for those who visited the guild chapel in the parish church of St Laurence.⁵ The guild had borrowed part of this sum from a local man by the name of Dyer, which they began to repay in 1516.⁶ The financial repercussions of the warden’s journey to Rome were still being resolved several years later when it was recorded that Downe was reimbursed for the money spent, saving £6 13s 5d.⁷ The indulgence that Downe managed to secure from that trip to Rome survives as a printed bill in the form of a confessional letter from Pope Leo X, confirming that visitors to the guild chapel would secure indulgences (offered at Lent for the Stations of Rome) on the feasts of the Annunciation, the Assumption, St John before the Latin Gate, St Katherine and St Edward the Confessor, after they said the required prayers of Pater Nosters and Aves for the pope, the king and queen (who were already members of the guild), and all fellow brethren of the Palmers.⁸ It was perhaps produced by a London printer such as Richard Pynson, who printed the indulgences for Boston’s guild of St Mary and the Austin Friars, and contained a blank space for the guild to write in the name(s) of those who received the indulgence. The sole surviving example duly has the handwritten names of Hugh Leighton of Rodington (Shropshire) and Anna, his wife, who became members in 1515/16.⁹ It is worth noting that the indulgence was not limited to only members but rather to all visitors to the guild chapel.¹⁰ The indulgences that the guild had acquired in the previous century restricted their benefit to members, without the need to undertake a journey, and therefore with this particular indulgence the guild was encouraging people to travel to Ludlow. In turn, it would both provide members with the opportunity to interact with the guild’s governing council (as only the stewards and solesters consistently met with brethren outside of Ludlow), and present the opportunity to recruit new members, all of whom would see the magnificent stained-glass window depicting the legendary origin story in the guild chapel. While considerable effort was put in place to support microcosms of the guild across different locations, the guild wished to encourage members to make their own pilgrimage to Ludlow. That is presumably exactly what Hugh and Anna Leighton did, as they had only partially paid their fee when their names were added to the indulgence, and they never ended up completing their membership fee.

The indulgence for visitors to the chapel was at least the third indulgence that the guild had secured since the beginning of the fifteenth century. An indulgence of 1400 granted members plenary remission in the hour of death.¹¹ The conditions of an indulgence of 1497, granted by the bishop of Troyes to the Palmers’ Guild, are almost impossible to decipher due to manuscript deterioration: only a remission of forty days is legible, and that it was a donation of charity from the bishop.¹² Given that the indulgence is included alongside the bishop’s entry into the guild, it was likely obtained at the same time that he enrolled as a member.

But indulgences from the pope, unlike the one granted by the bishop, were expensive affairs, incurring costs for registration, composition and expedition, on top of advisors’ fees and expenses for travel and staying in Rome. Boston’s St Mary’s Guild spent £3,241 9s 10d on costs pertaining to preparing and obtaining their two indulgences in 1517 and 1518.¹³ The surviving accounts of the Ludlow guild, in their incomplete state, only record an expenditure of £310 – a small fraction in comparison. There may well have been extra costs associated with Ludlow’s indulgence: a chance reference to the warden’s account roll for his expedition to Rome shows that there was further reckoning beyond the surviving memoranda book.¹⁴

The haphazard accounting processes in the guild’s memoranda book both resolves questions about the practicalities of obtaining their indulgence and raises new ones. For instance, the neat account notes a payment of £130 to one Anthony Vivaldi of Genoa. Although the purpose of Vivaldi’s payment is not recorded, and he does not appear in the guild’s accounts again, we may nevertheless surmise the circumstance of his work for the guild. Throughout the early sixteenth century, Vivaldi worked as an agent – usually for those based in England or Ireland – to obtain papal bulls. He was prolific in his endeavours, being involved in numerous partnerships and operating during the time the guild was attempting to obtain their indulgence.¹⁵ While officially bound to work exclusively for one company (formed of five Genoese men) between 1511 and 1516, litigation in the Court of Chancery makes it clear that he was simultaneously working with another Genoan, Raphael Maruffo, to obtain bulls, either on the company’s behalf or on his own.¹⁶ The guild probably entered into a contract with him to obtain the indulgence, similar to a contract drawn up between the archbishop of Dublin and Vivaldi (and Maruffo) to obtain a papal bull in 1511.¹⁷ Vivaldi was employed to assist the Palmers’ warden, Richard Downe, at least six months after the latter’s initial departure from Ludlow.¹⁸ Downe may have engaged Vivaldi in London, his base of operation, or in Rome itself, or, if the warden went to Tournai first, potentially there. Vivaldi, too, was involved in trade, and Tournai as a town newly held by the English, with fresh trade possibilities, may have enticed him, or as part of his route through the Low Countries, where he was engaged with trade.¹⁹

Obtaining an indulgence usually required multiple actors, particularly those who acted as agents at the papal court or as advisors more generally, drawing on previous experience. Guilds in both Boston and York had powerful advocates when obtaining indulgences: Henry VIII and Thomas Wolsey, as archbishop of York, supported York’s SS Christopher and Gregory guild for confirmation of their indulgence to Leo X, while Boston’s guild of St Mary paid for several advisors.²⁰ Thomas Cromwell was employed by the Boston guild to help obtain their desired indulgence, already demonstrating the legal prowess that would later make him indispensable to the newly minted Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII.²¹ It seems probable that the Palmers would have relied similarly on help from advocates, the most obvious choice being Silvestro Gigli, bishop of Worcester and resident ambassador in Rome, who either was a guild member by this time, or was shortly to become one, as is discussed further on in this section. Papal and guild records do not contain any evidence of Gigli’s involvement, although that does not necessarily preclude his assistance, given the scarcity of surviving evidence for the indulgence within surviving records. Gigli certainly worked to obtain indulgences for other English causes: he secured a papal bull for the repair of Norham Castle after it was destroyed by the Scots.²² Granting a plenary indulgence and the remission of sins to those who visited cathedral churches within a year, the bishop of Durham deployed deputies for each diocese to administer the indulgence, with the proceeds going towards the rebuilding of Norham – the visitation element of this indulgence not dissimilar to the requirement of a physical visit to the Palmers’ Guild chapel.²³ Gigli, at the very least, was well aware of the Palmers’ agent Vivaldi and his activities in Rome as Vivaldi and his partner, Marruffo, feature in Gigli’s correspondence from Rome in 1516.²⁴

With such limited evidence, we can only highlight the arenas in Rome where the guild warden may have been made known to Gigli. The Hospice of St Thomas, more commonly known as the English Hospice or the English College at Rome, was established in the fourteenth century and offered accommodation to Welsh and English visitors to Rome. It was probably able to accommodate over a hundred overnight visitors at a time.²⁵ Other members of the guild had certainly been recent residents, like Elizabeth Kithin of Oswestry, who had joined the guild in 1503/4, and then visited the English Hospice in August 1505.²⁶ Likewise, fellow men of Ludlow had stayed: the decade before the warden visited, a wounded sailor from Ludlow had remained there for thirty-six days until he was healthy.²⁷ As the hospice was a ‘microcosm of their [Welsh and English] world back at home’, it offered an opportunity for interaction with other travellers, those seeking indulgences or on pilgrimage, and some other visitors were likely to have been Palmers, given their expansive membership.²⁸ If the Palmers’ warden did not stay, he may still have accessed the community through other means, such as by dining at the hospice’s hall, which visitors were able to do without being resident.²⁹ In the early sixteenth century, the hospice was under the jurisdiction of the Crown and Gigli was keeping a watchful (if disapproving) eye on their activities, writing to Wolsey to complain that the men at the hospice did little but eat, drink, bicker and cause trouble.³⁰ Gigli’s interactions with the hospice also included arranging the burial and funeral of his cousin, Giovanni Gigli (the previous bishop of Worcester), in the hospice’s chapel, who is commemorated there with an elaborate tomb.³¹

How long it took to obtain the indulgence, and whether Richard Downe remained in Rome for the full duration or left Anthony Vivaldi to act in his stead, is yet again unclear. Yet a second piece of intriguing evidence remains regarding Downe’s journey abroad: at some point, either before or after his visit to Rome, he visited the city of Tournai and recruited several new guild members, including Silvestro Gigli.

In 1513, and in a bid to emulate the martial glories of his predecessors, Henry VIII embarked on an invasion of French territories. The land gained by these efforts was neither extensive nor was it held permanently. Henry’s victories were largely confined to the capturing of the cities of Thérouanne and Tournai, a small reward compared to the successes of Edward III and Henry V. In August, Henry defeated Louis XII’s army outside Thérouanne, in a clash later ascribed the epithet of ‘The Battle of the Spurs’, a derogatory reference to the speed in which the French cavalry retreated. While the battle was commemorated in a vivid contemporary painting now normally hung at Hampton Court, the victory had little tactical value and it was the city of Tournai that would focus the attention of Henry’s time and money for the foreseeable future.³² The English army progressed inland in September, reaching Tournai and offering the citizens within a chance to swear their allegiance to Henry, an offer which was ultimately refused. Thereafter began a short siege of the city, and the official conditions of surrender were agreed on 23 September.³³ On 25 September, only ten days after his troops arrived at the walls of Tournai, Henry formally entered the city and held Mass at the cathedral. He and his councillors remained for three weeks, before leaving the city with a garrison of 5,000 men with the unrealised hope that Henry would return to France the following spring with a new army.³⁴ The English held Tournai for only five years, ending with the city’s return to the French following the Treaty of London (1518) and the release of its inhabitants from their oath of allegiance to Henry VIII in February 1519.³⁵ Thus concluded Henry’s ambitions of gaining French territory, at least until the 1540s.

The English Crown’s policy of engaging in warfare affected the lives of all of its subjects – not just those directly involved in combat.³⁶ Disputes between monarchs affected trade, prompted the imposition of burdens of taxation, transformed local economies (especially those towns and villages with a strategic, defensive or industrial role to play) and shaped national identities.³⁷ Despite the brevity of Henry’s expedition in the 1510s, its impact on the political and military landscape of early sixteenth century Europe is well illustrated.³⁸ The capture and brief occupation of Tournai had a tangible commercial impact too, with trading rights granted to its inhabitants in a parliamentary act of 1514.³⁹ And Henry’s fixation on war is important for its impact on the Ludlow guild and its activities, offering the opportunity to journey to Tournai and to utilise pre-existing networks of membership to recruit new brothers and sisters. This is a previously unrecognised socio-religious side effect of Henry’s campaign, and a stark reminder that a close reading of sources that fall under themes of ‘religious’ or ‘local history’ have significantly wider application for enhancing our understanding of the Middle Ages. The following examines who paid for membership while in Tournai, how recruitment materialised and how the networks of the Welsh Marches discussed in the previous chapter served the Palmers’ Guild in their overseas interactions.

At some point between August 1515 and December 1516, Richard Downe entered Tournai. While there, he recruited at least seven new members and collected fees from two existing members. Among the new recruits were a few notable names, such as Sir Edward Bensted, treasurer of the city and garrison of Tournai, his wife Joyce, and Silvester Gigli, the absentee bishop of Worcester and resident ambassador of Rome, as discussed previously. Others included Thomas White, a messenger ‘sumtyme of Ludlow’. The way in which the guild recorded their names reflect the transitory nature of the English in Tournai; or at least, perhaps, the guild’s priority to locate individuals in relation to well-trodden recruitment patterns. Despite the list of new recruits comprising those ‘names master warden made in turney [Tournai]’, individuals were identified by their location within England. Sir Edward Bensted and his wife were to be ‘set under the king’s ho[us]’ in the guild records, while others were identified by their ‘original’ location: Quatt, Ludlow, Ashford (all in Shropshire) and London. The clerk’s record of their English locations was a practical measure, in order to allow for future stewards to easily locate the men to collect further fees if they returned, but it might also indicate the perceived temporary nature of garrisoning Tournai.

Although surviving records of Tournai enrolment are limited, they tell a story of the Palmers’ Guild’s own expedition to Europe in the early sixteenth century, while further reinforcing how prominent and widespread the guild’s networks were. The recruitment of Silvestro Gigli in Tournai is particularly revealing about networks that were formed in and of the Welsh Marches but materialised abroad. There are two layers to his connections to the Palmers’ Guild and Tournai that illustrate reasons why Gigli became a member: the see of Worcester and Thomas Wolsey.

From a family of merchant bankers with origins in Lucca but who were often based in London, Silvestro Gigli was recorded as resident in London during the alien subsidy assessments of 1483 as a servant of his cousin Giovanni Gigli, who was at that time archdeacon of London and papal collector.⁴⁰ He was promoted to the bishopric of Worcester in 1498, upon the death of his cousin Giovanni, who had been the previous incumbent. Gigli held a number of positions that connected him to the royal court throughout his career, most notably as the papal nuncio that brought the dispensation permitting Prince Henry to marry Katherine of Aragon. Gigli remained at the English court as papal nuncio until 1512, while also serving as a royal chaplain. From 1512, he was sent as the king’s representative to the Fifth Lateran Council and for the remainder of his life acted as the resident English envoy in Rome.⁴¹

It is through his position as envoy that Gigli was drawn towards Tournai. Gigli spent the best part of the English occupation working tirelessly to gain full control of the bishopric of Tournai for Thomas Wolsey, whose appointment to the see was disputed by the French bishop-elect, Louis Guillard. Both Guillard and Wolsey had appointed vicars general to collect revenues but Richard Sampson, Wolsey’s man, was continually thwarted by his French equivalent.⁴² Frustrated, Wolsey requested that Gigli seek further papal support for control of the diocese of Tournai. The fight for the bishopric resulted in a steady stream of correspondence between Gigli, at the papal court, and officials in England. Gigli’s diplomatic focus on Tournai, therefore, is not unexpected – but his presence in Tournai is not documented elsewhere in English governmental sources. Gigli’s centrality to Tudor diplomatic activity (which is illustrated in a visual manner in the network graphs created by the Tudor Letters Project) means that his whereabouts in the 1510s are relatively well documented through English governmental records and correspondence – but there is no reference to him at Tournai.⁴³ Tracing his movements through this correspondence (which places him entirely in Italy, at Rome, Viterbo, Portico, Arezzo, Florence and Bologna), there are a few opportunities during which he might have been in Tournai between August 1515 and December 1516 – the period of time in which Downe was away from Ludlow.⁴⁴ Based on his correspondence preserved in the State Papers, which states the location he sent each letter from, there are three periods of time, ranging from four weeks to two months, during which Gigli’s whereabouts are not accounted for, which may have given him time to travel from Italy to Tournai.⁴⁵ It is certainly not unreasonable that Gigli may have been in Tournai in 1516, travelling there to attend to the issue of the bishopric.

But we must be wary not to assume that the inclusion of Gigli’s name is definite proof of his presence in Tournai. For, when the warden recorded Gigli’s entry, he also recorded the name of Gigli’s vicar general, John Bell, who may have signed up his master, either on his own initiative or on Gigli’s behalf.⁴⁶ Bell was, as the diocese of Worcester’s vicar general, Gigli’s chief operative when distant from his see. While successive Italians held the bishopric of Worcester from the end of the fifteenth century until the Reformation, proctors general, vicar generals and commissaries took charge of the daily running of the diocese.⁴⁷ These men were regularly members of the Palmers. The first of Gigli’s proctors general, John Paul Gigli (a relative of the bishop), joined in 1497.⁴⁸ David Leweys, who had become a Palmer in 1503/4, frequently acted as commissary of the diocese and a judge in the consistory court.⁴⁹ Of the seven vicars general under the Italian bishops, at least three were Palmers: Thomas Wodington, John Bell and Thomas Parker.⁵⁰ A further Palmer, John Mogriche, acted as vicar general while the office holder, Dr Thomas Hannibal, was deployed on diplomatic missions.⁵¹ The absentee nature of the Italian bishops elevated the significance of these officers.

Given the importance of the vicars general in governing the diocese (which was sizeable, crossing several counties near the modern-day border between England and Wales), their involvement in the Palmers is illuminating. As experienced ecclesiastical administrators, they were often either of local origin or had previously established connections with the diocese.⁵² In the case of John Bell, he was born in Worcestershire, acted as a proctor before becoming vicar general, and held benefices in the neighbouring county of Shropshire.⁵³ Thomas Parker likewise came from Worcestershire and held ecclesiastical posts within Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. One of these presentments was the rectory of Buckland (Gloucestershire), which was owned by Gloucester Abbey. Parker was presented this rectory by his brother – and fellow Palmer – prior William Malvern of Gloucester.⁵⁴ Parker was tied even further into the many strands of the guild’s network: he was presented to the vicarage of Wolferlow (Herefordshire), a benefice that was overseen by the prioress and convent of Aconbury (Herefordshire).⁵⁵ Both parties involved in this transaction were Palmers: the prioress and nuns were members of the guild.⁵⁶

There is a final layer of connection between Gigli and the Palmers’ Guild. In addition to familial ties to the guild (through his kin John Paul Gigli’s entry), and that through his vicars general, he was also associated with the guild through John Wednesbury, then prior of Worcester, who had become a Palmer in 1503/4 while holding the office of sexton of the priory.⁵⁷ Alongside his vicars general, Gigli deployed the services of Wednesbury to manage the diocese between 1507 and 1518.⁵⁸ During Wednesbury’s tenure as sexton and then prior, there is a marked increase in guild recruitment from religious houses in the Marches, aided by Wednesbury’s regular journeys to religious communities within the diocese, particularly when he was sexton.⁵⁹ The priory at Worcester was, as we have seen in the previous chapter, influential in the governing of the Marches and was strongly tied to the guild at Ludlow. There were, then, a multitude of second-degree connections between the Palmers and Gigli, operating for years before the bishop’s own entry into the guild.

For the remaining new members, we may well ask how the guild recruited these new members in a town that the English had only recently conquered? Unlike locations in England and Wales, the usual structures to aid enlistment were not present. Villages, towns and cities in England and Wales were used to the Palmers arriving around the same time each year, as well as the presence of local solesters to help with recruitment. Both of these were obviously lacking in Tournai in 1515/16. Yet when Downe arrived, he entered a city that had been conquered by troops comprised of many Palmers. Several high-ranking Palmers were involved in the Battle of the Spurs and the siege of Tournai, like Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Stanley, Sir Richard Sacheverell and Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.⁶⁰ Stafford participated in the celebrations at Tournai as well, acting as a judge at the lavish tournament Henry held at Tournai in celebration of his victory.⁶¹ A number of men who were knighted in Tournai Cathedral following the English victory were also connected with the Palmers, through their own membership and long-standing familial connections, including Christopher Baynham, Edward Belknap and John Savage. Baynham’s mother, Alice Denys, had joined the Palmers in 1503/4, along with her deceased relatives, and Baynham and his wife joined a few years later.⁶² Belknap had become a member in 1505/6, while Savage’s family and his servants joined throughout the early sixteenth century.⁶³ Welsh captains, like Sir Rhys ap Thomas, had long-standing familial associations with the guild at Ludlow, and were praised for their efforts on the battlefields of Thérouanne and Tournai by poets.⁶⁴

Those left behind to garrison the city in the ensuing years were also Palmers. In the year before the warden’s arrival, the guild recorded the enrolment of John Turnor, yeoman of the guard, and his wife, but noted that Turnor was residing in Tournai.⁶⁵ While the warden was present, he collected fees from an existing member, Robert Leighton, who had begun his membership ‘yn prince arthures days’.⁶⁶ Robert Leighton was also a yeoman of the king’s guard under both Henry VII and Henry VIII, and was given black livery to wear at the funeral of Henry VII. In Henry’s French excursion, Leighton was initially appointed petty captain of the ship Gabriel of Topsham and ordered to muster mariners for that ship in 1512, as part of the preparations for Henry’s war. Once in Tournai, he remained there until at least 1518 where he can be found protesting the changes in pay for men of the garrison in a letter to Wolsey.⁶⁷

If other Palmers contributed to their membership while in Tournai, the records are lost. Yet names within the military accounts indicate that several men within the city were Palmers, like Richard Whethill, porter of the city.⁶⁸ The Welsh captains of the garrison had, unsurprisingly, many guild members among them. Sir Owen Perrot had joined the guild in 1499/1500; John Wogan, knight, had joined in 1503/4; Richard Wogan and his petty captain, Harry Wogan, had joined in 1507/8 and 1505/6 respectively; and so, too, had captain Dafydd ap Phillip in 1507/8.⁶⁹ It is entirely possible – indeed, probable – that many other captains, both Welsh and English, were Palmers. The nature of surviving expenses relating to the large garrison at Tournai is such that the names of the captains and petty captains recorded rarely have any other identifying descriptors with them (such as location of origin) and therefore it is difficult to say with much certainty if other officers are the same ones noted in the Palmers’ records. Two examples from among hundreds illustrate the point clearly. John Cotton, petty captain, was at Tournai and collected payment for his captain’s retinue. There are two John Cottons in the Palmers’ Guild records – he could be either of them, or someone else entirely. Was he the John Cotton who joined the guild in 1502 while a member of Prince Arthur’s household?⁷⁰ Or was he the John Cotton of Shropshire that had joined in 1505?⁷¹ Was his fellow officer, captain John Hussy, one of the two men with the same name who had joined from Shrewsbury and Herefordshire in the previous decade?⁷²

Identifying members of retinues and connecting them to the guild is equally challenging. Payments to soldiers were routinely handled by the captain and petty captain of retinues and thus the accounts of the treasurer often privilege the names of captains and petty captains, noting only the size of their retinues among which the money was to be distributed.⁷³ Where the occasional list has survived, we are met once again with the perennial issue that there is no guarantee that the individuals with corresponding names in the guild records are indeed the same individual. The reality of the geographic spread of the Palmers, with its extensive enrolment of those in the lower socio-economic brackets, means that it is highly probable that many of the retinue of these captains – especially those led by the Welsh gentry – were members of the guild. With over 28,000 men as part of Henry’s expedition to France, most people in England and Wales probably knew someone who served.⁷⁴ The same rationale might be applied to guild membership: the sheer number of Palmers in early sixteenth century England meant that it is probable that a number of Palmers served. Other surviving accounts, such as the large number that relate to the expensive building of the citadel in Tournai, rarely present any names that allow us to connect individuals to the city at particular moments in time.⁷⁵

With or without exact numbers of Palmers within the garrison of Tournai, when Richard Downe arrived, a number of connections could be deployed. When individuals joined a guild, they became part of a community that promised mutual aid and protection.⁷⁶ Our knowledge of forms of guild support usually come from ordinances, which place the emphasis on providing financial aid for members in poverty, or on the costs and spiritual aid associated with death.⁷⁷ Beyond these commonly expressed benefits, Gervase Rosser has demonstrated that guild networks were also helpful in securing employment.⁷⁸ Guild members, as it has been shown throughout this book, also provided for the guild, as an entity, by encouraging recruitment among their own local and family networks.⁷⁹ It is reasonable to assume that the existing guild members present in the city provided Downe with introductions to Bensted and Gigli (and the other new recruits), thereby playing a part in expanding guild membership. There were ample opportunities for the Palmers’ Guild to utilise networks in Tournai.

It was not only the living at Tournai who ended up part of the Palmers’ Guild. Richard Meyos, a yeoman of the guard, was entered in the guild in 1516/17, as ‘deceased in Tournai with the kinges grace’. Described as the son of Thomas Meyos of Richards Castle and given that the discounted rate of 2s 6d for deceased members in the surrounding area of Ludlow, Richard’s enrolment was probably undertaken by his father.⁸⁰ In the same vein, it is worth also mentioning who was not among those recorded as being recruited by Downe in Tournai, with the caveat that only a single folio of names survives (which appears to be a later copy written by the clerk in Ludlow) and so therefore we do not know whether a more significant recruitment took place. Permanent inhabitants of Tournai are absent in Downe’s recruitment, which is perhaps unsurprising: the mercantile elite who did not support the English occupation, for the most part, relocated to other regions of the Low Countries, or France, and some of the remaining inhabitants of Tournai plotted against the English.⁸¹ The guild, despite its established history of including members from Ireland, Gascony and Iberia (discussed in the next section), may well have been viewed as thoroughly ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’ – underlined, undoubtably, through the membership of the occupying militia stationed within the city, in addition to their conqueror, Henry VIII, and his queen, Katharine of Aragon, the English nobility, and the Welsh gentry.⁸²

‘Foreign’ Membership

The men and women who hailed from Tournai may not have joined the Ludlow guild but those from other territories did. Eight ‘foreigners’ or ‘aliens’ (six men, two women), originating from modern-day France, Iberia and Ireland, joined the Palmers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These were few, but their presence in the guild is worth a brief discussion as it usefully illuminates the reach of the guild, adding another dimension to its already varied membership. Mercantile trade and historic ties with other polities are perhaps two of the influences upon such membership. The aliens within the Palmers are reflective of wider membership of the guild, although that is perhaps unsurprising given that the Palmers community, as has been seen, consisted of individuals from a range of socio-economic circumstances. The inclusivity of the Palmers, along with their mobile presence in late medieval society, may explain why they appear to be unusual in their foreign membership among the large guilds of late medieval England. On the whole, alien membership is rarely discussed in studies on guilds, featuring instead in scholarship on marginality or alien experiences in urban centres.⁸³

The enrolment of non-Welsh or non-English membership mirrored wider trading networks. There were a couple of men from Gascony who joined the guild in the 1460s and early sixteenth century. Bernard ‘of St Mark of Bordeaux’ was described as dwelling in London when he became a Palmer.⁸⁴ In Bristol, a merchant of Bordeaux contributed towards his membership fee in 1506 with wine, presumably from Gascony and related to his trade.⁸⁵ Bristol and Bordeaux had a long-standing trade relationship and it is perhaps surprising that merchants from Gascony are not better represented among the guild, given the strength of the Bristol mercantile contingent within the Palmers.⁸⁶ While the wine trade with Bordeaux did drop with England’s loss of Gascony in 1453, trading of wine was still a feature of Bristol’s sixteenth-century mercantile activity.⁸⁷ The lack of Gascon representation, however, may be related to the uneven survival of membership records or the occasional desire of Bristolian merchants to keep overseas commerce ‘in their own hands’, rather than those of aliens.⁸⁸

Commercial networks also influenced the Irish connections present in the Palmers’ Guild. John Welshe of Trim (Co. Meath) but ‘sometimes citizen of Coventry’ joined in 1505, contributing money towards his membership fee in that year and the one following.⁸⁹ In the later Middle Ages, fuelled by a demand for wool and linen, Ireland’s exports were channelled through north-west England before making their way down to the Midlands, particularly Coventry.⁹⁰ While a destination in and of itself, Coventry was simultaneously a node in the network of trade between Ireland and London, with merchants (or their agents) travelling from Ireland to Chester and then Coventry before making their way to the English capital.⁹¹ Irish merchants are known to have become freemen of Chester to help establish their credentials to trade elsewhere in England and Welshe may have done the same thing, but in Coventry – hence the guild describing him as this ‘sometimes citizen of Coventry’.⁹² Over and above that, Welshe may have been reminded of devotional connections to the parish of Trim’s popular altar of St Laurence, as the Palmers were based in a church of the same dedication.⁹³ Trim was part of the Pale, being one of the four Anglicised eastern Irish counties, where membership of fraternities was popular and displayed similar characteristics to western European fraternities. Northern and western Irish inhabitants, on the other hand, channelled lay devotion through houses of religious orders.⁹⁴ In joining the Palmers’ Guild, Welshe was acting as he might have in his local community, while accessing the potential benefits of an extensive network of Palmers in his new (or temporary) home.

Other Palmers of Ireland that joined the Palmers, such as Katherine Wellesley ‘of Ireland, remaining in Ludlow’, may have been influenced by historic relationships. Ludlow, and the Marches more generally, had historic ties to Ireland as their lords – such as the de Lacys, Grenvilles and Mortimers – had held a stake in the English attempts to conquer and hold Ireland throughout the late Middle Ages.⁹⁵ The Mortimers were a predominant Marcher family and it was through this family that the Yorkists claimed lineage from Edward III. Their base in the Marches was originally Wigmore but from the early fifteenth century shifted to favour Ludlow. Richard, Duke of York, inherited the Mortimer estates from his uncle, Edmund Mortimer (d. 1425), and Ludlow became one of his principal sites for his household.⁹⁶ In 1437, York enrolled alongside his wife Cecily Neville in the Palmers’ Guild.⁹⁷ While maintaining a vast landed base in the Welsh Marches, the Mortimers were also part of the group of English magnates who held lands and castles in Ireland, and the Duke of York was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1447.⁹⁸ Local men went to Ireland with the Mortimers, and surname evidence suggests that some Ludlow men settled in Ireland.⁹⁹ Trim, County Meath (the home of the aforementioned John Welshe of Trim/Coventry), had been in the possessions of the Mortimers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹⁰⁰ Other evidence suggests that a small number of Irish men and women settled in Ludlow from the thirteenth century onwards, likely from the Mortimer lands in County Meath.¹⁰¹

While the nobility of medieval England proved themselves avid members of fraternities, whether those local to them or more sizeable regional/national ones, the presence of the noble families from abroad is more of a surprise. Yet in 1497/8, the Countess of Caminha, Teresa de Távora, joined the guild, along with one of her sons, Diego Sotomayor.¹⁰² It is possibly through their connection with the court of Castile that Távora and Sotomayor became involved with the Palmers in the late fifteenth century. Teresa de Távora’s husband, Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor, had lost part of his family’s lands in Castile following a troubled relationship with Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Following the death of her husband in 1496, Teresa de Távora appealed to Isabella to return those lands to their eldest son, Álvaro, which was granted. Was the enrolment of de Távora and her other son, Diego, connected in any way to the relationship between Castile and England that had been ratified in a new marriage treaty for Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur earlier in 1497?¹⁰³ Yet there are no other individuals connected with Castile who enrolled (with the exception of Catherine of Aragon five years later in 1502), and there is an absence of enrolment from Iberia more generally, despite the strong trading connections between Iberia and England in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.¹⁰⁴ In fact, the manuscript folio that notes the countess and her son also contains the entries of English women and men, and the enrolment of the bishop of Troyes (France), providing a jumble of locations in which the guild had a presence, even if a minor one.¹⁰⁵

Few conclusions can be reached as to whether any historic ties to overseas locations played a decisive role in the enrolment of aliens in the Palmers’ Guild. Local guilds offered plenty of opportunities to newcomers: access to networks, employment opportunities and a community of brethren that could act as a surrogate family.¹⁰⁶ Across England, aliens joined local fraternities: merchants from Antwerp left money to the fraternity of Our Lady in St Botolph Billingsgate, London, and Hull’s immigrant mercantile population left bequests to local fraternities.¹⁰⁷ Even in instances when aliens created their own expatriate fraternities, they continued to participate in local ones at the same time.¹⁰⁸ The Palmers, while far from a local guild, may have offered similar benefits (for they brought access to localised communities of Palmers, fostered through the guild’s solester and annual feasting). The benefits, too, offered opportunities beyond the immediate area, allowing aliens to tap into a network of members across Wales and England. These secular opportunities might have been more attractive to the mercantile contingent and those aliens that chose to settle in England. The spiritual benefits, including accessing a community of over 18,000 individuals who were required to pray for each other, in addition to the guild priests, were important benefits to all. For the Frenchman John Hardwarman, who died in Ludlow in 1516/17 and was enrolled posthumously, prayers for the soul were the primary resulting benefit.¹⁰⁹ The result of alien membership was one of increased diversity within the community of the guild.

The preceding discussion on foreign membership has been guided by the sources; in other words, it has focused on who the officers of the Palmers’ Guild decided to enter under the heading of extranei (best translated as ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner’). Foreigners were not only or exclusively men and women who lived outside of England or Wales.¹¹⁰ At the end of each year’s book of new recruits came one or two folios which were reserved for extranei. This included people from counties that were not part of the guild’s normal collection route, primarily Norfolk, Sussex, Lincolnshire and Hampshire, as well as individuals from outside of the British Isles, like the Countess of Caminha. But the Gascon and Irish members were not included under as extranei: they were recorded under the location they were in when joining the guild, such as Bristol, London, Ludlow and Coventry. For the Palmers, then, ‘strangers’ were not those of another nationality, but those that enrolled from a location that the guild stewards did not routinely visit.

Likewise, those that lived in pura Wallia, also known as the principality of Wales, were not differentiated in any way from other members of the Palmers. The guild’s collection route regularly included destinations within pura Wallia, such as Conway, Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Bangor, Aberystwyth and Carmarthen. The route of the stewards often followed established routes through the hills (for example, Welshpool to Machynlleth to Aberystwyth) and followed the coast down to Cardigan, avoiding upland areas within the Principality.¹¹¹ The landscape may have been an influence in Welsh recruitment, being less easy to traverse, and a similar reasoning may be applied to the absence of the guild making forays across the Pennines into Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland.

Conclusion

Without the desire of Henry VIII to engage England’s historic enemy of France in warfare, the membership of the Ludlow guild would have been smaller in scope and possessed more insular networks. Yet with the Crown’s actions, the occupation of Tournai led to the movement of the guild overseas, albeit briefly. The guild’s subsequent activities and expansion of its brethren were avenues to advance the guild’s prestige while also providing positive financial implications. An increased membership was a benefit to the entire brethren, especially when the guild was recruiting the elite, whether they were from England and Wales or mainland Europe. The elite (secular and ecclesiastical) sometimes gave higher donations, bolstering the coffers of the guild, which in turn paid for more priests to pray for the souls of the brethren, or to support those in need.¹¹² Moreover, in a time when Catholicism was beginning to fracture, members of the Church from across polities were voluntarily engaging in an orthodox organisation that crossed geographic boundaries.

The Palmers’ Guild was connected to, and indeed reflected, national and international tensions of the early sixteenth century. A number of influential individuals who emerge in the later Henrician court are found referenced within the guild’s activities, providing some of their earlier activities before appearing on the national stage. In some ways, this chapter provides a parallel route to diplomatic history but through the lens of a socio-religious institution. While there is more research that can be undertaken, particularly through an exploration of archives in Iberia, what arises most clearly from this chapter is that the records of one single – but unique – guild provides an alternative way to trace individual and collective experiences in sixteenth-century Europe. As the preceding analysis and discussion has made clear, using records of institutions that appear ‘local’ or records that were created for a specific reason (in this case, recording membership and activities of a guild) is fundamental to studying late medieval and early modern society. Approaching political history through a bottom-up, archival-focused methodology is deserving of a central place within the mainstream approaches to historical study.

Notes

1. 1.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 11r; LB/5/3/36, ff. 12v, 24v.

2. 2.  The payment notes that Yenance was sent during Lent, which took place between 15 February (Ash Wednesday) and 1 April (Easter Sunday) in 1515.

3. 3.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 11v.

4. 4.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 12r.

5. 5.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 12v. The accounts that survive are scribbled, out of order, and at times payments are noted twice (as memoranda to remind the clerk of payments for the annual accounting). Whichever way the sums are added up – with or without repeated notes of payment – the amount does not total the £310 that the clerk notes in his ‘neat’ and final copy of expenses relating to Rome.

6. 6.  The lender is named only as ‘Master Dyer’. It may have been Richard Dyer, a local merchant and previous steward of the guild (1497–1501). Details of the loan and its repayment can be found in SA: LB/5/3/36.

7. 7.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 24v.

8. 8.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 34r. and LB/5/3/4, f. 31v.

9. 9.  SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 10r. Rodington was also known as Rodenhurst. Alongside Rodenhurst/Rodington, Leighton was a member of the gentry, leasing Madeley manor and was active in Eaton-upon-Tern (both in Shropshire). TNA: C 1/869/46; ‘Madeley: Manor and Other Estates’, in A History of the County of Shropshire, vol. 11, Telford, ed. G.C. Baugh and C.R. Elrington (London, 1985). British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol11/pp35–40.

10. 10.  Another example of a pardon not restricted to members was that obtained by the guild of St Peter of Milan and St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, which granted a 40-day pardon for those who attended masses at the high altar of the Dominican convent in Cambridge. Robert Swanson, Indulgences in Late Medieval England: Passports to Paradise? (Cambridge, 2007), 244.

11. 11.  Calendar of Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 5, 1398–1404, eds. W.H. Bliss and J.A. Twemlow (London, 1904), 316.

12. 12.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 129r.

13. 13.  William Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 1327–1534 (Cambridge, 1962), 11.

14. 14.  SA: LB/5/3/36.

15. 15.  When Vivaldi departed England in 1535 to move back to the Continent permanently, he may have amassed a fortune of £20,000. Michael E. Bratchel, ‘Regulation and Group Consciousness in the Later History of London Italian Merchant Colonies’, Journal of European Economic History, 9, no. 3 (Winter 1980), 588.

16. 16.  TNA: C 1/337/39, C 1/351/7; Michael E. Bratchel, ‘Italian Merchant Organization and Business Relationships in Early Tudor London’, Journal of European Economic History, 7, no. 1 (Spring 1978), 24–5.

17. 17.  TNA: C 1/337/39.

18. 18.  The £130 sent to the warden in the August after his departure is the only sum that aligns with the final sum recorded for Vivaldi’s fee.

19. 19.  For Vivaldi’s licenses to trade see TNA: C 76/197, m. 26; L&P, vol. 2, nos. 1057, 1323.

20. 20.  Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 509–10.

21. 21.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell: A Life (London, 2019), 31–4.

22. 22.  L&P, vol. 1, nos. 2641, 2642; William Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England: Rome and the Tudors Before the Reformation (Oxford, 1974), 99.

23. 23.  Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England, 504.

24. 24.  For instance, in August 1516, Gigli wrote to Andrea Ammonio that Vivaldi and Marruffo requested that their letters be sent via France, rather than Germany. L&P, vol. 2, no. 2243(2).

25. 25.  An analysis of the numbers and names of visitors can be found in Joel Rosenthal, ‘The English Hospice in Rome: A Late Medieval Home Away from Home’, The Catholic Historical Review, 108, no. 1, (Winter 2022), 44–67.

26. 26.  Alternative spelling includes Elisabeth Keffyn. SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 19v; George Hay, ‘Pilgrims and the Hospice, Appendix 12’, The English Hospice in Rome, The Venerabile Sexcentenary Issue, 21 (May 1962), 131.

27. 27.  Rosenthal, ‘The English Hospice in Rome’, 63.

28. 28.  Quote from Rosenthal, ‘The English Hospice in Rome’, 66.

29. 29.  George Hay, ‘Pilgrims and the Hospice’, The Venerabile, 19, no. 2 (May 1959), 331.

30. 30.  George Parks, The English Traveler to Italy, vol. 1 (Rome, 1954), 364; Brian Newns, ‘The Hospice of St Thomas and the English Crown 1474–1538’, The English Hospice in Rome, The Venerabile Sexcentenary Issue, 21 (May 1962), 166–71.

31. 31.  Cecil H. Clough, ‘Three Gigli of Lucca in England During the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries: Diversification in a Family of Mercery Merchants’, The Ricardian, 13 (June 2003), 140.

32. 32.  ‘The Battle of the Spurs’, Flemish school, sixteenth century. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 406784.

33. 33.  The negotiation process is outlined in detail in Charles Cruickshank, The English Occupation of Tournai, 1513–1519 (Oxford, 1971), 2–6.

34. 34.  Cruickshank, The English Occupation of Tournai, 9.

35. 35.  For politics and ideas of kingship relating to Henry’s time as ruler of Tournai see Neil Murphy, ‘Tournai Under Tudor Rule: Cooperation or Opposition?’, Mémoires de la Société Royal d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Tournai, 14, 35–70; C.S.L. Davies, ‘Tournai and the English Crown, 1513–1519’, The Historical Journal, 41, no. 1 (March 1998), 1–26.

36. 36.  Steven Gunn, The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII (Oxford, 2018).

37. 37.  Gunn, English People at War, chapter 3; David Green, The Hundred Years War: A People’s History (New Haven, 2015), chapter 10.

38. 38.  Cruickshank, English Occupation; Davies, ‘Tournai and the English Crown’, 1–26; Gunn, English People at War, 17–19; Steven Gunn, ‘War, Dynasty and Public Opinion in Early Tudor England,’ in Authority and Consent in Tudor England, ed. George Bernard and Steven Gunn (Aldershot, 2002), 269–72; Alexander Hodgkins, ‘Rebellion and Warfare in the Tudor State: Military Organisation, Weaponry, and Field Tactics in Mid-Sixteenth Century England’ (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2013).

39. 39.  Murphy, ‘Tournai Under Tudor Rule’, 44–45.

40. 40.  TNA: E 179/242/25, m. 14; Person 32255, England’s Immigrants 1330–1550: https://www.englandsimmigrants.com/person/32255.

41. 41.  Michael Wyatt, An Italian Encounter with Tudor England: a Cultural Politics of Translation (Cambridge, 2005), 54, 58; Clough, ‘Three Gigli of Lucca’, 143–4; Bart Lambert, ‘ “Nostri Fratelli da Londra”: The Lucchese Community in Late Medieval England’, in Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Michele Campopiano and Helen Fulton (York, 2018), 101; Cinzia Maria Sicca, ‘Pawns of International Finance and Politics: Florentine Sculptors at the Court of Henry VIII’, Renaissance Studies, 20, no. 1 (February 2006), 21–2; Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England, Parks, The English Traveler, 303.

42. 42.  There were multiple layers of political manoeuvring relating to Tournai between France, England, and the papacy. See Wilkie, Cardinal Protectors of England, 89–92.

43. 43.  Tudor Letters Project, https://tudornetworks.net.

44. 44.  The guild’s records place Downe back in Ludlow by January 1518. SA: LB/5/2/1405.

45. 45.  This is based on a reading of all of his correspondence between August 1515 and December 1516. There are two months of unaccounted time between 16 May and 19 July 1516, one month of unaccounted time between 27 August and 27 September 1516 and seven weeks between 4 October and 22 November 1516. All of these letters are dated at Rome.

46. 46.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 183r.

47. 47.  Kevin Down, ‘The Administration of the Diocese of Worcester Under the Italian Bishops, 1497–1535’, Midland History (June 1995), 1–20.

48. 48.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 83r.

49. 49.  SA: LB/5/3/5. For his positions in the diocese see Down, ‘Worcester Under the Italian Bishops’, 11.

50. 50.  SA: LB/5/1/2, m. 3; LB/5/3/40, ff. 69r, 183r.

51. 51.  SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 38v; Down, ‘Worcester Under the Italian Bishops’, 10.

52. 52.  Down, ‘Worcester Under the Italian Bishops’, 7.

53. 53.  Bell held many positions, including rector of Quatt, Shropshire (admitted 6 September 1509), was appointed archdeacon of Gloucester in 1518 and became bishop of Worcester in 1539. Alfred Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, 1501 to 1540 (Oxford, 1974), 38–9.

54. 54.  For the presentment see Down, ‘Worcester Under the Italian Bishops’, 7. The connections between Prior Malvern and Ludlow extended beyond the guild, as he took legal action (along with the prior of Bromfield) against Richard Troyte (barber) of Ludlow in the town court in 1527/8: SA: LB/9/1/7.

55. 55.  Parker’s resignation from the vicarage is noted in 1524 in the bishop of Hereford’s registers, as well as the patronage of the prioress and convent of Aconbury. See The Register of Charles Bothe, Bishop of Hereford (1516–1535), ed. A.T. Bannister (Hereford, 1921).

56. 56.  SA: LB/5/1/2, m. 6.

57. 57.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 72v.

58. 58.  Clough, ‘Three Gigli of Lucca’, 143.

59. 59.  Rachael Harkes, ‘Joining a Fraternity in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow, c. 1250–1551’ (PhD. diss., University of Durham, 2021), 148–9.

60. 60.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 36r; LB/5/3/2, f. 84r; LB/5/3/9, f. 17v; LB/5/3/8, f. 6v. Their involvement can be found in Hall’s Chronicle (London, 1809), 537.

61. 61.  Cruickshank, The English Occupation, 13.

62. 62.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 55v; LB/5/1/4, m. 7. For the importance of enrolling deceased family members into the guild see Rachael Harkes, ‘Remembering the Dead: Postmortem Guild Membership in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 63, no. 2 (April 2024), 323–48.

63. 63.  For Belknap see SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 31r. For the Savage family and servant enrolment see SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 50v, 51r; LB/5/3/7, f. 68v; LB/5/3/8, f. 11r. Savage’s role at Tournai is also discussed in Hall’s Chronicle, 566.

64. 64.  Gunn, English People at War, 127.

65. 65.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 73r.

66. 66.  All these examples can be found in LB/5/3/40, f. 183r. Robert Leighton does not appear to be a direct relation to Hugh Leighton, discussed earlier in the chapter. All of the older male relatives of Hugh Leighton, so far as is known, were called William. See W.G.D. Fletcher, ed., Shropshire Parish Registers: Diocese of Lichfield, vol. 14 (Shropshire, 1921), iv.

67. 67.  Anita Hewerdine, The Yeomen of the Guard and the Early Tudors: The Formation of a Royal Bodyguard (London, 2012).

68. 68.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 164v. His last will and testament is: TNA: PROB 11/27/57.

69. 69.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 147r; LB/5/3/5, f. 41v; LB/5/3/9, f. 25v; LB/5/3/7, f. 43r; LB/5/3/40, f. 2r. The list of payments to these men can be found in TNA: E 101/61/10.

70. 70.  TNA: E 36/236; SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 34v.

71. 71.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 12r.

72. 72.  TNA: E 36/236; SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 62r; LB/5/3/2, f. 164v.

73. 73.  For example, TNA: E 36/236. Some entries detail specific horsemen, and a couple of lists do survive of archers and ‘bills’ for English captains, as found in TNA: E 101/56/20.

74. 74.  Gunn, English People at War, 17–18.

75. 75.  For example, TNA: E 101/203/9.

76. 76.  Rosser, The Art of Solidarity, 111.

77. 77.  Ben R. McRee, ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 32, no. 3 (July 1993), 195–225; Barbara A. Hanawalt and Ben R. McRee, ‘The Guilds of Homo Prudens in Late Medieval England’, Continuity and Change, 7, no. 2 (August 1992), 163–79.

78. 78.  Gervase Rosser, The Art of Solidarity in the Late Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250–1550 (Oxford, 2015), 50–51, 149–86.

79. 79.  In particular, see Chapters 1 and 2 of the present volume.

80. 80.  LB/5/3/40, f. 209v. For the different rates for deceased members: Harkes, ‘Remembering the Dead’, 20–22.

81. 81.  Murphy, ‘Tournai Under Tudor Rule’, 17–20.

82. 82.  It seems unlikely that a guild would view itself as a particular nationality; if one did, the Ludlow guild’s identity was tied up with a Welsh-English identity unique to the Welsh Marches.

83. 83.  Discussion of aliens in guilds is absent from: Virginia Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside: Social and Religious Change in Cambridgeshire c. 1350–1558 (Woodbridge, 1996); David Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 2000); Caroline M. Barron, ‘Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F.R.H. Du Boulay, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1985), 13–37; Gervase Rosser, ‘The Town and Guild of Lichfield in the Late Middle Ages’, Staffordshire Archaeological and History Society Transactions, 27 (1985), 39–47; Gervase Rosser, ‘Party List: Making Friends in Medieval English Guilds’, in London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron, ed. Matthew Davies and Andrew Prescott (Donington, 2008), 118–34. There are no identifiable aliens in: Mary Bateson, ed., Cambridge Gild Records (London, 1903); Mairi Macdonald, ed., The Register of the Guild of the Holy Cross, St Mary and St John the Baptist, Stratford-upon-Avon (Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007); W.B. Bickley, ed. The Register of the Guild of Knowle in the County of Warwick, 1451–1535 (Walsall, 1894). For a few studies on aliens in England see W.M. Ormrod, Bart Lambert and Jonathan Mackman, Immigrant England, 1300–1550 (Manchester, 2019); Joshua Ravenhill, ‘The Experience of Aliens in Later Medieval London and the Negotiation of Belonging, 1400–1540’ (PhD diss., University of York, 2019); Justin Colson, ‘Alien Communities and Alien Fraternities in Later Medieval London’, The London Journal, 35, no. 2 (July 2010), 111–43; Charlotte Berry, The Margins of Late Medieval London, 1430–1540 (London, 2022).

84. 84.  SA: LB/5/3/1, f. 5v. He does not appear in the England’s Immigrants database.

85. 85.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 26v. The folio only partially survives so his name is lost.

86. 86.  New recruits from Bristol ranged from to twenty to fifty-two per annum. SA: LB/5/3/2–10. For the relationship between Bordeaux and Bristol, see E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The Overseas Trade of Bristol’, in Studies in the English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Eileen Power and Michael Postan (London, 1933), 183–246. For its state in the early sixteenth century, see Peter Fleming, Late Medieval Bristol: Time, Space and Power (Donington, 2024), 108–10; Margaret Condon and Evan Jones, ‘Bristol 1509–10: Particulars of Account of Nicholas Browne, Deputy Butler, for Presage and Butlerage’ (Bristol, 2023).

87. 87.  Anne Crawford, Bristol and the Wine Trade (Bristol, 1984), 9–12.

88. 88.  Fleming, Late Medieval Bristol, 108.

89. 89.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 29r.

90. 90.  Michael Bennett, ‘Late Medieval Ireland in a Wider World’, in The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 1, ed. Brendan Smith (Cambridge, 2018), 345.

91. 91.  Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 19.

92. 92.  Bennett, ‘Late Medieval Ireland in a Wider World’, 345.

93. 93.  Colm Lennon, ‘The Parish Fraternities of County Meath in the Late Middle Ages’, Ríocht na Midhe, 19 (June 2008), 91.

94. 94.  Lennon, ‘Parish Fraternities’, 94–101.

95. 95.  The Genvilles held a moiety of Ludlow before it came, through marriage, to the Mortimer family in 1307, before then acquiring the second moiety in 1358: Michael Faraday, Ludlow: 1085–1660: A Social, Economic and Political History (Chichester, 1991), 7–9.

96. 96.  Faraday, Ludlow, 12.

97. 97.  SA: LB/5/3/25, m. 1.

98. 98.  Brendan Smith, ‘Transnational Lordship and the Plantagenet Empire: The Mortimer Lords of Wigmore, 1247–1425’, Welsh History Review, 29, no. 1 (June 2018), 27–50; James L. Gillespie, ‘Richard, Duke of York as King’s Lieutenant in Ireland: The White Rose A-Blooming’, The Ricardian, 5, no. 69 (June 1980), 194–201.

99. 99.  Faraday, Ludlow, 139.

100. 100.  Smith, ‘Transnational Lordship’, 27–50.

101. 101.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 1r. ‘Chester’ is written in the margin next to her name, suggesting that at some point she moved there. The strength of Chester’s Irish community – driven by trade – may well explain Wellesley’s move to that city: ‘Later Medieval Chester 1230–1550: Economy and Society, 1350–1550’, in A History of the County of Chester vol. 5, Part 1, the City of Chester: General History and Topography, ed. C.P. Lewis and A.T. Thacker (London, 2003), 64–80. For Irish settlement in Ludlow: Faraday, Ludlow, 139.

102. 102.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 129r.

103. 103.  For the impact of Henry VII’s diplomacy on Spanish trade, see Gordon Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A Study of English Trade with Spain in the Early Tudor Period (Bristol, 1954), 31–55.

104. 104.  The trading connections can be found in many works of scholarship including Flávio Miranda, ‘Before the Empire: Portugal and the Atlantic Trade in the Late Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 5, no. 1 (2013), 69–85; Fleming, Late Medieval Bristol, 109–17; Jesús Angel Solórzano Telechea, ‘Medieval Seaports of the Atlantic Coast of Spain’, International Journal of Maritime History, 21, no. 1, (June 2009), 89, 99; Jesús Angel Solórzano Telechea, ‘From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: The Role of the Town-Ports of Northern Iberia in the First Internationalization of the European Economy in the Middle Ages’, in Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher and Antonio M. Zaldívar (Turnhout, 2022), 39–53.

105. 105.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 129r.

106. 106.  Rosser, The Art of Solidarity, 50–1, 149–186; Rosser, ‘Party List’, 118–34.

107. 107.  Ravenhill, ‘The Experience of Aliens’, 140–41.

108. 108.  Colson, ‘Alien Communities and Alien Fraternities’, 112, 125–6; Berry, Margins of Late Medieval London, 67.

109. 109.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 206r. The Palmers’ ordinances state that they would pay for the funerals of their members but there is no evidence of payment for Hardwarman’s funeral in the extant accounts. It is worth noting that enrolment of the deceased into fraternities was a popular practice in the late Middle Ages. See Harkes, ‘Remembering the Dead’, 22–6.

110. 110.  See, for example, Brendan Smith, ‘Migrants and Borders in the Medieval English World’, in Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race, ed. Bridget Anderson (Bristol, 2025), 105–6; W.M. Ormrod, Bart Lambert and Jonathan Mackman, Immigrant England, 1300–1550 (Manchester, 2019).

111. 111.  For example, SA: LB/5/3/6 or LB/5/3/32. Ralph A. Griffiths argues that the late fifteenth century increase of members with Welsh names shows an increased interest in the town of Ludlow by the Welsh: ‘After Glyn Dŵr: An Age of Reconciliation?’, Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture (2001), 151–2, https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/1969/pba117p139.pdf.

112. 112.  For example, SA: LB/5/3/37, f. 6r. For an analysis of the financial circumstances of the guild and how they used their funds see Harkes, ‘Joining a Fraternity’, 263–4.