WOOL.

Sub-series within E 101

Most of these accounts relate to the manipulation of the wool market in the Low Countries by Edward III during the 1330s and 1340s (E 101/347/7-38). Other documents in the bundle E 101/347 are miscellaneous accounts, writs, proclamations, indentures and declarations relating to the collection of various subsidies on wool and of its packing and transportation. These were added to this series from the Ancient Miscellanea of the Exchequer on its sortation in the nineteenth century, presumably because they did not fit conveniently into the other possible destination classes, the customs accounts in E 122 or the ministers' accounts in SC 6.

42 15 Edward IV. Indenture for subsidies on wools shipped to Calais. 1 m.

See E 358/10-11for enrolled accounts of syndicate particulars. Wool merchants loans to the crown (Edward III), see E 34/1A. Letters patent relating to syndicate wool collections, see E 156/28. Chancery returned certificates relating to wool collection 1338 -1342, see C 255/2. Particulars of account relating to ancient and new custom on wool are in E 122; the enrolled customs accounts in E 356. Staple rolls are in C 67. Particulars of account of wool subsidy collectors are in E 179.

During the first half of the reign of Edward III, wool was forcibly bought by the king's merchants, most notably William de la Pole, as part of a complicated scheme to fund war with France. On 26 July 1337, de la Pole and fifty other merchants agreed to lend Edward III £200,000. To raise the capital for this, the syndicate was given permission to seize 30,000 sacks of English wool to sell in Antwerp, Dordrecht, Bruges and Middelburgh, where the price had been artificially inflated. The wool suppliers were to receive payment once the merchants had been repaid by the crown, but this part of the scheme failed and many were ruined. Despite this, merchant syndicates, often headed by de la Pole, continued to lend money to the crown against wool throughout the 1340s. Most of E 101/347 contains the accounts of this venture.