class in the chief trading centres which displaced the municipality of Calais and received power to levy a new tax on wool.'

9955

The huge "floating debt," as we would call it, of Edward III began with his Scottish wars in 1327, and was steadily increased after he began to require unprecedented sums for his campaigns in France. In 1338, after negotiating with the assemblies of merchants and with parliament for a grant of 40s. a sack on wool, and after securing great sums in advance of the collection of his taxes from the Italian banking companies, the Bardi and the Peruzzi, as well as from native merchants, the king seized over 11,000 sacks of wool at Dordrecht, giving the owners only acknowledgements of indebtedness, which they were to recover through exemption from the payment of future subsidies. Henceforth Edward's financial policy was a sorry succession of further borrowings in anticipation of future subsidies, and of efforts to postpone the realization of all exemptions. The debts to the Bardi and the Peruzzi were eventually repudiated in 1345. The acknowledgements of debts to English merchants were apparently sold and resold, settling always into fewer and fewer hands. The Dordrecht debt, amounting to £65,000, is referred to as unpaid in 1348. In 1356 the Londoners seem to have held £60,000 of it.56 In 1373 much of it seems to have been still outstanding, as appears from a petition of the heirs and executors of the merchants who had owned the wool.57

It seems not at all unlikely that this debt, among others, was the occasion of the complaint by the Commons of the Good Parliament in 1376, when they said: "Since the king has been debtor of record to divers persons for very large sums, certain persons, with the assent and collusion of the king's secret advisers, have bargained (ont fait bargainer) for most of such debts, some for the tenth penny, some for the twentieth or hundredth penny, and have secured payment in full from the king.''58 One of the persons so accused was Richard Lyons, merchant of London.

Another bit from the same bill of complaint is illuminating: "Since the king has had need of divers sums of money for his wars and other purposes, certain persons, with the assent and collusion

55 Ibid., p. 246.

56 Ibid., p. 240; and see Index, s. v. Dordrecht.

57 Rolls of Parliament, 2, 312.

58 Ibid., 2, 323 b.

9959

of the king's secret advisers, have made chevysances at the need of the king of divers sums by way of usury, receiving greater sums than were furnished him. Of which chevysances, and of the profits arising therefrom, the said secret advisers of the king have been partners, to the great deceit and grievous damage of the king.' There is at least one record of the lending of a "great" sum of money to the king by a merchant of Ipswich. September 18, 1377, the collectors of the customs and subsidy at Ipswich were ordered to permit Gilbert Boulge of Ipswich to ship thirty-two sacks of wool without paying the subsidy, in repayment of the "great" loan.60 Merchants of the Staple, some of them from Ipswich, continued as late as 1450 to lend money to the king and to secure repayment by exemption from payment of the subsidy on wool.61

It is possible, I believe, to explain the Merchant's success in concealing his debts only on the assumption that he was one of those persons who were deeply involved in the national finances. The official registration of private debts, together with the pledges and securities, before the mayor and bailiffs, had been the rule, at first in the case of specified cities, and afterwards in all cities, for a hundred years.62 The mayor and constables of the staple in home. staple cities were also designated as official registrars of debts under the seals of their offices by the Statute of the Staple in 1353.63 It seems certain therefore that the Merchant stood small chance of manipulating his accounts and business so as to conceal his insolvency, if Chaucer's allusion is simply to his private business.

On the other hand, merchants alien or native who farmed or collected the taxes, and who lent or advanced money to the crown, usually became so deeply involved on both sides of their transactions that the skill of even such a book-keeping century as the fourteenth was frequently unable to straighten out their accounts.

Unjust as Edward III's repudiation of his debts to the Bardi and the Peruzzi certainly was in 1345, he was able to color his

59 Ibid., 2, 323 b.

60 C. C. R. 1377-81, p. 31. Gilbert Blaunchard of Bouche or Bouge is also named in C. P. R. 1367-70, p. 443. Of course I do not intend to imply that Gilbert was Chaucer's Merchant.

61 Rolls of Parliament, 5, 208.

62 Lipson, I, p. 264; Cunningham, p. 281, note 4.

63 27 Edward III, Statute 2, chapter 9. -Pickering, II, p. 85; Lipson, I, p. 480, note 1.

action with the plea that the bankers owed him a large sum of money which they had collected for him, and for which they could not account in the audit of their affairs. That the English merchants, named the "King's merchants," were little more scrupulous or fortunate in distinguishing between the king's moneys and their own appears from a series of entries in the patent rolls between 1348 and 1356. On October 22, 1352, for example, a protection was granted to Walter de Chiriton, Thomas de Swonlund, Gilbert de Wendlyngburgh, William de Melchebourn, and a number of other merchants, farmers of the custom and subsidy, "who are held to the king in great sums of money at the exchequer." A new protection in the same terms was issued May 1, 1354, and was continued twice until 1356.65

The manner in which a fairly honorable royal official used the king's moneys in his own business is illustrated by the plight in which, as we have seen, Robert Waleys found himself when William Malyn's peculations left Robert without the means to satisfy the exchequer with the sums of money which he had gathered as collector of the custom and subsidy at Ipswich.66

Lastly, we find a request made by the Commons in the first parliament of Henry IV, in 1399, that an inquiry be made concerning those who have borrowed money in the name of King Richard, but who have paid none of the money to the king."

67

Chaucer's explicit denial of knowledge of the name of the Merchant, which has puzzled or misled several commentators, may now be made intelligible against this background of facts. penter says, "But introduces an unexpected clause; one would expect that being a worthy man, his name would be known." Pollard believes that contempt for the tradesmen is implied in the line. Liddell asks, "Does Chaucer insinuate, 'It wasn't worth while to learn his name, for he was just a merchant like another'?''

Geoffrey Chaucer, friend and official associate of the greatest London merchants, son of an importer and wholesaler of wine,

64 Russell, "Societies of the Bardi and Peruzzi," in Unwin, Finance and Trade, pp. 119-128.

65 C. P. R. 1348-50, pp. 50, 505, 559; C. P. R. 1350-54, pp. 2-3; C. P. R. 1354-58, pp. 34, 300, 369.

66 See above, pp. 8-9.

67 Rolls of Parliament, 3, 439 b.

controller of the custom on wool at the port of London from 1374 to 1386, with custody of part of the cocket seal, and member of the House of Commons, was unquestionably familiar with the conditions of which we have caught such revealing glimpses in the records, as well as with the careers of many merchants who were guilty of practices paralleled by those of Richard Lyons—who, after all, was only a victim of political spite. After so mordant a sketch of so eminent a character, and with the suspicion that too many shrewd readers might leap at a ready identification, it is easy to understand why a tactful writer should hasten to conclude with an alibi:

"But sooth to seyn, I noot how men hym calle."

THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT OF CAESAR, PLINY, AND SALLUST AND THE

LIBRARY OF CORBIE

By B. L. ULLMAN

University of Iowa

The Vatican manuscript lat. 3864 contains Cæsar's Gallic War, the Cronica Iulii Caesaris, also known as the Cosmographia of Aethicus Hister, four books of Pliny's Letters, and excerpts of orations and letters from Sallust's Histories and Wars, and from the Suasoriae.1 It is an important manuscript for the three classical authors, especially for Sallust, as it gives portions not found in any other manuscript. It is known as V for Pliny and Sallust and M or R for Cæsar.

Chatelain gives a facsimile of a page of the manuscript in his Paléographie des Classiques Latins (pl. 54) and says in his description: "provenant du monastère de Corbie." In the Table of Contents he labels it as Corbeiensis, as he does again in reproducing a page of the Pliny (pl. 144.1). He does not give the evidence for this origin nor have I been able to find any elsewhere, but it is clear from his caution at other times that it must be strong. Apparently he was not judging by the script. I had thought that perhaps, like Paris. 6796 (Pliny the Elder) it contains the note "Liber Sancti Petri Corbeie" (Chatelain pl. 140), or something similar, but an examination of the manuscript by Mgr. Mercati and Mr. H. J. Leon, Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University, (through the kindness of Professor E. K. Rand) failed to disclose any such inscription. Chatelain generally gives the evidence when he makes an attribution. Other Corbie manuscripts given by him are on plates 75.2, 161.1, 161.2. When there is the slightest doubt he inserts a question mark. So, e. g., on pl. 151.1 the Martial manuscript Paris. 8067 (Corbeiensis?), on pl. 79.2 the Horace manuscript Bruxellensis 9776 (Gemblacensis?). But the most striking example of his caution is on pl. 145, containing Laur. XLVII.36 (Corveiensis?) and Laur. LXVIII.1

1 Regarded as Sallustian by the latest editor, A. Kurfess, in the Teubner edition of 1920.