The Merchant Adventurers of England: their origins and the Mercers' Company of London

Abstract

The history of the adventurers, or overseas merchants, trading to the Low Countries is taken back to their earliest privileges, those from Brabant 1296–1315, to the establishment of their fraternity of St. Thomas c.1300, and to their common origin with the staplers. This discounts the theories that they owed their beginnings to the Mercers’ Company of London. The rise of the London mercers to an increasingly dominant position among the Adventurers to the Low Countries is traced from c.1400, and their records, the frequently misleading acts of court, are re-examined. The theory that the Company of the Merchant Adventurers of England was created at the end of the fifteenth century is similarly discounted.

“No Intrigue Is Spared”: Anglo-American Intelligence Networks in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

“…15For more on the Company of Merchant Adventures, see Brenner, Merchants and Revolution ; and Sutton, “Merchant Adventurers.”…”

The London Fullers and Shearmen, and their Merger to Become the Clothworkers' Company

“…51 In the fi fteenth century they came to dominate the cloth trade with Antwerp, making the Mercers the richest London company as long as the Antwerp cloth trade prospered. 52 The company intentionally discarded its artisan element and small retailing interests to become an elite wholesaling and overseas trading company. 53 It repeatedly tried to prevent its members trading at fairs, and to convince other companies not to attend in order to strengthen the London retail and wholesale market.…”

British Business History: Review of the Periodical Literature for 2002

“…Sutton, in an attempt to overturn many myths regarding the Merchant Adventurers, argues that the 'history of the "adventurers", as the overseas merchants of England, long precedes the first record of this title' and reveals a long and complex process of institutionalisation. 77 Integration involves the flow of many different factors; information, knowledge, capital, and raw and manufactured commodities. Capital is Smith's concern as he revisits the arguments advanced more than 40 years ago by Richard Pares in Merchants and Planters.…”