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THE DE LA POLES OF HULL

c. 1272-1366

HE gradual development of British trade brought into prominence several great names of merchants who are entitled to a place among the leading men of Commerce in history. Even so early as the beginning of the fourteenth century certain men appear who by ability, nerve, and a certain commercial flair won high place in the opinions of their fellow-countrymen, and made themselves powers in the

State.

Among the first of the conspicuously successful men were the members of the de la Pole family of Hull, who are said to have come over from France with William the Conqueror. Be that as it may, this family of strong men soon grew away from, or forgot, their Norman ways, and became thoroughly English, establishing branches in Middlesex, Oxford and Devon during the reigns of the first Plantagenets, though according to some authorities the consanguinity of these branches is very doubtful. Their early reputation was obtained as soldiers and courtiers. In 1264 a William de la Pole of Middlesex lately decorated with the belt of knighthood" was ordered by Henry III. to receive 10 "to purchase a house for his use as our gift." Several members of the family fought for Edward I. in the Conquest of Wales and received as reward a large grant of land in Montgomeryshire. But in 1272 one Nicholas de la Pole was

appointed one of the authorized collectors and receivers of the goods of the Flemish merchants of England, and about the same time William de la Pole of Totnes, with other merchants, received the sum of £12 9s. 5d. for cloth sold to the King at Winchester Fair. This William was also well known in Rouen, and probably acted as his own commercial traveller between England and France, but he removed later to Ravensrod, then a newly founded town in the south-eastern corner of Yorkshire.

The brief history of Ravensrod is a curious one. The site was originally a small island a mile from the mainland, formed by gradual heaping up of stones and sand from the action of the ocean currents on one side and the River Humber on the other. This island later found itself connected with the mainland by a tiny neck of land, very narrow, but just broad enough to act as a road. As a peninsula it evidently possessed special advantages as a site for a mercantile trading town, which were immediately recognized by the quick-witted inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Ravenser.

Thus came into existence what was first called the town of Odd, then Odd-juxta-Ravenser, then Ravenserodd, and finally Ravensrod. It proved an excellent landing-place, and at first was free from what at this present day and throughout all history has been an obstacle to progress, namely undue civic interference. It soon grew into an important mart, so much so that in 1276 the people of Grimsby, on the opposite side of the river, complained to the King of the great damage it was doing their trade in causing them a loss of £100

a year.

The King seems to have felt that competition, as long as it was fair and above board, was not a bad thing, and that any community of people who could not meet it in the same frank spirit deserved to lose. At all events, he paid no attention to the childish complaint; but according to their competitors these aggressive and

unscrupulous merchants then sailed in their small boats into the North Sea and intercepted the trading ships and fishing smacks, inviting them to put in at Ravensrod where the trade was so much brisker than that of Grimsby, that often forty shillings could be obtained for a last of herrings against not more than twenty shillings at Grimsby. Even if this was true it ought not to have been hard for Grimsby to pay them back in their own coin. The rivalry, however, was not destined to last for very long. In 1361 a great flood drove all of the inhabitants of this lively little place to seek shelter on the mainland. The whole peninsula was wiped off the map, and the spot is now marked only by the solitary Spurn Head lighthouse, for of the mainland town of Ravenser as well as of Ravensrod not a vestige remains.

William de la Pole, as we have seen, had become one of the prosperous merchants of this " great flourishing city," and had probably done his share to disturb Grimsby's peace of mind, but he had been gathered to his fathers fifty years before the great catastrophe came upon them. His widow married for her second husband John Rotenheryng, a famous merchant of Hull; but we are more concerned with the sons, of whom the eldest, Richard, was born about 1280; the next, William, a few years later; while of the third, John, we know but little.

These sons early tasted the pleasures of commerce. They learnt to be adventurous-to risk money and safety in the hope of accomplishment. They took frequent voyages with their father in his good ships to Flanders and France. They met and bartered on those foreign shores with the richest merchants of the world. They sold them the wool and leather of England, and bought their wines and timber. This was a splendid training for the young "merchant-adventurers," for while full of danger, it sharpened their wits and cultivated their imagination to the full.

During their journeys they were likely at any time to be attacked by French or Scottish pirates, when, as all