London - Edward Rutherfurd [227]
The English had also become astoundingly successful. King Edward III, worthy grandson of mighty Edward I, whom he rather resembled, had hammered the French repeatedly. His eldest son, the gallant Black Prince, leading the English knights and archers at the famous battles of Crécy and Poitiers, was the greatest hero since Lionheart. Not only were the southern lands of Aquitaine and the Bordeaux vineyards secure under the English Crown, but in northern France, the Channel port of Calais, whose burghers had begged for their lives in chains before King Edward and his queen, was English now, a depot and customs point for England’s mighty wool trade on the European mainland.
Most remarkable of all, the wars had even been profitable. England’s merchants had been able to continue their huge trade – with Flanders, the Hansa ports of the Baltic, with Italy and Bordeaux – almost uninterrupted. There were profits from supplying the armies too. And the successes against the French had brought in so much plunder and ransom money from captured knights that for years King Edward had not needed to tax his people at all.
Now, on a bright May morning, the King of France himself, a gallant and charming fellow, captured in battle the previous year, was coming as a captive guest to London. And here came the heroic Black Prince, worthy leader of his father’s new order of chivalry, the Knights of the Garter, riding with exquisite courtesy beside the captive monarch on a little palfrey, as though he were his squire. No wonder, seeing these matchless flowers of chivalry, that the Londoners flocked to greet them. “His ransom,” they declared, “will be stupendous.”
It was just as the procession reached the mayor that Gilbert Bull, standing on the slope behind, took a decision and, turning to the girl at his side remarked:
“I’ve decided to marry you.”
The girl looked up at him.
“Do I get a say?” she enquired.
“No,” he answered pleasantly. “I don’t think so.” At which she smiled. She wanted a husband who would take the decisions. And he smiled too, because she was exactly what he needed.
When, sixty years before, William Bull had retired in disgust to his estate at Bocton, he had stopped trading and devoted himself to country matters. So had his son and grandson. But in the next generation, when there were two healthy sons and only one estate, something had to be done. In Continental Europe, the estate might have been split. But English kings, finding this made it harder to collect their feudal dues, had increasingly insisted upon primogeniture, inheritance by the eldest son. And if Bocton went to the eldest son, then what about his younger brother, Gilbert?
There was the Church, of course. But the priesthood was now almost entirely celibate, and young Bull had no desire for that. Then there was a military career. At the age of fourteen he had gone with the Black Prince and fought at Crécy. The experience had been as thrilling as it was frightening; but it had also given him a chance to see the harsh reality of medieval warfare. “The truth is,” he told his father upon his return, “when they’re not on campaign, our soldiers and their captains roam around the French countryside. If I find a patron I might rise; otherwise I’d be little better than a brigand.”
“You’d better go to London, then,” his father said.
Trade. Here again, England was a special case. When a French noble married a merchant heiress, as many did, he took her merchant money, but never touched trade himself. But though Norman and Plantagenet kings had imported knights into England who shared these attitudes and who still formed the bulk of the upper aristocracy, these Continental impositions had never quite struck root. It was only a little more than a century after the Conquest that Bull the merchant had bought back the Bocton estate. A century later and William Bull had retired to it. Before Gilbert was born, the Bulls of Bocton were wholly indistinguishable from the other gentry, some of whom were Norman knights, and others former aldermen, who lived on the Kentish estates