London - Edward Rutherfurd [279]
“I’ll think about it,” he said, as they rode upon their way.
Few trading activities are more profitable, and few more hated, than the stratagem of cornering a market. Buy up the entire quantity of any commodity that is in great demand, create an artificial shortage, and sell at a high price. Such operations usually have to be large and involve a ring of merchants. In medieval London, the practice was called “forestalling”. Technically, it was illegal.
Young Geoffrey Bull, formerly Ducket, and Richard Whittington, gentleman mercer, were more subtle.
The situation in which Bull had left them was remarkable. First, they had the use of Bull’s huge business – the rents coming in from properties near the bridge; the exports of wool to Flanders, the imports of cloth; and there were profits from long-standing dealings with the Hansa merchants too. But it was not just the cash at their disposal that was so exciting. It was Bull’s credit. “With this sort of credit,” Whittington remarked, “a man could make huge speculations.”
They did. But the system they operated was entirely of Ducket’s devising. For the unusual feature of Bull’s arrangement was that the two guardians of his fortune came from different guilds – not only that, but from guilds which were, just then, on extremely bad terms. When, therefore, Ducket’s group of grocers purchased a huge quantity of a commodity, and Whittington’s group of mercers bought up most of the rest, those in the marketplace assumed they must be rivals. Cleverer still, the two men were always careful to leave a little so that some of the middling traders could benefit from the rise in prices they were engineering. The two men went for luxury goods whose prices were not regulated and which could not be quickly replaced.
Peppercorns. Furs from the Baltic. An entire cargo of silk from the Orient. In the space of months they had swooped upon each of these – buying up, holding back in warehouses, letting out a little at a time at inflated prices. Between the autumn of 1385 and May 1386, the two men struck five times. By the end of this period, Whittington was a major figure in the Mercers; and Geoffrey Bull, formerly Ducket, was already a rich man in his own right.
It was Tiffany’s idea. “I wouldn’t have had the nerve,” her husband confessed. “We’re doing this behind your father’s back.” But Tiffany was determined.
“Leave Father to me,” she said.
So on a bright afternoon in June 1386 Geoffrey Bull, formerly Ducket, nervously left his house on Oyster Hill and walked westward two hundred yards to the great house known as Coldharbour, whose gardens ran down to the river, and which was the place of business of one of the most awesome officials in the kingdom. “I bet they throw me out,” he muttered, as he entered the forbidding gateway.
If the ten months since Bull’s departure had allowed Geoffrey Bull, formerly Ducket, to make his fortune, his good luck in the last few weeks had almost taken his breath away.
The mighty Grocers Guild controlled the city. The mayor was a grocer, as were key aldermen. Like all successful organizations, its leaders looked to the future. And when they looked at Bull’s son-in-law, they liked what they saw. His recent activities had impressed them. A number of middling members of the guild, who had been part of the ring, had profited nicely. “He is also going to inherit a huge fortune from Bull,” an alderman pointed out. “Who would prefer him to transfer to the Mercers,” someone else reminded them. “Can’t have that,” the alderman said. Like every man concerned with politics or charity, he knew that rich men must be cherished. “Better do something for him, then,” he said.
So it was that Geoffrey Bull, formerly