Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [269]
William crossed to the centre of the bridge. First he glanced down the road on the other side that led to the south and west; then he looked back at the rising city; next he stared glumly at the little grey building on the island. And then, suddenly seized by some inner rage, he jumped up and down, flapping his thin arms, before turning and spitting viciously at the hospital. He spat once again, this time on the dusty road in front of him. Then he cried out: “Damn that bishop and all his works,” before turning and loping gloomily back towards the city.
William atte Brigge was a naturally resentful man – but today he had cause to be bitter: for the revered Bishop Bingham of Salisbury was about to ruin him.
Since the time of King Alfred and before, the town of Wilton had been the capital of the shire. Not only did the sheriff hold his court there, not only had there been a mint in the town since Saxon times, but above all it had been a thriving market, well situated at the junction of two busy rivers. True, there had been the little market in the old castle on Sarum hill. But because of the place’s exposed position and its lesser status it had never seriously damaged the business of the old Saxon town in the western valley. But a quarter of a century ago when Bishop Poore had started to build this new market town in the valley, the burgesses and traders of Wilton had begun to be anxious. Soon the bishop was granted the right to hold both an annual fair, and a market day each week; its charter also gave its freemen important trading concessions and tax exemptions similar to those granted to other great cities like Winchester, or Bristol. Worse, the royal hunting lodge in the forest of Clarendon was only two miles east of the bishop’s new town, and King Henry, who liked to hunt there, had a well known passion for new church building.
“The new town will soak up all the money,” the Wilton burgesses grumbled. “The king’s not interested in us.”
They were right. But at first there had been one compensating factor. For as the trade of the area grew and the traffic on its roads increased, many traders were coming to the new settlement from the south and west, and in order to cross the river system and enter the city, they had to use the bridge at Wilton. The Wilton traders therefore benefited from the traffic. For twenty years it had seemed that the old burgh in the west might even flourish beside its new neighbour. But now, in 1244, the inevitable had happened: Bishop Bingham had built his own bridge south of the cathedral. By crossing at Ayleswade, and paying a small toll, visiting merchants could get over this part of the river system without going near Wilton at all, and the older town was suddenly cut off from the mainstream of trade.
Nor was that all. Since time immemorial, the old burgh of Wilton had held two market days a week in its little square. The bishop had only been granted one. But the merchants in the broad expanse of New Salisbury’s market were trading without a licence almost every day of the week, and no one was stopping them. Despite the frequent protests to the king from the burgesses of Wilton, the new foundation was sucking its life blood away.
William’s family had made little progress since their aborted lawsuit a century before. Though he bore the same name as his great-grandfather who had so uselessly challenged the farmers from Shockley, William was not a tanner but a minor wool merchant, making a precarious living by advancing money to the smaller peasant farmers on the security of their wool, which he then sold in the open market. Since wool prices were firm and the trade booming, he managed to make small gains in this developing futures market. His wife and her sister had also inherited the tenancy of a cottage on one of the Godefroi estates; as a result of this, he owned thirty sheep which he grazed above the river Avon. To supplement the family’s modest income further, his sister-in-law wove a poor quality cloth on a single loom which he then sold for