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

Abstract

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.