44 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Sum 24s 9d 
Item on sacke hoppes the first day of Marche of the 
year 1533[4], weight 4Cwt 101b at 7s the Cwt. 
Sum 28s 7d halfpenny 
Sold to John Duffel bere bruar the 29th day of Aprill 
of the year 1534 
Item 1 sacke of hoppys weight 2Cwt 2qtr 27]b at 7s 
the Cwt. Sum 19s 2d 
Sold to John Duffelde macer the 19th day of July of 
the year 1534 
Item 1 sacke hoppys weigth 2Cwt 21]b at 7s the Cwt 
Item more | sacke weight 2Cwt 7]b at 7s the Cwt 
Item more the 24th day of July 7 sackes weight as 
follows. 1 weight 2Cwt 2qtr, 4Cwt 16lb, 3Cwt 3qtr 81b, 
3Cwt [l]qtr 14lb, 3Cwt [l]qtr 6lb, 3Cwt 2qtr 18lb, 
3Cwt 3qtr 2Ib, 
Sum weight all 28Cwt 3qtr 18lb at 7s the Cwt. 
Sum £10 2s 4d halfpenny 
To paye at plessure 
John Duffell, described both as a ‘bere bruyar’ and 
‘macer’” was shown as not only buying sacks of 
hops but also borrowing £4 from Thomas Harford. 
Elsewhere in the ‘Boke’ it becomes evident that 
Thomas Harford was a fellow mercer of Thomas 
Kytson, and although there is no record that Kytson 
bought from Harford his cloths were sometimes 
included with Kytson’s purchases in the fardells of 
cloths exported to Flanders. The above memoran- 
dum perhaps indicates that in 1533-4 Kytson was a 
go-between for loans made by Harford to Duffell. 
Four years later Duffell still owed money to Harford, 
as well as being in debt to Kytson. Kytson certainly 
profited from Duffel’s beer. Assuming that Duffel’s 
barrels each contained 36 gallons and that the beer 
could be sold at three half pence (1'd.) a gallon, the 
3s. purchase price per barrel could have turned into a 
sale price of 4s. 6d., or a 50% profit. 
The ‘Boke of Remembraunce’ records the 
exports made by Kytson, and the majority of these 
are of cloth, with some Cornish tin also included. 
For each mart there was a record made of the ships 
and the cloths assigned to each master for the 
passage to Flanders. The export of goods to the four 
annual fairs was governed by the rules of the 
Merchant Adventurers. No merchant was allowed 
to ship his goods independently but had to use and 
pay for the ships chartered for the collective use of 
all of the merchants. The Merchant Adventurers 
had three classes of officials to manage the convoy 
from London to Flanders. When a fleet was about 
to sail for a mart ‘appointers’ were chosen, to see to 
its equipment and protection, and those men were 
either elected in General Court or named by the 
different fellowships of the Adventurers.* In order 
to pay for the fleet ‘conduitors’ were chosen who 
assessed and levied the necessary rates to pay for the 
convoys (the ‘conduit money’), and kept the 
accounts.*! Those accounts were checked by the 
‘auditors’.*’ The London Fellowship who chartered 
the ships also determined when the fleet sailed, 
where it went or even if it went at all, depending on 
the circumstances and the likelihood of attack by 
Scots or Scandinavian pirates.** The ‘appointers’ 
had ‘to se that the shippes have theire complement 
and also furnysshed with men, with vitaill, takkle & 
ablements of Warre, lyke & accordyng to the 
Charter partie’.* In 1522 Kytson had been elected 
as one of the eight ‘appointers’ of the Merchant 
Adventurers for the Pask mart,® and in the next 
year he became an elected ‘conduitor’ for the 
Sinxten mart fleet and sought naval protection by 
Henry VIII from ‘the Kyng of Denmarke [who] ys 
uppon the See with a grete Navye of Shippes and ys 
aryved in the Cost of Flaunders’.*° 
In order to mitigate the financial loss that might 
have occurred if a ship had been attacked or lost at 
sea Kytson arranged, for every sailing to the marts, 
for his cloths to be sent on several ships. The 
materials were made up into ‘fardells’ of about 40 
cloths,*’ and occasionally there was also a ‘truss’ of a 
smaller number of cloths. No one fardell contained 
more than 32 of any clothman’s cloths, and even the 
small number of cloths of a minor producer was 
spread throughout the fleet. When Kytson shipped 
39 fardells to the Cold mart in Barrow in 1536 they 
were distributed between 24 ships, and of these 
ships, 19 carried 30 fardells with Wiltshire cloths in 
them. The prime-quality whites were wrapped 
either in canvas or even in the inferior ‘coarse 
whites’ or the cheaper ‘cottons’ or ‘penestones’. 
Kytson’s clerks recorded 
. for heddes & sydes 
shyppyd to the Synckson mart 1536, 76 yerds. Thes 
76 yerds mad 4 sydes, quantity in every syd 10 yerdes. 
5 [sic = 4] heddes, quantity in every hede 9 yerds. 
Total sum 76 yerds. 
Item more spent for a syde 19 yerds. Sum 95 yerds, 
yelles 71. 
there was spent in canvass . . 
Often there is an entry in the make-up of a fardell, 
such as — ‘Item 1 whitt cowsse of [John] Norintons, 
wrappers’. Part of a typical entry in Kytson’s 
‘Boke’ is 
