sum of the fells my master hath shipped at this time 26 packs and a half whereof be winter fells of the country 561 fells and they be marked with an C, and of summer fells there should be 600 and more, but part of them be left behind, for we have two packs we could have no appointment for them, and all the summer fells be marked with an O. Item, sir, ye shall receive of the ‘Mary’ of Rainham, John Danyell master, your male [trunk] with your gear and a Essex cheese marked with my master’s mark.

And so on, with details of the number of fells shipped in like manner by the Michael of Hull and the Thomas of Newhithe, where they lay ’next the mast aftward under the fells of Thomas Betson’s’, over 11,000 fells in all.[46]

How invigorating is such a list of ships.  Cargoes are the most romantic of topics, whether they be apes and ivory and peacocks, or ’cheap tin trays’; and since the day that Jason sailed to Colchis fleeces have ever been among the most romantic of cargoes.  How they smack of the salt too, those old master mariners, Henry Wilkins, master of the Christopher of Rainham, John Lollington, master of the Jesu of London, Robert Ewen, master of the Thomas of Newhithe, and all the rest of them, waving their hands to their wives and sweethearts as they sail out of the sparkling little bays, with the good woolsacks abaft or under hatches—­shipmen, all of them, after Chaucer’s heart: 

But of his craft, to rekene wel his tydes
His stremes and his daungers hym besides,
His herberwe and his moone, his lodemenage,
Ther was noon swich from Hulle to Cartage. 
Hardy he was, and wys to undertake: 
With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake;
He knew wel alle the havenes, as they were,
From Gootland to the Cape of Fynystere,
And every cryke in Britaigne and in Spayne. 
His barge y-cleped was the Maudelayne.

Their ships were doubtless like the Margaret Cely, which the two Cely brothers bought and called after their mother, for the not excessive sum of L28, exclusive of rigging and fittings.  She carried a master, boatswain, cook, and sixteen jolly sailor-men, and she kept a good look out for pirates and was armed with cannon and bows, bills, five dozen darts, and twelve pounds of gunpowder!  She was victualled with salt fish, bread, wheat and beer, and she plied with the Celys’ trade to Zealand, Flanders, and Bordeaux.[47] She must have been about two hundred tons, but some of the other little ships were much smaller, for, as the learned editor of the Cely Papers tells us, ’The ships of the little Medway ports could scarcely have been of thirty tons to navigate the river safely; the “Thomas” of Maidstone can have been only a barge, if she had to pass Aylesford Bridge.’[48] But they navigated the channel and dodged the pirates blithely enough, though often Thomas Betson at Calais was nervous about the safe arrival of the wool fleet.  Like Chaucer’s merchant,