Item.  Sir, please it you to understand that here is a variance betwixt our host Thomas Graunger and the fellowship, of our lodging, for Thomas Graunger promised us at his coming in to our lodging that we should pay no more for our board but 3s. 4d. a week at the high table, and 2s. 6d. at the side table, and now he saith he will have no less than 4s. a week at the high table and 40d. at the side table, wherefore the fellowship here will depart into other lodgings, some to one place and some to another, William Dalton will be at Robert Torneys and Ralph Temyngton and master Brown’s man of Stamford shall be at Thomas Clarke’s and so all the fellowship departs save I, wherefore I let your masterships have knowledge, that ye may do as it shall like you best.[54]

But Thomas Betson never fell out with his hosts, whose only complaint of him must have been that he sat long over his love letters and came down late to dinner.

There was business enough for him to do at Calais.  First of all, when the wool was landed, it had to be inspected by the Royal officers, to see that it had been properly labelled, and their skilled packers examined, repacked, and resealed the bales.  This was an anxious moment for merchants who were conscious of inferior wool among their bulging sarplers.  The honest Betson, we may be certain, never cheated, but the Celys knew more than a little about the tricks of the trade, and one year, when the Lieutenant of Calais took out sarpler No. 24, which their agent, William Cely, knew to be poor wool, in order to make a test, he privily substitutes No. 8, which was ‘fair wool’ and changed the labels, so that he was soon able to write home, ’Your wool is awarded by the sarpler that I cast out last.’[55] No wonder Gower said that Trick was regent of the Staple,

Siq’en le laines maintenir
Je voi plusours descontenir
Du loyalte la viele usance.[56]

Then there was the custom and subsidy to be paid to the Mayor and Fellowship of the Staple, who collected it for the King.  And then came the main business of every merchant, the selling of the wool.  Thomas Betson preferred, of course, to sell it as quickly as possible, as the ships came in, but sometimes the market was slow and wool remained for some months on his hands.  Such wool from the summer sheep shearing, shipped in or before the month of February following, and remaining unsold by April 6th, was classed as old wool, and the Fellowship of the Staple ordained that foreign buyers must take one sarpler of old wool with every three of new; and although the Flemings grumbled and wanted to take one of old to five of new, they had to put up with the regulation.[57] A great deal of Betson’s business would be done at the mart of Calais itself, where he met with the dignified Flemish merchants, scions of old families with estates of their own, and the more plebeian merchants of Delft and Leyden, and the wool dealers from sunny Florence and Genoa and Venice.  Among the best