Sir Nicholas Exton (died 1402) was a medieval English merchant. A leading member of the Fishmongers' Company and citizen of the City of London, he was twice elected Mayor of that city during the troubled years of the reign of King Richard II. Little is known of his personal background and youth, but he became known at some point as a vigorous defender of the rights of his Guild. This eventually landed him in trouble for attacking the then-current Mayor, and he was fined and imprisoned as a result. The situation soon reverted to his favour with the election as Mayor of Nicholas Brembre, a close ally of his. During this period Brembre was a loyal supporter of the King, who at this time was engaged in a bitter conflict with some of his nobles (known collectively as the Lords Appellant). They managed to manoeuvre the King into surrendering some of his authority, which, in turn, weakened Brembre, who was eventually executed by the Appellants for his support of the King.
By then, Exton had in turn been elected Mayor. Although for a while he and Brembre worked together in running London, when his predecessor fell from influence, Exton effectively deserted him, even to the point of being partially responsible for Brembre's eventual hanging. Exton's primary policy throughout his two periods as Mayor was probably based on a desire to maintain the city's neutrality between the feuding parties. On the other hand, he appears to have personally profited from the Appellants' period of rule, and it seems that there was some dissatisfaction with him in London, even if he was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing by parliament. His later years are as obscure as his youth; known to have married at least twice, he seems to have had no children and died in 1402 at an unknown age.
Background and origins
London London in the late Middle Ages has been described as "the largest port, the largest market and retail outlet for luxuries and manufacture, and the largest employer in fifteenth-century England".
Nationally and financially, it was the most important trading post in the country, only six decades later handling over 60 per cent of English trade abroad. Throughout the later Middle Ages maintaining control of (and influence in) London was of fundamental importance for every monarch. London meant close proximity and access to the hub of royal administration, justice, and patronage, as well as Parliament and the King's Council at Westminster. The City, though, had also been hit heaviest by the King's poll taxes of 1376–81, providing even more "irritation and labour" for Londoners.
Governance of London and relations with the crown London was governed and administered by its successful merchant class, who were organised by their respective trades into different Guilds (or "misteries"). The mercantile guilds were sufficiently wealthy both in themselves and in their members to form a political upper class in the city. They governed through the Common Council and in the person of the Aldermen, Sheriffs, and Mayor. The Council was "omnicompetent... [and] difficult matters which involved dealings with the king and royal government were frequently referred to it". The city, however, was politically turbulent at this time. Although at least one contemporary (Froissart) believed that Richard II favoured London at the expense of the rest of the kingdom, it is likely that he disliked the Londoners as much as they did him. But, they had to live with each other: the Crown depended on the wealth of London's merchants—the subsidies they paid and the loans they made— and the City relied on the King to protect its trade abroad and liberties at home. Throughout the 1380s, though, the politics of the City of London tracked those of Westminster, and if indeed England "was all but on the brink of civil war", then Londoners were also split between those who supported the King and those his opponents. Yet these divisions within London's political society were not due to high politics. They were part of a deeper struggle between political factions over the fundamental governance of the City and the direction of its civic society. It was during this period of crisis that Nicholas Exton first appears in contemporary records. It is possible that the factional strife within London's government in the early 1380s, which influenced City politics for half a generation (including during Exton's mayoralty), may have had similar causes to those that encouraged some Londoners originally to join the Great Revolt.
Political career Nothing is known of Nicholas Exton's date of birth or youth, and little of his early years. He is known to have been involved in an Internecine dispute within the fishmongers' guild in 1364, when he was in a faction opposed especially to the wealthy and powerful Sir Robert Turk, a relative of Lord Burghersh. Unfortunately, due to a dearth in internal records for the guild, historians know little as to day-to-day political activities. He was elected Member of Parliament for Middlesex to attend the June 1369 session at Westminster.
London had been experiencing political tumult ever since the 1376 Good Parliament (Exton attended), which had caused radical constitutional change in the city, including annual aldermanic elections. Caroline Barron has summed up this tense period:
King Edward III died in 1377, by which time Exton had become a leading citizen of the city. To make matters worse, in 1381 the Peasants' Revolt erupted. This was a series of uprisings across the country, of an extent which had never been seen before. London, as the capital, was a focus of the rebels, who marched on it from Kent and Essex. But the rebels did not only come from outside of London; they were already within the city. Indeed, it is probable that Exton knew some of them personally. It had been fellow-members of Exton's Guild of Fishmongers who had allowed the rebels outside the city gates entry to the City.
Exton is known to have obtained royal pardons for some of the Londoners involved in the revolt, some of whom had been condemned as its leaders in the city. Most notably, this included Walter atte Keye, who had attempted—or at least threatened—to burn down the Guildhall. On the other hand, the Mayor and many aldermen assisted King Richard in raising an armed force to confront the rebels with on 14 June 1381. The Mayor, William Walworth (who personally killed the over-all leader of the rebels, Wat Tyler) was a fishmonger like Exton, and also accompanying them was Nicholas Brembre. Both Walworth and Brembre, in fact, were knighted after the rebels had submitted; but, although popular with the King, they and their guild were gradually losing their grip on power in the politics of London. Increasingly weakened by internal pressures, they were becoming only nominally in charge. Following the crushing of the revolt, Exton began involving himself directly in the government of the city. On 12 March 1382 he was elected alderman for Billingsgate Ward, an office he was to hold another seven times until 1392.
By the early 1380s he had become an "active" spokesman for the Fishmongers' Guild, of which he was a member. His guild had a monopoly on the wholesale fish market. Controlling the sale of a staple food as it did made them immensely powerful in London politics. Exton too was becoming of increasing importance thanks to the King's patronage, and acquired a swathe of rewarding offices, including collector of the port's wool customs and subsidies, surveyor of the murage, and Mayor of the Westminster Staple. These positions were both financially lucrative and politically influential. It is also likely that, as a citizen of the city of London, with the legal right to trade in goods beyond the remit of one's guild, he would have taken full advantage of such a right.
Relations with Geoffrey Chaucer
Exton's appointment as a port subsidy- or tax-collector was not an unusual one: "many of the greatest, and in some cases, the most infamous" London merchants were appointed to the position at this time. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer had been appointed controller of the customs in 1374, so it is almost certain that he oversaw Exton's tenure as a tax-collector; certainly Brembre was Chaucer's colleague in the wool custom. They were also both supporters of the King—or at least were "both cultivated" by him, probably in order to create a "royalist" party within the City's administration. King Richard supported Brembre's and later Exton's mayoralties, and had already appointed Chaucer to be an esquire of the royal chamber. Indeed, it has been suggested that Chaucer modelled his merchant (from The Merchant's Tale) on one such as Exton—a "real man who was well known to Chaucer's audience". Chaucer already seems to have been predisposed to Exton's faction in the Common Council, and they were thrown together again in 1386, as a result of the Wonderful Parliament. Here, a petition was presented by the Commons, to remove all customs controllers who had been granted life-terms in the office (i.e., such as Chaucer).
Opposition to Northampton's reforms
Following the rebellion, the reputations of Wentworth and the incumbent common council had been tarnished, and this allowed the election of a radical, John Northampton. Northampton was Mayor between 1381 and 1382 and had very much a populist agenda. He was particularly vocal in his desire to break the monopoly of the Fishmongers. This was also a popular policy, as it would bring down the price of fish for the citizens of London and open London's markets up to the less-prosperous. Exton, on the other hand, wanted to preserve the City's existing price controls. He and his fellow fishmongers took the view that other victuals (bread, wine and beer, for example) were also monopolies, and so failed to see why their particular practices—restrictive or not—should be removed from solely themselves. Exton's party has been called the "capitalist party" of London politics of the time. The smaller misteries on the other hand, for instance, those of craftsmanship and manufacturing, stood for free trade. The victualling guilds' desire to maintain their monopoly made them antagonistic towards foreign traders, to the extent that the fishmongers were in the habit of seizing fresh fish from alien fishermen, selling at a heightened price, and only repaying when and what they liked. Northampton's mayoralty was beset by violence, with riots and running street battles being commonplace, as members and apprentices of the clothing and manufacturing guilds clashed with those of the victuallers on a regular basis. But Northampton was eventually able to introduce free trade in London fish in the parliament of 1382. Exton appealed to the King on behalf of his guild: Northampton immediately denounced the fishmongers for being the only thing in London that was stopping the city from existing in "unnitee amour and concorde". Exton claimed that Northampton and his party were prejudiced against them, as did Walter Sybyll; in turn the fishmongers generally and Sybill specifically was then accused of taking part in the Peasants Revolt in London in 1381 and of assisting the rebels.w