HAROWE, John

No definite evidence of Harowe’s parentage has been discovered, but it is possible that he was a son or other kinsman of a man of the same name who in the 1390s held land at Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire in the right of his wife, Margaret.6 C1/69/340; SC8/115/5730; CCR, 1392-6, p. 262; 1396-9, p. 133; C66/349, m. 36d; CP25(1)/90/96/5. John himself is first heard of in 1422, when he was apprenticed to Robert Large*, a prominent member of the Mercers’ Company in London. The status of his master almost certainly contributed to his later success as a merchant, and the two men remained closely associated until Large’s death in 1441. The year of Harowe’s admission to the freedom of the city is not recorded but it probably took place in about 1430; nine years later he passed through the first of the three stages which led to admission to the livery of the craft, a process he completed in 1442. 7 Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers, 342-3; C1/26/441. In the following year he was elected as one of the wardens of the Mercers’, a post he held again in 1449-50.8 Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers, 534-5, 542-3, 550-1; Sutton, 556-7. His dealings with his fellow mercers were generally amicable. In November 1444 he was chosen as one of the sureties for the guardianship and patrimony of the children of a prominent tailor, John Kyng, which had been committed to Richard Needham* who had married their mother. Likewise, although not generally very prominent in transactions concerning property, in August 1455 he was employed as a feoffee by Thomas Muschamp, who acquired a tenement in Milk Street from another mercer, John Middleton*.9 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 300, 307; Corp. London RO, hr 184/17. There is, however, also some evidence that Harowe had a quarrelsome side to his character which could occasionally come to the fore. Thus, in 1446-7 the Mercers fined him 26s. 8d. for making insulting comments in the Company’s court. A further outburst of his ‘lying and uncourteous language’, this time directed at William Pratte, a fellow mercer and a close associate of William Caxton, was recorded nine years later. On this occasion, the disputants were fined 13s. 4d. each.10 Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers, 628-9, 778-9. The background to their quarrel remains obscure, but it may have been connected with Harowe’s own business dealings with Caxton, who in that same year appeared before the court of aldermen and claimed that he was owed many sums of money by him. The debts in question clearly dated from a time when relations between the two men had been harmonious: Caxton, like Harowe, was a former apprentice of Robert Large, and in 1442-3 Harowe had taken on a Richard Caxton, almost certainly one of William’s relatives, as his apprentice.11 A.F. Sutton, ‘Caxton was a Mercer’, Eng. in 15th Cent. ed. Rogers, 122-3; Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers, 564-5, 624-5. Moreover, by the end of his life, Harowe was in possession of property at Tenterden and elsewhere in Kent that had previously belonged to William.12 C1/103/41.

The extent of Harowe’s property and the process of its acquisition cannot be fully established, but it is clear that his marriage played a crucial part. His wife, who came from a Kentish family, was the widow of a fellow mercer, John Penne, and while there were several surviving children (including two sons) of her first marriage, she nevertheless at least temporarily brought to Harowe her share of her first husband’s property, which included two valuable messuages and a great garden in the parish of St. Alban Wood Street.13 London hr 195/7-8.

Equally, the range and nature of Harowe’s commercial activities is difficult to gauge, but it is clear that they were extensive. He was trading across the Channel by the summer of 1437, when he, along with William Cottesbroke*, William Melreth* and other merchants, was alleged to have attempted to export £3,000-worth of woollen cloth and other goods belonging to alien merchants from Queenborough harbour in Kent. An inquiry found that the ship concerned had been arrested by the admiral’s marshal, John Bille, on 24 July before it left the port of London, and Harowe and the others had been ordered not to move it without permission. After failing in an attempt to bribe Bille with the sum of ten marks, Melreth, who seems to have been the ringleader, persuaded his fellow merchants and the mariners to take the ship out of Queenborough to Middleburgh in Holland.14 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 310-11, 512. More usually, Harowe’s trading activities were carried out free of controversy. Like many of his fellow mercers, he exported substantial quantities of cloth through the port of London and imported a range of goods including linen cloth and furs.15 E122/72/23, f. 19v; 73/20, m. 18; 73/26, ff. 2-6, 7v, 8v, 9v, 29, 30, 31, 33v, 35.

Harowe’s involvement in the lucrative wool trade was sufficiently extensive to merit his membership of the Calais staple, a body he had joined by the autumn of 1449. By this time the maintenance of the staplers’ monopoly of the export trade in wool had become a vital issue for the merchants, for the Crown was increasingly resorting to granting licences to foreigners, royal servants and others, enabling them to export wool through Calais free of customs duty, or even to avoid the staple altogether. Related concerns for the staplers were the repayment of the loans which they had advanced to the Lancastrian government, and, following the loss of Normandy to the French in 1450, the security of Calais and its garrisons. Harowe, like John Walden*, was one of a small, but powerful, group of Londoners whose political allegiances and fortunes were shaped by their experiences as merchants of the staple during the 1440s and 1450s.

By this time Harowe had begun to play a wider part in public life in London. In August 1444 he had been chosen as one of the collectors of a loan of £1,000 made by the City to the King, while in September 1447 he was appointed as one of the four civic auditors.16 Corp. London RO, jnl. 4, f. 38v. Early in 1449 he attested the parliamentary election in London for the first time. That autumn, while serving a second term as warden of the Mercers’ Company, he was himself chosen by the commonalty of London to sit in Parliament. During this assembly the Commons, at the instigation of Harowe and his fellow staplers, submitted a petition calling for the restrictions on the granting of licences to bypass Calais, claiming that their revenues from the customs there had been severely affected. The financial crisis affecting the Crown meant that there was little option but to give in to the demands of the staplers (Harowe among them), who had been shoring up the Crown with loans since the late 1430s and continued to do so, and who in return claimed trading licences allowing them to recover their advances.17 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 316, 324; PROME, xii. 57-60; RP, v. 208 (cf. PROME, xii. 157); R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 392-4. In the early summer of 1450, the south and south-east of England erupted into open disorder, and London itself was occupied by insurgents under the leader known as Jack Cade. In the first week of June, Parliament, then sitting at Leicester, was hastily dissolved. Once the crisis had been overcome, fresh writs were issued, and Harowe was once again returned to represent London. His re-election was doubtless testimony to the continuing fears about the safety of Calais, although in the event little was done to address the concerns of the staplers. Only in July 1451 did efforts to raise a large sum of money for the town’s defence get under way, and Harowe, Geoffrey Boleyn*, and John Young* were chosen by the court of aldermen to supervise the exercise.18 Jnl. 5, f. 58v.

By the mid 1450s Harowe had become one of the most prominent and active members of the common council in London. From the summer of 1451 to 1453 and again from 1454 to 1456 he served as one of the constables of the Westminster staple. He was appointed to numerous committees established by the city government, including no less than ten which dealt with questions concerning tithes. As a mark of his standing he was, on three occasions, permitted to have access to the common seal.19 Jnl. 4, f. 217; 5, ff. 40, 58v, 66, 84v, 86v, 90, 92v, 97v, 98v, 122v, 155v, 159v, 181, 223v, 234v, 260v; 6, f. 229v. He attested the election of his fellow staplers Walden and William Cantelowe* to the Parliament of 1453-4. It was during this assembly that the duke of York, having been appointed as Protector during the King’s illness, made a bid for the captaincy of Calais. While the interests of the staplers were represented by men such as Walden, there is clear evidence that, outside Parliament, Harowe had already become identified as one of the Calais merchants whose disillusionment with the financial and political policies of Henry VI’s government meant that they were prepared to consider York’s proposals. In March 1454, shortly after York had been appointed Protector, riots directed against the retainers of the duke’s principal allies, the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, broke out in London. Seven Londoners were said to have been hurt during the violent disturbances, and a number of Salisbury’s men were put in prison. Their release was secured only after Harowe, Ralph Verney* and others had stood surety for them. Rewards were swift to follow: in October Harowe, Cantelowe, Walden and other Calais merchants were assigned repayment from the customs of loans they had provided in 1450-1.20 Jnl. 5, f. 152; R.R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, i. 290; CCR, 1447-54, p. 503.

Henry VI’s recovery in early 1455 brought York’s protectorate to an end, and renewed the tensions among the lords, which eventually found an outlet in open battle in the streets of St. Albans in May. Within days of the battle, a Parliament was summoned, and Harowe, probably in view of his connexions among the victors, was once again returned by the Londoners. Alongside him were elected three other staplers, Cantelowe, Young and Geoffrey Feldyng*. These men by now represented an influential constituency of opinion in London, in which specific concerns about the safety and prosperity of the Calais staple were mingled with anti-alien sentiment. In April or early May 1456, after Parliament had been dissolved, rioting directed against aliens, particularly Italians, broke out in the capital. Although circumstantial, there is a large amount of evidence which points to the involvement, or at least collusion, of staplers in the violence, which was also directed against the mayor and sheriffs. Members of the Mercers’ Company, in particular, seem to have been the instigators of the disturbances, and Cantelowe was among those senior Mercers who were required to answer for the behaviour of their fellows. Investigations also revealed that one of Harowe’s servants had been directly involved in the trouble.21 J.L. Bolton, ‘London and the Crown’, London Jnl. xii. 12-21.

The appointment of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, as captain of Calais in 1456 meant that those Londoners who were also merchants of the staple had, by and large, little choice but to embrace the policies pursued by York and the Nevilles. Although Harowe never became an alderman, he nevertheless played his part in London politics throughout the difficult later 1450s. Following completion of his second spell as a constable of the Westminster staple, in September 1458 he was chosen once more as one of the city’s auditors, and was selected for a second term in the autumn of 1459. Within weeks of his reappointment, the Yorkist cause appeared all but lost as following the rout at Ludford Bridge the duke of York and his supporters were driven into exile. With the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick in control of Calais, the Lancastrian administration could ill afford to alienate the city of London by reprisals against suspected or known Yorkist partisans. It is nevertheless suggestive that on 15 Mar. 1460, some six months before his term was up, Harowe relinquished his auditorship in favour of Robert Basset*. What is not clear is whether the mercer himself took the decision to resign, or whether his hand was forced by a court of aldermen nervous about the future.22 Jnl. 6, f. 207v. Whatever the truth of the matter, within three months the tables turned once more, when in June the Yorkist earls invaded from Calais, marched on London, and on 2 July were admitted to the city.

The Lancastrian Lords Scales and Hungerford, remaining in London, withdrew to the Tower, and while the main body of the Yorkist army marched to meet Queen Margaret’s forces at Northampton, the earl of Salisbury stayed behind with instructions to reduce the fortress to obedience. If many of the citizens were inclined to remain loyal to Henry VI and his queen, the unfortunate decision of the Tower garrison to bombard the city soon alienated them, and persuaded the dithering mayor and aldermen to co-operate with Salisbury in a full-scale siege. The two sheriffs joined Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, in taking charge of the bombardment from the west, while the attack from the eastern side was co-ordinated by (Sir) John Wenlock* together with Harowe, who was now clearly marked out as a leading Yorkist partisan among the citizens. On 19 July, the beleaguered garrison attempted a night-time breakout. Scales was intercepted and slaughtered, while following the Tower’s surrender other defenders were tried at the guildhall and executed.23 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 74-75; Griffiths, 863. By this time the main Yorkist army had gained a victory over Henry VI and his queen, and had entered London with the captive monarch.

Another Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster on 7 Oct., and it was to this assembly that York presented his claim to the throne. For a fourth time, Harowe was a Member of the Commons, but strikingly both he and another Londoner, the draper John Worsop*, were not returned for the city, but for the Sussex borough of Horsham, while their neighbour, the grocer Robert Gayton*, found a seat at Steyning in the same county. Beyond doubt, the victorious Yorkists deemed their presence in the House to be advantageous, and one of their number, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, who was lord of Horsham, probably played his part in facilitating the return. Once the agreement which reserved the crown to Henry VI for his life, but recognized the duke of York as his heir had been brokered, the assembly was prorogued. The prorogation was to last until 28 Jan., but a number of Members of the Commons, Harowe among them, would not return to the House. During the recess, the duke of York led an armed force into Yorkshire to address the continuing threat posed by the magnates in the north who were still loyal to Henry VI. Harowe joined this force, presumably at the head of a London contingent. On 9 Dec. he settled his moveable property in the capital on three trustees, before setting out.24 Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 156. His exact fate remains uncertain. According to one chronicler, he was killed in the fighting at Wakefield on 30 Dec., but another authority claimed that he was captured and executed at Pontefract the following day, his head joining those of the Yorkist lords on Micklegate bar.25 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. 76; R. Fabyan, New Chrons. ed. Ellis, 638. He had made no will, so the administration of his goods was entrusted to John Howton of Tenterden.26 Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 197.

Harowe was survived by his wife, Alice, and his two children, Giles and Angeletta.27 CCR, 1461-8, p. 95. Alice went on to marry first the lawyer William Brayne, a future prothonotary of the court of common pleas, and after his death one John Newbury.28 London hr 195/7-8; C1/62/322.