William de la Pole (of Hull)

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Sir William de la Pole (of Hull) († 1366 ) was a wealthy merchant from Kingston upon Hull and Ravenser Odd, a banker to the king and later baron .

Life

Statue of William de Pole at Hull Harbor.

The life of William de la Pole is largely unknown.

Born before 1318, he was, along with his brother Sir Richard de la Pole, a great patron of the government of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella . They lent the couple large sums of money in 1327, and in return they were granted the right to sell wine throughout England, as well as to trade in Hull and later in London. They lost some of these posts after the fall of Mortimer, but their wealth prevented them from falling victim to the new King Edward III. to become.

De la Pole was particularly active in England's most important industry, the wool trade. Together with the merchant Reginald Conduit, he took over the management of the "English Wool Company" in 1337. In the same year this consortium of merchants had received the monopoly to buy English wool from the king, who hoped to profit from this cooperation for his war. The income from the sale of wool was shared with the king. However, these were not very high because it was not possible to export enough wool. After the resulting, early collapse of the monopoly, William de la Pole - along with the Italian trading companies Bardi and Peruzzi - became the king's greatest lender and was appointed baron in 1339.

In 1340, however, he fell into a political crisis caused by the gradually desperate state of the royal finances. De la Pole was imprisoned, removed from office, and charged with the collapse of the English Wool Company because of his poor conduct. In May 1342, however, he was dismissed and slowly regained his old position as sponsor of the crown. In April 1343 he set up the "English Company" again, which was to lease customs duties and use the proceeds to lend the king money. Due to the renewed failure of the "English Company" in 1345, de la Pole were again accused of poor management. In November 1354 he received a full amnesty. He invested some of his fortune in lands and estates, mainly in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire . He died on June 21, 1366 and was buried in Carthusian Priory in Hull.

progeny

Sir William was married to Katherine de Norwich. The marriage had seven children:

  • Michael de la Pole, 1st Earl of Suffolk (approx. 1330-1389)
  • Edmund de la Pole († after 1384)
  • Walter de la Pole († 1378)
  • Thomas de la Pole († November 24, 1361)
  • Blanche de la Pole
  • Katherine de la Pole
  • Margaret de la Pole (* before 1334) ∞ Robert (III.) De Neville, Lord of Hornby (* before 1328; † 1413)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sir William de la Pole on thepeerage.com , accessed August 30, 2015.
  2. ↑ To the wool monopoly and de la Pole as financier Edward III. see: Elisabeth Andre: A royal court on the move: The continental stay of Edward III. von England 1338-1340 , Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau 1996, pp. 72, 74.
  3. ↑ Royal and Noble Genealogical Data on the Web  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www3.dcs.hull.ac.uk  
  4. ↑ Margaret de la Pole on thepeerage.com , accessed August 30, 2015.

literature

  • Edmond Boleslaw Fryde: William de la Pole: Merchant and King's Banker († 1366) , London [u. a.]: Hambdledon Press 1988. ISBN 0-907628-35-4
  • Rosemary Horrox: The De La Poles of Hull , Beverley: East Yorkshire Local History Society 1983. ISBN 0-900349-38-7
  • J. Antony Tuck: Pole, de la . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , column 51 f. here col. 51.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pole, William de la
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pole of Hull, Sir William de la
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English merchant and banker
DATE OF BIRTH 13th century or 14th century
DATE OF DEATH 1366