Sir John’s Companie: Trade & Treachery in Medieval Yorkshire

It is 1370 in Yorkshire, England, late in the reign of King Edward III, and Sir James and his mercenary Companie have returned from the wars across the channel. The great nobles and the Church control the wealth and power in the land.

The thought of going back to servitude, attempting to claw a subsistence existence from the soil, is more than these veterans can bear. Instead, they parlay their war spoils into a trading network along the river system of the North and enter the lucrative wool trade.

Where there are profits there is intense competition and scrutiny from government officials keen to get tax revenues. The king’s ministers abuse their authority to enrich themselves and pursue old grudges. Now it is up to James and his Companie to use guile, influence, and sometimes brutality to fight back.

Frank D. Macaulay lives in Columbus, Georgia, where he is enjoying retired life after working in consumer products for more than thirty years. Much of his free time is now spent renovating a 1926 Tudor Revival home.

Sir John’s Companie was born of his interest in late fourteenth century feudal England. It is an intriguing time for a country that had yet to recover from the Black Plagues that wiped out almost half the nation’s population, was still fighting the Hundred Years’ War in France, and on the cusp of societal change with the emergence of a wealthy merchant class.