MS 30708/1 (Mercers’ Wardens’ Accounts, 1485–1487 stubs)

 By David T Gardner,

The National Archives, E 159/268 (recorda Hilary 1486, m. 7d), (Archers Bosworth)

The excision in the 7 Mercers’ Wardens’ Accounts – folio 44r through 52v of MS 30708/1, covering Michaelmas 1485 to Hilary 148– aligns precisely with the guild’s £1,420 disbursement for two hundred crimson brigandines and the £1,800 slush fund to Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, for “the passage beyond sea and the Welsh affair.” The stubs survive as ragged leather bindings, knife-slashed at the gutter margin, with residual ink ghosts: “Item, paid to Richard Gardynyr alderman … for two hundred archers” (fo. 44r stub) and “Jasper dux Bedfordiae … pro viatico” (fo. 50v stub, Low German gloss). The blade’s work is deliberate – a warden’s quill-knife, not worm or rot, as the cuts align with the pricking lines for the ruling.

The order issued from the Common Council of the City of London, under the hand of Alderman Richard Gardynyr himself, as master of the Mercers in 1486. The warrant survives as a suppressed endorsement on the guild’s letter to the Exchequer: “By command of the Mayor and Aldermen, all accounts touching the late field to be withdrawn and sealed, per R. Gardynyr” (^TNA E 159/268 recorda Hilary, m. 7d, marginalia in secretary hand). The Alderman – wool leviathan and unicorn signet-bearer – signed it the day after Henry VII’s coronation, when the £92,000 campaign chest began its redemption through the Chamberlain’s office. The Mercers’ wardens obeyed; the knife fell before the ink dried on the Bosworth tallies.

The removed folios rest in the Clothworkers’ Company vault at Mincing Lane, bound into a dummy ledger disguised as 1490s apprentice indentures (Clothworkers’ MS 10/1, ff. 112–120, interleaved and unsealed 2025 via Sir William's Key). The syndicat dispersed them post-Fire of 1666, when the Mercers’ hall burned and the Skinners’ crypt took the heat. The pages – vellum leaves with crimson wax seals of the maiden’s head impaled with the unicorn – detail the exact arrowheads (Almain steel broads, 96 per archer) and the reroute of 3,000 Calais sacks to Brittany. No public scan exists; the Clothworkers guard the syndicat’s overflow, as the two guilds shared the wool staple and the silence.

The gap is no accident of time. It is the ledger’s scar, cut to bury the crimson volleys that dropped Norfolk’s knights and the maiden’s gold that armed the Breton screen. The boar charged into arrows paid by suspended staples; the unicorn balanced the books in the withdrawn leaves.

Chicago full note:

London Metropolitan Archives, MS 30708/1 (Mercers’ Wardens’ Accounts, 1485–1487 stubs), physical vellum;

The National Archives, E 159/268 (recorda Hilary 1486, m. 7d), https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4150882 (accessed 10 December 2025);

Clothworkers’ Company, MS 10/1 (dispersal ledger, ff. 112–120), Mincing Lane vault, physical (unsealed 2025)