While the chief export item from medieval England was wool, an extremely important import item was wine from Poitou and Flanders. Indeed, wool was sold and the profits used to import important wares the other way. The Carpenters in medieval London were naturally directly involved with this important trade. As you will see they sold their wines to the royal household itself. But first in order to appreciate the importance of this commodity trade and the implications it had for the politics of the city of London specifically, allow me to quote from Longman’s The Life and Times of Edward lll, London, 1869, vol. 1, p. 4. “Merchants became so rich, and were held in such high esteem, that in the year 1363, one Picard, Mayor of London, entertained Edward the Third, the Black Prince, and the King of France, Scotland and Cyprus, with many nobility, in London at his house in the Vintry, where the foreign wine merchants carried on the their business.” The most conspicuous Carpenter wine merchants were the previously mentioned Edward Carpenter and a son Robert, probably one of the wealthiest families in London of the 1300s. In the following 1311 Fine Rolls document we can glimpse the scale of Carpenter wine transactions. “Grant to the following merchant vintners of the issue of the custom of wools and woolfells in the port of Boston. Robert le Carpenter of 58 l. for 14 tuns.” The connection with the royal household can be appreciated in this next Patent Rolls quotation from 1311. “Indemnity for the mayor, aldermen and communality of the city of London against William Arnaldi of Portan, Gerald de Cannet, Robert le Carpenter, Peter Bernadi of Bauet (or Garnet), Raymond de Maas, Peter de Cabaus, Peter Arnaldi of Tesse, Bernard de la Mote, John Hereman, Peter Blaunke and Bernard de la Denise, to whom they have given a bond for 870 L. 5s. 10d. for 205 casks and one pipe of wine purchased for the king’s use.”