The incorporated group of merchants who dealt in wool for export were known as Merchants of the Staple. For much of the period the staple town was Calais, an English possession on the coast of modern France. This trade generated so much revenue to the governments of both realms that the English kings, wishing both to protect and control it, designated certain towns as “staples,” centers of distribution for nearly all raw materials for export. Wool was produced in England and woven into fine cloth in Flanders, leading to close commercial and political ties between the two regions. It is quite common to associate merchants in early modern Europe with cities, because generally only cities had the privilege of engaging in trade, especially important international trade such as the manufacture and export of woolen cloth. His date of birth is not known, and almost nothing is known of his early life, but his activities became much easier to follow as he engaged in correspondence with his suppliers and fellow merchants in the 1470s.
Thomas Betson was a merchant in the wool cloth trade between England and France in the middle of the fifteenth century.
