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Mercantile Politics and the Ascendancy of Networks, c. 1435–50

Over the 1430s and 1440s, a subtle but important shift occurred in the nature of urban political agency. In 1413–35, the dramatis personae in the theatre of the English urban political sector were civic governments, but in the years after 1435 collective political action was coordinated instead through informal networks of wealthy merchants. This chapter examines the causes and consequences of this shift in urban involvement in national politics, from public and corporation-based to private and mercantile. The first section examines why the Crown came to rely on mercantile resources in the years following the 1435–6 Burgundian assault on Calais and how merchants used their political leverage to influence royal policy. The second section goes on to investigate the effects that these lateral networks between members of the merchant elite had on the complexion of urban internal politics.