The credit relationship between H enry III and merchants of D ouai and Y pres, 1247–70

This article looks at an important but neglected aspect of medieval sovereign debt, namely ‘accounts payable’ owed by the C rown to merchants and employees. It focuses on the unusually well‐documented relationship between H enry III , K ing of E ngland between 1216 and 1272, and F lemish merchants from the towns of D ouai and Y pres, who provided cloth on credit to the royal wardrobe. From the surviving royal documents, we reconstruct the credit advanced to the royal wardrobe by the merchants of Y pres and D ouai for each year between 1247 and 1270, together with the king's repayment history. The interactions between the king and the merchants are then analysed. The insights from this analysis are applied to the historical data to explain the trading decisions made by the merchants during this period, as well as why the strategies of the Y prois sometimes differed from those of the D ouaissiens.