DISCUSSION

[I have divided the second will into paragraphs to make for easier reading.]

The Blackburns were one of the more prominent York families in the opening decades of the fifteenth century, and their lifestyle a cut above even the average city merchant. Nicholas senior served as mayor in 1412 and his son Nicholas junior in 1429; a second son, John, who was one of the city's aldermen by 1419, having represented it in parliament two years earlier, and who took as his second wife a daughter of William Bowes (mayor 1417), might also have risen to the mayoralty had he not died prematurely in 1426. Nicholas senior drew up his will at a time when he probably sensed his end approaching, for it received probate on 10 April 1432.

Nicholas migrated from Richmond (although the family had its roots in Blackburn, Lancashire) to York in the late fourteenth century, becoming a freeman there in 1396, when already referred to as "senior". His wife Margaret was from a family that also had its roots in Richmond: her brother William Ormeshead, who became a colleague of Nicholas in York's government, also entered the franchise (1404) as "of Richmond". Possibly Nicholas had made his marriage before moving to York; his elder sons John and Nicholas, also merchants, were old enough to take up the franchise themselves in 1403, suggesting a possible birth date for Nicholas of ca.1365/70.

He was probably prospering in business before making the move to York. In his will Nicholas did not forget the home town that was his stepping-stone to success. Surviving records sample his mercantile activities between 1395 and 1431 and suggest a pattern that was fairly typical: wool, sheepskins, and cloth were his major exports, although he dabbled in other goods (e.g. coal) when there looked to be a profit in it; his imports were likely even more varied, and included iron. He is also seen active in the victualling trade, notably the opportunities to serve the frontier garrisons and the king's household. Like many leading merchants of that period, he is found making sizable loans of money to Henry V; this was part of doing business with the king.

His quick rise into the ranks of York's mercantile leadership – he being one of the few men not called on to serve as chamberlain before reaching higher office – is reflected by a couple of things. First, he and his wife together, and apparently at the same time as William Ormeshead and his wife, became members of the Corpus Christi Gild at York in 1414. This influential, cleric-run, socio-religious gild, which had been in existence for perhaps only a few years, associated many of the city's leading churchmen with the leading citizens, as well as with members of the country gentry. Women were prominent among the secular members and it may have been Margaret Blackburn's influence that prompted her husband to join; or perhaps that of their son John, who had become a member two years earlier. The gild's register of obituaries lists both Nicholas and Margaret in the appropriate years, and indicates that the gild had received from Nicholas an extraordinarily large legacy of £15.

Second, Nicholas was appointed the king's Admiral of the North in 1406. He is not known to have held the post for long, yet it was remembered as significant as late as 1432, when he was described in a completely unrelated context as a former mayor of the city and former admiral of the king. Other royal commissions regularly came his way in that early phase of his career, notably involving investigations to be made in Yorkshire – many of which related, directly or indirectly, to commerce, which was why Nicholas was qualified for such duties.

The context in which he was remembered as admiral was the foundation by Nicholas and Margaret on 2 February, just a couple of weeks before the former drew up his will, of two perpetual chantries (at different altars) in the house of the Friars Preacher of York. The Blackburns made some significant donation to the Dominicans, although whether in cash or property is not stated. Detailed instructions [see the abstract in J. Percy, ed. York Memorandum Book, Surtees Society, vol.186 (1973), 155-56] were given regarding those foundations:

• A qualified friar was to celebrate daily at each altar.
• The friary was to supply the celebrants' needs (chalice, book, bread, wine, wax).
• At the altar of St. Mary Magdalene the celebrant was to begin the chantry service by ringing the chapter bell, just as was done for high mass. A daily mass of the Holy Spirit was to be said for Nicholas while he lived, and a Requiem mass for his soul, and that of Margaret, after their death. However, on Sundays and festival days (with named exceptions when masses were not to be celebrated at any but the high altar of the church) a slightly different service was prescribed. These services were not to be omitted except in special, specified circumstances, e.g. epidemic, fire, general interdict, etc.
• At the high altar of the friary church a mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary was to be celebrated daily – again with differing specifications for the service before and after Nicholas' death – followed by specified psalms and prayers to be said by all the brethren.
• After the deaths of Nicholas and Margaret, an obit was to be celebrated annually, by the choir wearing their copes, with specified offices being performed on the feast of St. James (25 July), and a Requiem mass on the feast of St. Anne (26 July). The obit was not to be omitted unless unavoidable, such as in the case of a general interdict. The holding of the obit was to be announced publicly by the city bellman.
• Each new prior was to take oath, on his first day in office, to uphold this agreement, and was to ensure that all those under his authority did the same, with any brother who failed to do so being punished by excommunication. Failure to meet the above conditions in any year incurred a fine of 40s., distrainable, to be equally divided between the mayor and community and the estate of Nicholas Blackburn.

It would appear that the Corporation was made a party to this agreement, which resulted in it surviving to us through the copy in a city register.

Blackburn's foundation of a chantry in the chapel of St. Anne was a natural follow-up to the major renovation of the Foss Bridge, with the building of the chapel probably an integral part of that initiative; this had taken place while Blackburn was involved in city government. It is the establishment of Blackburn's chantry, in 1424, that lets us know that the chapel (administered by the corporation) was completed and in operation. It represents therefore, from one perspective, an investment to assure the continuation of an institution Blackburn had a hand in creating. The chantry was still in existence in 1534 when its owner (by purchase) was still paying attention to Nicholas' prescription for how the chantry would be run; but York's chantries were dissolved not long after.

The administration of Nicholas' will evidently proved demanding. His monetary bequests amounted to over £600, half of which was to be expended on provisions for the testator's soul, and raising this money from the estate (including debts due, themselves possibly requiring litigation) would have been onerous. Margaret Blackburn had to follow up, in her will's codicil made less than a month before her death in April 1435, on her late husband's open-ended request regarding the support of local bridges – bridges on which merchants such as Nicholas depended for their businesses. Margaret provided clearer specification of how the bridge bequest was to be handled. The ongoing demands of fulfilling Nicholas' will are indicated by the fact that his executor and brother-in-law, William Ormeshead, in a codicil (1437) to his own will asked one of his own executors, Nicholas Wyspington, to take over his remaining obligations regarding Blackburn's will. Perhaps one of the reasons why Margaret Blackburn did not include her brother among her executors, apart from his advanced age, was a feeling that he had been burdened enough by her late husband's will. However, it seems that Margaret's confidence lay more in the female members of her family; women's wills often appear more female-oriented than men's wills.

Administration of Nicholas senior's will could not have been made easier by a quarrel among the executors: Nicholas Blackburn junior accused Revetour, Carleton, Bolton and Aldstanemore of having influenced his father's wishes, so as to defraud the son of property in York. Where the other executors, not accused, stood in this dispute is unknown. As the split must have taken place before Aldstanemore's death in early 1435, it is not clear if it has any relation to the reversion of the Needlergate property, which the executors transferred (September 1436) to Nicholas Wyspington and other York men. Surprisingly, the will mentions relatively little property. Possibly other property had been held but provision made for it prior to drafting the will; this might have been transferred directly to one or more of the sons, or put in the hands of trustees – likely some of the executors-to-be. Another possible bone of contention was a debt for £400 that Margaret Blackburn claimed John Bolton had owed her husband; she gave Bolton two years grace after her death to repay the amount to the heirs; whether he did so is unknown, but Nicholas junior left only a small amount of cash in his will. The administration of his will presented sufficient problems, or was so singularly unattractive, that the two men designated his executors refused to take on the task, leaving it to Nicholas' widow, who procrastinated and eventually passed along the challenge to her own executor.

Nicholas and his wife lived in North Street. We can well imagine the colourful and, for a merchant household, sumptuous rooms of Margaret Blackburn's home. Along with silverware and other tableware, table linens, bed furnishings and linens, and wall coverings were among the kinds of valued items – reflecting wealth and social status – that were considered bequest-worthy. Margaret herself left monetary bequests of over £500, indicative of a level of wealth few widows could match, although of course there had been relatively little time since her husband's death to drain the money supply. Nicholas junior inherited the North Street property after his mother's death but, dying (1448) without sons, it passed to his brother Christopher. The latter, described as "late of Sandwich" (Kent), in 1453 transferred his rights to his sister Agnes and her husband; Agnes had at some time between 1433 and 1436 married Thomas Wandesford (possibly the man who served as mayor's esquire-at-mace 1454-80).

The Blackburns' parish church was All Saints, also in North Street. Although they sought and obtained burial in the cathedral, this does not reflect any alienation from the parish church. On the contrary, the family were important benefactors of All Saints, endowing it with two stained-glass windows; these still survive, now known as the Blackburn window and the Corporal Acts of Mercy window. To what extent this was the initiative of Nicholas senior and his wife Margaret, or that of Nicholas junior and his wife (another Margaret), is uncertain; both couples are depicted, as donors, in the Blackburn window – Nicholas senior in armour, perhaps as a reference to his military role as admiral. But the devotion to St. Anne, reflected in the wills of the older couple – such mention being unusual – is also evident in the choice of the imagery in the windows. The central of the three main lights of the Blackburn window (dated between 1417 and 1427) is a depiction of St. Anne teaching Mary to read. The cult of Mary's mother was growing stronger in the early fifteenth century and may be reflective of a renewed piety among the urban elite; we may note the growth in popularity of Agnes (Anne) as a Christian name. One analysis of the content of the windows has led to the conclusion about the Blackburns that:

"their choice of iconographic material and the act of donating the windows were part of the donors' larger concern for maintaining the social fabric.... such donations form part of a new and internalized piety and thoughtful charity inspired by more than the customs of the day."
[Sarah Pedersen, "Piety and charity in the painted glass of late medieval York," Northern History, vol.36 (2000), 35.]

Whether we see a woman's hand in the choice of St. Anne as the central figure of the Blackburn window, perhaps even reflecting an interest in female literacy [Pedersen, p.36], it is hard to say. It is the female donors, rather than the males, depicted in the window who are holding books with legible texts. It is not inconceivable that the female members of mercantile families – with the wealth and connections that could provide access to education, yet not as preoccupied as the males with mundane matters – may often have taken the lead in setting the standards for piety in a household.

Another key figure in the Blackburn window is St. Christopher. He was the patron saint of travellers, and merchants were some of England's most regular travellers. In 1416 Nicholas had donated £10 to erect in Durham cathedral a statue to St. Christopher, St. Anne, or St. John the Baptist. Possibly the interest of the Blackburns in that saint reflects a mercantile preoccupation, just as the concern with maintenance of local bridges in a fit state of repairs was also a matter of business sense. Blackburn's interest in bridges preceded his will. His name is the first in a list of those contracting for the construction of Catterick Bridge – which stood on the road between York and Richmond – in 1421; interestingly, a chapel dedicated to St. Anne was built on the bridge at date unknown, but before 1474. As mentioned, the rebuilding of the Foss Bridge had been a programme of a city government of which Nicholas was a member. Kexby Bridge lay on the route between York and the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, through which much of York's overseas commerce was conducted, and so was important to Nicholas' personal interests, not just his pious intentions. The Blackburn obit at the Dominican friary was to begin on St. James' day, which also happens to be the festival of St. Christopher, although this may be coincidence. We may also note that there was a socio-religious gild in York dedicated to St. Christopher and this, like the Corpus Christi Gild, became increasingly associated with the city corporation, helping pay for rebuilding of the city guildhall in 1444 and maintaining a chapel in the cathedral that served particularly the civic elite. Whether Nicholas Blackburn was a member of this gild is unknown, but the association of St. Christopher with the pious dimension of city government is not insignificant.

The other window donated by the Blackburns depicts six of the seven acts of mercy prescribed for those who wished to be win favour at the Final Judgement. In each, a wealthy man is shown performing the acts, such as visiting prisoners to give them a charitable dole. It has been suggested that the wealthy man is Nicholas Blackburn; clearly it is not intended as an accurate depiction of him, being dissimilar to the donor's portrait of him and far more comparable to the saints portrayed in other windows, but it may be intended to reflect Blackburn as a performer of these charitable acts. In a parish such as All Saints where many of York's well-to-do merchants lived, the window's depiction of exemplary behaviours for merchants hoping for salvation may have been particularly à propos. Whether this moral lesson is in fact intended to point to moral leadership through the example of the Blackburns during life (as opposed to in their last wills) we cannot know for certain.

It is easy to read into the pious and charitable provisions of what are often formulaic testamentary documents a conventionalism and a selfish concern for saving one's own soul, and doubt whether the those provisions represent charitable outlooks and actions during life. However, we should not brush aside the possibility that in at least some cases, the piety was genuine and death-bed charity provides a final instance of a concern during life for the well-being of one's community, including the less fortunate members. We should not forget that religion was more pervasive then than it is today. The influence of Christian mores is suggested, for example, by the number of churchmen shown, by the wills of Nicholas and Margaret Blackburn, to have been within their circle of close acquaintances. These included:

• Robert Semer, who had become a freeman of York in 1425/26, as a "vicar", and by the time of his death in 1432/33 was sub-treasurer of the cathedral.
• John Carleton, who was either the cathedral prebendary who had joined the Corpus Christi Gild at around the same time as John Blackburn, or the doctor of laws who acted as an advocate in York's consistory court (also a member of the gild).
• William Revetour, a cleric when he became a freeman of York in 1420 (the son of a riveter originally from Swinton). By 1423 he was acting in the capacity of chantry priest in the chapel of St. William on Ouse Bridge, and by 1424 had a post as a deputy clerk in the city bureaucracy. By August 1428, he was associated with the chantry in St. William's chapel that Nicholas Blackburn had purchased from the descendants of the founder, Richard Toller; Nicholas had presented Revetour to the post of chantry chaplain. Revetour is suspected of being the author of the Creed Play, the manuscript of which he bequeathed to the Corpus Christi Gild (of which he had been one of the custodians in 1440/41) on condition it saw the play performed, apparently among the other Corpus Christi pageants, each year for ten years. His will of 1446 also bequeathed a second play to the gild of St. Christopher, and props for a third play to the girdlers gild, as well as numerous other books, including an English translation of De Oracione Dominica et Stimulus Conscientiae to Blackburn's daughter, Alice Bolton, and an illustrated Primer to Alice's daughter Isabelle, who was Revetour's god-daughter. In 1434 he was also, along with cleric John Carleton junior, a trustee of manors of Roger Salvayn, husband to Alice's other daughter, Margaret. Here was evidently an educated and cultured man close within the Blackburn circle.
• Nicholas Wartre, a Franciscan friar who had been Bishop of Dromore (Ireland) 1419-27, but had returned to York – possibly his home town (goldsmith Richard Wartre being sheriff in 1429/30 and elected to his first of two mayoralties in 1436) – by 1429, when he became a member of the Corpus Christi Gild. Ca.1437 he was presented to the rectory of St. Mary's, Castlegate. Nicholas had bequeathed him (in part of the will omitted by Raine) £3.6.8d on condition he celebrate the mass at Nicholas' funeral.
• John Fox, who went on to an appointment in 1439 as master of Trinity hospital, Fossgate, remaining in that post for 40 years; he also served the Corpus Christi gild as a custodian (1453/54) and later as master (1470/71).

Such men – along with some of the ecclesiastics with whom the Blackburns rubbed shoulders in the Corpus Christi Gild – may have encouraged and fostered pious and charitable behaviours on the part of the Blackburns.