Pewter
Second only to cloth among mid-15th-century English exports was pewter. An alloy of tin with lead – both readily available in England – together with a small proportion of copper, this easily moulded and worked material was at first used mainly for inexpensive chalices and altar vessels.It soon expanded into the far more lucrative domestic market. Millions of plates, dishes, flagons, salt-cellars and spoons were made, as well as mass-produced souvenir badges for pilgrims.
Scoured shining bright with sand and the mare’s-tail plant (rather than grey and oxidised, in the fashion of modern ‘antique’ pub tankards), English pewter was a cheap substitute for silver, much in demand throughout northern Europe.
Old and dented pewter could also be converted into new vessels in more fashionable shapes without much difficulty.
Gold & Silver
Gold and silver plate and showy jewellery were also convertible into ready money when times were hard, or else could be pawned or used as security for loans.
An outstanding example of ‘conspicuous consumption’, Richard, Duke of York’s ‘very rich collar called the White Rose’, encrusted with jewels and hung with a massive spear-pointed diamond, was valued at £2,666 against a loan in the 1440s.
The Middleham Jewel, a mid-15th-century gold pendant set with a sapphire found near Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire, in 1985, testifies to the high quality of English goldsmiths’ work. And goldsmiths (who also made and dealt in silverware) were, not surprisingly, among the richest of the guilds that dominated the trade of English towns.
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/medieval-part-2/commerce/ .
