Mercenaries · also Company & trade
Kentish company houses
Also called the houses · Kentish houses · Dover houses · the company houses · the houses that place bands
The agencies that place hired bands in Kent and broker their commissions, advising them, holding standing accounts with victuallers and lodging houses, and writing the letters that get bands received across the water.
Houses that place hired bands with Kentish clients, requiring a named client, place, day, sum and deadline before they place a band.
Named with it
- Agent Clement Sittingbourne (places bands
- hiring book)
- Agent Mary Alkham
- Agent Cecily Vantle
- Agent Osbert Halling
- Agent Barnabas Teynham
- Agent Clement Sittingbourne
Ties
- write to the Britannian factory at Blanchefleur on bands' behalf
- use the Wye household guard's terms as a model
At the table
They give consistent advice: take small work for a year, price the road separately, write dates as 'the first working day after', write before crossing. They refuse outright to broker commissions to enter the Drowned Lands and will stop writing for a band that loses someone there. They send work away from a gap that has caused a licensed hull to lose its papers for about five years. Two Dover houses retain factors for early weather news from the Near Coast. They advise walking the pilgrim road, a year of parish work first, getting requests in writing, keeping a written watch book when the Grey Nails are involved, and refusing boarding-master and free-trade work. Four use the Wye marshal's terms as their standard form.