Nicholas and the Wool-Pack by Cynthia Harnett

First published: 1951, in Great Britain as The Wool-Pack; illustrated (U.S. edition, 1953)

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Family, jobs and work, friendship, and coming-of-age

Time of work: From spring to autumn, 1493

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Southern England, chiefly the village of Burford in the Cotswolds

Principal Characters:

• Nicholas Fetterlock, a responsible, fun-loving youth of about fourteen
• Master Thomas Fetterlock, Nicholas’ hardworking father, a well-to-do wool grower and merchant
• Giles, Master Fetterlock’s conscientious, knowledgeable chief shepherd
• Hal, son of Giles, Nicholas’ foster brother and best friend
• Cecily Bradshaw, a lively girl of eleven, betrothed to Nicholas
• Simon Leach, Master Fetterlock’s wool packer, whose cold demeanor and furtive behavior arouse suspicion
• Messer Antonio Bari, shrewd Lombard, who deceives Master Fetterlock
• Toad-Face, the name that Nicholas and his friends call Messer Antonio’s heavy, unpleasant secretary

The Story

Two intersecting concerns perplex Nicholas Fetterlock, the fun-loving, usually responsible and obedient son of Master Thomas Fetterlock, prosperous and respected late fifteenth century sheep farmer of Burford in the Cotswolds of southern England. Nicholas is proud that his father is one of the select group of English merchants who market wool through the influential Staple, the alliance of merchants and traders headquartered at Calais. He is disturbed, however, that his father has business dealings with the Lombard banker, elegant, smooth-talking Messer Antonio Bari, and his brusque, heavy secretary, whom Nicholas dubs Toad-face, men Nicholas does not trust.

Nicholas is puzzled by the Lombards’ surreptitious and inexplicable movements about the Cotswolds and their secret meetings with Simon Leach, his father’s dour, aloof wool packer. His apprehensions increase when his Uncle John Stern, a sea captain, and Giles, his father’s wise, knowledgeable, competent head shepherd, speak disparagingly of the Lombards, in particular of their greed, avarice, and sharp dealing.

Nicholas’ life is further complicated when his father decides to betroth him to Cecily Bradshaw, the lively, astute daughter of a well-off wool clothier, a match Nicholas knows will be financially and socially advantageous to the Fetterlocks. When Nicholas and his father travel to Newbury so that he and Cecily may get acquainted before the betrothal is formalized, he discovers that she has noticed the Lombards passing furtively through the countryside and has doubts about them, too. Thus, the two strands of the story come together.

At first, Master Fetterlock, a trusting, strong-minded man, refuses to listen to Nicholas’ suspicions and warns him against idle gossip as unworthy of the scion of a respected house. Later, his own suspicions aroused, he confides to Nicholas that he has had to borrow money from the Lombards and has even gone surety for them with the Staple for five hundred pounds that they will not export wool to northern Europe, an area prohibited to Italian trade.

More complications arise. Rumors that the Fetterlock business is failing spread and jeopardize the betrothal. Giles reports that prime Fetterlock wool is missing and some wool packs bearded, that is, filled with refuse and topped with prime wool. While Cecily and her mother are in Burford, returning the Fetterlock visit, Nicholas, Cecily, and Hal, Nicholas’ loyal foster-brother and Giles’s son, find the missing wool in Leach’s own barn in bales ready for shipment. At Cecily’s suggestion, they plant hen feathers in each bale as identification. Then Cecily secures a map of Messer Antonio’s that indicates that the Lombards, with Leach’s help, have been smuggling Fetterlock wool out of England through the Isle of Wight.

The climax occurs when Nicholas gets this information to his father, who is at that time at Staple headquarters under a charge of bearding bales and breaking Staple shipping rules. Master Fetterlock is exonerated by Nicholas’ news and his reputation restored, the culprits are apprehended, and the Fetterlocks look forward to a bright future in wool production.

Context

Nicholas and the Wool-Pack is Cynthia Harnett’s best-known and most critically acclaimed novel. The first book of historical fiction to win the Carnegie Medal, it thrust her into prominence as a practitioner of the genre. Her other critically cited historical novels include Caxton’s Challenge (1959), which was commended for the Carnegie award, about a boy apprenticed to the fifteenth century printer William Caxton who unmasks a scrivener plot to ruin Caxton financially by keeping him from securing the paper he needs for his press, and The Writing on the Hearth (1971), another story of intrigue, which is set in and near London in the mid-1400’s and which was named to the Fanfare list by the editors of Horn Book magazine.

Trained as an artist, Harnett turned to writing historical fiction after a successful career producing picture books. She is credited, along with such writers as Geoffrey Trease and Henry Treece, with changing the nature of historical fiction for young readers from the “gadzookery” brand based upon questionable research to a more convincing, authentic mode that focuses on common people. While the well-to-do and even some nobles appear in Harnett’s books, she concentrates on the merchant class or tradesmen, on the middle class or rising members of the lower class.

While critics have sometimes complained that her plots are predictable and her characters lack emotional depth, they have generally praised her ability to maintain reading interest with carefully sustained tension and realistic action and to present the period without overburdening her stories with historical detail. Most highly praised is her skill at invoking the sense of the period through easily visualized descriptive passages, a technique perhaps the result of her artist’s training. Nicholas and the Wool-Pack exudes the flavor of its period, containing richly drawn scenes that re-create the era and reveal the extensive and careful research for which she was noted.

Nicholas and the Wool-Pack re-creates the late fifteenth century with much domestic and economic and some political detail. The book is a rich and substantial account based upon actual happenings, and Nicholas is a sympathetic and attractive protagonist who finds his place in the world gradually and believably.