Simon Eyre (Draper and Mayor)
The Early Years
Born in Brandon, Suffolk to John and Amy Eyre, Simon Eyre moved to London in his teens and
became an apprentice to an upholder (second hand clothes dealer), Peter
Smart. In 1419, Eyre ended his
short career as an upholder and transferred to the prestigious Drapers’ Company ([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)). Unlike Thomas Deloney’s and Thomas Dekker’s fictionalized portrayals of Eyre, the real Eyre was never a shoemaker.
As Caroline M. Barron notes in her summary of Eyre’s life, he soon became a distributor to
London merchants: Unlike other successful merchants of this period Eyre did not make his money in
overseas trade but acted instead as a middleman, buying cloth in the
countryside and selling it to the royal wardrobe and to other merchants,
above all to Italians
. At the same time, Eyre also purchased dyes and spices from the
Genoese and Venetian merchants and redistributed them throughout England. As
Italian merchants were forbidden to sell their own goods in London, Eyre saw high profits and few risks
acting as a distributor. Due to Eyre’s increasing success, the Drapers’
Company elected him as Master in 1425 ([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)).
Eyre the Civic Benefactor
Despite Eyre’s protests of his
modest wealth, the City elected him as sheriff in 1434. In 1435, he was
elected as the Master of the Drapers for a
second time. Perhaps due to these two appointments, Eyre became deeply involved in civic projects
([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)). In 1441, for
example, Eyre succeeded as a
common councilman who, as Barron reports, actively engaged in civic duties
serving on at least eight important joint committees of the common council
and court of aldermen
. Eyre also
served as an auditor from 1437–39 ([Beaven](BIBL1.xml#BEAV1)).
By the time the City elected Eyre
as the alderman of [Walbrook Ward](WALB2.xml) in 1444, he
was already engaged in rebuilding the [Leadenhall](LEAD1.xml) granary. Eyre was indeed one of the granary’s primary financers and he
aided in the land negotiations for the granary at [Cornhill](CORN2.xml) ([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)). In
A Survey of London, John Stow recounts that
Eyre envisioned the granary
as a public space:
among other his works of pietie, effectually determined
to erect and build a certaine Granarie vpon the soile of the same citie at
[Leaden hall](LEAD1.xml) of his owne charges, for the
common vtilitie of the saide Citie
(1.154). Perhaps due to his civic
vision, business savvy, increasing wealth, and influential spirit, the
aldermen elected
Eyre as the
Mayor of London in 1445.
Eyre was married a second time
between the years 1419 and 1457, but not much is known of his wife, Alice,
except that she gave birth to Eyre’s only son, Thomas. Throughout his life, Thomas frequently
squandered his money, so his father continually bailed him out of debt.
Thomas died only ten years after his father ([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)).
The Later Years
From 1446–58, Eyre continued to
serve as an alderman for various wards including [Bread Street](BREA3.xml) (1446–49), [Cornhill](CORN1.xml)
(1449–51), and [Langbourn](LANG1.xml) (1451–58) ([Beaven](BIBL1.xml#BEAV1)). Barron infers from the
evidence of Eyre’s decreasing
civic involvement that he lost interest in his civic career
after the
completion of [Leadenhall](LEAD1.xml): after ending his
term as mayor, Eyre served on one
last committee in 1454 and attended his last meeting in 1456 ([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)). Stow depicts Eyre as a public hero, recording
his bequest of five thousand pounds for the release of the poor, his desire
to release certain prisoners, and his contribution of over two thousand
marks for various charities throughout the city (1.154). Instead of civic
affairs, Eyre focused his efforts
on improving the new [Leadenhall](LEAD1.xml) by expanding
its original function from a granary into a free school for young scholars.
He not only began a curriculum to teach children Latin grammar, songs, and
vernacular writing, but willed about two thousand pounds to his executors,
the Drapers’ Company, to establish schools,
maintain buildings, and pay salaries
([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)). At his death in 1458, Eyre’s wealth was estimated between five thousand
and seven thousand pounds. Although Eyre wished to build a London dynasty
, his dreams were
thwarted. After his death, the executors did not implement Eyre’s vision;
rather, they used the funds to maintain the church of [St. Mary Woolnoth](STMA38.xml), the site where Eyre is buried ([Barron](BIBL1.xml#BARR3)). While Stow remarks that he had heard
speculative flying tales
regarding the dispersal of Eyre’s wealth, the cause for the executors’
decision to deny the realization of Eyre’s dream remains unknown (1.155).
Eyre the Shoemaker
In his 1597 early novel entitled
The Gentle Craft,
Thomas Deloney refashioned
Eyre into a shoemaker and a
draper. Although
Thomas Dekker would draw on
Deloney’s characterization of
Eyre in his 1599 play
The
Shoemaker’s Holiday, he re-scripted
Eyre solely as a shoemaker. Michael Manheim
reasons that
Dekker’s motivation
for shifting
Eyre’s occupation
lay in his desire to combine historical and legendary elements of
Eyre’s life:
The main plot—which
follows the rise of Simon Eyre
from humble cobbler, to Sherriff, and finally to Mayor of London, is rooted
in folklore and was a very well known legend in its time
(
[316](BIBL1.xml#MANH1)). Alternatively, W.K. Chandler argues that
Dekker exercised reasonable
historical accuracy in naming his characters-an accuracy which is at
variance with the romantic spirit of the legend about Eyre, ’the mad shoemaker of [Tower street](TOWE3.xml)’
(
[175](BIBL1.xml#CHAN2)), while still setting the overall stage
action in a
realistic Elizabethan setting
(
[182](BIBL1.xml#CHAN2)).
Both Deloney and Dekker apply past historical knowledge to
contemporary conceptions (and in some cases, romanticizations) of Eyre’s life. In both works, Deloney and Dekker revise history by blending past and
present events. As Brian Walsh argues in his analysis of Dekker’s historicity, not only is Eyre an anachronistic figure in the
play, but his temporal displacement also beckons to a more general idea of
enacting pastness
([328](BIBL1.xml#WALS2)). Dekker deploys the real elements of
Eyre’s biography alongside
fantastical legends to create a local
historical imagination—a pastness
that the audience would find familiar and could reconcile with their
contemporary experience ([324](BIBL1.xml#WALS2)).