This book is based on the biographies of some 1400 individuals who lived in three northern English towns during the later Middle Ages. It analyzes the many aspects of merchant society: achievements in politics, attitudes toward religion, the family, wider circles of friends and business acquaintances, and the nature and conduct of trade. Merchants were at the core of urban society and played a central role in the development of urban mentalité. This is one of the broadest studies of them yet published, integrating a very wide range of original sources.