But foreigners were quick at reprisal when debts were owing to them, or any injury had been done by English merchants. And the proud traders of Lübeck and Bergen, members of the Hanseatic League, who warred with and dictated to kings, were especially sensitive in this respect. This may be seen by the fate which befell Laurence Cook, afterwards twice mayor of Coventry, in the days of his apprenticeship to William Bedforth, and Thomas Walton, servant to John Cross, another local merchant, who aided in the erection of S. Mary's Hall. For in 1398, as they lay in the ship of one Thomas Herman, of Boston, in the port of Stralsund, certain allies of the League, who had some grudge against the English traders, fell upon the apprentices, beat and wounded them _minus juste_, taking moreover from the ship 240 dozen pieces of cloth of divers colours, Bedforth's property, valued at £200; "much merchandise" belonging to Cross, worth half the sum, and other pieces of cloth, exported by a third Coventry merchant, valued at £50.[581] Such incidents as these were not uncommon in the lives of mediæval merchants, and for the making of a successful trader it was necessary that a man should have a dash of the warrior and a great deal of the adventurer in his composition. Trained by exposure to such perils by land and sea as nowadays only explorers undergo, it is little wonder that they proved themselves keen, energetic, and resourceful in their civic life. The servant of one Mr Wheatley had a happier adventure than Laurence Cook when in the sixteenth century he undertook a journey to Spain. For, wishing to purchase steel gads, he bought a chest at a fair, and lo! when it was opened it was found to contain ingots of silver, treasure brought perhaps from over the Spanish main. The servant, not knowing of whom he bought them, Mr Wheatley--honest man--kept them for a time, but as no inquiry was ever made, he gave the profits, amounting with contributions from the city to £96 a year, to the maintenance of twenty-one boys at a school at Bablake, an institution which exists and thrives even to this day. This benefactor, the "Dick Whittington" of Coventry, is a person of whom we would gladly learn more. The real Sir Richard, "thrice Lord Mayor of London," was, as historians tells us, not the poor friendless wanderer of legend, but the hopeful son of a well-to-do family of the country gentry, and was apprenticed to a wealthy London merchant by his kinsfolk after the orthodox fashion.[582] But as yet no historian has deemed it necessary to investigate Mr Wheatley's early career, and we still believe that he came to Coventry as a nameless adventurer, "a poor boy in a white coat," as Dugdale says. He died a bachelor, and bequeathed his fortune to charity.[583] [Illustration: OLD BABLAKE SCHOOL]