132 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



or carriage from manor to monastery. There were also the ''aver- 

 agium de manerio ad manerium" (from manor to manor) and 

 " averagium ad mercatum et ad forum" (to market). No real markets 

 existed in this intermanorial system. The system disintegrated with 

 the break-down of the manor as a unit and as a group. Inequalities 

 in the density of population and diversifications of occupation tended 

 to cause territorial market areas. London was the first clearly dis- 

 tinct market. Its corn markets date very early: those for corn and 

 malt brought by water were at Billingsgate and Queenhite; Gras- 

 chirche and Smithfield were the markets for grain coming from the 

 counties of Cambridge, Bedford, Huntingdon and from Ware. Those 

 owners of corn coming from the West, "as from Barnet," sold on the 

 pavement at Newgate. Such pavements were convenient for the 

 deposit and exposure of their sacks. Stratford in Essex was a sub- 

 urban corn-supply place for London: the corn was carried up by 

 carts.^ The rise of local markets is further indicated by the fact that 

 in the Peasants Rebellion one demand was for free markets for their 

 corn." 



Until the sixteenth century the metropolitan influence on the 

 prices prevailing on the other markets of the Kingdom and conse- 

 quently on the direction of corn movements was not marked. The 

 chief reason was that its population was small and it did not exceed 

 the other ports much in exportation. The Kingdom was divided 

 into regular marketing districts whose conformations were deter- 

 mined by local facilities of transportation as river or port, by relative 

 plentitude of corn, by nearness to foreign market, and by the num- 

 bers of the local consuming population. Prices in the upper Thames, 

 the Severn and Cambridge districts were lowest; while in the counties 

 of the far North and South-east they were highest. The outports as 

 well as London exported to the continent: the Trent and Humber 

 counties used Hull ; the eastern counties Lynn Regis, Yarmouth, and 

 Ipswich; the southern counties Chichester, Poole, and Weymouth; 

 the Severn counties Bristol. 



During the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century the 

 population of London was nearly decupled and it so outran the rural 

 parts that it could number a tenth instead of a fiftieth of the total 



1 Lib. Alb. I, LXXII. 



- Rymer, VII, 317. The writer wishes to make due acknowledgment to Dr. 

 Gras of Clark University whose excellent thesis on the early corn trade the writer 

 has read. It is hoped that Dr. Gras will publish his work soon. In several places 

 in this chai)ter the writer owes the opinions and the findings of facts to this thesis. 



