134 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



CORNMONGERS. 



From the middle of the thirteenth century there appear to have been 

 cornmongers (bladers, bladarii) in London. They were mostly 

 Londoners and resident there; some were mentioned from St. Albans, 

 Fulham, Great Marlow, Stratford and other nearby towns. Though 

 men of considerable wealth they did not obtain prominence in the 

 city. The city offered them a varying recognition, sometimes en- 

 couraging them to buy in the country and to bring to the city, at other 

 times laying restrictions on their dealings. One class of dealings 

 seems to have been in the capacity of agents selling for country pro- 

 ducers.^ In the latter part of the fourteenth century the corn- 

 mongers were organized into a Mistery, which, apparently, lasted 

 somewhat longer than a half centur>^- It was never an important 

 company; the want of a monopoly of its ware — corn — was probably 

 its greatest weakness. Cornmongers' gilds existed outside London 

 also.^ By 1600 a new nomenclature was arising; the terms badger, 

 kidder, mealman, etc. displaced the more general term cornmonger.^ 



CORN BUYERS. 



In some orders^ issued by Charles I, 1630, "for . . . Pre- 

 venting and Remedying of the Dearth of Graine and Victual ." . . 

 there is, in the somewhat redundant language of public laws and de- 

 crees, a list of the middlemen concerned, at that date, in the corn 

 trade. They are "Badgers, Kidders, Broggers, Carriers of Corne 

 - . . Mault-makers, Bakers, Common Brewers or Tiplers . . . 

 Buyers of Corne to sell againe . . . Buyers of Corne upon the 

 Ground." In the Edwardian statute^ against regrating, forestalling 

 and ingrossing, 1552, the corn-buyers were included under the terms 

 badger, lader, kidder, and carrier. These terms were redundant so 

 far as the functions of the persons in the trade were concerned; for the 

 badger was kidder, lader, and carrier, and so was each of the others, re- 

 spectively. Real distinctions seem not to have existed at that time nor 

 since, and whatever fact led a buyer to assume one appellation instead 

 of another seems lost, for the most part, in the community of functions. 



I Lib. Alb. I, 693, 697. 



- Brewer, Records, 167; Unwin, Gilds, 162, 370. 



' Gross, I, 47, 152; II, 383; Herbert, 28. 



^ Cf. Dyson, 374. 



* See J. Massie, reprint, "Orders" 1 1 . 



« 5 and 6 Ed. Ill, Cap. 14, Sec. 7. 



