Middlemen in English Business 227 



in a town by a foreigner could be sold to him only by a freeman. In 

 every purchase or sale a freeman was one of the contracting parties. 



This principle, in conjunction with a statute^ of the sixteenth 

 centur}^ threw the whole coal trade into the hands of the Hostmen. 

 Henry VIII, for the purpose of making the collection of customs 

 duties easier, required that all traflfic within the tidal limits of the Tyne 

 was to embark and disembark at Newcastle, the head of the port of 

 the Tyne. Hereafter all produce from the interior had to be brought 

 to Newcastle, and by the custom of " foreign bought and foreign sold" 

 had to be sold to the freemen of Newcastle. The coal-owners who 

 were not freemen of the town and members of the Hostmen's Company 

 and who had mines in the vicinity of the Tyne had to employ the 

 Hostmen as intermediaries between themselves and the foreign 

 buyers.- It was for these reasons that the discoverer of "England's 

 Grievance ... in Relation to the Coal Trade," in 1655 com- 

 plained that "now the owners of the collieries must first sell their 

 coals to the magistrates of Newcastle, . . . (and) the magistrates 

 to the masters of ships. "^ And likewise for these reasons the coal- 

 owners who were not free of the Hostmen's Company found little 

 profit in operating mines in competition with the freemen and disposed 

 of their mines to the latter, thus strengthening the Hostmen's monop- 

 oly. One Sutton in 1569 obtained a long lease on the mines of 

 Whickham and Gateshead. This was the famous "Grand Lease" 

 and worked into a monopoly in the hands of the Newcastle merchants. 

 Liddell and Ravensworth and other notable men were active in main- 

 taining and perfecting monopolistic combinations of the mines of 

 these parts. ^ 



The dissolution of this Hostmen's monopoly was gradual, but 

 hastened after 1726 when the custom of "foreign bought and foreign 

 sold" was forfeited.'^ Under the head " Fitters" it is shown above that 

 a change had contemporaneously occurred in the composition and 

 character of the Hostmen's Company and that the Hostmen had 

 ceased being coal-owners and became a company of licensed fitters. 



The regulation of the vend of coal by the Hostmen while they were 

 in control and of the coal-owners generally thereafter was one of the 



' 21 Hen. VIII, Cap. 18. 



- See general treatment in Surtees, 105 ; XXX-XXXII. 

 ^Anderson, Origin, II, 431. 

 * See history in Galloway, 93 et seq. 



^ The process of decay is traced through several suits at law in Surtees, 105: 

 XXXV-XXX\'II. See also V. C. H., Durham, II, 327. 



