Middlemen in English Business 147 



Somerset some of the hundreds were losing their rural character and 

 there was a ''great neglect of tillage upon many great farms." Frome 

 Hundred, for instance, became dependent upon Wiltshire for its chief 

 supply of corn. Such hundreds defended the presence of badgers as 

 necessary for their food supph'. Six were admitted in Hartfliffe and 

 Bedminster to provision Bristol in 1623.' It was reported in this 

 district '" that the constant viewing and searching for corn caused 

 an imminent dearth" and thus defeated its \'ery purpose. Gradualh' 

 the assize of corn was abandoned and badgers more freel}' licensed, 

 with the hope and opinion that their freer operations would equalize 

 prices better.- About the same time the Justices of the Peace some- 

 times employed badgers in the parishes to buy corn and sell it to the 

 poor "\2d in every bushel better cheaper than it did cost."^ 



In 1718 a critic and most virulent pamphleteer and ardent defender 

 of the old system ga\-e ample testimony that the old system was 

 decadent and that trade was breaking the shackles of non-speculating 

 market methods. The badger, lader, kidder, and carrier acquired bad 

 reputations and became contemned on the charge of regrating, etc. 

 The dictionaries hereafter defined the terms badger, etc., as "an 

 ingrosser, a fore-buyer, or forestaller of the market, one that buyeth 

 corn and other provisions beforehand,"'^ and anyone who had the 

 ability to "get an acquaintance, or make an interest, or find credit, at 

 once set up ... to buy and sell" as he pleased.' There thus 

 arose a more general set of corn-buyers and the old nomenclature of 

 badgers, laders, kidders, and carriers ga\e place to the new of buyer, 

 ingrosser, jobber, and hawker. Their functions were essentially the 

 same except that their freedom ga\-e them greater opportunity to 

 perform them better; they bought, stored, carried, sold, and specu- 

 lated more freely and extensively than heretofore. Growing capital 

 and easier means of communication furthered their operations. For 

 these and \'arious reasons they became a more numerous and prom- 

 inent class, and their operations attracted the public attention 

 more. 



In times of famine the stores of the ingrossers of corn were especialh' 

 envied and corn riots became quite the fashion by the middle of the 



I S. P. Dom. Jas. I, CXLIX, 24; \'. C. H., Somers, II, 308. 

 -Somers, Rec. Sor., XXIII-XXI\' passim. Sessions R. bk. II, pt. I; V. C. H., 

 .Somers, II, 308. 



5 V. C. H. Sussex, II, 194. 



* Robertson, Phr. Gen., 196. 



^ "Considerations on the Present," 15. 



