148 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



eighteenth century.^ In 1693 a mob at Banbury, at Chipping Norton, 

 and at Charlburg "took away the corne by force out of the waggons, 

 as it was carrying away by the ingrossers, saying they were resolved 

 to put the law in execution, since the magistrates neglected it."'- 

 The vehemence of the corn riot was not less virulent than the vehe- 

 mence of the pen that wrote: 



Every Buyer and Consumer .... is miserably Impos'd upon, cheated 

 and Oppressed, by this Villainous Cabal and Confederacy of Blood Suckers, the 

 very Pest of Societies, ar.d Vermin of the Body Pohtick.' 



The policy of the government in dealing with the corn-buyers in 

 such times of dearth shows that it sympathized to a greater or less 

 extent with this opinion. For instance, in the famines of 1586-87, 

 1619-22 and 1630-31 it dealt rigorously with the corn-men. The 

 Privy Council in 1587 ordered the Justices of Peace to appoint juries 

 in each county to return the number of persons in the household of 

 every owner of grain in barns, etc., the amount of such grain, the 

 "badgers, kidders, broggers or carriers of corne," the "malt-makers, 

 bakers, comen brewers or tiplers," and the "greate buyers of corne." 

 Then whatever surplus each had above that requisite for his family's 

 food he was ordered to bring to be sold "in open market."'* Some- 

 times they were ordered to bring definite quantities of these food 

 supplies to the various markets.^ The object of these restraints was 

 to prevent badgers and other corn-buyers from buying corn to resell 

 at an increased price through the necessities of the starving poor. In 

 1622 the sheriff of Somerset notified the Council that the "disorderly 

 proceedings toward persons going to market with corn" had been 

 suppressed but that the unemployed spinners and weavers tended "to 

 mutiny."'' The same course of action as in Elizabeth's time was 

 again applied. Some corn masters sold corn at their homes to the 

 poor on credit also.'' In 1630 the justices of Sussex ordered that no 



1 Gent. Mag., 1740: 3550; 1756: 608. "The risings of the people in severa 

 places of late, and the mischief done at those times, by pulling down and demolish- 

 ing mills, breaking open granaries, stopping carriages and boats laden with com for 

 market, or going from one part of the nation to another where it is more wanted, 

 and violently carr>TOg away flour and grain of all kinds, in open defiance of 

 law . . . ." 



2 V. C. H., Oxford, II, 199; Wood, Life and Times, III, 319-446. 

 ^ "Essay against Forestallers," 27. 



* Leonard, Early Hist. Poor ReUef, 85 ff. 



6 V. C. H., Oxford, II, 193; Bucks, II, 74; S. P. Dom. Eliz., 199, No. 43. 



« Cal. S. P. Dom. Jas. I, 1622, p. 392. 



^S. P. Dom. Jas. I, 142. No. 44; V. C. H., Bucks, II, 76. 



