Middlemen in English Business 157 



since then their warehouse stores constituted them monopolists of the 

 market. This circumstance is well illustrated in the report of the 

 Mayor of Hull to the Privy Council in 1622. Derbyshire had been 

 supplied for some time with foreign grain sent from Holland. He 

 reported thus during the dearth; " We . . . have at this present in 

 the hands of divers merchants and others, within this town, by them 

 brought from beyond the seas, reasonable store of rye and other 

 grain to the quantity of two thousand quarters and above for the serv- 

 ice of the . , . country ... of which their is daily some parts 

 sold and delivered out of such reasonable rates as they may be af- 

 forded, . . ."I 



It was possible for them to create an artificial scarcity by keep- 

 ing the port of London closed against importation. By the acts 

 of 1663 and 1685,- the port of London and the outports might be 

 opened to the importation of corn when the prices of corn had 

 reached a scale of prices set by the laws. The prices at each port 

 were to be determined by the Justices of the Peace, and in London 

 also by the Mayor and Aldermen. Oaths were to be taken by "two 

 or more honest and substantial Persons of the respective Counties, 

 being neither Merchants nor Factors for the importing of Corn, nor 

 anyways concerned nor interested in the Corn so imported," and the 

 Justices were to use "such other Ways and Means as to them shall 

 seem fit, to examine and determine the common Market prices of 

 middling English Corn." These prices were to be determined twice 

 a year, in October and April. At these times it was possible for the 

 jobbers to flush the market, actually throwing vast quantities into 

 trade or spreading rumors of great quantities en-route thither by 

 ship or barge, and depress the prices below the schedules that per- 

 mitted the port to be opened. During the next six months they 

 recouped themselves by monopolistic prices.^ It is probable, how- 

 ever, that the possible use of the foreign corn supply tended on the 

 whole to equalize rather than disturb the market price of corn. It 

 did, in particular, before the acts of 1663 and 1685. During the ex- 

 treme dearth of 1619-22, for instance, the imports of corn kept the 

 price down in Derbyshire.'* 



Few commodities of commerce have been the basis of so much 



1 V. C. H., Derby, II, 180. 



- 15 Chas. II, Cap. 7, Sec. 3; 1 Jas. II, Cap. 19, Sees. 3' 5. 



' Allegations to this effect are given in "Abuses Relative to Provisions," 28; Gent. 

 Mag., 1751: 474, 510; J. H. C, 30: 763. 



•« S. P. Dom. Chas. I, Vol. 113, No. 17; V. C. H., Derby II, 180. 



