Middlemen in English Business 165 



The jobbers strove to keep the port closed by depressing prices in 

 April and October. Hence wide fluctuations surely resulted and the 

 service which the merchant would have otherwise rendered was 

 destroyed or held in abeyance. Were it not for the bounties, some 

 contemporaries held, granaries would have been erected in the near 

 vicinity of the metropoHs and the service of supply been improved.^ 

 Under the head "Corn Buyers," above, the Tudor granary system was 

 briefly outlined. The aim of this system was purely to supply the 

 consumption of London. The method of provision by voluntary 

 money contributions from individuals and the method of forced corn 

 contributions by the Liveries Companies were tried out during the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and abandoned. The supply of 

 corn was intrusted to private initiative thereafter. At various times, 

 usually times of dearth, projects were published for establishing a 

 system of granaries for trade purposes. King James had proposed, 

 and proclaimed the liberty to set up a system in 1623 "For the Well- 

 Storing and furnishing of the Realme with Corne."- At the next 

 period of dearth 1631-1633 simflar projects were announced.' Yar- 

 ranton in 1677 wrote and worked for the estabhshment of public 

 granaries for the corn collected in Oxford and Northants and brought 

 to London by river."* He would have combined with his granaries a 

 sort of banking and credit business. None of these schemes found 

 practical realization either at the hands of town or state; what gran- 

 aries existed were the private properties of corn dealers and big farm- 

 ers; but the bounties on export tended to reduce the number of these. 

 The corn merchant had to be a capitalist of some strength and have 

 control of considerable credit. Necessarily the rate of turnover of 

 his wares was slow, not more than three or four times a year.-^ Be- 

 sides, if he was to avail much as a merchant he had to buy heavily 

 when markets prices were low; his outlay was thus spasmodic and for 

 long periods. He usually sought independence of the carriers by 

 buying up a controlKng interest in the vehicles of the commerce in 

 which he engaged, even to monopoHzing them. For instance, at 

 Ware every barge that carried corn to London belonged to the corn 



^ Middleton, Middlesex, 561, for example. 



2 0ddy, II, 248; Cunningham, Growth, II, 318; Council, Reg., Jas. I, Vol. VI, 

 63; Rymer, VII, Pt. IV, 86-87. See also S. P. Dom., Jas. I, Vol. X, 124, 129, 130, 

 140; Council Reg., Vol. IV, 372, 294-95. 



3 Council Reg., Chas. I, Vols. VI, 477-78; VII, 131-32; VIII, 249-50; IX, 506; 

 Cal. S. P. Dom., Chas. I, Vol. V, 428. 



^Yarranton, Eng. Imp., 114-38. 

 ^ Smitli, on Com Trade. 17. 



