174 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



who bought up malt and forwarded it to their London principals.^ 

 Competition among the big malsters appears to have been very rife, 

 and destructive in some cases. The historian of Chichester ascribes 

 the decline of the malting houses to the greed of the malsters.- 



BAKER: 



Bakers were manufacturers and only incidentally middlemen. It 

 was a very old industry and trade peculiar to the cities and larger 

 towns. London's supply of bread was made partly within her walls 

 and partly without. In the fifteenth century part of it came in horse- 

 packs or carts from Stratford in Essex, Bremble near Stratford, 

 Stevenhethe (Stepney) and Saint Albans.^ Both in London and in 

 provincial parts the bakers were subject to considerable regulation. 

 Strange bread was sometimes prohibited from being brought to the 

 city, usually on the ground of adulteration. The prices of loaves 

 were fixed by public law. Each loaf was sealed. It could only be 

 sold in public market and not in the baker's shop "before his oven." 

 Cornhill and Cheap were popular bread markets; each baker had 

 assigned to him his own particular market. It was brought to the 

 market in "panyers" and boxes or hutches. Regratresses, female 

 retailers, carried it from house to house for sale; they bought it from 

 the bakers and made a profit of every thirteenth loaf; they dared not 

 buy in markets outside London, nor from foreign bakers before these 

 had brought their bread to the market at Cheap; they bought on 

 credit sometimes from the bakers. The foreign bakers undersold the 

 city bakers by two ounces per loaf. The bakers were forbidden to 

 buy corn for the purpose of resale. Nor were they to set up in busi- 

 ness -with less chattels than 40^; accompan\-ing this prohibition was 

 one against sharing their profits with their landlords who might sup- 

 ply them \vith bakehouse, oven, or materials. Their products were 

 inspected by a public inspector and made to conform to the standard 

 of the assize.^ 



In Beverley, illustrating the rural town, the danger of the large 

 buying by the bakers was lessened by restraining them from buying 

 before one o'clock, i.e. after the other denizens had bought for their 

 own use. Similar regulations were laid in 1401, 1418, and 1555; so 



. ' Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 181. 

 - Hay, Hist, of Chichester, 330, 336. 

 3 Lib. Alb. T, LXVI. 

 ' Sec detailed regulations iij Lib. Alb. I, LXVIII-LXX; 264-65. 



