Middlemen in English Business 207 



years later the licensed badgers were permitted to buy butter and 

 cheese; as were also \dctuallers to the extent of one-month's suppl)- 

 for their house. ^ But this act made no provision at all for retailers 

 of cheese and butter; they fell under the prohibition of ingrossing. In 

 1623 the government recognized the services of the cheesemongers 

 in fetching butter and cheese from the "divers Counties, upon their 

 great Travel, Charge and Adventure, for Provision of the . 

 City" and relieved them from troublesome informers and litigation 

 about retaihng done by them; the remedy consisted in allowing all 

 regularly apprenticed denizen cheesemongers and tallow-chandlers 

 to retail "in open shop, Fair, or Market by any Quantities at one 

 Time, and to one Person, iiot exceeding four Wey of Cheese, or four 

 Barrels of Butter.'"- Charles II in 1662 standardized the butter 

 firkin for the whole Kingdom and issued regulations to prevent the 

 fraudulent packing of butter.^ 



Besides this retail business on a small scale some of the cheese- 

 mongers became wholesalers and did a big business. In 1733 Abra- 

 ham Baking was the greatest dealer in butter and cheese in the King- 

 dom and probably in the world. In that year he sold 40,566 firkins 

 of butter and about the same value of cheese; and of the butter 

 that came up by land he handled 30 per cent.^ As early as 1662 it 

 was necessary to regulate the transactions of the wholesale cheese- 

 mongers; penalties were prescribed for short- weighing to the re- 

 tailers and the cheesemongers were forbidden to repack butter.'' A 

 few years later the importation of butter and cheese from Ireland 

 was stopped. '^ Much of these products was brought to London to 

 "the great Loss and Prejudice of this Kingdom" — such was the justi- 

 fication offered for the statute. The cheesemongers of London 

 through their factors appointed in almost every butter-and-cheese- 

 shipping seaport an officer called "weigher" whose ofifice it was to 

 search and weigh the butter which came to port to be shipped. The 

 factors bought in the country places and markets and contracted to 

 have it delivered at the port towns. Complaint was laid against 

 these weighers for the deductions which they ordered for defective 

 butter; the country sellers were at the weigher's mercy under the 



^ 5-6 Ed. VI, Cap. 14, Sec. 7. 



■' 21 Jas. I, Cap. 22. 



' 13-14 Chas. II, Cap. 26. 



*Maitland, II, 758. 



^ 1.3-14 Chas. II, Cap. 26. 



6 32 Chas. II, Cap. 2, Sec. 9. 



