208 Animal and Animal Products Trades 



statute of 1662. This handicap was removed in 1692. The weighers 

 were required to leave off personal discriminations among the shippers 

 who brought butter to the port for shipment; butter was to be shipped 

 in the order in which it was received; and their fees were prescribed. 

 They were to keep a book of receipts and shipments which was open 

 for inspection by the shippers. The masters of the ships had likewise 

 to observe the rules of impartiahty among the shippers. The cheese- 

 mongers of London who had vessels of their own might send their own 

 vessels for "their own proper and respective Goods. "^ 



This 1692 law did not apply to the Chester and Lancashire ports 

 and trade and ships. In the Cheshire cheese trade the London cheese- 

 mongers operated a line of vessels of their own.- During the last 

 decade of the eighteenth century they waged a long fight against the 

 freemen of Liverpool who levied dues on Cheshire cheese shipped by 

 that port.^ By 1670 they had totally engrossed the carrying of cheese 

 between Chester, Liverpool and London, and were striving to monop- 

 olize all the carrying "trade to those Places, by carrying Goods at a 

 lower Price than others afford to do, and laying it on the Freight of 

 Cheese.'" This is a case of "charging what the traffic will bear" and 

 giving cutthroat rates on goods for the back-freight cargo to save 

 going in ballast. A complainant averred in 1772 that they were 

 associated in a club; owned sixteen vessels; had warehouses in Cheshire; 

 settled -at their weekly meetings what quantity they each would hax'e 

 brought up to London; and intimidated the outsider cheesemongers 

 from engaging any other vessels to bring up cheese.^ Along with the 

 petitions against the bill limiting the number of horses drawing car- 

 riages on the turnpike roads in 1751 "The Cheesemongers' Reasons 

 for Support of their Petition" gave evidence of the large volume of 

 their overland business. 



(d) Fish. 



The trade in fish was, from medieval times, subject to much regula- 

 tion. It formed a most important item of food, and one which re- 

 quired rapid dispatch between catcher and consumer. The fisher 

 could scarcely organize a sales business. The middleman was quite 

 irrepressible under these circumstances; yet the state and local author- 



i -1 Wm. & Mary-, Cap. 7. 



2 Picton, II, 48; 4 Wm. & M., Cap. 7, Sec. 8-9. 



3 Picton, I, 300-5. 



*"View of Real Grievances," 276. 

 » Ibid., 275. 



