M iddlemen in English Business 215 



{e) Leather. 



Southwark became the greatest leather market in England at 

 an early date. The leather industry got well seated there dur- 

 ing the fourteenth century. London, like all other towns of the 

 medieval period, was jealous enovigh of her markets; and it was only 

 because of the offensiveness of the slaughtering and tanning and 

 leather business that she tolerated the rise of this market in a suburb. 

 The Thames afforded the Londoners immunity from these offensive 

 occupations on the Surrey side.^ Bermondsey was also an early seat 

 of the industry. It was promoted by the settlement of religious 

 refugees here, by its oak-woods, and by its tidal-streams which af- 

 forded water power.- In Oxford the towns Witney and Bampton 

 were great manufacturers of blankets. These were made from fel- 

 wool, bought in great part with the fells at Southwark. The leather 

 industry grew up in Witne^' as a by-industry of the blanket; "the 

 Fell-mongers' sheepskins . . . being here made into wares, viz.. 

 Jackets, Breeches, Leather Linings, etc., which they chiefly vent(ed) 

 into Berkshire, Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, no town in P^ngland ha\ang 

 a trade like it in that sort of ware."' During the seventeenth century 

 there was considerable tanning done in the Thames ports Reading, 

 Wallingford and Abingdon.^ The plentifulness of oak trees was the 

 primary cause for the location of this industry in this county. It 

 appears that there were shoemarkets in the small towns. In Beverle\-, 

 for instance, in L364 stalls were assigned for this purpose, called the 

 Shoemarket, during market and fair days. It was then an old 

 practice.'^ 



The leather business was conducted under much restraint from the 

 town and state governments. One line of legislation aimed at the 

 demarkation of processes in the manufacture and distribution of 

 leather; each operative was required to specialize in some one process 

 and devote himself to that only.^ During the fifteenth century the 

 Worcester barkers, curriers, corcesors and saddlers were forbidden to 

 act as leather middlemen — "to buy or sell leather either from butchers 

 or from foreign hide or leather merchants, except in open markets." 



' V. C. H., Surrey. 11, 249. 



■' Ibid., 330. 



^ Plot, Nat. Hist. O.xford, 279; V. C. M., Oxf. II. 2SS. 



*V. C. H., Berks I, 397. 



5 Selden, 14, p. 30. 



6 25 Ed. Ill St. II. Cap. 4; 1 Hen. VH, Cap. .S; 19 Hen. VII, Cap. 19; 2-3 Va\. 

 VI, Cap. 11. 



