216 Animal and Animal Products Trades 



The object here was to prevent the "grete custom of hids belongyng 

 to the baill's ofifis for the tyme beyng (from) be(ing) loste . . . 

 (through) byeing of hids of persons strangers owte of open market.'" 

 Nottingham had similar regulations requiring tanners and others to 

 buy and sell only at the public market.- A system of searching and 

 seaHng leather was used at Leadenhall which persisted until 1803.^ 

 The laws against engrossing applied to leather: purchasers dared not 

 buy any tanned hides with the object of reselling them.* All sales 

 within three miles of London were confined to Leadenhall,^ Southwark 

 was exempted.^ This act was enforced against several Surrey 

 leathermen.^ It was understood that if hides or leather were bought 

 to be sold again they were to be improved while in the hands of the 

 buyer. None were allowed to buy raw hides and sell them untanned.* 

 Elizabeth allowed to tanners only the right to buy raw hides, and to 

 leather artificers only the right to buy red tanned leather from the 

 tanners.^ These regulations are enough to illustrate the straitened 

 course of the leather business. During the first half of the eighteenth 

 century there was a general breakdown of the regulated market 

 system.^ ^ 



There was, therefore, very little purely middleman business in 

 leather. The Southwark and Bermondsey hide dealers bought sheep- 

 skins, tore off the wool and sold the unwrought skin; or else they 

 sold fel and f el wood together to the Witney blanketers." The tanners 

 had regular customers among the cordyners, and the butchers like- 

 wise among the tanners; in most towns the trades were controlled by 

 gilds; and it was common practice to boycott debtor customers until 

 debts had been paid.'^ The biggest tanners and dealers were found 

 at Southwark; as early as 1606 it was common for some to deal in 

 thousands of oxhides and sheepskins per year.^^ The volume of busi- 



1 Green, Hist. Wore, App. LXV; J. T. Smith, Eng. Gilds, 384; V. C. H., Worces., 

 II, 302. 



- V. C. H., Netting, II, 338. 



* V. C. H., Surrey, II, 337. 



* V. C. H., Sussex, II, 260. 



5 24 Hen. VIII, Cap. 23. 



6 5 Eliz. Cap. 8, Sec. 23. 

 'V. C. H., Surrey, .II, 331. 



^3-4 Ed. VI, Cap. 9; 5-6 Edw. VI, Cap. 15. 



» 5 Eliz., Cap. 6. 

 1" V. C. H., Northants II, 312-3. 

 " V. C. H., Surrey, II, 333. 

 12 Selden, XIV, p. 120, 122. 

 " V. C. H., Surrey, II, 335. 



