Middlemen in English Business 3.37 



ited to property-holding and tax-paying burgesses; none was to be 

 bought at markets in Oswestry Pool, or the Marches adjoining; onlv 

 the drapers who had served seven years at apprenticeship could buy 

 and only at specified times. ^ In Halifax at the ringing of the bell at 

 ten o'clock each Saturday the merchants buyers were admitted into 

 "Manufacturers' Hall;" the market lasted two hours. In the after- 

 noon a one-hour market was opened in one room for worsted yarn. 

 Cloth-sellers other than the occupiers were admitted to do business 

 if they paid one penny per piece sold.- The regulation of Blackwel! 

 Hall has been described.^ 



Born of the medieval theory of town policy and perpetuated by 

 legislation for the government of markets "and against ingrossers, fore- 

 stallers and regraters, existed a general body of law and custom 

 designed to thwart the rise and operations of the middleman. The 

 most common, as in the case of the cloth-halls, was the prohibition to 

 buy anywhere but in a market.^ If corn, for instance, was not brought 

 to market the consumer or a middleman would have to seek it from 

 the producing farmer. In general it was too troublesome for the 

 consumer to make a canvass of the rural parts in search of his supply 

 of corn. The legislator therefore had the alternative of forcing the 

 farmer to bring his surplus corn to market himself or to permit an 

 intermediary to do the marketing. But to intrust a middleman with 

 the privilege of engrossing the corn and exacting a profit, which might 

 be arbitrary, and exorbitant, depending on the people's necessity, 

 was dangerous to the common weal. The legislator therefore acted 

 on the principle that victual being a necessary sustenance for the body 

 should not be esteemed at the seller's liberty,^ and required two things, 

 first, that no one should buy or sell except at open public market on 

 known days, hours, and place,^ and secondly, that fixed prices should 

 be set on all pro-visions, as by assizes of bread, beer, etc. 



It has been said that "the true spirit of this law .... was 

 an intelligent glimpse, but imperfect in several respects."'^ It rested 



1 V. C. H., Shrops., I, 429. 



2 V. C. H., York, II, 420. 

 ' Cf. Clothier, above. 



•* For treatment of this prohibition see "Leg. and Com. of Corn," 287 et seq. 



^ Schanz, I, 622, quoting Henry VIII. 



^ CantiUon held it was "'more natural that Farmers should bring the Produce of 

 the Land, as being a certain Market or Place to find Vent, than that Chapmen 

 should go about the Country, where they could not well agree for the purchase of 

 what they wanted." Cantillon, Analysis, 9. 



' Leg. and Com. of Corn," 293. 



