Middlemen in Enghsh Business 339 



there is little need for a place of frequent resort for purchase or sale. 

 The exotic supplies can be procured by occasional resort to periodic 

 fairs. For example in Lincoln in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 

 turies about Ingoldmells there were bakers and tipplers on every 

 manor and the tenants bought from one another malt, beans, flour, 

 corn, timber, nails, and divers ^'marchandise."^ They bought robes, 

 wine, and the best cloth at Boston Fair. Often times the canons of 

 the abbeys would buy at the fairs as agents for their parishioners.^ 

 The fair was "superannuated" and "was already falling into a slow 

 decrepitude" in the fifteenth century.^ It tended toward toys, 

 baubles, knickknacks, and amusements, as it lost, comparatively, its 

 former economic significance and thus perpetuated itself till the pres- 

 ent day. The causes of its comparative decline were chiefly the 

 changed social and economic conditions.^ Population had grown 

 denser per square mile, land^ and river and coastal traffic had ex- 

 tended, towns had developed, and production increased. The town 

 economy yielded to the regional; the domestic and local self-suffi- 

 ciency of the former age had grown less pronounced; surplus produce 

 of farm and manufacture moved greater distances. It had become 

 possible for a more frequent or even continuous exchange, which was 

 realized in the weekly or daily market. 



But the same changes when developed on a larger and more com- 

 plete scale tended in turn to superannuate the market. This move- 

 ment was noticed in the century under study. The result was a 

 gradual transfer of business from the periodic to the continuous 

 market represented in the shops and stores. The advent of these 

 media of commerce premise a volume of trade, and a specialization 

 of industry, and an ease of communication, and a density of popula- 

 tion, far greater than was existent in times when fairs and markets 

 featured prominently. Exchange was undergoing a transformation. 

 Producers no longer met consumers. Intermediaries and agents of 

 consumers and producers conducted the exchange and transportation 

 and storage of wares. 



Besides the general, man}- specific agencies operated to effect this 

 transition. It has been shown that the practice of forestalling, in- 



1 V. C. H., Lincoln, II, 386. 

 = Whitaker, Craven, 458, 472. 

 ' Green, Town Life, 25-6. 



^ See discussion in Cunningham, Growth, I, 451, of the decline of fairs, 1461 

 to 1485. 



6 Smiles, Lives, I, 191 



