Middlemen in English Business 253 



measures relieved but indifferently the oppression.^ The monopoly 

 method was abandoned between 1650 and 1660 \nth good results.^ 

 It was spasmodically used by Charles II and Anne and in the interims 

 the tin dealers reestablished themselves.^ 



After the Restoration the local Cornish shopkeepers and men of 

 means gained an increasing part of the business of dealing in tin, both 

 as factors for the Londoners as in the past, and also as independent 

 dealers and exporters. The smelters, particularly, increased in power 

 and supplanted the Londoners as financiers of the tin trade. In 

 medieval times the miner had smelted his own tin ores. But the 

 establishment of blowing-houses came to be an independent capi- 

 talistic venture; the owner of a smelter hired blowers or leased parts 

 of his smelter to smelters; he smelted tin for owners of tin and took a 

 percentage of the product. The owner of the tin received a note from 

 the smelter when the ore was delivered by which the smelter agreed 

 to deliver a certain quantity of tin at the next coinage. These notes 

 were negotiable and were formerly sold at once to the merchant 

 dealers."* The smelters about 1700 began to buy back their notes at a 

 discount and thus indirectly purchase the tin without incurring as 

 high risks as would attach to outright purchase of the tin which could 

 be sold only at periodical coinages. This system continued till the 

 abolition of the coinage system.^ 



The greater portion of the tin of this district was used in the manu- 

 facture of pewter. The London pewterers established themselves 

 into a gild during the fourteenth century and during the following 

 century acquired a practical monopoly of the pewter industry of 

 England. Chapmen of tin were restrained from business in 1504 

 by a statute^ which forbade all sales of pewter except at fairs or pew- 

 terers' shops. This statute constituted the pewterers in monopoHstic 

 power. They also gained control of the foreign exportation of tin. 

 They fought the monopolies conferred by Elizabeth and her successors 

 and gained some concessions. After the Restoration they declined 

 rapidly. '^ 



' V. C. H., Cornwall, I. 558. 



- Ibid. 



^ "Aggravii Venetiani." 



^ Borlase, Nat. Hist. Cornwall, 181; see above Pryce, Mineralogia Comubiensis, 

 292-3. 



5 V. C. H., ComwaU, I, 562; Lewis, 223-4. 



« 19 Hen. VH, Cap. 6; 4 Hen. VHI, Cap. 7; 25 Hen. VIII, Cap. 9; :•>?> Hen. VIII, 

 Cap. 4. 



' See Lewis, 45-54. 



