Middlemen in English Business 259 



As was said, the greatest market for this district was Cirencester.^ 

 It was the distributing point for wool oxer the Western district of 

 manufacture. The manufacturers came thither from Tedbury, 

 Malmesbury and other towns of Gloucester and Wilts and Devon to 

 buy their wool. The wool-merchants of Leicester, and the fel-wool- 

 men from Southwark, and the Sussex and the Welsh and Irish wool- 

 men, all brought vast stores of wool to this market for the Tuesday and 

 Friday sales. Even Spain contributed.- Defoe said, "The quantities 

 sold here are incredible."^ It was handling at least five hundred packs 

 of wool per week about 1700. 



Another prominent class of wool that i)pured into Cirencester was 

 fel-wool. As has been noted elsewhere, man}- thousands of sheep 

 were brought yearly to Smithfield and other London markets and 

 slaughtered by the carcass butchers. Much fel-wool thus came to 

 the London market. It was bought up by two sets of buyers; the one 

 bought for the Eastern district, for the makers of bays and sayes; the 

 other bought for the Western district, where, with the other wools 

 above mentioned, it was manufactured into medley or white cloths; 

 these, when dyed, were called Spanish cloth; this wool was bought of 

 the wool-staplers of Barnaby Street, Southwark, and carried westward 

 by the same carriers as brought up the West country cloths to Black- 

 well Hall. The blanket makers of Whitney, Oxon, were probabl}' the 

 greatest consumers of this fel-wool. A writer in 1677 said, "this 

 place has engrossed the whole trade of the nation for this commodit}' 

 (blankets) in so much that the wool for their use, which is chief!}' 

 fell wool (off from sheepskins) centers here from some of the further- 

 most parts of the kingdom, viz. Rumneymarsh, Canterbury, Colches- 

 ter, Norwich, Exeter, Leicester, Northampton, Co\entry, Hunting- 

 don, etc., of which the Blanketers . . . do work out above a 

 hundred packs of wool per week. . . . The\' send all sorts of 

 Duffields and Blankets weekly in waggons up to London, which return 

 laded with fell-wool from Leaden-hall and Barnaby Street in South- 

 wark, whither 'tis brought for this purpose from most places above 

 mentioned; Oxfordshire and the adjacent counties being not able to 

 supply them."^ 



i"Essai sur L'Elat," 29-30; V. C. H.. Glouc. II, 154-5, 162-3. 

 - Exch. Q. R. bdle 457, Xo. 35; V. C. H.. Glouc. II, 159. In 1567 125.5 cwt. of 

 Spanish wool were imported. 

 3 Defoe, Tour, II, 268. 

 ' Plot, Xat. Hist. Oxf., 278-80. 



